Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Connor
All the way home, I try not to think about that woman, but it’s like her face is tattooed on my brain. Dark hair. Big sunglasses. Straight, white teeth like she wore braces for years when she was young.
No, that’s impossible. My mind is playing tricks on me. She couldn’t have been standing in the self-checkout area of my neighborhood grocery store. She’s dead.
This is because I let my mind go back to that night all those years ago. I knew this would happen sometime. My brain would get the best of me, and then I’d be fixated on all that happened. Dammit! I’ve been so good for so long. Why is this happening now?
I pull into the driveway as I decide it’s stress.
Work has been a fucking bear lately. Between those two new guys coming out of the gate and making sales most of us haven’t seen in two or three years and my boss Martin practically breathing down all our backs to do better this quarter, I’ve been a huge ball of stress from head to toe.
And Jamie hasn’t been much help. Between her saying we need to find a new school for the girls since they’ve outgrown their current gymnastics teacher, which means I’ll have to fork over more money for those damn sessions each week, and her claiming we need to hire a landscaper to make the yard look as good as all our neighbors’ yards, I’ve had to listen to a near constant stream of we need talk for the past month or so.
Yes, it’s definitely stress. My mind is playing tricks on me. I couldn’t have seen who I thought I saw. Not possible. Dead people don’t hang out at the grocery store.
I chuckle at that idea and silently joke to myself that they don’t use self-checkout either. A dead person would definitely use a regular checkout. I mean, if they’re dead, the last thing they want to do is scan their own damn items. Hell, most living people don’t want to do that.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The stress is getting to me. I need to get my head together. In two minutes, I have to deal with my wife and eight screaming girls. It was just my mind playing games with me. That’s it.
After grabbing the four grocery bags, I head into the house where my daughters and all their friends have set up camp in the living room.
I level my gaze on Jamie as if to ask, “Why the hell aren’t they outside?
” but she doesn’t understand my look and simply hurries over to grab the bags out of my hands.
“Girls, look what Mr. Jennings got! Ice cream, gummy bears, the works! Let’s get this party started!” she squeals, and I swear she sounds just like one of the preteens surrounding me.
That gets eight girls even more excited and jumping up and down. As I look on in horror while they rush into the kitchen, I have to wonder if they really need more sugar.
What I need is to get the hell away from this before the headache that started forming on the drive home explodes into a full-on throbbing migraine.
With a quick wave, I hurry upstairs to change my shoes.
By the time I sit down on the edge of the bed, I feel trapped in my own home.
I could go downstairs to my home office, but all that goddamned yelling is going to make concentrating on anything impossible.
Even all the way up here I can hear them.
Three thousand square feet of house that I pay far too much of my salary for each month and I’m stuck hiding out in my bedroom in order to get some peace and quiet. Someone remind me again why having kids is such a joy.
Jamie interrupts my attempt at silence, bursting into the bedroom like some frantic chicken. “Oh, Connor! The party is such a hit! This is going to help the girls so much. You watch!” she squeals as she searches the room for something.
“Great. What are you looking for?”
She spins around, and I see her hands full of the towels she bought a few months ago that cost a fortune. “I need more towels for the girls.”
“What’s wrong with the beach towels they’ve been using for the past couple hours? Why do they need our good towels?”
Stopping in front of me, she shakes her head as her eyes fill with tears. What the hell is she so emotional about? I merely asked about towels.
“Don’t you want your girls to be popular? Their friends are going to tell their parents about what they saw at our house, and I don’t want them saying that they had to use those beach towels the whole time they were here. Don’t worry. I’ll wash them after they’re done.”
I watch her scurry away as I shake my head in disbelief. I don’t understand her. Are these darlings too good for beach towels?
Whatever. I can’t be bothered to dissect my wife’s thinking. Let her deal with all of them and all of the nonsense involved with impressing their parents.
Maybe I can get out on the links for a few holes of golf so I can escape all of this.
My temporary moment of hope is dashed when I remember hearing that there wasn’t a tee time available until two weekends from now.
Something about the club inviting in more members creating a backlog on reservations.
So that shoots down that idea. I need to think of something to get me as far away from a house full of girls as possible.
My mind remains blank for a few minutes as the yelping from downstairs makes thinking next to impossible. Jesus, don’t these girls ever stop? You’d swear someone was strangling them in my living room.
Then an idea comes to me. Bryan from the office mentioned something about doing something this weekend. What the hell was it? Hiking? Cycling? Dammit, why didn’t I pay attention when he was going on and on about it the other day during morning break?
I know the reason. He’s always talking about doing something with his time off, and I swear to God it takes every ounce of strength I have not to be filled with jealousy.
I don’t know if he’s married, but if he is, his wife isn’t like mine.
That’s for sure. I can’t remember a weekend in the past six months that she didn’t have something planned that interrupted any chance I had to relax.
My envy of his life aside, if he’s got something good going on, maybe I can join him and get away from here for a while. Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.
With new hope that I won’t be trapped here all day with eight screaming preteen girls and a squealing woman, I fish my phone out of my shorts pocket and search for his number.
There’s no Bryan in my contacts, though.
Christ, what did I list him under? I scroll up and down through the names until one jumps out at me finally.
