No, he needed a bigger threat than himself.
“If you mother comes home and finds out you’ve been jumping on her bed, she’s gonna fire me. She won’t ask me to babysit you anymore. You guys don’t want to lose Uncle Dave as your favorite babysitter, do you?”
Mattie refused to be intimidated. “She won’t fire you, Uncle Dave,” he replied, not slowing his bouncing. “You work for free!”
Dave had to make a conscious effort not to smile. Mattie was a sharp little booger, all right.
Okay. Reason and threats hadn’t worked. It was time to get physical. He stepped all the way into the room and up to the edge of the bed. “Okay,” he announced. “It’s ‘No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed’ time.” And with remarkable speed, he caught little Marie at the top of a bounce, pulling her close to his body. Three beats later he scooped up Mattie as well, pulling him in close with a one-armed catch. Spinning like a quarterback about to be sacked, he pulled them in close and let his body fall backwards, letting the water-filled mattress cushion him while his well-padded body cushioned the children. The resulting impact displaced a large amount of water, which pushed against the edges of the mattress and surged back to the canter and out again, so that they rode the waves. The children in his arms howled with delighted laughter, holding tight until the waves subsided to the faintest ripple.
“That was
so
cool!” Mattie yelled. “Let’s do it again!”
“’Gen! ’Gen!” Marie echoed, clapping her pudgy little hands.
“Oh no!” Dave responded, rocking his body a few times until he resulting waves built up enough momentum to help him push off the bed with his precious cargo. “It’s time to make the bed. Your mother doesn’t ever need to know that you guys snuck into her room while I was loading the dishwasher. Mattie, you get on that side,” he said, setting the skinny little boy down. “And you, princess,” he set Marie down and pointed to the foot of the bed where the bedding was still essentially tucked in. “You can smooth out that side.”
“You do it, Uncle Dave,” Mattie protested. “I don’t make beds so good. If we do it, Mom and Dad are gonna know we messed it up.”
“I’ll help you,” Dave promised. “But you might as well learn right now, if you’re gonna play in bed, sooner or later you’re going have to straighten up the mess.”
• • •
Two hours later, Dave was exhausted. He’d survived three viewings of a video about a singing dinosaur, stopped Mattie from cheating at Candy Land then cheated himself to let the kids beat him, let Marie mess up his hair with her doll’s hairbrush to make him “pretty” (not that she could do a lot of damage there, for he had close cut, tight curls that generally defied all efforts to alter them), and had made popcorn from scratch in the popcorn popper because the kids got such a kick out of seeing it pop.
In spite of the exhaustion, Dave really did enjoy the time he got to spend with the kids. He loved Mattie’s antics, while Marie fascinated him with her baby features and a willingness to do anything to keep up with her big brother, no matter how rough and tumble. Sure, they were a lot of work, but he sure loved these kids.
And then it hit him. He wanted a family of his own.
Not just time spent with his sister’s kids. And not just kids — he wanted a family. A real family of his very own.
It shouldn’t have come as a revelation. He’s always wanted to have a wife and kids
someday
, but it had never been at the head of his agenda. He’d had a lot of living that he’d wanted to do first — places to travel to, adventures to discover, experiences to live. And then there were the practical reasons — he’d needed to establish himself, to make a decent living, to grow up to the point where he was ready to settle down.
A thin crease furrowed itself right between his eyebrows. He had a good, steady job as associate sales manager at WMTR, a popular Boston radio station. He made a decent living — not extravagant by any means, but comfortable. Hell, he’d even seen the dark side of thirty. So what was stopping him from starting a family of his own?
He needed a woman in his life.
He wasn’t so callow to think that just any woman would do. He needed a woman whom he could want to be with for the rest of his days. Someone smart. Someone kind. Someone with a sense of humor who would laugh at all of his cornball jokes because she truly thought they were funny.
Someone he could fall in love with who would love him back.
