Team Spirit

4. Lars Gets Babysitting Duty

  4. Lars Gets Babysitting Duty  

I pull up in front of my house, trying to decide whether or not to go in.

The problem is, there is really nowhere else to go in Murphy. There's barely anywhere to even kill time, unless I decide to take up bowling by myself. The crushing monotony of small town life takes no time burying me underneath it again.

I should go in.

I pull my emergency makeup remover and mascara out of the glove compartment to fix my face. Erase the smudged remains of my eyeliner wings, vanquish the shadow of day-old mascara under my eyes. Reapply mascara, fresh and midnight black. Dig my fold-out brush out of my purse to tug the post-party tangles out of my hair. That is the routine. 

My rearview mirror leaves something to be desired as far as a vanity goes. With tired eyes, I look just a little too much like my mother. Adults always say that: you look just like your mother.

It takes a minute to mentally prepare and to haul my bag from the summer out of the back seat.

Billy's been gone for most of the summer. How has the house collapsed without him?

From the outside, it looks fine. It looks like any other middle-class kind of family home, dog and toddler toys strewn just inside the front gate. It's a facade, always has been. The front door will reveal all.

I let myself into the tornado, noise rising up in a wave: Mom on the phone somewhere, speaking distinctly louder over the chippy kids TV show soundtrack; Oli isn't even watching TV but jumping down the stairs like a frog, threatening to tumble down them headfirst; Dad's old jazz music, his writing music, croons beneath it all; somewhere in his office, his keyboard taps 120 words per minute under his fingertips.

Home.

They didn't even hear me pull in.

"Judy, I have to call you back." Mom hangs up the phone, stepping over half-built Lego architecture to reach me, wrapping me in a one-armed hug.

"Laura, You didn't even sunburn!" she says. The exclamation of a Danish mother. 

I cringe. I can't help it. For an entire summer, no one called me Laura at all. The kids didn't even know me as Lars. Just Cinnamon. And no one asks isn't Cinnamon usually a boy's name?

"Hats and sunscreen." I force a smile. Mom pauses, something more hanging in the air. It can't be good.

"Your dad and I have tickets for the Kinsmen Park fundraiser tonight. Do you mind watching Oli?" 

There it is.

And Mom's already distracted, realizing Oli's attempting to leap his way down the stairs. "Oli, settle down!"

I smile, a little smug and a little bitter that so quickly my parents fulfill my expectations.

"Whatever, Mom."

It's Billy's fault. He trained them to be this expectant, which was fine when he was around to do everything he was ever asked.

But he's not anymore. And I haven't even been in the house five minutes yet.

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Oli knows the drill by now. I got lucky with this kid in that he's pretty good at keeping himself entertained building Legos on the area rug in the basement. I wonder if he knows by small child intuition that the basement is my sanctuary.