Terry Essig - Mad For The Dad

Natural born masochist was more like it.

But no, she’d get through this thing on her own, without any placebos. It was simply a case of hardening her heart and walking out his front door. She’d already done more than any other woman who’d come across that scene she’d witnessed out on her front sidewalk would have—well, maybe not, considering Daniel’s shoulders and butt—but still, she’d done her corporal work of mercy. “You’re more than welcome,” she said. “But now I’ve really got to go.”

With that, Rachel made her escape. There wasn’t a shadow of doubt in her mind that it had been a close one, too.

Rachel spent her afternoon organizing her cupboards. She unpacked her silverware and placed it all neatly in a new silver separator she’d bought for the drawer closest to the sink drain board. Then she stacked the dishes in the cabinet up above the silverware and the pots and pans—what few she needed to cook for one— in the cabinet below the rangetop.

By the time she broke for dinner, Rachel was out in the hall and mostly done with unwrapping the new linens she’d bought for her fresh start in life. The linen closet looked good, she decided as she stepped back and examined it. Towels that actually coordinated not only with each other but the bathroom as well, sat folded in the same direction and in neat piles on the shelf in front of her. Combined with the sheets, blankets and pillows she’d bought, it looked like a well-done department store display, Rachel thought.

She took another step back. It appeared just the way she’d always wanted her old linen closet to look and the way it would have looked if she’d ever gotten any cooperation from her son and former husband. But no, they’d always rooted through her neat piles and then walked off, leaving the disaster behind them. Well, no more. This closet would win homemaking awards—only there was nobody left to make a home for. Again Rachel lectured herself. “Buck up. You can’t win any homemaking awards if there are people living in the house. It’s just one of life’s poorer jokes. Oh well, maybe Mark will come home for winter and spring break. Possibly even part of the summer. He can mess up the towels then.” She hoped so, but basically Rachel just had to recognize she was all alone now. That was simply the way it was. Her stack of towels would remain neat forevermore.

On that rather melancholy note, Rachel returned to her small kitchen and baked a frozen, premade chicken potpie and pulled a handful of salad out of a pretossed bag of greens.

She ate it all by herself with nothing but the radio for company. Rachel wondered what Daniel and Todd were eating for dinner. More hot dogs?

Rachel washed her plate and fork and set them on the drain board. Her days of needing a dishwasher were over, she mused as she contemplated the lonely utensils. The phone rang as she turned away from the sink.

“Mom? It’s me, Mark.”

Alarm bells rang in Rachel’s maternal mind. “Mark? What’s wrong?”

“Chill out, Mom. Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to see what was going down on the maternal home front. You know, see how you were doing and stuff.”

Rachel barely controlled her snort of disbelief. Yeah, right. In other words, her best beloved son wanted something from her. “I’m fine, Mark, just fine. I spent the day organizing my new apartment and guess what?”

“What?”

“It’s been four whole hours since I put the silverware away and it’s all still in the right compartments! No teaspoons mixed in with the soup spoons, no forks stuck up so the drawer can’t close, no knives left with the cutting edge up. It’s like a miracle, Mark, an honest to God miracle.”

“Very funny, Mom. When the guys here ask about my parents, one of the first things I mention is my mother’s great sense of humor. Of course then I have to break it to them that you still use snail mail because you are, like, the most totally computer illiterate person I know and couldn’t use e-mail if your life depended on it. It wrecks the image, Mom, like totally destroys it.”

Rachel laughed. “You’ll be happy to know I’m thinking about taking a computer class.”

That surprised her son. “Really? What for?”

“So I can get a job. Gotta support myself now, you know. Dad only pays alimony for the next six months. After that I’m supposed to be back on my feet and self-supporting.”

Mark’s response sounded disconcerted, as though they’d strayed into territory he’d just as soon avoid. “Oh, yeah. Right. That, um, sucks. So, uh, what else is happening?”

Rachel understood her son’s reluctance to be caught up in adult problems. She thought back over her day. Really, only one item of import stuck in her mind. “I met a guy,” she reported. “He’s going to try to raise his little nephew all by himself. He crashed his nephew’s little red wagon right in front of my new place. The little boy was crying and groceries were everywhere. I had to go out and save them. Todd—that’s the child—is a little pistol, but Daniel—that’s the guy—seemed real nice. Sincere, but in over his head, if you know what I mean.”

“A guy with a wagon? Sounds like a dork.”

“He’s not a dork!” God, no. Daniel Van Scott was anything but dorky. Oh, man, here it was hours later and Rachel got the shivers just thinking about him. She was going to give herself high blood pressure if she didn’t watch out. End up on medication like her mother, for crying out loud. “He just tripped, that’s all.”

“Like I said, sounds like a dork.”

“Well, he’s not.” Not by a long shot. “Now, what’s new with you, Mark? Your classes going okay? You’re studying enough? Are you meeting any nice girls?” Ones that still go to church?

Her son’s voice came back sounding entirely too casual for a mother’s peace of mind. “Yeah, I’ve met a few. Most of them are sorority tools, if you know what I mean, but this one’s pretty cool. She’s vegetarian. I had no idea meat was so totally bad for you and the environment, too. I’m never eating it again, man.”

Oh, God. “Mark, how will you get enough protein in your diet? How will you—”

“Chill out, Mom. I’ll be fine. But what I need is one of those small refrigerators for my room. You know, so I can keep yogurt and stuff like that on hand.”

Rachel walked into her living room with the cordless phone and sank into the sofa. She tucked her feet up underneath herself. “So go get one.”

“Mooom.”

Her son’s disembodied voice came back at her and she had no trouble imagining the despairing look on his face.

“They’re expensive, you know? I’d need like, eighty or ninety dollars put into my checking account. Think you could do that for me?”

Ah, they’d reached the crux of the phone call. Money. She’d been warned about this from friends with older children. “Mark, you had three hundred dollars when your father and I dropped you off at school just a very short time ago.”

“Yeah, but I bought this totally awesome game for my computer and I had to have a good bike for getting around campus ‘cuz nobody uses the campus bus, so I turned in the pass you guys bought me and spent the cash on a bike helmet, you’ll be glad to know. And I bought this unbelievable mountain bike. It was on sale and everything, so how could I go wrong?”

Rachel put her hand over her eyes and collapsed back into the sofa. “You’ve already gone through all your money? Mark, that should have lasted you a couple of months!”

“How was I supposed to know something else would come up that I’d need?” Mark asked, his logic clear, at least in his own mind. “I mean, you should see the graphics on this computer game I got. It was going to be my entertainment for the semester. But now, with this girl and all, she’ll probably want to go to the movies and stuff. And I really need that refrigerator—actually, a small microwave would be cool, too. A lot of the guys here have them. And at least I’m better than my roommate. He never takes his girlfriend anywhere! All they do is fool around. One of these nights that top bunk is going to crash right down on top of me—probably kill me.”