Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Connor
The girls squeal and shout outside in the pool as I try to read the news on my phone. Nothing but garbage. Doesn’t anyone do anything good anymore? Why does it always have to be murders and people hurting one another? I’d kill for a story that involved someone fucking smiling.
Jamie putters around in the kitchen a few feet away from me making snacks for our daughters and their friends.
This day is a celebration for both girls after both finishing in the top spots at practice this week.
They’ve talked about nothing else but that and this party today since their mother suggested a celebration was in order.
Four days of nonstop chatter about it, and then their mother jumps in with her ideas on how great the two of them did compared to the other girls.
It's enough to make a man wish he had a son or two to even things out.
That’s not possible, unfortunately, but I still wish for it from time to time. Reality at the moment, however, is I have a beautiful wife who’s given me two lovely daughters, and when I’m not trying to drown out their yelping and hollering, I’m the most grateful man in the world.
“Honey, do you think three bags of chips will be enough?” my wife asks, tearing me out of my thoughts.
I look up and shrug. I have no idea if three bags of chips will be enough for eight girls. Aren’t they athletes? Should they even be eating chips? The thousand dollars I spend each month on gymnastics makes me wonder if my wife should have picked up some protein bars for them instead.
“Well, I thought it would be enough, but now as I stand here listening to them having such a good time out there, I wonder if they’re going to be hungrier than I anticipated when I was standing in the junk food aisle at the store,” Jamie says, punctuating her statement with a heavy sigh.
“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” I say as I sneak a glance down at my phone and some story about a local woman who found a shell estimated to be worth ten thousand dollars.
For a shell? What the hell kind of shell is it? Did someone famous used to own it, or is it from the time of the dinosaurs? Christ, why don’t I ever find shit like that?
“I don’t know,” she says, continuing this conversation. “Maybe I should run to the store and get more. I do have a bag of pretzels and some of those pizza bagels the girls love. Well, Cassandra loves them. Danielle only picks at them every time I make them for sleepovers.”
Already, I’ve heard enough about how much my two daughters eat.
Neither one of them is more than a hundred pounds soaking wet.
I doubt they need as much food as my wife thinks they do.
As for the other kids, I don’t care. Let them go back to their own homes to eat if they don’t like what we’re serving here.
I don’t dare say that to my wife. She’ll practically fall apart at the mere mention of not caring about what six pre-adolescents think.
Then she’ll give me the lecture on how important it is for the girls’ success in gymnastics for them to be seen in a positive light, and the best way to do that is to have their teammates over as often as possible and show them a wonderful time.
It’s keeping up with the Joneses on a level even the most ridiculous social climber could never imagine.
She acts as if they’ll be ostracized if our house isn’t nice enough and we don’t entertain the little darlings to their hearts’ content.
Jamie nearly had a conniption one time when I mistakenly used the downstairs bathroom while three of their little friends were over one Saturday night.
With tear-filled eyes, she explained I should have used our bathroom off our bedroom if I had to go.
I wanted to ask if the little darlings are too delicate to deal with the faint scent of a man having used the toilet, but I did what I always do when my wife starts in on one of her things.
I nodded and smiled before kissing her cheek and walking away. There’s no point in fighting with her on most of her crazy ideas. I’d only end up getting a long, drawn-out lecture about how I don’t care about my daughters’ well-being and happiness.
“Whatever you think is best,” I mumble as I scroll through the sports section of the news.
Then I realize if she does make a trip back to the store, I’ll be forced to watch eight pre-teen girls. Oh, no. Not happening. I did not sign up for that when I agreed our daughters should have some friends over.
Quickly, I jump up from my chair and stuff my phone into my pocket as I hurry into the kitchen. “Honey, why don’t you let me run to the store for you? Just tell me everything you want me to get so the girls can be happy, and I’ll get it all. Easy, right?”
She studies my face for the briefest moment before smiling at my suggestion. “Oh, thank you, Connor. I really appreciate you helping me with this. I’ll write a list of everything I think we need. Just give me a minute.”
Leaning in, I kiss her on the cheek before turning to walk upstairs. “My pleasure, honey. I need to put some shoes on, so I’ll be back down in a minute.”
I sometimes wonder if she knows I use these thoughtful errands as a chance to escape what she insists on doing around here.
If she does, she hasn’t said anything about it.
I doubt she knows. My wife, while a beautiful woman, isn’t exceptionally bright when it comes to seeing the truth of things in our life.
It’s the secret to how she’s able to walk around with a smile all the time.
Nobody’s that happy, but she always appears to be completely content.
When we first got serious, I liked that about her.
It made my life easier, so why shouldn’t I appreciate having someone who only saw the positives?
It was one of the main reasons I wanted to marry her.
While other men had nagging girlfriends and wives, or worse, women who constantly wished for more than my friends could give them, I had a perfectly content woman happy as a clam to marry me.
It's become a trait I resent now, but not for the reason most people would think. It isn’t the apparent happiness that’s the problem.
It’s how she uses it as a way to do things I hate.
It bugs me that despite the fact that she has no job, she spends like a sailor on leave to make our house look more impressive to others and to make the girls seem like they come from far more money than we have.
Whenever I say anything about it, she simply smiles and answers, “Don’t you want to be surrounded by nice things?
