4. Claire
four
“To surviving the first day!”
Our circle of teachers clinks celebratory beers to my iced tea, and we all take a sip—some, heftier than others, as I watch Penelope chug back nearly half her beer, go back for more, and eventually finish it.
“I’m getting another round. Who’s in?”
I laugh and shake my head.
“Benson? What are you drinking? What’s your poison?”
“Iced tea,” I say, lifting my glass.
“I’m getting you something stronger.”
“I won’t drink it,” I chuckle.
“No booze for you?” Drake Lawson, the sixth grade Social Studies teacher asks, pressing his elbow into mine and taking a swig of his IPA.
“Nope. I have to babysit tonight. Can’t let the youngins get a leg up on me.”
I tip my iced tea at him and match his eyebrow raise.
“Side job, or…”
I shake my head. “Nope. I’m a live-in babysitter for my never-ending sibling train. So, actually, in a way, yes?”
Damn. Maybe I do need something a little stronger.
I’m not usually outwardly bitter about watching my siblings, but at the thought of having to duck out of plans to make sure that Harper and Ryan take showers, and that Zoey and Michael get their homework done before they hop onto their tablets, and keeping Oliver from sticking a fork into a light socket, I realize that I kind of don’t want to head home to that.
But alas. Dad works late. Mom has her precious social life. And that, ladies and gentlemen, means that Claire has the kids.
“Damn. That sucks.”
I nod mechanically. Because it does and it doesn’t.
I love my siblings with all my heart, but also? I want the choice to have a beer to celebrate my first mostly-successful day in my first real job that isn’t waitressing. Oh well.
Just like I always do, I paint on a sunshine attitude. I can’t control the number of siblings I have or the fact that they’re my responsibility starting in forty-five minutes, but I can control the way I look at it.
I have a rent-free roof over my head; breakfast, lunch, and dinner; the clothes on my back; and a fully functioning minivan that can get me and the Benson circus from point A to point B. Which is when I remember…
“Shit. It’s Wednesday, isn’t it?”
“Mhm,” Drake nods, beer pressed to his lips. “Why?”
“Zoey has cello on Wednesdays. I’ve gotta run.”
I slug back the rest of my iced tea and wave over my shoulder at the coworkers that get to stay out as late as they want, because they don’t have parentally-imposed schedules.
They get to be real adults.
“How was your lesson?”
Zoey, in typical Zoey fashion, tried to hop into the front seat of the car and put her headphones on. But me, in typical Claire fashion, conveniently hid them while she was inside Mike’s Music for the last half hour.
“Where are my…” she murmurs, searching the cupholders, the door pocket, and the floor between her shoes before I dangle the headphone case she’s looking for in front of her.
“You can have them back once you tell me three things about your day,” I say in a sing-song voice that only grates more on her nerves the deeper into adolescence she gets.
“I woke up, existed as a blob of cells, and gained one stress-related headache from my older sister who thinks she is my parent.”
Ha. Oh. Sweet Zo. How I wish the parentage was my idea.
She reaches for the headphones, but I’m too fast.
“Three positive things, Zoey-Ba-Boey,” I tut, knowing that would be her answer before she could drench me in sarcasm. She exhales, and narrows one eyelid, twitching it at me in annoyance.
“One positive…” I prompt, the car still in park, Oliver still happily playing with his busy book in the backseat.
“I scored a ninety-four on my science lab.”
“Proud of you!”
She doesn’t return my high five. I didn’t expect her to.
“One thing that could’ve gone better?”
“I could have worked alone and gotten higher than a ninety-four on my science lab.”
“Billy Mitchell?”
She exhales a forceful, Yes, and settles into the seat, buckling at the same time that she opens up. If venting is what does the trick, I’ll take it. My sister rants about her poor excuse for a lab partner the whole ride home.
“…don’t even understand how he was accepted into the STEM academy in the first place,” she continues as we lightly bump over the curb into the driveway of our two-story suburban home. “Nepotism at its finest. He’s going to drown once we take high school placement exams. It’s completely unfair that I have to put up with him for two more years.”
I put the car in park, the motion sensor illuminating the garage cramped with memories of sports escapades past and present, and tilt my head toward my sister with a soft smile and lifted brows.
“That’s the bitch of it, kid: life’s not fair. Sometimes, you have to take the hand you’re dealt and do your best with those cards.”
I reach over to cup her cheek; a year younger than her peers, she’s a ticking time bomb to teen acne. Her baby-soft skin warms my thumb until she rolls her eyes and pulls away, Can I have my headphones now? her parting words to my free wisdom. I hand them over, glance in the backseat at a sleeping Oliver, and sigh. I’ll give him five more minutes before I head inside.
Besides. That’ll give me five more minutes before I take the chaos back from Michael, who has been on duty since I picked up Ollie, Zo, and her cello Bruno an hour and a half ago.
After three attempts at rousing my sweet angel, I end up hauling him, still dead to the world, from his car seat through the connected garage door. All attempts to shush the rest of my siblings are futile.
