Page 43 of The Write Choice

I swat at him again, but he dodges out of my reach. “Dammit. Go get dressed or something.”

He moves to the closet, but chuckles to himself the whole way, shaking his head and muttering something about Grouchy Katie, and I pray this isn’t going to become a stupid new nickname.

I go out in the hall with the intention of gently waking Christine up, but Mason runs past me, bursts through her door, and yells, “School today! Get up, Chrissy!”

She bolts up in her bed, her eyes wide, and her blonde hair standing on end. When she sees us, she lets out a belated wail. I glare at Mason, who has the good sense to cower and slink backwards out of the room.

I go over to Christine’s bed, sitting on the edge of the pink satin comforter. I pull her onto my lap, and she buries her head in my chest, still crying, but calming a bit.

“I know, baby. Mason scared you, didn’t he?”

“Mason’s a jerk,” she says vehemently.

I pull her little face away from me and look into her green eyes. So much like Brandon’s, those eyes.

I hold her cheeks between my palms. “Who taught you that word?”

Her tears stop on a dime, and she grins impishly at me. “Mommy’s a jerk.”

“Excuse me?” I use my best mom voice.

Brandon comes in, somehow already dressed for work in a thin, blue sweater and gray slacks. He picks her up and throws her over his shoulder. She giggles wildly. “Daddy’s a jerk!” she yells.

He carries her out into the hallway, and I follow, leaning on her door frame with my arms folded. He sets her down in front of Mason, then takes a knee beside both of them.

“Mason.” His tone is full of warning, though he’s such a teddy bear it’s hard to take him seriously. “Did you teach your sister to call people jerks?”

Mason, already sufficiently scolded once this morning, looks to me for help. I shake my head, and he turns back to Brandon, shrugging. “She could have learned it anywhere. Kids grow up way too fast these days.”

Brandon’s back is to me, but the twitch in his shoulders tells me he’s trying to stifle a laugh. Mason’s too old to miss it now, and he smirks. Then, he looks at me over Brandon’s shoulder and schools his face into seriousness. I’m not one to break easily.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” he says solemnly, then he puts a hand on Christine’s shoulder. “Chrissy-pie, we don’t say ‘jerk,’ okay?”

She smiles with glee. “Jerk, jerk, jerk! Jerk, jerk, jerk!” Her little head bobs back and forth each time she says it.

Brandon stands, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looks to me for what to do next. Of course he does, because that stern talk to Mason is the limit of the parenting he’s been able to do for a long time.

I sigh. “Ignore it.” I glare pointedly at Mason. “She’s looking for a reaction. Don’t give it to her.”

“Yep,” Brandon says, as if this was also his assessment. I bite back a retort as he grabs Christine and throws her over his shoulder again. “Okay, squirt. Time to get dressed.”

Brandon takes a squealing Christine into her room, and I hastily throw on my ripped jeans and an old sweatshirt before ushering Mason into the kitchen to eat breakfast and pack his lunch.

Somehow, everyone gets out of the house in a relatively timely fashion without too much drama. They’re excited enough to rush out, and I can’t help but think Brandon didn’t get the full drop-off experience with missing shoes, messy backpacks, a last-minute request from school Mason forgot to tell us about the night before, and a resistant toddler. I’m sure all that’s coming. I guess this is a good warm up.

My inner monologue sounds skeptical, and maybe it is. He seems willing to follow through on the promises he’s making to come home in time for dinner, to drop the kids off at school, to give me more time to myself. But it’s only a matter of time before the honeymoon is over. The kids will get antsy, Brandon will start spending more and more time at the office, and I’ll be right back where I started.

Well, not where I started. I started in New York.

I pour myself a mug of coffee and entwine my hands around it, warming them. I sit at the island, looking toward my studio door. I have to admit, things feel different between Brandon and me. Different, even, than they were before all of this started. And it’s more than just him framing my painting, or setting up the studio for me, or coming home on time. It’s almost like he’s happier, too. Like we’re enough for him. Like I’m enough for him. He doesn’t want to keep chasing and hustling. He wants to be here.

I’m probably an asshole for thinking it, but I wonder if it’s enough for me. The bustle and noise of the city, the fancy fundraisers and parties, even the acquaintances I didn’t like very much, didn’t make me happy, but they filled the time. It all made me feel like I had some purpose. I still don’t know what my purpose here is. I know my family should be enough. Everyone tells you it should be, anyway. But I don’t know if it is. It hasn’t been for years now. Brandon has his work. I want something more, too.

I suppose I’m not going to figure this out today, though, so I take my coffee into the studio where I sit on my stool in the middle of the room and survey everything I sketched out over the weekend. Rough drawings line the walls. Brandon and the kids making pizza. Brandon reading them bedtime stories. Brandon ice skating with them in Rockefeller Plaza. And, of course, the first one I did back in the city of Brandon and the kids at the pumpkin patch. But also, Brandon the way he was the other night when I came into the guest room, shirt off and hair a little messy, looking at me like he wanted to bear hug me and devour me in equal measure.

I frown at that one. “One of these things is not like the other…” I intone, then chuckle. I knew that one would be out of place, but I sketched it anyway. I couldn’t help it.

There’s a story here, though, of a man who loves his family. Of kids who worship their dad. I sip my coffee and study them more, the little bud of an idea that started in the school office growing roots in my brain.