Chapter 8
EIGHT
WILLA
“What was your favorite part about school today?” I ask the kids.
“Lunch!”
“Yeah? What did you have?”
“Noodles with chicken bits that we ate with our fingers! And cucumber and carrot sticks and goldfish crackers! And Daddy hid the red gummy bears under the crackers!”
“He did? That’s funny. What about you, Lucky? What was your favorite thing?”
Lucky is considering his answer very carefully. “Hmmm. I liked it when Mrs. Babcock tooted and pretended she didn’t. Everyone laughed, and then she laughed too, and she said she had a soda for lunch.” Lucky and his sister both cover their adorable faces as they laugh hysterically.
“I seem to recall Mrs. Babcock had a soda for lunch last week too,” Shane mutters from the driver’s seat.
“She did! She toots a lot. But not the smelly kind.”
“Wow. Mrs. Babcock sounds like my kind of teacher.”
“Why do some toots smell bad and some don’t?”
“Good question, Lucky! Willa’s an expert on smells. Willa?”
I smile, and my eyes meet Shane’s in the rearview mirror.
When we picked up the twins. I decided to sit in the back seat between them.
Partly because it seemed like a good idea to be closer to them and partly because sitting next to their dad on the drive to school was silent, awkward agony.
He’s barely said a word to me since his shower, and the only time he’s made eye contact with me since then is through the rearview mirror.
“Well, I can tell you exactly why that is, actually. You see, when you toot, your body is passing gas and chemicals out from the belly, and the type of gas that comes out of you depends on what you ate. So, if you ate something that has sulfur in it, like meat or eggs or broccoli, your farts are going to be silent but deadly! But if you drink bubbly drinks like soda, your belly might get filled with those gas bubbles, but there’s no sulfur in them, so when the gas comes out it doesn’t smell. ”
So this is what our life is going to be like together for the next three months. Fart talk. That should make it easier to keep it in my pants.
“Did you know our mom and dad are famous?” Summer grins up at Shane while asking me this.
“Yes, I do know that. Did you know that I first met your dad when he was a famous teenager?”
“You did?” Lucky’s voice gets squeaky. “Did you know our mom too?”
“No, I actually met your dad when he was working on a TV show called That’s So Wizard! with my brother Nico. Do you know Nico?”
“I know Nico!” Summer yells out as she flings her arms in the air. Typical female response to my brother’s charms. “Wait. Nico is your brother?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is Nico coming to live with us too?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Nico has his own place. And I’m better at looking after kids than he is.”
“Because you’re the nanny?”
“Exactly, Lucky. Because I’m the nanny.”
“Was our dad the same as he is now when you met him?”
“Well, that depends. How is he now?”
“Tall. Funny. Nice,” Lucky says.
“Tall and weird and tired all the time and sometimes nice and sometimes a big grumpy bear.”
“Hey,” he says without looking back. “I’m not tired all the time, and I’m nice even when I’m a big grumpy bear.”
Honestly, it’s hard for me to believe he’s grumpy with the kids.
The way their faces lit up when they saw him waiting on the sidewalk.
The way they ran to him and giggled when he caught them both and somehow managed to pick them both up at the same time…
my right ovary wept while the other one shoveled ice cream into its mouth.
“Sounds like he hasn’t changed much,” I say. “Only I don’t think he was tired all the time when he was a teenager. Maybe we should let him take a nap when we get home. What do you think?”
“Dads don’t take naps. Naps are for little kids.”
“They don’t? Not even tired dads? Do you take naps sometimes?”
“Nooooo!” Summer says.
“Sometimes! When we’re tired we do!”
“See. Anyone can take a nap if they’re tired. Even dads.”
When we get back to the house, I ask the twins to show me what they want for a snack and tell them they’ll see their dad again at dinner.
Shane looks uneasy about leaving me alone with them so soon, or perhaps he also does not feel that masculine grown men are allowed to take naps.
I tell him to go do whatever he wants, just do it up in his bedroom with the lights off.
And then I skillfully distract him from the accidental innuendo by telling awesome, hilarious jokes.
“Hey, guys—if your dad refuses to go upstairs and take a nap, we’re going to have to charge him with resisting a rest. Get it?”
That one went straight over their little heads, but Shane just blinks and grins appreciatively.
“We should give your dad a report card on his napping skills. If he does good, he’ll get straight zzzzz’s!”
I can tell that Lucky and Summer don’t get the joke, but my delivery is so comical, they laugh politely anyway. They’re good kids. Shane shakes his head, gives each of his kids a kiss and then says to me as he passes by, heading out of the room, “See you at dinner. If you don’t quit before then.”
“You won’t get rid of me that easily. Hope you get some zzzzz’s!”
Summer and Lucky show me to the pantry, where their favorite afternoon snacks are kept. They are all packaged, organic, and Margo-approved. While they eat, I take a picture of them to send to their mother, rinse salad ingredients for dinner, and encourage them to make up more jokes about napping.
“Why did the chicken cross the road?” Lucky barely manages to ask because he’s laughing so hard.
“To take a nap!” Summer says, giggling. “What’s black and white and red all over?”
Lucky’s head falls back before she’s even finished the sentence. “A nap!”
I guess this is how twins tell jokes to each other.