It was funny, he thought as he carefully slipped a hand under Marie’s head and gingerly extracted his thigh from under her. This was the second time in the last month that he’d thought about finding a special woman to share his life with. It had been a Friday night and he’s been sitting in a club talking with his friend Ghoulie’s wife when the band began to play “A Man Like Me/A Woman Like You.” The change in song barely even registered with him until he suddenly looked up and there stood Ghoulie, standing there next to their table, holding his hand palm up at waist level with a look on his face that — well, it was almost embarrassing to look at; a look full of confidence, tenderness, pride, and an unspoken promise of things to come. And Shelby stopped, right there in mid-sentence, put her hand in her husband’s and stepped onto the dance floor and into his arms, leaving Dave alone in the darkness with a sense that he had just witnessed something so intimate as to be almost holy. For the first time Dave had felt that maybe was missing something vital in his life.
He carefully scooped Marie’s sleeping body up off the couch and lifted her to his shoulder, wondering why it was that kids weighed more asleep than they did when they were awake. He stood for a minute, rocking back and forth to soothe her even though she hadn’t stirred, then carried her upstairs to the bedroom with the brightly colored balloons on the wallpaper. He pressed a kiss on her wispy curls and laid her gently in her crib. Just for a moment, he stood with his hands curled around the crib rail, wondering what it would be like to stand there with a woman and look down at such a small package of perfection, knowing that they had created it out of their love. He sighed, not sure that he could even imagine it.
Back in the living room, he ejected
Ernie Goes to Preschool
and turned to look at Mattie, asleep on the floor in his Spider-Man pajamas amidst a hailstorm of popcorn kernels, and decided to leave the boy where he was rather than risk waking him and having to watch Ernie stress out over the prospect of going to preschool one more time. He went back to the couch and began to channel surf, looking for sports.
Diane and Tom came home a couple of hours later, looking slightly less fresh but infinitely less harried than the had when they’d left four hours before. “How were the kids?” Diane asked as she hung up her coat in the front closet.
“Piece of cake,” he replied dismissively. “How was your night out?”
Tom slipped up from behind and wrapped his arms around Diane. “It was a chick flick,” he said, “but Diane liked it.”
She swatted his arm. “You liked it!”
“I liked you after you’d seen it,” he clarified, nuzzling the side of her head.
“You just like what that kind of movie leads to,” she accused.
“Damn right,” he replied, grinning at her suggestively.
“Behave yourself,” Diane told him, giving him a final swat and stepping out of his embrace. “Want a cup of coffee, Dave? We’ve got some cheesecake if you didn’t let the kids con you into letting them eating it.”
As much as Dave loved cheesecake, he knew that neither Diane nor Tom wanted him to stay for coffee. “Nah,” he replied. “Thanks anyway but I’m supposed to meet Kirk tomorrow morning. We’re painting his mother’s kitchen ceiling.”
“Sounds like fun.”
Dave rolled his eyes. He had worked as a painter in college and it was no longer his idea of fun. Even so, he was fast and he was good at it, which was why he let Kirk talk him into helping.
He said his good byes, kissed his sister, and stepped into the crisp night air.
Dave listened for a minute to the radio while the car’s engine warmed up. It was one of the on air weekend people. WMTR was shuffling people around in the wake of the evening commute deejay defecting to another radio station. He hoped they’d fill the vacancy soon. Having a known commodity was a big part of his sales pitch for getting clients to advertise on ’MTR.
Before he pulled out, he looked back at his sister’s house. Through the picture window he could see Diane and Tom. Tom was holding a groggy Mattie, and Diane stroked the boy’s dark hair. Then she turned her eyes towards her husband’s and they shared a look filled with love and tenderness.
Dave lingered for a minute, watching the intimate family scene through the glass before taking his foot off the brake and driving off into the cold, lonely night.
Working late on a beautiful July night wasn’t Dave’s favorite thing, but if the circumstances warranted it, he’d do it. The Belmont Auto Glass account had been his baby for weeks now, and so here he was, putting together a variety of advertising packages to present at a meeting with the company’s executives the following morning. It was half past seven now — late enough in the evening that he wasn’t likely to be interrupted — so he’d left his office door open after his journey to the snack machines.
He could hear the smooth voice of the new evening commute deejay playing over the PA system out in the hall, reading tomorrow’s weather forecast. He’d seen her at the weekly staff meetings, but hadn’t met her yet. She was a real looker, though — a smooth curtain of long black hair, killer brown eyes, manicured nails, stylish clothes, a statuesque height that topped his own five-foot-seven by a good four inches, and just enough makeup to look like she wasn’t wearing any.
