Chapter 13
“So have you ever done anything with children before?” Wesley asked as they pulled out from the cottage and motored slowly down the sandy road toward the main street. It would only be about a five-minute drive, if that, until they made it to Vera and Dominic’s house.
“Not really,” Birdie said, her fingers twisting in her lap. “You?” She looked over at him, and he couldn’t misread the hope in her eyes.
“Zilch. I didn’t even have siblings.”
“That’s great. So, you’ve never changed a diaper?” she asked, and he thought she was probably trying to sound cheerful.
“I have not. Hopefully that doesn’t change today.”
“Well, it’s going to change for one of us, I’m pretty sure.”
“You’ve never changed a diaper either?”
She shook her head.
“What famous person has never changed a diaper,” he said, teasing, scratching his chin as though he were trying to figure it out.
He felt the several days’ worth of beard on his face and thought that he probably ought to shave, although that was part of his disguise. One of his biggest sponsors was a razor company, and he appeared in a lot of commercials. The scruff on his cheeks would hopefully be helpful in keeping him incognito .
“I think it would have been a bigger hint if I had changed a diaper. There are fewer famous people to choose from that way.”
He laughed, agreeing with her assessment. “Well, it’s only for two hours.”
“Yes. That’s what I heard too. Apparently Vera hasn’t been out since her C-section.”
“I’ve heard those take a long time to recover from, not that I know. Or will ever find out,” he said, wanting to put a hand on his stomach in sympathetic pain.
“That’s what I’ve heard too.” She couldn’t believe that Dominic and Vera were going to entrust their six children to them. Her grandma must have been a pretty smooth talker in order to have that happen. Regardless, her nerves were pinging as they pulled into the Millers’ house.
“I’m not sure I’m ready for this,” Wesley said, echoing her exact thoughts as they stopped on the drive and he kept his hands on the wheel.
“There’s still time to turn around and leave,” she said, scrunching up her face and thinking that if he was going to agree with her, she would have a hard time getting out of the car anyway.
“There is.” He nodded, looking straight ahead at the garage door that was down. “Can we live with ourselves if we do that?”
“I think I can,” she said. “I think that would be easier than changing a diaper, anyway.”
“I’m not going to disagree with you.” He tapped the steering wheel. “Are we going to do the hard thing or the easy thing? We could make this a skip day, go to the beach, and hang out.”
“Or we can go in and do our best to wrangle six children, including two newborns, when neither one of us have any experience with children and don’t even know how to change diapers.”
“That makes the skip day look really, really nice.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” They sat there for about three seconds, and then, almost as though their brains were working in tandem, they reached for their door latches and yanked them so close together that it was just one sound.
They looked across the seats at each other and grinned.
“We can do this.”
“Or we’ll die trying,” she said with a dramatic flair.
They walked up to the door and knocked .
As though he was waiting for them on the other side, Dominic opened it almost immediately.
“We were afraid you’re going to chicken out. It took you a little bit longer than strictly necessary to get out of the car.”
“Do people do that?”
“Yesterday’s person did,” Vera said, smiling as she came walking toward them. “And they weren’t even going to be watching the twins, just the four older kids.”
Behind both of them, kids zoomed around, flying one way and then the other, and Wesley didn’t even try to keep track of them. He was going to be hard put to just keep the kids alive, let alone learn their names.
“I have a paper on the counter with our phone numbers on it. We’re only going to be down at the healing garden, and I’m just going to be watching my husband do a few little maintenance things.”
“And we will be back in two hours, no more,” Dominic added, putting a hand on his wife’s shoulder and saying his words firmly, as though wanting to reassure them that they were not going to be stuck with their children forever.
It wasn’t a huge amount of reassurance for Birdie, but she glanced at Wesley and returned his tremulous smile.
“Everyone should be fine. The twins have just been fed. They’re down for a nap right now and in their dual pack and play, right here with the rest of the kids. So you don’t have to try to keep track of them in some room somewhere,” Vera said, leading them over to where the twins slept in a side-by-side bassinet type thing.