A happy wife leads to a happy life, Connor. ”
And that right there is the thing I hate most. Her happiness being more important than mine because if she’s not happy, then none of us will be. Who the hell came up with that nonsense? Why isn’t it a happy husband leads to a happy life? Is it because it doesn’t rhyme?
Ridiculous.
I mull all of this over as I sit on the edge of our king size bed and slip my sneakers on. Looking around the room, I see nothing I wanted here. It’s all very Town and Country and nothing that I’d ever want my bedroom to be, but Jamie claims it’s necessary, so it matches the rest of the house.
As if anyone who comes to visit us ever walks upstairs to inspect our bedroom to make sure it’s not clashing with the other twenty-six-hundred feet.
Closing my eyes, I stop myself from this spiral of discontent I get into sometimes.
I have a very nice life. It’s more than I could have ever imagined as a kid growing up in western Pennsylvania.
I’ve traded miserable winters for the relative warmth of southern Maryland, left behind a life of lower middle class struggling for a well-paying job as a salesman that’s given me the opportunity to have this beautiful, nearly three thousand square foot home with an in-ground pool in a gated community complete with tennis courts and nature trails only my neighbors and I can enjoy, and married a beautiful woman teenage me would have never been able to dream of getting.
Life is good, especially considering what it could have been because of that one mistake I made right before I turned eighteen.
I shake my head to stop my mind from returning to that night.
I won’t think of that today. I’m happy and don’t need to remember anything from before I became this Connor Jennings.
The person I was before isn’t me now. That person wouldn’t even recognize my life it’s so changed from what it was then.
And that’s the way it needs to stay. In the past. Never to be brought up again.
As I walk into the grocery store, I glance down at the list Jamie gave me.
She should have been a doctor with handwriting like hers.
Other than the additional bags of chips, I can barely understand a single thing on this paper in front of me.
I should have asked her about it before I left, but I was in such a hurry I didn’t have time.
The last thing I wanted was to be cornered by one of my kids on my way out.
Like their mother, my daughters think only of what I can buy them.
I squint as I try to make out some of the items my wife wants.
Is that first line gummy bears? All those girls seem too old for that kind of candy, but what do I know?
The next line might be vanilla ice cream.
I remember her and the girls making ice cream sundaes a few months back and them dumping those colored gummy bears over the top, so that would make sense.
Looking up, I barely have time to step out of the way of a harried looking woman with her blond hair up in a bun rushing down the aisle. Jesus, slow down, lady. What’s the hurry?
A man behind her passes by and gives me a tiny smile as if he’s thinking the same thing.
In a split second, I decide they’re together.
I don’t know why I think that because she’s got to be at least a decade younger than him.
Or maybe he’s just prematurely gray. I can understand that.
I found my first gray hair a few weeks ago.
Right near my left temple. I’m only thirty-six, but I’m already beginning to go gray.
When she turns around at the end of the aisle, she snaps, “Gregory, we’re in a hurry. Our son and daughter are expecting us to be finished here and all set up for the end of their cello lessons. At the rate you’re going, they’ll already be first and second chair by the time we get out of here.”
I watch his jaw tighten as he grits his teeth and hurries to catch up to her when she turns to walk to the next aisle.
That’s the kind of marriage I’d hate. See, there’s a woman who nags.
No doubt about that. I’d venture to guess she does even more than nag.
She hectors him. I bet he never intended on his life being this miserable.
It just happened. One day he was the man of the house with a wife and two children, and the next he was some jackass whose wife publicly humiliates him at the grocery store.
Yes, I really do have a good life. I need to remember that more often.
If only I could read my wife’s chicken scratch she calls handwriting. Oh well. She and the girls will have to be happy with what I bring back.
I roll up to the register with a cart of things that might have been on the list and begin unloading items onto the conveyor belt behind an elderly man who’s stacked his cans of dog food three high and six wide.
I watch as he keeps a careful eye on them, moving once and then twice when he thinks they’re about to tumble into a heap right before they get to the cashier.
He’s an odd-looking guy too with dark eyes that bug out a little too much and a strangely small nose for a man.
Then again, it may only seem tiny because of those bizarre googly eyes.
Reminds me of an older neighbor who used to live down the street from me when I was growing up, except Mr. Danson wasn’t as tall as this man.
“I like things to be orderly,” he says without a hint of guilt when he looks back at me.
With a smile, I pretend like he’s not the oddest duck I’ve seen all day and keep piling up the items from my cart. The cashier tries to make small talk with him, asking about what kind of dog he has, but the man simply nods and points at the cans like he wants her to scan faster.
The grocery store is sure full of weirdos for a Saturday afternoon.
Ten minutes later, I’m all checked out and pushing my cart full of bags toward the store exit when I see the dog guy stop dead and point at some woman in the self-checkout area. He seems even more excited than he was about the way his dog’s food was stacked a few minutes ago.
For a moment, I consider stopping to ask if he’s okay, but the last thing I need is to be stuck here at the grocery store for God only knows how long while this guy has his attack or whatever it is. I’ve got two gallons of vanilla ice cream to get home and into the freezer.
I walk past him and glance over at a woman with dark hair and sunglasses. She looks like she’s staring at him, but I realize it’s not the old man she’s interested in.
It’s me.
My ego pleased I still have it, I smile at her, but then I notice something about her that makes my heart skip a beat. She looks so much like someone from my past.
Someone from back there, back where I left.
But that’s impossible.