Good News

First thing in the morning. I’m up. The sun is already too bright and flashes through the blinds, illuminating motes of dust in a sequence of angular rays. The house already smells of burnt toast. Someone is talking too loudly downstairs. Oh. Yelling. My wife - or is it my daughter? What time is it anyway?

8:07AM.

I slept in. I was supposed to help get the kids ready this morning. I don’t have a good enough excuse, so I might as well check my phone – uh, quickly. Useless emails. Scroll. Breaking news. Scroll, scroll. My thumb hovers over a little blue app icon with an ‘F’ but then I see the calendar invite: Work meeting: 9:00AM. Right. I’m up, I’m up.

I grab my little black book on the nightstand and practically ooze downstairs, like jelly falling out of the back of the PB&J’s I'll probably make the kids for lunch. My wife, Eleanor – El – isn't amused. She's wiping something off her shirt while our youngest, Joshua, is pulling at her pantleg and splitting eardrums. Huh, so that’s who it was. The scene would make a cute, kind of exaggerated Norman Rockwell of huge mouths and knobby knees if it wasn’t So. Damn. Loud.

We have 3 kids altogether. Winona, our oldest, has already started her online school in the other room and Noah is in his green-and-white superhero underwear playing with trucks in the corner of the kitchen. I step on a little unseen, red pickup truck, wince and notice the cars and trucks are scattered across the kitchen floor, some tipped over - not unlike the busy, downtown traffic with the construction that’s going on. Speaking of, she’s going to be late.

“Good morning.” I smile.

My wife doesn’t. I pick up Joshua and push some of the cars towards Noah with my feet. “Noah, can you help daddy pick up these cars, please?” Noah’s the kind of quiet, wants-to-be-helpful kid that I need in my corner right now. Together, we somehow get all the cars in one spot, except for that one halfway under the fridge – yeah, I see you. I put Joshua down on the couch watching a music video on my phone featuring “The Wheels on the Bus” and begin bringing over the dishes and silverware from the table to be put in the dishwasher.

8:39AM on the stove.

“Hey, can I do anything for you?”

El sighs. When she speaks, the tone of her voice is strained. “No. I mean, there’s a list of things we need to get done today.” She points to the fridge. “The big one is the budget. And we need to pay the cell phone and the car. By the way, I’m going to have to get gas,” she glances at the clock, “ –after work. Oh, your student loan is also due.” She adds, as she steps closer with a finger on the list.

“Are we going to pay that today or at the end of the week after you get paid?”

“I don’t know.” She grabs her jacket and pocketbook. The keys jingle in her hand. “We can talk about it later. Or you can pay it when you’ve looked at the budget.”

“Hey,” I look at her, searchingly. “I’m sorry.” She meets my eyes for the first time this morning. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Listen.” I offer, “You’re going to do great. Call me later and tell me about it, okay?” She’s distant, but she hugs me anyway.

She picks up Joshua, “Noah, Josh, mommy’s going to leave. I love you.” She gives them both a kiss. Noah doesn’t want her to go and hangs on, wordless but unyielding. Unlike Joshua who is getting loud again.

I’m struck by an idea.

“Kids, when mommy comes home later, we’ll go out for ice cream, okay?” The kids look at me. "Ice cream? Ice cream?" pleads Joshua making the word cream sounds like 'queam.' El looks at me. I shrug. “Leprechaun shakes. Saw an email advert. Buy one, get one.”

I take Joshua from El's arms – he lets me. She looks thoughtful for a moment but then she smiles. “Yeah, that sounds like fun.” She turns to Noah, “But mommy has to go to work first, okay?”

Noah hesitates, but then, reluctantly, lets his arms fall to his side. “Okay.” I breathe a sigh of relief as I pull him to my side and tussle his hair.

Then she kisses me. A good kiss. Useless emails, indeed.

Suddenly, the door opens in an epiphany of light, birdsong and cold air. In a practiced motion, El closes it before she can accidentally pincer any of the fingers or toes of our two, unwitting momma’s boys. For a moment, as the three of us stand staring at a closed door, silence descends on the home. I look down at the boys. I feel her absence too, kids.

“So, who wants to help daddy finish cleaning up?”

***

I curse under my breath. The budget is a tedious, frustrating thing. I’d rather be cleaning up after the kids. Of course, I really should be at work. Ever since I was laid off in the wake of these COVID-19 staff cuts, money has been tight. Lord knows I’ve been unmotivated after the 8 or 9 interviews leading nowhere. All the “Now Hiring” signs I see driving around seem to be more false promises: roads to nowhere.

It’s 10:17AM. Half an hour ago, I got a call from El. The meeting was short and didn’t go well. Problems with coworkers. “Personalities,” she said, vaguely. I think she was crying.

I open my little black book, double checking the numbers. We were supposed to be further ahead than this. After 8 weeks, still no unemployment compensation, we’re missing money from the stimulus Congress passed months ago, tax returns haven’t… returned. A week, two weeks tops, and we’re in the red.