Zoey is shaking an empty box of Chick’n Biskut crackers wildly at Michael—who more than likely finished the box of her favorite snack and then replaced it in the pantry just to torment her—while Ryan furiously erases something on Harper’s apparently still unfinished homework. Why he is helping her with second grade math is beyond me, considering he couldn’t add single digits until the end of third grade—I would know, since I spent thirty minutes a day tutoring him in every teaching method imaginable until something finally clicked. Our dog—my best friend in the world, the lovable golden Sonny—has his paws up on the island around which everyone is congregated, and has a full stick of butter nearly nudged to the edge.
“Guys! Butter! Sonny!”
They barely react. Zoey whacks Michael with the cracker box, Harper chucks her eraser at the countertop and starts crying, Michael grabs Zoey by the hair and she starts screaming, Oliver wakes up in my arms and immediately starts yelling for fruit snacks, Sonny succeeds in toppling the butter dish off the counter, and I?
Have no other choice but to roll with the punches. Same as I always have.
Luckily this time, I have reinforcements.
Penelope got me a teacher lanyard with a badge holder and whistle for the start of the year—You can’t be a teacher unless we can hear your keys clacking against your stomach from down the hall!—and I get to practice it on my siblings.
The deafening screech halts even Sonny in his forever quest to eat any and all butter-dipped objects. For the second time today, all eyes are on me.
“Status report?”
“What are we, soldiers?” Michael asks, his shoulders hunching up to his ears as his eyes narrow to that typical teenager, What do you even mean, bruh? stature.
“With the way you’re acting like hooligans? I might need to whip you into shape like ‘em.” To punctuate that thought, I tighten the slack on my lanyard and circle the whistle around my fingers. Oliver covers his ears and shouts No, Cware!, and Sonny dips his head and whimpers.
“All of my homework is finished, your majesty.”
Michael punctuates his retort with a sarcastic bow.
“And these two?”
He shrugs.
“Ry said he had it covered.”
“And he clearly does not?”
I cross my arms, indicating to Harper’s math worksheet that now has a hole in it. Michael exhales and rolls his eyes, muttering, I’ll take care of it, and swipes the worksheet in his direction to assess the damage.
“Lunches for tomorrow?”
“Made, except the sandwiches.”
My job, since apparently Michael doesn’t know how to make them and yours are always the best, Claire! Hey. I’m no gourmet chef, but I’ll take it.
“Okay. Dinner consensus?”
When the overwhelming answer is veggie pasta, I am not at all surprised. I’ve been sneaking these knuckleheads vegetables in their pasta sauce since Ryan threw broccoli at my head like he was trying out to be a pitcher for the Sox.
“Okay. Zo: shower. Michael and Harper: math. Ry, can you handle PJ’s for Ollie?”
“On it, Sarge.”
Ryan salutes me with two fingers, then takes Oliver by the hand to the giant family closet attached to the laundry room to help him pick out tonight’s jams.
I take out the necessary pots and pans, boil up their favorite bow tie noodles, and have dinner on the table within the half hour. By that point, order has been restored. Sonny has eaten real dog food, Harper can mostly add triple-digit numbers independently, Oliver’s dinosaur pajamas have been turned right-side-out, and we are essentially the Brady Bunch, all seated around our large kitchen table.
All we’re missing is dear old mom and dad.
I should be grateful that dad has a great job. We are not strapped for anything in the Benson household when it comes to money. What we are strapped for is time.
Time from our parents—ironically, as the oldest, I seem to have banked the least.
“Best part of your day?” I ask, helping Oliver get some noodles onto his construction truck fork. He gets a face full of sauce before the pasta is anywhere relatively near his mouth, and I kick myself for not making tonight bath night. I mentally add that to tomorrow’s checklist.
“I got to sign the brag book in the office!” Harper shares.
“Good for you, kiddo! What’d you do?”
“I helped Xander B. with his math problem when he couldn’t solve it.”
She looks so smug, and I tamp down my eye roll, remembering the meltdown she’d appeared to have over her own math homework not half an hour ago.
The rest of my siblings share the best parts of their days, and then we wash up, taking our stations to do the dishes and clean the kitchen so that Mom and Dad come home to an orderly household.
Dad had meetings in New York today, so he won’t be home until after ten. I put his plate in the fridge, knowing he won’t eat it, but will probably take it as lunch tomorrow. Mom will return from her social plans as soon as Oliver is asleep, close to eight.
After the younger ones have read for twenty minutes out of a chapter book, and I ensure that all of Zoey’s homework has been done both correctly and neatly, after Michael asks for help filling out a job application when he doesn’t know what a SSN is, after Oliver gets up three separate times for water, then another hug, then to pee, I finally get to sit down for the first time since I was at school.
My siblings are either asleep or winding down with their own form of entertainment. The RoboVac is taking care of the kitchen and the dishwasher is running. Backpacks and lunches are ready on the counter, and outfits for tomorrow are laid out on the living room couch for an easy grab-and-go.
And as my exhale turns into a full ten-second yawn, the chunky knitted throw blanket from the back of the couch encasing me in its heaven and threatening to carry me off to Neverland, I realize that no one cared enough to ask me about my day.