A Christmas Caroline by Camilla Isley

Thirteen

Baby Shark, Tururuduturu

I spend the rest of the afternoon leafing through my emails and computer files with all my plans for the franchising. This is brilliant. If other locations performed like this one, I could replace the loss of Borders, become a household name in book distribution. I could be a millionaire.

I don’t know why I’m so excited when, in fact, I already am a multi-millionaire. I’m simply stuck in an alternate reality for reasons still unclear.

A knock on the door interrupts my reverie.

“Mom,” Jo pokes her head in, holding her brother in her arms. “Bram is getting restless, he might want to go for a walk, and I’ve run out of games to make him play. And we need to leave anyway if we want to get to the dress shop before it closes.”

I look at the clock mounted on the wall opposite the desk and, oh my gosh, I left my seven-year-old daughter to take care of a baby alone for three hours.

I scramble to get up and relieve her of the chubby mothersucker. Balancing him on one knee, I squat down to be face to face with Jo. “You’ve been a fantastic assistant today; I couldn’t have asked any more of you.” I kiss her forehead. “Now let’s go shopping.”

Jo shows me her brightest smile, tooth gap and all, and I ruffle her hair before getting up.

We leave Pam and Elsie in charge of closing the store, and once on the streets, I awkwardly have to ask Jo for directions since I’ve no idea where the dress shop is.

Bram enjoys the first five minutes of the change of scenery and then drops sleeping like usual. Strollers are made of magic.

When we enter the boutique, the owner greets us in a tone a few octaves out of a tolerable hearing range.

I must make a terrorized, mommy-who-just-put-her-baby-to-sleep face because next, the owner—a red-haired middle-aged woman with an uncanny resemblance to the actress playing Lilah Folger senior in Snowpiercer—starts whispering, “Oh, sorry, I didn’t notice little Bram was sleeping.”

I must know her well if she’s on a first-name basis with my kids. Now the question is, can I fake my way through Jo’s dress exchange without having to explain the whole amnesia situation?

“What are you doing back so soon?” Lilah Folger asks—since I don’t know her name, that’s what I’m going to call her. She bows ever so slightly in Jo’s direction. “Is something wrong with your dress, sweetheart?”

“No, Mrs. Parry, but Mom has agreed to buy me the princess gown, the pink one with the tulle skirt.”

“Really?” Mrs. Folger aka Parry sends a dubious glimpse my way. “I thought your daddy had ruled it out.”

“Yes, but I’m working to earn the difference. Mommy has hired me to be her personal assistant throughout the holidays.”

Seeing Jo so proud of her hard work is heartwarming and fills me with pride as well. She’s an extraordinary mini-human.

“How wonderful,” Mrs. Parry says. “Should I just pack the new dress, or are we trying it on?”

This last question is addressed to me.

“She’s trying it on,” I say. Mostly because I want to make sure price was the only reason Sam didn’t buy Jo the princess gown.

It must’ve been, because when Jo twirls out of the fitting room, she’s a vision. She admires herself from different angles in every mirror in the shop. Jo is so young but already so feminine, and I have to admit the dress is super cute. Flower appliqués cover the bodice, and the blush tulle skirt reaches to her mid-calves.

I give Mrs. Parry a nod and go to pay while Jo gets changed again.

For a moment, as I approach the cashier, I panic. Does Jersey Caroline have enough money? Do I even have my wallet in my bag? I check, and yes, it’s there. I take a random credit card out and hand it to Mrs. Parry, following with trepidation as the POS machine processes the payment. When “transaction approved” appears on the screen, I quickly sign the receipt with a sigh of relief.

“Is everything all right, Caroline?” Mrs. Parry asks. “You’re awfully quiet today.”

Before I can lie with a non-committal I’m fine, Jo rats me out, “Mom has amnesia, she can’t remember anything from the past seven years, including having me or Will or Bram, or not even marrying Daddy.”

And I want to say the expression on Mrs. Parry’s face is pure shock, but I also detect a sort of delighted enjoyment.

“But how is that possible?” she asks, no doubt craving more juicy gossip.

