CHAPTER 7 - EMILY
If you have kids, there’s one thing you can find in almost any room: cheerios. They have a way of sticking to soft pudgy skin as they waddle around the house. Then they fall off and land in the most inconceivable places. I sit at the kitchen table and watch as my Ben contemplates a scattering of cheerios on the spot in front of him. He picks up one, examines it, and then sticks it on his tongue. After he swallows it, he brings both hands down on the cereal and begins rearranging them, plotting out his own little army attack. I don’t dare interrupt him for fear of breaking the glorious silence. James is on the floor in the other room playing with Legos, and Sophie is next to me doing homework. I glance at my phone and note that three whole minutes have gone by without a sound from anyone. I can now officially die happy.
When I recover from my euphoria, I realize that silence in a home filled with children is almost always bad news. I lean back and eye James who is still being an angel. Then I set my sites on Sophie.
“You’re so quiet. Did something happen today?”
She shrugs one shoulder and lets out her I don’t know sound, “Mm-mm,” that usually means yes.
“Did something happen at school, sweetie?” I repeat.
She puts her pencil down and eyes me with hesitance. “I got my clip moved down.”
“Oh,” I say in a soft, almost whisper. I’ve learned that non-reaction works best to get the whole story. Then, when they confess, I lower the boom. They haven’t figured it out yet. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I yelled out a landmark and Ms. Weldon made me move my clip down.”
“I don’t understand what that means. Why a landmark?”
“We were doing centers, and me and Keeley were at Math cubes. She said her parents were getting divorced and she was going to have to move away.” Sophie’s mouth is tight and her eyes glaze over.
I reach over and rub her arm. “I’m sorry, baby.”
“Are you and Daddy going to get a divorce?”
“Of course not. Why would you say something like that?”
“Because you and Daddy don’t have enough romance, and Keeley said you have to have romance or your parents will get divorced.”
“Do you even know what that word means?”
“Sure I do. It’s when a man and a woman kiss and have the time of their lives.” She said the last part with her arms stretched out as if she was reading a fairy tale.
“Where did you hear that from?” I’m almost sure I know the answer before it comes out.
“Auntie Jax.”
So far, I haven’t worried that when I look at my Sophie, I see pieces of Jax: both wild, uninhibited, speaking their minds, and trying to save the world one soul at a time, but completely botching it up half the time. “First of all, Daddy and I have enough romance. Now, that still doesn’t explain this landmark business.”
“When Keeley said she was moving, I got mad. I wanted to yell and say a bad word like I heard Daddy do in the garage when he dropped the drill.”
I shake my head and wait for this story to make any kind of sense. With Sophie it eventually gets there, but sometimes the trip is oddly fun. “And…”
“So I yelled, Hoover International DAM!”
This takes me by complete surprise and a tiny laugh escapes me. Sophie will always find a way around the rules. “Sweetheart, I understand you were upset, but you may not say that word…even if it is disguised in a landmark.”
