Best Day Ever. Kaira Rouda Sturdivant

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СКАЧАТЬ there,” she says. She has opened the magazine on her lap, to a different story now I see. She twists open her bottle of water and, as I could have predicted, spills a fourth of it on the magazine. “Darn it.”

      How adorable. Mia’s ban on swearing in front of the boys has resulted in this childlike response from my wife, even though the kids aren’t around. I should tell her to express herself freely in my company.

      Before I can think to stop her, she has popped open the glove compartment and she’s rummaging around in it. “I don’t have any napkins in there,” I say quickly. I feel my palms begin to perspire. I check myself in the rearview mirror and notice my forehead is shiny, suddenly damp. It’s so hard to keep secrets these days. People can find out anything, ruin all kinds of plans. Sometimes, all it takes is just opening the wrong door. “Just close that back up. Here...” I know my voice sounds terse but I can’t help it. I reach into the back seat to grab my gray cotton sweater, and toss it into her lap. “Use this.” My voice has returned to its normal tone. That pleases me.

      “You’re acting weird,” she says, instead of thanks. I’m going to let it go, though. She doesn’t know I have a surprise hidden in there, part of our special day. I can’t tell her that so I say nothing as she mops up the magazine with my sweater. She could have simply ripped out those two pages. Maybe there is someone important in there. All I see is another guy with a two-day beard, sparkling brown eyes and a thick head of hair. Another Buck look-alike. There really aren’t any men in her magazine that look like me, not now anyway. Actually, that’s not quite true. I could give George Clooney a run for his money, and I’m taller, too. When I was younger, watch out world. I would have been on the cover, you know, Sexiest Man Alive, if I had wanted to be. But I hate all that celebrity garbage, as I told you.

      “I’m going to call Claudia. Can I use your phone so it’s on Bluetooth? I want her to have the boys call us after school, just to check in,” Mia says. We have been gone for about an hour so far. This is ridiculous.

      “We haven’t been driving for that long. The boys are at school, and I guarantee you they’re having too much fun with their teachers and their little friends to spare us a thought. We can call them this afternoon. We don’t need to talk to Claudia.” Sometimes my wife acts like the kids are still babies in playpens. That bugs me; them, too. They’re big guys, both in elementary school. They’ll be men before we know it. My parents started treating me and my brother, Tom, like grown-ups as soon as we started school. Dad wanted us to toughen up, fend for ourselves, especially me since I was older. Ah, the good old days. Speaking of Tom, I wonder if I should tell Mia that I think Claudia is on drugs, but decide not to rev her up further. “You need to relax, let go a little.” I pat her thigh for reassurance.

      I feel her eyes on me. “I know. But the thing is, they’re my life. You encouraged me, begged me, not to work outside the home, so I quit my job at the ad agency, the job I loved, and built my whole world around the kids. They just don’t need me so much now that they’re in school most of the day.” Her voice is quiet, her eyes shiny but this time it’s because they are filling with tears.

      “You raised them well. Now it’s time for them to learn independence so they can tackle the world. Boys pulling away from their mommy is natural. It’s how they become young men,” I say. “You still baby them too much. But that’s part of what makes you a great mom, the kind of mom I knew you would be when we first discussed your staying home. Don’t cry, honey.” Honey, such an interesting word to apply to a person. I guess she is dripping, sappy, syrupy, her tears like actual honey drizzling from a spoon. “This is our weekend. The boys are fine.” With their druggie babysitter, I don’t add.

      I flash Mia my biggest rectangle grin, adding my signature wink, the account-winning combination. It’s the smile that launched a thousand new accounts for the advertising agency—until it didn’t. I swallow, holding the smile to reassure Mia that this is a joyful day filled with fun. “This isn’t a day for tears,” I tell her softly. I am a kind, loving husband. I understand her pain, I do. “This is our special day, a day for reflection and for being thankful for everything we created. A day to enjoy being together.”

      “Of course,” she says, taking a big drink of water from the crinkly plastic bottle. Hypocrite. She reads my mind, a wifely skill I can’t say I’m overly fond of, and says, “They didn’t have any glass bottles, Paul. I need to start grabbing my glass water bottles for road trips. I don’t even know if I have any at the lake.”

      “I don’t think you realized the peril of plastic water bottles last season,” I comment mildly, and now she smiles.

      “Well, you know I’m right,” she says.

      “Every woman’s favorite phrase,” I tease. We’re back to happy ground, I notice. She’s even tapping her right thumb on the bedraggled magazine, keeping time to one of our favorite songs, “Still the One.”

      Until.

      “So how is Caroline doing? Still flirting with you?”

      I take a deep breath and squeeze the steering wheel.

       11:00 a.m.

       3

      I check my expression in the rearview mirror, forcing my face into a blasé look of nonchalance: mouth relaxed, shoulders down. Poker-face Paul. I inhale a deep breath. I’ve got this, I do, but then I feel the heat on my cheeks. I pretend to check the driver’s side mirror.

      “Caroline?” I ask, stalling for a moment as a shiny silver frame holding a photo of a smiling young couple thuds into my awareness. I shake my head, erasing it. My brain has enough to do. I must recollect everything I’ve uttered to my wife about Caroline, and the Thompson Payne office in general over the past few months. Then, like for one of Sam’s first grade projects, I must sort what has been said into one pile and what hasn’t been into another. This is an important exercise, best done on my terms, not hers. Too late for that, though.

      “Your jaw is twitching,” Mia says.

      It’s true. I unclench my jaw, sliding it back and forth. I take a deep breath and force a smile. This is disappointing, her observation of me. My skills are slipping. Not so poker-faced, after all, these days. I glance at my wife, who is smiling, presumably at my discomfort with this topic.

      She adds, “So Caroline is still bothering you, huh?”

      “No, not anymore,” I say, speaking slowly to find the right words. “She’s young. It’s her first job. She just didn’t know what is appropriate and what isn’t, that’s all.”

      “Everyone knows it’s inappropriate to call your boss at home at midnight,” Mia says. “Especially when you’ve been drinking.”

      “She was upset, Mia. I explained all of that.” I check the side mirror and pass the stupid green Honda traveling at a snail’s pace in front of us. It’s almost time for the two-lane road, so I need to get this menace far behind me. “Her father died. She didn’t know where else to turn.”

      Mia gives me the look that says she doesn’t believe me, still. “So you turned her in to HR, but she’s still working at Thompson Payne?” she asks, her fingers drumming on the car door handle. I maneuver the car back into the right lane.

      “We don’t fire СКАЧАТЬ