“If they do wake up, I have instructions for formula and the diapers are right there,” she pointed to the diapers, “and if you have any questions, you can call us. Honestly, at this point, we’ll be happy if we can just have five minutes outside of the house.”
“Together. Five minutes together,” Dominic added.
“As for the other kids, don’t worry about them. They can do whatever they want to except watch TV. They can play, inside or outside, we let them run in the house, we originally started with the rule that you couldn’t, and we decided that we didn’t want to go insane, so we quit telling everyone to stop running after having them for about an hour and a half.”
“Yeah, that’s about right,” Dominic said, looking at his wife and nodding.
“I’m not sure if it kept us actually sane, but it was a nice idea. ”
“Yeah. I have noticed you’re a little on the crazy side.”
“You mean you didn’t notice that when I said yes when you asked me to marry you?”
“Oh, that’s right. I was looking for someone like you.”
They grinned at each other, and then Vera looked back at them. “I’m sorry. He’s sidetracking me. Do you have any questions?”
“So, we don’t have to feed them, don’t have to change them, all we have to do is keep them from killing each other for two hours?”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much the baseline,” Dominic said. “That’s my life in a nutshell right now. Survive, without killing the children.”
Dominic and Vera looked at each other, nodded and shrugged, and then glanced back at them, to see whether or not they thought of any questions.
Birdie was quiet, she looked a little shell-shocked, as her eyes got caught on a little girl who ran through the house with white leotards on. Wesley looked again. Scratch that. She had no leotards on.
Possibly his expression was a mirror of Birdie’s.
“Oh. We also try to keep the house from catching on fire,” Dominic said, and then they disappeared out the door.
“Well, if I’d known that to begin with, it would have changed everything,” Wesley said as he stared at the closed door, feeling a little bit like it was a prison cell that had just closed in front of him.
“Same. Wow. Keep them alive and keep the house from burning down. I don’t know how they expect two humans to accomplish such lofty heights.” Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned toward him, lowering her voice. “The one girl is naked.”
“Was that a girl?” he said.
“Didn’t you have biology in school?” she asked.
He snorted. “I think I was in the gym.”
She laughed out loud at that, and he almost thought she was going to touch his bicep, but she didn’t. “I like it.”
Somehow her words made a soft thrill expand in his chest, more than the syrupy compliments that he got from numerous girls about everything from his play on the ice to his biceps to his white teeth .
“So do you think we ought to go in and interrupt their play and try to learn their names and introduce ourselves and all that?” Birdie asked as her eyes scanned over the room again where a truck rumbled past, followed by a boy running, and then a ball zoomed through.
“I think that’s going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. If we want to get through this without anyone dying, and the house not going up in flames, I think we need to focus. Zero in on what’s really important.”
“Gotcha. So we just stand here. We’re referees.”
“As long as you’re fair,” he said automatically.
She jerked her head over at him, and he pressed his lips closed, gave her a tight-lipped smile, and looked back at the kids.
“So, what’s going to make us call the parents?” she asked.
“If either one of those things over there make a sound,” he nodded at the sleeping babies, “I’m dialing their number immediately. Both at the same time if necessary.”
“Agreed.”
“Anything else?”
“Any kind of explosion.”
“Right. Explosions definitely require a call to the parents. What about you?” he asked.
“I would feel better if the girl put her clothes on, but...that’s probably not parent worthy since she had them off before they left.”
“I’m not sure they saw that. I think they were just afraid that you and I were going to chicken out, and they were more concerned about getting out the door before we did. After all, if they’re out first, we can’t leave until they come back.”
“Good point.”
“Blood. Any blood, definitely a call to the parents.”
“Right. One of us will call the parents, one of us will call 911.”
“Good thinking. I feel like we have a plan now.”
They turned and watched the children. It felt like complete chaos, but after a while, he thought he had figured out that there were two boys and two girls.
