He smiles. “I like the Incre-bull Hulk. Ith your thkin gonna turn green?”
I get on my knees and hold my arms open wide. “Come give Mama a hug.”
He runs over and throws himself into my embrace. “Don’t worry, Mama. Itth gonna be okay.”
I pat him on the back, my heart soaring as I imagine him being a strong man someday, comforting a wife or child like he’s doing for me right now. At least I’m doing something right.
“I know, baby. I know. Don’t worry about your old mama. She won’t turn into the Hulk or bust anything up. She’s going to be okay.”
He pulls back to look at me earnestly. “It might be fun to butht thome thingth up, though.”
I laugh. “You’re probably right.” I hold him tighter and bury my face into his neck, inhaling for all I’m worth.
“That ticklth.” When he giggles, it sounds like a whole chorus of angels are delivering a healing song to my bruised heart. I take in a deep breath and let it out, hoping some of the negativity that Frank brought into my life is escaping with it.
I have no idea what I’m going to do now. Even just holding my shit together is a tall order. But I need to do that for my kids, even if I can’t do it for myself, because I’m a mom, and that’s what moms do.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Okay, so . . . Deep breaths, in and out. My skin isn’t green, my pajama pants still fit, and Sammy is installed on the couch with a cup of peppermint tea and a box of animal cracker cookies. Cookies for breakfast! Mom of the Year! Woo hoo! With the girls at school and Sammy happily watching Barney, I have a moment or two to figure out what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. No big deal. No pressure.
I feel like a sloth. I have no energy at all left in my body. I could lie down on the couch and slowly drop kernel after kernel of popcorn into my gaping mouth while staring off into space and be perfectly happy. Unfortunately, I don’t have that luxury. I have a mortgage to pay, three kids to feed, and an ex-husband who’s not really that great at making sure his support checks aren’t rubber.
Obviously, I need to find another job. The severance package, whatever it turns out to be, is not going to get me far. The economy shows signs of picking up, so I don’t think I’ll have a problem actually finding a job; the question is whether I’ll find one with a boss who will put up with the fact that sometimes one of my three kids will be sick, and that because I’m here alone, it’ll mean that I have to stay home with them.
A little voice in the back of my head is chanting: freelance, freelance, freelance. It gives me a stress stomachache, probably very similar to the one Sammy is suffering. It’s so unpredictable! You never know whether you’ll be working or struggling to pay the bills! If Miles loses his job his insurance on the kids will get canceled! A regular paycheck is all I’ve ever known. I don’t know if I can handle all the risk that comes with freelancing.
I pick up my cell phone and look down at the text messages that have come from my sister over the past couple days. My stomach is in knots as I consider calling her. It’s probably too late. Ozzie’s probably already hired someone else for that job. Why was I such a bitch earlier? Why did I have to go ballistic at the warehouse? Those people were just trying to help me out by giving me a little extra money for what was probably not a big deal.
Having a job gave me a sense of security, but I should’ve known better. In this industry, you never have a job for long. Companies are always selling out, going out of business, or changing mission statements. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and people like me are Purina ALPO—even easier to eat than another dog. Nom, nom.
I take a few more deep breaths. At this point I’m almost ready to start hyperventilating. I walk over to sit down at the kitchen table, bringing my phone with me. It’s time to face the music, swallow my pride, and put on my big-girl panties.
“Pick up, May. Pick up.” She’d better answer soon, before I chicken out.
“Hello?” says my sweet sister. Just hearing her voice makes tears rush to my eyes.
“Hello. It’s me.”
“What’s wrong?” Gone is the sweet voice, and in its place the demanding one. The concerned one. And that’s what does me in.
I start crying and my throat squeezes shut. When I can finally talk again, I sound like a total mess. “I got fired.”
“Fired? When? Why? You’re their best employee! What happened?”
“I guess I’m not so great after all.” I try to laugh, but it comes out more like a choking sound. “I called in sick because Sammy’s got another stomachache, and they just laid me off.”
“They can’t do that. They can’t fire you or lay you off because your child is sick.”
“I’m not sure it has anything to do with that. Or maybe it does. I’ve called in several times over the past year because one of the kids has been ill. Anyway, the end result is the same. I’m jobless as of today.”
“Did you get some kind of severance package?”
“That’s what I hear, but I also hear it’s only two months’ pay, so it’s not going to get me very far.” I stop to consider how much detail I actually want to share with my sister. She has her own problems; she doesn’t need to be burdened with mine.
“How much money do you have saved up?”
I laugh bitterly. “Are you kidding me? Savings? What’s that?”
“Okay, no need to panic. We can figure something out.”
“There’s nothing to figure out, really. I was just calling to see if you still have that freelance job available.” The humiliation is strong. I’m actually almost to the point of begging my sister to get me a job from her boyfriend.
I’m on tenterhooks waiting for her response, but thankfully it comes pretty quickly. “Of course! We haven’t hired anyone else. And besides, even if we had, there’s still work for you to do here.”
