“Brandon! Get in there and wash your face.” Tracey yelled out of her bedroom door. She stepped over to the bureau, and began to brush her hair in the large mirror.
“I did, mom.” He said, as he ran into her room. He grinned from ear to ear, as smudges of dirt tried to hide in his dimples.
“I didn’t ask you if you’d already washed it, now did I?”
“No, mam. But I-”
“No buts, mister. Get in there and wash your face.” His smile disappeared, and slowly he let his head hang down. He turned and walked towards the door.
“Bella didn’t wash her face!” He said as he disappeared into the hallway. Tracey exhaled in exasperation.
“Bella! Come here young lady!” Tracey said as she sat the brush aside and picked up her jeans from the where she had laid them on the bed. She stepped into her jeans, and pulled them up. “Bella Marie!”
“What?” Bella called from down the hall.
“Did you wash your face?”
“No, mam.”
“Well get in there and get it washed.” Tracey tucked her shirt in, and reached for her belt.
“It’s not dirty.” Bella called back.
“I didn’t ask you if it was dirty, now did I?”
“But-”
“Wash it!”
“Yes, mam.” Every day it was the same thing. Tracey couldn’t understand why it was so hard for them to do what they had been told to do. But she knew if she took just a moment and thought back twenty-five or so years, she would remember exactly how it had been when she was growing up. The only problem was that she never seemed to have a spare moment to think back to yesterday, much less reminisce about events that were twenty-five years old.
“Mommy!” Bella called out. “I can’t. Brandon’s in the bathroom.”
“Brandon! Let your sister in the bathroom.”
“The door’s open.” He yelled back.
“But he’s in there.” Bella replied.
“You can share the sink. Now get in there and get that face washed.” She grabbed her shoes from the closet.
“Mommy! Brandon won’t let me have the washcloth!” Bella called from down the hallway.
“It’s dirty, Mom! I just washed my face with it.” He countered innocently.
“Give her the washcloth, Brandon!” Tracey demanded.
“But, Mom-”
“Now, mister!”
“Yes, mam.” Another disaster narrowly averted. Being a mother was more like negotiating for world peace, she thought. But instead of the demise of the entire world at stake, one person’s sanity hung in the balance, and more and more Tracey felt that her’s hung on the wrong side of the fence. She sighed as she sat down on the bed to put on her shoes and glanced at the picture that sat on the nightstand. Her heart sank as the image brought her back to the present, and the fact that Jack wasn’t there. It was a picture that she had taken two years ago when they had vacationed in Florida. Jack had decided to build a giant sand castle, and the kids had provided a lot of help for the first ten minutes, until they got bored with the actual work involved, and had decided to amuse themselves in other ways. Jack had labored for hours, as he piled bucket after bucket of wet sand onto the giant mound. When he had finally been satisfied with the chest high height, he had begun to intently sculpt the mound into a monstrous castle. She had taken the photo as he focused on carefully creating the details of a stairway. His gaze was intent. His jaw set. His blue eyes lit up by the bright sun. It was one of her favorite pictures. As she blinked back tears, her focus shifted from the photo to the clock on the night stand.
“Great! It’s six-forty-five and we’re still not ready.” She said as she got up from the bed and turned back towards the hallway. “Let’s go, guys! Right now!”
It had taken an act of Congress, but Tracey finally was able to get everyone washed up and dressed and to leave the house with eight minutes left to drive over to the restaurant. Five minutes later she pulled into the parking lot, parked, and they walked through the door at exactly six-fifty-nine. A minute to spare, she thought, as she glanced at her watch. She spoke briefly to the hostess, and as she expected, Jack had not yet arrived. No surprise there, she thought. She asked for a table for four, and the hostess seated them in the main dining room. There was a small debate over where Brandon and Bella were going to sit, as both wanted to sit on their mother’s right, until Bella made a big deal out of sitting on her left. Then, of course, that’s where Brandon wanted to sit. Soon peace was once again negotiated. Everyone was seated, and now it was five after seven. She refused to wait any longer and placed their orders. By seven-fifteen, their food had arrived, and Tracey suddenly realized how hungry she was.
“Mommy, where’s Daddy?” Brandon asked as he twisted his fork into his pile of spaghetti, red sauce smeared around his mouth.
“He’s not here yet, buddy. He’ll be here in a minute.” Tracey looked at her watch. It was seven twenty. She knew that she expected him to be late, but she had hoped that for once, things would be different. It wasn’t fair to her, and it definitely wasn’t fair to Bella and Brandon. Deep inside, she wondered if there was any hope at all that Jack would ever change. She hoped so. With all of her heart she hoped that this separation would make him see how hard it was on her and the kids. How lonely it had become, and how much more there was to life.
“Bella, get your fingers out of his plate.”
“But he said I could have his meatball, Mom.”
“Yeah. It’s okay, Mom. I said she could have it. I don’t like those. It’s got moose shrooms in it.” Tracey smiled slightly at his pronunciation of mushrooms, and nodded her acceptance. Bella scooped up the meatball and plopped it onto her plate. Tracey looked at her watch again. The hands read seven-twenty-five. Twenty-five minutes late, and they had almost finished dinner. She made a firm decision. They would not wait for Jack to show up, like they usually did. Not this time. At seven-thirty, they would leave. Jack or no Jack. This separation thing was supposed to be an opportunity for him to learn. She reasoned that if she just sat back and waited for him to arrive, that she would not help the situation. He had to learn that life went on with or without him. It did not revolve around him and his job. At some point he would have to learn that his participation would be required. And if he wasn’t here by seven-thirty, she thought, he would just have to find out the hard way.
Chapter 14