Stuck With You: A Sweet Romantic Comedy

Part 6

Bianca

For several days after the family pizza party, I managed to escape the house early and worked late.

Then the weekend came.

Saturday morning, I was awakened by wailing, followed by the voice of Timo in the hall, telling one of the kids it would be alright.

Judging by the anxious edge in his voice, I wasn't so sure.

I rushed out to the hall to find Morty's chin covered in blood. He'd been racing down the hallway, then sliding in his socks on the slick wooden floor. Morty had misjudged his speed and tumbled down the stairs, splitting open the underside of his chin and knocking a couple of baby teeth loose in the process.

Morty was still in shock, but Franny's face was wobbling in a big-sisterly attempt to hold it together in the face of a crisis.

Marta wasn't trying to hold anything together. She was the source of the wailing. Even Tobias, the baby, was getting in on the drama. In response to Marta's hysterics, he joined in with wailing of his own.

"I'll have to take Morty to the emergency room," Timo said.

I'd never seen Timo look anything less than calm not counting the evening we had met. Then, he'd looked angry. Now, he looked scared.

"I'll stay here with the others," I said.

The thought of me looking after his little charges didn't seem to reassure Timo any, but he did, at least, acknowledge the wisdom of not trying to bundle all the kids off into the car and then attempt to keep them calm and occupied in the hospital waiting room while Morty waited who knew how long to have his chin stitched up.

"You have my number," Timo said as he grabbed a clean washcloth from the linen closet in the hall and scooped up Morty. "Call me if anything happens. Anything at all—" was the last I heard as he headed down the stairs.

"Let's have ice cream," I said to Franny, who had finally dissolved into tears, and Marta, who was wailing louder than ever.

I got no reaction at all, which surprised me a little. Normally, the kids regard ice cream as a cure for anything that ails them. We're very big on ice cream in our family.

"Ice cream!" I yelled at the top of my lungs.

That stopped the hysterics cold. Even Tobias stopped wailing.

I took Tobias out of his crib and herded the girls downstairs. The clock on the stove in the kitchen said it was seven am.

"Ice cream isn't breakfast food," said Marta. "That's the rules."

"We'll sprinkle cereal on top," I said. "Cereal is breakfast food."

That seemed to satisfy her.

I doled out double scoops of chocolate ice cream into three bowls and sprinkled corn flakes over the top of each to make our comfort food compatible with Marta's scruples.

"There," I said. "Dig in."

While we ate the ice cream, I tried not to think about Morty's blood-covered chin. The girls were clearly having the same troubles because halfway through her ice cream, Franny asked if Morty was going to have to go back to eating Tobias's baby food now that he'd lost "all his teeth," and Marta ghoulishly pointed out that Morty might have swallowed those teeth and wondered out loud if he would poo-poo them out.

Franny told Marta that her musings were gross, which prompted Marta to point out that Franny had talked about poo-poo only that previous Thursday. It seemed Marta felt Franny was in no position to censor her own discussion of bodily functions since Franny herself had recently done the same.