After I’ve wiped their mouths and hands with wet wipes and they’ve helped me to put the dishes in the dishwasher, Summer asks for pocket snacks.
“What are pocket snacks?”
“Snacks that I keep in my pocket. For later,” she explains, as if she shouldn’t have to explain this to me.
I look over at Lucky. “Is that a thing?”
He shrugs. “I don’t need them. But she gets really grumpy if she doesn’t have snacks.”
I don’t want to wake up Shane to ask if it’s okay for her to have double snacks, and gosh darn it, I want her to like me. “Okay, but just something small, like a packet of goldfish crackers.”
“But I’ll take Lucky’s too. I have two pockets—see? And he forgets that he likes snacks sometimes.”
“Hmmm. Okay, but only if you both brush your teeth first.”
“Why? I brushed them this morning!”
“Because you ate lunch and snacks. I like to brush my teeth whenever I get the chance. Brushing your teeth is fun!”
Neither of these two little people is buying it.
Summer screws up her face and tilts her head at me as she slides snacks into her pockets. “Do you know any songs from musicals?”
“By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea! You and me, you and me, oh how happy we’ll be!
When each wave comes a-rollin’ in, we will duck or swim, and we’ll float and fool around the water.
Over and under, and then up for air, Pa is rich, Ma is rich, so now what do we care?
I love to be beside your side, beside the sea, beside the seaside, by the beautiful sea! ”
Summer has barely brushed her rear upper quadrant by the time I reach the end of the first kid-friendly song that popped into my head, courtesy of all the ocean views. Without removing the toothbrush from her mouth, she says, “Again.”
“No ma’am. One song, that’s the deal. Finish brushing all of your teeth so we can do something else.”
Lucky is definitely the good twin.
“What are we going to do?” he asks.
“Well, that depends. Do you guys feel like being big right now or being little?”
“What can we do if we feel like being little?”
“I can read you a book, or you can play dress-up or some kind of game.”
“What can we do if we feel like being big?”
“Well, I heard that Summer hid your shoes and some other things, so maybe she can show us where she hid all of it and we can put everything back where it was so everyone can find everything and that will make life easier for everyone.”
Summer spits into the sink, frowns at me, and crosses her arms in front of her chest. “I did not hide them. I put them in better places.”
I fill a little cup and hand it to her to rinse with. “Okay. Well, why don’t you show us where these better places are. Or we can make it a game! Lucky and I can look for his shoes, and you can tell us if we’re getting close to finding them or not!”
She puts the cup down, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and huffs.
“Or…I can show you my room and all of the things I use to make perfume and you can help me mix together something that might help your dad sleep better at night. And then you can help me make dinner.”
Summer and Lucky have now sniffed all fifty of my essential oil bottles, and after calmly explaining to Summer that no, I do not have more than I need because this is for my work and if she ever throws my things away I will be very, very mad, she and Lucky have narrowed the scents that they think will help their dad sleep down to spearmint, lemon, and rosemary.
They’re all stimulants. But they’d smell great together!
“Why don’t you try this one again.” I open up the neroli oil. “Don’t you think this one’s nice?”
They both lean in to get a whiff.
“It smells like Grandma’s hands.”
“She probably has a soap or a lotion with this ingredient. I’m going to leave this one out for you to think about. How about this one?”
I open up the rose essential oil for them to sample again.
“I like it,” Lucky says.
“It’s too girly-foo-foo for daddy.”
“Well, he’s not going to put it on his skin.
This is for burning in an essential oil burner in his room before bed, remember?
We’ll put a little bit of water in a little soapstone bowl, add a few drops of these oils, and then we light a tealight candle under the bowl and it makes the room smell like the essential oils. ”
“Why?”
“Because the heat from the candle warms up the oil and water, and that releases them into the air. That’s called evaporation.”
“But why does it make the room smell? Because of gas in his belly?”
I can’t help but laugh at that. “Sometimes. But this will make the room smell really good and help him to relax and fall asleep.”
I feel my phone vibrate in my back pocket.
“Why don’t you guys sample some more, and then we’ll decide on three of them before we start making dinner.”
I pull my phone out, and my heart skips a beat when I see a message from Shane.
SHANE: Have you set your own hair on fire and run away screaming yet?
ME: No, but I accidentally set the twins’ hair on fire. Is that okay?
SHANE: Yeah, just keep it down. Trying to sleep over here.
ME: Maybe put your phone away and try harder.
SHANE: I just wanted to say thanks. For explaining farts to us. For being here. You’re good with them.
ME: Well, now I just feel bad for burning their hair.
SHANE: Naw. It’ll grow back. Okay, I’m gonna go to sleep, but I have one question for you.
SHANE: What do you call a male cow who’s taking a nap?
ME: A bull dozer. Nico and I learned every dumb joke on the Internet. It was basically the only way we could communicate with each other when we were kids. So if you want to dazzle me with something I’ve never heard before, you’ll have to try harder.
The moving dots by his name appear immediately, continue to move for about twenty seconds, and I brace myself for some amazing dazzling thing that I’ve never heard before.
But the dots disappear.
No more messages come through.
Maybe he fell asleep.
Maybe I should stop texting my boss to try harder to dazzle me.
But hopefully he just fell asleep.