Step On A Crack

Chapter 54

WHEN THE MUTED clunk and giggles and bangs and cries of my family getting ready woke me that morning, I sensed the absence on my wife’s side of the bed and was grateful. The workday-morning deal between Maeve and me was that she would get them dressed and I would take them to school. To let me sleep in while she did the much heavier work of getting our double-digit familia together was the type of kindness by omission only people who are long married can understand.

I tossed around and was reaching for the warmth of her body pillow when I felt the cold, stiff sheets beside me, and I remembered.

As I lay there, taking my first morning sip of personal horror, a chilling question occurred to me.

I swung my bare feet onto the cold hardwood and grabbed my tattered and holey robe off the bedpost.

If Maeve wasn’t getting the kids ready, who was?

It’s hard to describe how I felt when I stepped into the kitchen and saw my children fully dressed for their Christmas pageant. I was convinced I was dreaming, or maybe even dead, seeing the kids transformed around our breakfast table into some surreal Renaissance painting of a heavenly multitude. Then Trent knocked his SpongeBob cereal bowl off the table-and everyone turned around.

“DAD!” they said at once.

How could they have gotten themselves ready? I thought. What a bad father I was. I hadn’t even remembered about the play. I didn’t know why I started crying when I stooped to pick up Froot Loops off the linoleum. Then I did know.

The kids being able to take care of themselves felt like Maeve had done her job. Like she had tied up all the loose ends and was now ready to go.

I wiped my tears on the sleeve of my robe as Chrissy hugged me hard and gave me a butterfly kiss by fluttering her eyelashes on my neck.

A deep breath helped me pull myself together. If Maeve saw me cry in front of them, she’d kick my ass.

And so, I felt a joyful smile invade my face when I looked at them again. My kids really were angels. They were completely unreal. I nodded at Julia and Brian. Had anyone, let alone a couple of kids, risen to a horrible occasion with such selflessness? I gritted my teeth to kill another wave of sorrow; then I cleared my throat.

“I know it’s not Sunday,” I yelled with enthusiasm, “but who needs a Sunday breakfast as much as me?”

The cries of “We do” and “Me” rang off the walls as I slapped two cast-iron frying pans up on the stove.

Seamus arrived in the kitchen as I was dispensing my bacon, egg, potato, and green onion hash to my guys.

“Ock. Faith and begora,” he said, glaring wide-eyed at the costumed kids. “Halloween already?”

“NO!” the kids cried, giggling at their grandfather.

Mary Catherine came in a minute later, a quizzical look on her face. I handed her a plate.

“I warned you we were nuts,” I said, smiling.

For a few glorious seconds, I just stood at the stove, staring out at my family, listening to them eat and laugh. My bliss lasted until I spotted my cell phone and keys on the counter next to the coffee machine.

Damn world, I thought. I wished it would just lay off already.

I thought of the hostages and how the clock was ticking against them. It was the hostage-takers themselves that finally got me to uproot myself and head for the shower. I smiled bitterly as I felt the heavy, black resentment in me shift away from myself and toward them like the cannon of a tank. Jack was the one responsible for taking me away from my loved ones, I realized.

You don’t know who you’re messing with, buddy, I mentally e-mailed him. You might think you do. But you have no idea.