“I slipped on the ice and hit my head, but the doctor says the injury isn’t serious and that I should be alright in no time. Now, sorry, but we really have to go,” I fake smile, hoping the tidbits of gossip are enough to stifle her interest. “Dinner time.”

If nothing else, having kids and schedules to follow is a great excuse to get out of any situation.

***

When we arrive home, Sam hasn’t returned yet. Mom hands me a happy Will and informs me they spent the afternoon mostly playing with his toy cars in the bathtub.

“You do smell good,” I say, picking up my son. “All fresh and clean.”

Now that he is in my arms, Will clings to my neck with the usual desperation. To say goodbye to my mom and thank her, I have to strain my neck to one side while Will struggles to keep me in place.

Once Mom is gone, and Jo disappears upstairs to admire her new dress, and while Bram still sleeps in the stroller, I take a minute to sit with Will and have a chat.

I drop on the couch and convince him to let go of my neck to look me in the eyes.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“Why you don’t love me anymore, Mom?”

I might not be the best mother in the world or not have been at the job for long, but even I know how to answer the accusation. “Of course, I love you. What makes you say that?”

“Bram. I hate him.”

“No, you don’t. He’s your brother and one day you’ll be best friends. And I spend more time with him only because he’s little and can’t do anything by himself. Bram isn’t a young man like you.”

“I still don’t like him.”

“Don’t say that, soon he’ll grow up and you’ll be able to play together all the time.”

“No.”

“Come on, you shouldn’t be jealous of Bram, he’s just a little mothersucker who can’t even talk.”

Will ponders my statement, serious at first, but then he throws his head backward laughing. “Bram’s a mothersucker, I like that, Mom.”

On second thoughts, probably it wasn’t the best idea to voice my nickname for my youngest aloud. Ah, hell, whatever.

“Shall we go get dinner started?”

“No.”

The declaration fills me with dread.

Will’s mealtimes are quickly becoming the terror of my days.

In fact, half an hour later, we’re engaged in a battle of wills where not even the TV is working.

“Why aren’t the puffins doing the trick tonight?”

Jo shrugs. “Try something different.”

“Like what?”

“Baby shark!”

“What’s a baby shark? He likes shark videos?”

“No, Mom, it’s a song.”

Jo pulls the video up on YouTube on the TV and Will becomes excited at once. I sneak a few spoonfuls into his mouth, but the song is over too soon.

“What now?”

“Now you have to sing it to him,” Jo hesitates, “and Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Are you cooking anything for us? I’m getting hungry.”

Fear spider-walks down my spine. I am not, in fact, simultaneously feeding the pickiest of picky eaters and cooking dinner for the rest of the family. And we polished the precious Christmas leftovers at lunch.

What now?

Maybe I can’t get a Nobu delivery in Jersey, but I can still go with the next best thing.

“Do you like Chinese?” I ask Jo.

Jo’s face brightens. “I love Chinese.”

“Any good restaurants we can order from nearby?”

“Sure, Mom, give me your phone, I’ll pull up the menu.”

While I’m busy singing “Baby Shark, Tururuduturu” on repeat, Jo places the order.

Regardless of all the singing, Will only eats half his meal, but at this point, I’m drained. His food has gone stone cold and disgusting again, and I give up.

I’ve just reached this liberating decision, when Bram wails that he’s hungry, too.

I wipe Will’s face, put him down from the highchair, and pick up Bram to feed him.

When the food arrives, I’ve barely finished nursing. I put the baby in the highchair. Bram can’t sit straight on his own, yet, but the highchair is snug enough to give him ample support, and he seems to enjoy the different perspective on the world. I fill the tray with toys and Bram plays content, at least for now.

Unfortunately, no matter that my other son hates the highchair, the moment Will spots his brother sitting in it, he screams, “That’s mine!” at the top of his lungs and only a promise that he can sit in my lap while I eat quiets him down.

Amidst all the chaos, I pay the delivery guy and take the food, planning to eat it straight out of the cartons as I don’t even have the energy to put plates on the table.

But when I get back to the kitchen, Jo has already laid the table for three. Such a small gesture, but one that threatens to make me break down in tears. Oh, gosh. I hate hormones.

I thank my daughter and sit.