The promotions department had a long running billboard ad campaign called “The Faces of Radio” where they tried to make the deejays more familiar by putting their pictures out in public with superlative captions — “The Most Trusted Face in Radio” for Vince MacNeil, the station news reporter, and “The Sweetest Face in Radio” for Allyson Every, the midday deejay who was blond and cherub faced with freckles even though she was well into her twenties. “The Ruggedest Face in Radio” was Rocky MacDougall, who held the overnight shift — his chiseled features, high cheekbones, and prominent jawline merited that distinction even as much as his passion for outdoor activities did.
It hadn’t taken long for the Publicity Department to come up with a catchphrase for the new girl. Denise Johnson was “The Prettiest Face in Radio” by a country mile. The posters, billboards, and ads hadn’t gone out yet, but she’d only been at the station a week. He cocked his head as he listened to her smooth voice, slightly sultry but friendly at the same time. A beautiful voice to go with a beautiful face.
As he listened, a clatter sounded in the hallway, accompanied by the sound of someone singing flatly. Dave smiled. It was Theresa, the station’s cleaning woman. He had no idea how old she really was, but she had already been working at the station when he had been hired eight years before. He watched as she came into the room, pushing a vacuum cleaner before her and dragging her cleaning cart behind. She wasn’t even singing the same song that was playing on the speakers.
Dave liked Theresa. She reminded him of Hope, his cousin who had died when he was a teenager, doomed by the Down Syndrome that had left her with a congenitally damaged heart. Theresa looked up at him, revealing a face that was much like Hope’s had been, with heavily lidded eyes and a wide set mouth that seemed to be too full of tongue. It was an elfin face, he always thought. She had an elf’s height as well, barely reaching 4’10. She smiled when she finally looked up and saw him sitting there.
“Dave!” she exclaimed in her slightly raspy voice. “What are you doing here?”
“How’s it shaking, T-bird?” he replied, an easy grin crossing his features.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she told him.
“Ah, I’m just working late. So how you been? You need a new boyfriend yet? I’m still available, you know.” It was a long running topic of conversation between them — Theresa and her bevy of boyfriends.
“Nope. I got three right now. Pete and Steve and Nathaniel.”
“What happened to Charlie?” he asked.
“Oh, he’s just my pal,” she admitted.
“Well, if you ever decide to get rid of all these boyfriends of yours, you look me up,” he teased.
“Oh Dave, you’re so funny!”
He clasped his chest in mock despair. “Theresa, you’re breaking my heart!”
She laughed as she began to unwind the vacuum cord and plugged it in.
“You still like Justin Beiber?” he asked her.
“I like him a lot,” she told him.
“I’ll tell you what — I think we got some posters in for his new album. You start to clean up in here and I’ll go check and see if I can get you one.”
Her whole face lit up in excitement. “Thanks, pal!”
“Anytime, kid.”
It was when he came back that Dave heard voices coming from his office. He quickened his step, concerned for Theresa’s sake. They worked in a building that was secure for the most part, but Theresa was a very trusting soul, and there shouldn’t have been anyone else in his office at that hour. Anxious to intervene, he started calling to her even before he reached his doorway. “Good news, Tee — they had two different posters, so I got them both — ”
He stopped short when he reached the doorway and saw who it was that was talking to Theresa. It was Denise Johnson standing just inside the doorway of his office, smiling and asking Theresa a question. “Hi,” he said, a little stupidly.
She blessed him with an electric smile. “Hi.”
“That’s Dave,” Theresa informed her.
Denise glanced at the nameplate on his desk. “Dave Dee — Dis — ”
“DiSciullo,” Theresa volunteered.
“Excuse me?” she replied, turning her attention back toward Theresa.
“DiSciullo,” Theresa said again. “‘Dish’ like you eat on, ‘shoe’ like you wear on your feet, ‘low’ like not up high. ‘Dish-shoo-low.’”
Denise turned her eyes questioningly to Dave. He shrugged. “I taught her that. It was the easiest way to help her remember.”