“You’re just saying that to try to make me feel better.”
“No, I’m not. Trust me. Now that I’m with Ozzie, I get to hear about everything that goes on with the company behind the scenes. He said just last night that in the last couple years, their jobs that involve computers have doubled.”
“But you already have somebody there for computer work, right?” I try to remember the guy’s name, but all I can remember is how beautiful he is and how nice and white his teeth are.
May fills in the blanks for me. “You mean Lucky. Yes, we have Lucky, but he’s not that kind of computer guy. He’s not an engineer like you are. He’s a financial person. He can get into people’s financial records and see what’s going on there, but he cannot get into hidden folders or hack into things.”
“Hack? You want me to hack into things?”
Suddenly May sounds very cheery. “No! Did I say ‘hack’? I didn’t mean hack. Don’t be silly.” She snorts, a sure sign she’s nervous about me knowing exactly what she’s talking about, but I let her continue uninterrupted. She has at least captured my interest.
“For example, in this case that we want to hire you for, we’re looking into this company’s financials because there’s something off. One of the owners suspects some sort of embezzlement. But Lucky’s not able to access everything on the computer. Or at least he thinks he’s not able to access it. He believes there are some hidden files somewhere, but he’s not the guy who can find them.”
Without knowing more than this, I already feel confident that I could help them. It’s the only ray of hope that has shined into my morning thus far, so I’m going to run with it. Reality can come and crash my party later if it must.
“I might be able to help. I wouldn’t know until I saw the files or the hard drive itself.”
“Okay. So you need to get to the actual hard drive? Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s always the best way, but it might not be critical. It might depend on what kind of encryption they’ve used, if they’ve protected any work behind a firewall, if they’ve put things on the server or the local drives. It would be a lot easie
r if I could get my hands on the actual server itself and then the individual computers being used by the employees.”
“Okay. Awesome. I knew you could do this. So, here’s the plan . . .”
I’ve never heard May sound so sure of herself. It makes my crappy morning much less crappy. My baby sister is growing up.
“I’m going to go talk to Ozzie and share what you’ve told me. And you’re going to go get dressed and brush those hairy teeth of yours and un-knot that ’do, so that when you come over here to the warehouse, my coworkers won’t think you’re some crazy person standing on the edge of a cliff ready to end it all.”
“I can’t, remember? I have Sammy. I can’t send him to daycare like this.”
“Is he really sick, or is he just faking it?”
I turn around to look at my son. He’s happily munching away on animal cracker cookies. “I’m not sure. He’s probably not that bad off. I think he’s having a problem at daycare with another kid or something . . . maybe a teacher.”
“Fine. Bring him with you.”
I’m warring with myself over this plan. I’m capable of doing the work—I don’t have to worry about that part anymore—but I’m still not positive I should take the job. If I mess anything up, it won’t be just on me, but my sister too. I don’t want to let her down.
Then again, it’s not like I have a choice. I need to pay the bills, and this is the easiest avenue for me to take right now. I haven’t even had to put in a CV anywhere.
“What’s the matter?” May sounds annoyed.
I sigh, because I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“Need I remind you that the last time I was there, you had some sort of break-in attempt and I was locked in a panic room for an hour?”
“Jenny, we already told you, that was a mistake. Yes, somebody may have tried to break in, but that kind of thing happens at the port.”
“Exactly my point. Why would I bring Sammy there? And an even better question, why would you go there?”
“I’ve been working here for more than two months. I’ve been here every single day, and we haven’t had even one problem.” She pauses to huff out an annoyed breath. “I’ve talked to the guys and Toni . . . This has never happened before. It was a random, isolated event, and it probably doesn’t mean anything. The police are on it, and so is the team. Together, we’re going to figure out what went wrong. Even if whoever did it is stupid enough to try it again, it won’t matter, because now we’ve got cops outside watching our place, and we’ve got even more cameras up than we had before.”
“You have police officers out there?”
I can hear the smile in her voice. “Yes. Doing a lot of work for the police department has its perks. Bourbon Street Boys is a big asset to the city of New Orleans, so the police aren’t going to let somebody come in here and mess with us.”
“And the police have the money to pay salaries for that kind of surveillance?”
“Don’t worry about it, Jenny. You’re over-thinking things. We’ve helped them gain so much funding through the work we’ve done by increasing their case-closure rate, they’re very happy to help us when we need it.”
I’m both pleased and sad that my sister lumps herself in with this group and says us whenever she’s talking about them. I might actually be kind of jealous. I’ve never been part of an us before at work. I was always working alone in my own cubicle, on my own little projects, living my own life, because the people around me didn’t have the same issues or motivations that I had. In my line of work, or at least in the places where I worked, there weren’t a lot of married people with kids. I always felt like the old lady in the room. And I never understood what was so fun about photocopying butts at parties.
“So, there’s no chance I can do this work here at the house?”
“You want the entire team to come over and brief you in your family room?”
Now I feel silly. “The entire team? Why is the entire team involved?”