It took about five minutes, but on one trip through, one girl zoomed around them, her long skirt flowing from her waist, and she was wearing what looked like another skirt on her head, maybe to imitate hair, but Wesley wasn’t entirely sure. Perhaps she thought she was some kind of forested creature. Regardless, she didn’t stop moving, but she looked them both in the eye and said, “I’m Emma.” Then she zoomed away .
“All right. That’s easy. Emma has clothes on,” Birdie murmured, mostly to herself.
“As long as she doesn’t take them off, I think we’re good.”
“She seemed like maybe she had put on what her sister had taken off, although I’m not sure about that.”
He hadn’t considered that. That her hairpiece might have come from her sister’s bottom.
“I have to pee,” the smallest child said as he ran up to them, holding himself.
They looked at each other. His panic was probably mirrored on Birdie’s face.
“I think this is yours,” he said, hoping that she was not going to argue.
“It’s your gender. I think you need to take care of it.”
She had him there. Actually, he could argue, but what if the little girl came up and needed to go to the bathroom? Would that be his turn? No, definitely it was better to deal with the little boy—
“Too late.” The little boy shrugged his shoulders and went running off.
“It’s still yours,” Birdie said.
“I had no idea that you were so devoid of any type of compassion or consideration for your fellow man.”
“I think my compassion will come back after you have those pants changed.”
“Me?”
“He puts them on the same way you do, one leg at a time.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. He looks like the type of kid that probably jumps into his jeans in the morning.”
But as he watched the little kid run around, there was definitely a wet spot in the front and going down the inside of both legs.
Birdie did not look like she was going to be the slightest bit of help, and he couldn’t blame her. He actually wasn’t sure which would be harder, watching the other five children while he took the one kid out of commission and changed his pants, or changing the pants on the one.
“First things first. I need to catch him.”
“I would hold him at arm’s length if I were you. At least until you get the wet stuff off.”
“Thanks for the advice there, partner.”
“Not a problem, Jack.”
He wasn’t sure where that came from, but the way she said it made him laugh .
“The next catastrophe is yours, Jill.”
She grinned at his retort and seemed to accept the nickname that he christened her with without comment.
It seemed kind of apt, since they were trying to keep their identities a secret, that they would have cutesy names.
He was able to swoop in and grab the little guy with the wet pants, but his next problem was how to get him somewhere to get them changed. And where to go?
“We’re gonna change your pants, kiddo,” he said.
“No!” the boy yelled and then started squirming in his arms.
That was unexpected. He expected the kids to peacefully comply, not stage an insurrection immediately.
Right. Plan B.
“Emma,” he called.
The little girl with the skirt on her bottom and another skirt on her head came running out of what he assumed must be the playroom.
“What?” she asked as she did a lap around him, both of her skirts flying in the breeze.
“Where are the clothes for this one?” he asked, nodding to the squirming child who was doing his best to pull a Houdini in his arms.
“Follow me!” she said as she did a second lap around him and then cut off, kind of like a car at a roundabout, down a hallway.
“Could you go slower?” he asked, trying to hold the little boy at arm’s length and still keep up to Emma.
“I’m fast!” Emma said, running back down the hall, doing a lap around him, and then swinging back like a boomerang and disappearing to the left at the end of the hall.
He heard thundering beside his ear and realized that she had taken the stairs. That made sense. The bedrooms were probably upstairs.
“If you would stop squirming, this would be a lot easier.”
“No! No! No!”
It was kind of like having a political discussion with someone who had no facts to back up their opinion. Wesley laughed at the very apt description as he made the turn and started up the stairs, careful not to allow the child’s feet to drag but also very careful not to let any wet part touch any part of his body. He had not volunteered for this, but he would gamely do his best, except...he drew the line at bodily fluids. Particularly the bodily fluids that came out the bottom end.
Except, he didn’t exactly want to get puked on either, so bodily fluids, big red line in the sand.