Mom Is Home

Sadee arrives home and John has to tell her yet again that he hasn't had any luck finding a job. John feels invisible.

Transcript

Hi, my name is Wayne Jones. Welcome to Lies I Tell My Kids, a fictional memoir by a truthful man with no children. This is episode 2, “Mom Is Home.”

I am happy to be snapped out of this reverie, a dream, a nightmare, an hallucination, by the ritual of Sadee arriving home from work, with a thud as the door closes and then muffled sounds as her shoes are kicked off, keys clatter into a copper dish that we got when our favourite Indian restaurant closed down last year, and she shouts the kids’ names like a command, a break in the action, a call to action.

“Grady! Lolly!”

They have been less attentive to her entry, engrossed in whatever it is they are fiddling with on the floor, but they get up instantly when they hear their names. Sadee is in the room by then and they both rush toward her, their heads smooshing into the middle of her torso and their arms tight around her. She bends down to kiss them and with that they then disengage and resume their play. Sadee gives me a dry kiss on the forehead and then sits down at the same awkward angle to how I am splayed out on this stupid couch, which always looks messy, whose modules are continually coming unhinged, and which requires genuine core muscle strength to be able to extricate yourself from with any semblance of personal dignity.

“John,” she says. A greeting, I suppose.

“Sadee. It’s good to have you home.” My lies have already started and she’s not three minutes in the door.

I picture other homes on our street where one or other partner has arrived from work, and, say, the man has extracted himself quickly from a less demanding couch and rushed to the foyer to hug her, to kiss her wetly for fuck sake, to feel her tongue slithering into his mouth in those brief seconds that he has before the kids’ brains have switched preferences from play to mom-hugging, and they are suddenly grabbing and hugging all over at whatever parts of either parent’s body they can get hold of. Shouting. Glee. Words coming out at a rapidity that the intended listener cannot possibly understand, especially in competition with another talking child.

I picture another home, a childless couple (ah, what a life), and they don’t ravish each other on the hardwood floor, even with that Persian rug there, but rush upstairs to the comfort of their bed, are naked in seconds, and they’ve both tasted each other within a few minutes and are now lounging, lolling and cooing, waiting for his refractory time to pass so that they can go at it again.

But, chez nous …

A dreary conversation ensues mostly about chores and errands and with the passion upticking only when the line of questioning veers into a hard fact that one of us has forgotten to do something. “Neglected,” as the characterization soon becomes, and then soon followed by “deliberately ignored,” “why can’t you follow your own spreadsheet?,” and finally, the nadir and apex, “Jesus fucking Christ, John.”

I’ve been unemployed for nine months now but the gestation has not resulted in a bouncing baby job. My wife’s and my qualifications and education for employment are as different as our personalities. She did something other than live with her parents and hang out with friends after she finished high school. No. She efficiently progressed easterly through a BA (Honours) in Vancouver, an MA in Toronto, and a PhD in Oxford. She’s now Dean of Arts at the bigger of the two universities in town (student enrolment: 35,000 full time). Me, well, after I was done with my parents’ spare room and, judging by the vehement arguments at dinnertime, after they were done with me too, I finally moved a little west and got a certificate in office administration. The regional office that I supervised closed down last year and since then I’ve been trolling for anything office. Office admin assistant, office clerk, junior clerk, office correspondence delivery, and on down the line stopping just short of shoeshine boy (office). One of the ironies of being qualified for the thousands of jobs available in an office in the general sense is that you become one of a hundred, two hundred, π × Avogadro’s number of other applicants. Whereas if you are one of the leading international scholars in Restoration theatre, and a good administrator, you tend to be promoted.

“How was your day, John? Any luck?”

I just shake my head now. She used to say hunny-hubby. Our interview now takes less than five seconds.

Dinner is nearly ready. She likes my baked asiago chicken and my carrot cake. When she disengages from me to get down on the floor with the children, I head to the kitchen to finish things off. There’s a mess that I have uncharacteristically left in the sink, due to a blowout I had with myself when I wasn’t able to find the one-third-teaspoon spoon and, my talents diminishing while I languish unemployed, I couldn’t do the math to figure out how to accomplish the correct measurement with just a quarter-teaspoon and an eighth-teaspoon. The dishwasher was full and so I threw the whole set of measuring spoons into the sink with the rest of the dirty dishes. Alone in the kitchen then while the kids played in the backyard, alone and still I shouted “Fuck!” when I considered even for a moment that it might be me that would have to ask them how to do my math homework.

I hear squeals of delight as Sadee keeps them entertained and I set the table. I’m meticulous about this even though nobody cares. I call them to the table and a few minutes later there is no rapture over the carefully placed utensils, the cotton napkins instead of sheets of paper towel.

“Looks great,” Sadee says, about the food, and that’s all I need. I often feel invisible, like I’m not really here, and their dinner has been prepared by an AI bot. That’s a good day. On a worse one, I really wish I wasn’t there.

The kids eat all the cheese off the chicken, eat the least amount of chicken possible, and between them have about fourteen grains of rice. Sadee is ravenous and is done when they are.

“John, the meetings today. I’d rather be cozying up to the cuckolds in a good Restoration play, introducing it to the students without triggering any—well, triggering any triggers. But did I mention the meetings?” She laughs.

I smile supportively. Cuckold, I think. That’s a funny word.