“Okay, everybody in,” I turn the key to the front door and it pops open to the welcome scents of Home and the unwelcome sight of stray socks, random backpacks (which must contain bacteria specimens that were once lovingly-prepared food), and shoes, oh LORD the shoes! And why do none of them fit? Or match up with each other?
“Okay, put your stuff away, shoes in the cubbies, coats and backpacks on the hooks and I want all this –” don’t say it, don’t say it, “crap put away.”
“What crap?” Mare asks.
“And that’s a bad word,” I add. We stare at the knee-high chaos in the entry way. “That,” –stuff, clutter, miscellany –”crap,” I say. ”All of it, the stuff on the floor.”
“Which crap?” Ren asks.
“Mwaha,” Mare says.
“You know which,” I say.
“No, which crap?” Ren asks. “The crap over dere, or da crap here?”
“Look, Ren. Wherever there’s crap? I want it gone. Okay? You see crap, pick it up.”
“Oh, o’tay, Momma, we picking up crap now.”
“And don’t call it crap.”
###
I tiptoe into the darkness of our bed room. Cute Husband jerks awake. He has fallen asleep with the television on. It was a movie. Now it is a coin extravaganza on a shopping show.
“Oh my God,” he says.
“Yeah?” I pile in beside him, turn the TV off. I am mostly asleep.
“What time is it?” he asks.
“2 a.m.,” I say.
“I had such a terrible dream. And you were such a shrew.”
“What’s that, now?” I asked.
“I was a corrupt cop.”
“Oh,”
“And, I stole money.”
“How much?”
“20 grand.”
“You sold your ethics and your soul for 20 grand — that isn’t even a nice car.”
“Shrew. YOU WERE A TOTAL SHREW.”
“So I told you that? In your dream?”
“Oh, in my dream, you were all-freaking-over me about it. ‘Don’t steal, it’s wrong, give it back,’ blah blah, my GOD.”
“I like that girl, you should marry her.”
“I was a bad cop, Liz. I was dirty. I was on the take. And you were bringing me down.”
“You are not going to remember this conversation tomorrow, you know that, right?”
“Bad cops forget nothing.”
“Except the value of a dollar in 2010.”
“Bringing me down. SHREW!”
“I am so blogging this.”
###
“Hey, do you remember our conversation last night?” We’re playing cards and eating dinner.
“Which one?”
“The bad cop?”
“What?”
“The extortion? The take? The shrew??”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“For full details? — Read my blog tomorrow.”
###
Ren scared the — stuff, clutter, miscellany — out of Finn today. She told him there was a scary monster hiding in his mother’s jewelry room. That little bit of fantasy was preceded by the game of “golden city” whereby Mare, Ren and Greta trolled the yard for the key to the magical fairy kingdom inhabited by, oh, God, princess hobbits or whatever the hell it is they find there.
Anyway, they came in after this game, Finny trailing along looking so confused, and Greta and Mare went upstairs to debrief their visit to the magic kingdom and Finn was making his way back to the toy room when Ren told him all about the beast hiding behind El’s cabinet full of Swarovski-and-wire.
“AAAAAAAEEEEK!” he said, weeping his little heart out.
El held him, and gave me — I swear — a dirty look.
Which I passed right along to its rightful owner, Ren. Who informed me that the whole thing had started with Mare so while Finn wept to his mother about monsters I told Mare to go over and make things right.
“There’s no monster,” she said to him. “I … I, well, I made it up.” She shot me a for-the-sake-of-the-children, I-lie sort of look.
“Finn, remember how, in your video game, things happen on the screen … and they aren’t real?” El said in a soothing voice, stroking his head.
No, no he doesn’t know that, El. He doesn’t because he’s a boy. He’s a boy and to him if you see it it’s there, if you don’t it isn’t, and he is not capable of spending sixteen hours parsing it to the satisfaction of his beleaguered heart.
“It’s not real, baby,” she says, stroking his head. “It’s not real, it’s just pretend.”
And Greta, Mare and Ren soothingly stroked his little arms and legs, telling him it will be all right.
And you know why? Because they have the magic swords of Ulderbrand and they will use them to strike down the monster with great force because THAT is what the people of the gold city really want.
And, Finn? — Dude you are totally right to be scared. Some day you’re going to marry a little girl all grown up. And she may not even let you have nightmares in peace.
###