“The entire team is involved in everything we do. It’s not a dictatorship, it’s a democracy. Everybody gives their input, and then Ozzie makes the final decision, taking all the input into consideration. He’s a really fair boss.”
Hearing those words—“fair boss”—makes me start crying again.
“What’s wrong now?”
I shake my head. “Never mind. I’m just having a chick moment.”
May’s voice softens. “You’re entitled. You got laid off today. And stop saying you were fired, by the way. You were laid off. People get fired for being assholes. People get fired for not doing their jobs. And I know that neither one of those situations applies to you. You worked, like, sixty hours a week at that place, you took work home with you that you couldn’t finish there, and you might have missed some days because of your kids, but you always made up for it. I know you, Jenny. You’re no slacker.”
I smile through my tears. “You always were my biggest fan and cheerleader. I don’t know what I’d do without you. You know that’s why I worry.”
“I do love you, yes, but I speak the truth. And you need to listen to me for once in your life. I know you worry about me, but I’m okay. I have Ozzie and all the others at my back. Bad guys have to get through them to get to me.”
Now’s not the time for me to remind her that one bad guy got to her pretty easily just a couple months ago when he finally figured out where the eyewitness to him shooting people in a bar lived; besides . . . her team did show up in time to help her out, so she’d have reason to argue with me. And I’m done arguing with my sister.
“Hey, I listen to you.”
“Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. So, what time can you get here?”
I look up at the clock. It’s almost nine in the morning. “It’s gonna take me about forty-five minutes to get myself and Sammy ready, and then if I leave here right away, it’ll take me probably thirty minutes to get there. Should we say ten-thirty?”
“Okay, eleven it is.”
“I said ten-thirty.”
“Yeah, but I know how long it’s going to take Sammy to get off the couch and out of those cookies, so I’m giving you an extra half hour.”
Part of me wants to get pissy with my sister and part of me wants to hug her. It’s scary how well she knows my family. “Okay, see you at eleven. Is there anything I should bring?”
“Whatever you think you might need to get into someone’s computer, and your smile. That’s it.”
“Is Felix there with you? Because I’m going to need something to distract Sammy.”
“Of course Felix is here. He’s my right-hand chihuahua. But don’t worry, I’ll help with Sammy.” She turns on the cheerleader mode again. “You’re not alone, Jenny. I’m with you, the team is with you . . . It’s like a family here. You’ll see.”
If she wanted to turn me into a puddle of goo, that was probably the best way to do it. I need to hang up before I turn into a blubbering idiot. “See you at eleven.”
“See you then. I love you, Jenny. Don’t worry, everything is going to be okay. I promise.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It’s embarrassing how right my sister is about my ability to be anywhere on time when the kids are involved. It’s 11:05 as I’m pulling up in front of the warehouse. The dent in the door that I remember from before is gone, and in its place is fresh paint. Geez, these guys don’t mess around. I guess appearances are pretty important to them.
“Where are we?” Sammy asks from the backseat.
“This is where Auntie May works. And Felix is here, and he wants to see you.” My son loves May’s dog. I turn off the car and turn around to look at him. He has cookie shrapnel all around his mouth. “Now, you promised that you would be a good boy for Mama, right?”
He nods. “I promith.”
“Good. And Auntie May is going to play with you, and Felix is going to play with you, and you’re going to be a good boy so that Mommy can do some work. And then wh
en we’re all done, we’ll go to McDonald’s.” Mom of the Year strikes again.
A big grin lights up his face, and he starts banging his hands and legs on his car seat. “McDonald’th, McDonald’th, McDonald’th.”
“But you have to be good. This is somebody’s house, Sammy. This is somebody’s work, too.”
His banging stops and he nods in earnest. “And I get to go to work with you becauth I’m thick.”
“Well, normally I don’t like taking sick children to work. That’s not nice for the other people, because you can make them sick. So you should make sure to stay away from all the people in there.”
Sammy’s expression changes. Now I see a tiny glimmer of fear in it, and I feel guilty for making it appear.
“Are they mean?” he asks.
I shake my head vigorously. “No, they’re not mean at all. They’re really nice, actually. It’s just that if you have a virus that’s giving you that tummy ache, we don’t want these nice people to catch your virus, right?”
He thinks about it for a couple seconds, blinks a few times, and then nods. “We don’t want anybody to get my viruth.”
I smile at him encouragingly. “Exactly. Let’s keep our cooties to ourselves.”
He giggles. “And we’ll keep our booteeth to ourthelves too.”
“Yes. Keep your booty to yourself too.” I roll my eyes and turn around. It’s probably not a good idea to encourage the potty talk right now, but I need for him to stay cool and comfortable. All I need is for Sammy to unleash the beast within, and it’ll all be over. He’s most likely to do that when he’s trying to impress people he’s just met. He could get me laid off before I even start working.
I get out of the car, remove Sammy from his seat-harness, and take his hand so he can walk next to me. My laptop is in its case, slung over my shoulder with my purse. “Do you remember how to introduce yourself?”