Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,30
the color and consistency of pig iron, is it?
Aunt Phiz’s palate is proving more exotic than our small-town tastes around here. I didn’t do a bad job with the eggplant Parmesan but Payt wouldn’t have any part of it. Not until I likened it to fried green tomatoes—then he couldn’t get enough.
Oh, and while I’m on the subject—breading! Why didn’t anyone tell me about this minor miracle years ago? Flour, egg, bread crumbs.
The great equalizers.
Unfortunately breading does not work its magic on soccer kids’ snacks. Have tried to get away from the nachos in favor of more healthy choices. Yesterday Aunt Phiz whipped up a batch of oatmeal cookies. I spent the rest of the afternoon making faces on them with raisins for eyes, apple slices for mouths and shredded carrots for hair.
They ate the cookies.
I think they fed the apple slices to the dog.
The shredded carrots are ground into my carpet.
The raisins?
Found some between the couch cushions.
Some dropped down into the vase on the bookshelf.
And two stuffed inside the ears of Payt’s bust of Dr. Albert Schweitzer.
It’s hard to stay mad at the boys, though. They are really good kids, even if they are rotten soccer players. Sadly they haven’t won another game yet. Am I a bad mother because I’m secretly a little bit relieved because this means I don’t have to attempt another cake?
No cooking for me tonight, though. Aunt Phiz is watching the children and I am going on a real, live bona fide date—with my husband! He left a message on the phone for me to meet him at his office after hours so we could catch up together. Trés roman-tique, n’est-ce pas?
At last, one evening in my life I won’t end up writing jokes about!
NOTE TO SELF: FINISH COLUMN BEFORE SENDING
“You asked me here to do what?” Hannah stood in the vacant waiting room looking at the top of her husband’s lowered head through the opened frosted sliding-glass window.
He scrubbed his clean, blunt fingers through his shortly cropped hair, never lifting his gaze to her. “Start by emptying out the trash cans, then tackle the break room.”
“Trash?” She tugged at the pearl necklace Payt had given to her when she’d given birth to Tessa. She’d only worn it one other time. Funny, she hadn’t noticed it feeling so constricting then. “Tackle?”
“Dump the small wastebaskets into the big one on wheels by the back door. In the break room, tidy up. Clear away. Do whatever needs doing to the floors, that kind of thing.” He tucked a pen with a drug company’s name on it in the front pocket of his lab coat. “Oh, and bin liners in the supply closet.”
“Bin liners in the supply closet to you, too,” she muttered, shifting her weight.
Her feet already ached in her brand-new high-heeled sandals, the kind of shoes she’d worn all the time before becoming a mom. Their soles scuffed the floor as she moved toward the receptionist’s desk. “Payt? Isn’t there something more you want to say to me?”
“Hmm? Oh, yeah.” Payt rummaged through the book where the staff recorded phone messages. “Turn out the lights when you leave a room. Don’t want Dr. Briggs to show back up and find us wasting electricity.”
“Dr. Briggs? Tell me you did not drag me down here to try to impress the phantom Dr. Briggs.” He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.
“I’m on a ninety-day trial period. Clock’s ticking.”
He had!
And all for Dr. Raymond Briggs. The boss. Senior partner. The surrogate father figure in Payt’s work life. Had to please the man. Had to do whatever it took just for the hope of an “atta boy” and a place at the proverbial grown-ups’ table.
Where, if her husband didn’t start thinking about the consequences of his choices, Payt might end up sitting alone. Not that Hannah had any room to criticize. Aside from taking on the column and choosing Canary for the toddler room, what had she done to break free of her own childhood patterns? How had she ever tried to rise above her own longing for approval?
Not much, she thought, standing in the office all dolled up for a date and not daring to demand her husband at least discuss the situation with her.
That had to end.
This was Payt, after all.
If she couldn’t assert herself even a little without risk here, she might as well give it up for good.
“In the first place, if you are here working after hours and asking your wife to work here, too, after hours—even though