Will at once reclaims his right to sit in my lap. I pick him up and search the cartons for my noodle soup.

I pour the content into the bowl Jo has laid out for me and start to eat. At my second spoonful, Will sticks his hands in my bowl, steals a noodle, and sucks it up laughing like crazy as the long pasta slaps his chin.

“Good,” he proclaims.

“You like noodles?” I ask, delighted, and watch as he steals another one and then another one.

That’s self-weaning for you, I cheer inwardly, awarding my sister more wisdom points.

Sam arrives halfway through dinner, and I can hardly contain my joy. “Look,” I say. “Will is eating Chinese on his own.”

Sam looks perplexed at first, like he might comment about the healthiness of Chinese food for a toddler, but then must think better of it. He greets us all with a kiss and sits next to Jo. “I was really in the mood for Chinese.”

After dinner, Sam puts the kids to bed while I wash the dishes. And if someone had told me a week ago, I would’ve been glad to be washing dishes, I’d have them committed to a mental institution. Of course, I would’ve thought the alternative task—putting three children of mine to bed—equally impossible.

The kitchen only takes fifteen minutes to sort, after which I collapse on the couch. Sam—short for Samaritan—doesn’t join me for another forty-five. I’m already half dozing off when he picks up my legs and puts them on his lap.

“Long day, uh?” he asks.

“Yep.”

“How did you manage?”

“Pretty well, all considered. We’re alive. You? Everything ready for the inauguration?”

“There’s still some work to do, but it’ll be fixed for Friday.”

I don’t ask for more details as I know Sam doesn’t like to share his art until he deems it absolutely ready and perfect.

“Did you like working at the shop?” he continues.

Contrary to him, I love talking about books. His question gets me started on a roll about my day in literary heaven. All the things I discovered about my own plans for the future and how I might’ve scared off Pam with my intensity.

“…I wish we could’ve stayed until closing time,” I conclude. “But of course, Will had to eat, and Jo and I had to leave early to go exchange her dress.”

“The dress for the first of the year party? Don’t tell me she hoodwinked you into getting her the princess tulle gown, that little minx—”

“Give your daughter, and myself, some credit,” I interrupt. “Jo didn’t hoodwink me, she was perfectly straightforward in telling me why you didn’t get that dress.”

“But if you knew, why did you buy the other one? I know thirty bucks might not seem like a big deal, but it adds up.”

“I know,” I say, summoning a mental picture of this family’s monthly expenses balance sheet I compiled earlier. “And I didn’t just buy her the dress, I’m making her work for it.”

“Work, how?”

“I’ve hired her as my personal assistant. Today she’s been invaluable. I would’ve got lost in the minutiae a thousand times if she hadn’t explained how things work around here. And you know that she babysat Bram for three full hours this afternoon, completely on her own.” Then, before Sam lectures me on how I shouldn’t let a seven-year-old care for a baby for that long, I add, “I was in the office studying the franchise numbers and lost track of time.”

Sam digests all this information. “I still think she should learn that when we say no, it’s no. I don’t want her to grow up spoiled.”

“And I don’t want her to give up on her dreams, I prefer to teach her she can have nice things if she works hard to get them.”

I get my feet back from Sam and get up; he’s stopped massaging them a while ago anyway. “I’m going to bed, I’m exhausted,” I say, a little stiff.

Having kids is already hard enough, but also having to defend my mothering choices with my husband who has been cozily at work all day—because from now on I’m placing all white-collar jobs in the piece-of-cake category compared to motherhood—is beyond my tolerance grade.

Sam looks like he might want to add something, but he thinks better of it and simply wishes me good night. The hubby might be cutting me amnesia slack, or it could be the unspoken “you weren’t here so you can’t complain” subtext that shuts him up. I’m not sure. But whatever the reason, I’m glad. A fight at the end of a day like today might prompt me to run down the driveway hoping to hit my head again and land myself back in a coma. Now, that’d be restful.

I fight the exhaustion a little longer to take a long hot shower before bed only because I know tomorrow morning, I won’t have the time.

By the time I get under the covers, Sam is already tucked in. I’m well prepared to carry my semi-grudge to the morning, but the moment he spoons me, I melt into his arms and pass out.