Guy From Work. Not exactly the most complimentary description I’ve ever given someone. A little bland, in fact, but certainly not the worst I’ve called people.
A few seconds later, his phone begins to ring, and I hope beyond hope he’ll give me some excuse to get away. Even biking would be a welcome relief from what I’m dealing with here.
“Hey, Connor! Fancy you calling me right now. Did you decide to take me up on my offer to go hiking?” Bryan asks with almost as much enthusiasm as my wife.
“Yeah. I thought some fresh air might be good for me.”
“Great! Meet me at the community center in ten minutes. Be sure to wear the right kind of shoes. It’s not incredibly mountainous around here, but it still can leave you with a twisted ankle if you aren’t careful.”
“Got it. Hiking boots it is.”
“And no shorts. I know you like to wear them, but with all the things out on the trails, you need long pants.”
“Long pants. Check. Anything else?”
Bryan hums into the phone for a few moments before answering, “Nothing I can think of. Just be sure to be ready for a workout. After, we can grab a few drinks since the bar at the clubhouse will be next to empty by the time we get back. Sound good?”
What it sounds like is a chance to escape the insanity of my estrogen-filled home for a few hours. Hiking isn’t exactly the way I prefer to spend my weekend afternoons, but I’ll take it today.
“Sounds great!” I say in my best fake excitement voice.
“Cool! See you in ten at the community center.”
Happy to have something to save me from what my house has become, I toss my phone on the bed and hurry to find a pair of comfortable long pants I can wear on this hike.
All my pants are for work, but I think I might have one pair that will do.
Stepping into the walk-in closet my wife and I share, I’m surrounded by her clothes.
I look to the left to see a tiny section of mine shoved into a corner.
This must be another example of that happy wife, happy life stuff.
It takes me a few minutes to find my tan pants stuffed into a cubby in the back of my section.
When I take them out and see they’re wrinkled, I’m instantly infuriated.
The neighbors’ kids can’t use anything less than towels made of fine Egyptian cotton, but my clothes can be jammed into the closet in practically a ball?
I open my mouth to yell for my wife to come up here, but what’s the point? She’ll only explain how important it is for her to be downstairs doing her best helicopter mom routine while she tearfully stares at me like I’m some madman who doesn’t care about his children.
Forget that.
When I slip my right leg into the pants, I notice they aren’t too wrinkled once I’m in them. Maybe this won’t be bad, after all. I’m still pissed, but I’ll discuss that with Jamie later.
I find my brown hiking boots crammed into the back of the closet like my pants were. Lifting them out of their cubby, I can’t help but glance at the way her dozens of shoes are carefully placed along the shelf dedicated to only them.
Must be nice to take care of something.
Five minutes later, I’m dressed and ready for a hike. Maybe it will clear my head a little and put me into a better mood. Between my wife and those girls downstairs and that weird experience at the grocery store, I need something to help this day improve.
I breeze through the living room on my way toward the front door and call out to my wife in the kitchen, “Going out! Be back later!”
Unfortunately, she can’t just yell back, “Have a good time!” No. She has to rush toward me as I head out, saying, “Wait! Connor, I need to talk to you.”
Ten to one she doesn’t actually need to talk to me. She just wants to say something about some stupid idea she’s concocted about doing something to make the girls more popular.
I turn to face her, hoping she sees the expression of disgust on my face. I don’t ask for much. I just don’t want to be involved in any of the nonsense she has going with these kids. Why can’t she understand that?
When I don’t ask her what she needs, she narrows her eyes and tugs her eyebrows in toward her nose to give me that face that says she’s upset I’m not interested in what she has to say.
Normally, I’d give her what she wants, but one glance down at my still somewhat wrinkled tan pants makes me want to do nothing of the sort.
“Where are you going? I’m here with a houseful of girls. I need you here.”
“First of all, I never wanted any of these girls here, and before you ask me if I care about our daughters and how not having this party could hurt them socially, know this. I don’t care right now.
What I care about is the fact that in a closet the two of us are supposed to share, my clothes are stuffed into a corner so they’re wrinkled as shit.
See these pants, Jamie? I have to wear them like this because you treated them like garbage. ”
She looks down at my legs and then up at me in pure horror. “You can’t leave the house in them! They’re wrinkled. What will people think?”
Already sick of this conversation and everything about this day, I snap, “They’ll think my wife doesn’t take care of my things as well as she does her own, and you know what? They’d be right. Now move so I can leave. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Have fun with the girls.”
Jamie stands staring at me, her mouth hanging open in shock as I do just as I said I would, flinging the front door open and marching out into the sunlight in my wrinkled pants.
I don’t care what people think. If anyone dares to ask, I’ll tell them the truth and I won’t feel one ounce of shame about it.
As I start the car to drive to the community center a few blocks away, I glance over at the front door and see my wife still standing there in utter shock that I’m leaving.
Did she expect me to stay at home all day with eight girls doing their best pterodactyl impressions?
Maybe if she had asked me if I wanted to help I might have, but since I wasn’t even consulted about today’s social event, I see no reason why I should stick around and be miserable.
She can have the social climbing all to herself. She loves that stuff anyway, so why not?