Flipping through the book mindlessly, it opens to the front. I purchased it in college. It’s a nice one with its own pen. In it there are doodles, notes about dreams I had, a list of assignments written with differently colored pencils, a poem, love notes to El. Heck, parts of my wedding vows were written in this book. I know all about what’s in here. But today it opens up to a page I’ve been avoiding. “Life Goals,” is written on the top of the page. I don’t even need to read them to know that, apart from goal number 1: “Marry El,” I haven’t completed a single other goal on the list.

I stand up and look out the window, sipping the cold cup of coffee in my hand. It's over-steeped and bitter, but tastes better than when it was hot. Neighbor is walking his dog. Someone has ordered a package. Two. Three. Four… Six packages. Every day there are more packages. What the hell are the Andersons about, anyway? The kids are playing noisily in the other room. It’s good. I can keep track of the noise. The laptop boots up on the kitchen table with a series of digitized whistles and a low hum. I’ve had that piece of crap since college, too.

My pocket buzzes with an e-mail notification on my phone, but I don’t pay any attention. I’m about to check my e-mails anyway.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

The first thing I see when I sit down are numbers – a lot of numbers on e-mails from our bank. Deposits. I gasp, staring in disbelief. Click through the e-mails again. Click, click, double-click, scroll, scroll, scroll. I check the bank account. It’s all there. Stimulus deposit, tax returns plus child credits, all of my unemployment backpay plus the add-ons from the stimulus. Something else from work – is that the PTO payout that I never got? Either way, altogether, it’s over $20,000. I now have $21,470 in my checking account.

The boys come running. Winona, too. I must’ve yelled. My hands are at either side of my head. I'm running my fingers through my hair.

“Dad, are you okay?” Winona repeats. “A-Are you okay?”

“Daddy?” Noah looks up at me with bright, concerned eyes.

Hot tears are streaming down my face. “Yeah,” I say blinking. I feel like I’m disconnected from my body. My head, a balloon floating on a string. “Yeah, kids. I think we’re going to be okay.”

***

At 6:15 PM, it’s a cool, Spring evening. Smells like clean laundry outside. Bright, too. The sun is surprisingly high in the sky for the time of day. I suppose I’m used to winter.

We pull into the local ice cream place across from the strip mall. Acres of newly-planted farmland stretch the whole way to the horizon behind the used car dealership. “Leprechaun shakes. BOGO” says the sign. I walk up to the window with Noah as El picks out a table with Winona and Joshua.

“What do you think mom wants – a chocolate cone? Pistachio?” I laugh. Noah looks back at me confused. We were talking about Leprechaun shakes almost the whole way over. Oh yeah, that’s Winona who gets my jokes. She's so like me. The young lady behind the counter looks at me expectantly. “Oh. Um…let’s see.” I make a show of looking at the menu on the side of the building like I’m still making up my mind about what to order. “Four Leprechaun shakes.” I say, awkwardly holding up 4 fingers. “All with whipped cream, please.”

Back at the table, I’m retelling the story about the deposits for the 2nd time since El got home. To begin with, El needed some space to process her meeting and workday. Eventually, right before dinner, we stole away a few important moments in the mudroom. Door closed.

“So, the meeting went okay, after all?” I asked, cautiously.

“Well, you know how Rhonda is.” Rhonda the roach likes to publicly undermine my wife under the guise of asking questions. “I guess it was fine. I have a meeting with Peter about it tomorrow.” She says, referring to her supervisor. “It’s just hard.” Changing the subject, El breaks. “I don’t understand why this is happening. I know it’s not your fault, I just hate this,” she says between sobs. “It just shouldn’t be like this.”

“El,” I pulled her chin up to look her in the eyes. “El, I have some good news.”

As I look around the table, the children seem content messily slurping down the pale, green contents of their clear, plastic cups. Joshua appears to have even more on his face than in his cup and. In mish-mashed tones, he's singing something low and soft that sounds familiar, then, at once, screaming at the top of his lungs: “Round and round!”

El’s face has almost the same look of perplexity as when I first told her in the mudroom.

“And all the money was just in the account?” She asks.

“Yeah.” I nod, leaning in, holding my little black book open to where I did the math. “Sweetie, I was able to pay off everything!” I gesture dramatically with the blades of my hand. “Student loans are gone. The rest of our car payments. I mean, we have the house that we have to pay for. And insurance. But the rest of the bills are gone!”

I get careless in my excitement and spill some of my shake. It drip-drops out the top and onto the open book. “Winnie, look at this.” I pull out the pen and begin to draw a shape around the green blob on the empty page. A few seconds later, I’ve turned it into a dinosaur.

“Rawr!” I exclaim, laughing as I thrust the book toward her. She humors me with a squeal and laughs along. Soon we’re all laughing as I attempt to gobble up my children and my wife with the pretend dinosaur.

As the laughter winds down, Winona is telling the family a story that she heard from a little girl named Rosetta in her class. My mind wanders and I find myself flipping through the book again, thumbing at the “Life Goals” page. I glance down and something on the page catches my attention. I smile, tears forming once again in the corners of my eyes. Pulling out my pen, I remove the cap and cross off life goal number 6: “Pay off student loans.”