THE JOB

Lee Travis

He knew how to revitalize and manage multinational corporations, but—how the hell did he reconstruct a broken family with three kids? e wqs stumpeedH

A handsome, muscular, wealthy, man with fading blond hair, Adam Green had brought his family to The Crossroads, a kind of home away from home for Adam, his wife Evelyn, and his brood. The restaurant was a gutted and remodeled 19th century house, with wooden planked walls, soft, sloe-eyed wall lights flanked by ruby-red hanging drapery, and four yawning brick fireplaces each ablaze in the main dining rooms.

As usual, he was dressed in his normal executive attire: a 3-G suit, white shirt, and a dark-chocolate brown tie. He was an industrial systems analyst who studied dysfunctional industrial systems internationally--in Munich, in Paris, in Brussels—and did cost-benefit analyses. He then formulated intricate management and production plans, presented his findings in formal corporate debate settings, sometimes strictly following Robert’s Rules of Order, and his clients, like a herd of sheep, usually just obediently followed his expensive recommendations.

He was an authority.

He was decisive.

What Adam Green said, went.

But that was there.

Now, walking up the fieldstone pathway under the red canopy leading to the front door, he felt strangely lost walking alone with the three children trailing behind him. Derrick, Cindy, and Sue-Ann, were all arrayed in their best dress up clothes—red-haired Derrick, age 10, in his blue, button-down shirt, brunette Sue-Ann, age 8, in her white blouse with the etched blue birds on the collars, and white-blond-haired Cindy, age three, in her light green paisley blouse and. kelly-green skirt.

Sharp looking crew, Adam thought.

Monty, the black-hair maitre’d, greeted them with his flashing white smile in the lobby; the plants along the hallway surrounded them with the smell of fresh flowers; the background sounds of the grand piano caressed their ears. Monty directed Adam and the children to their usual table, leaving behind four thick, chestnut-brown diner menus. They sat down near the fireplace, surrounded by tables of well-dressed adults in strapless evening dresses, glittering diamond necklaces, and Brooks Brother’s suits..

A soft, well-known voice emerged out of the blackness behind Adam’s head.

"Welcome back, ya’ll.”

The hoarse voice belonged to Mary Kay, a well-groomed woman with gray-black hair, dressed in a white blouse. She was in her early 60’s, had the beauty-shop look of a country-western singer, and her blue-gray eyes were misty, the color of seashore haze.

Mary Kay was “their” waitress at The Crossroads, a kind of unofficial family member, and had been so for the last 10 years. “Ever smiling Mary Kay"--as Evelyn called her--had been there when Adam and Evelyn, newlyweds, had first come to the restaurant, and had served them for the years since.

Mary Kay beamed at Adam, whom she admired and liked, the way mothers care for favorite sons.

“Hey there, Mr. Green. The usual?"

Adam returned her smile and glanced to his right at the girls.

"Hi, Mary Kay. We’re not quite ready, I guess, are we, crew?”.

The two girls whispered something to each other. Derrick grunted.

Mary Kay smiled at the children.

Adam nodded.

“Just a moment, please?”

Mary Kay nodded and remained standing.

"Sure.”

Adam looked back down at the unread menu in his hands. There were at least four pages of choices, in French, rendered in ornate script. Adam studied his menu, struggling to translate the French entries into English, trying--and failing--to remember how Evelyn had managed the ordering routine when they went out to eat together at the restaurant.

Meanwhile, Derrick stared across the table at his sisters, crossed his eyes, curled his upper lip backwards against his freckled nose, making his forehead crinkle into wobbly rolls like a washboard, and the girls recoiled and hid their faces behind their hands.

Adam looked up from his menu, saw what was happening, glared pointedly at Derrick, and looked up into Mary Kay’s gray-green eyes.

"I guess I'll have my usual draught--no, make that a bone-dry Vodka martini, up, with an olive, please, and the kids will have a, ah--what are they called?--a Kiddy Cocktail, Ok?”

“One up martini and two Shirley Temples and one Roy Rodgers comin’ up,” Mary Kay smiled, surprised by Adam’s unusual drink order. Clearly, Adam, who had never been to The Crossroads before alone, seemed strangely out of his element with the three children--just like so many men she’d seen over the years at The Crossroads--divorced or widowed guys—who without their wives, seemed adrift, stranded ships in a Sargasso sea.

But something was wrong: to the best of her knowledge, Adam was neither divorced or widowed.

Adam peeked over the top of his menu in his son’s direction: Derrick’s freckled face had returned to its normal contours. A draft of cool relief passed across the nape of Adam’s neck and he hoped against hope that his earlier, stern, managerial look aimed at Derrick, had done it, and that things would remain calm and collected for the rest of the dinner.

Mary Kay returned with their drinks.

Adam looked to his left at Derrick, who had now made his hands into ugly, contorted, shapes, intertwining his fingers under his snarling mouth and chin, and wriggling and pointing them, like so many seething snakes, at his sisters. Adam grimaced at his martini, and looked up at Mary Kay.

"He's only--just--10, you know."

Mary Kay nodded to Adam, and smiled knowingly down on the preadolescent Derrick, who continued with his ghoulish display towards his sisters.

"A great age,” Mary Kay said, the tone of her voice simultaneously warm and wistful, her face radiant with her ever-present smile.

Delightful? Adam repeated to himself and returned to the study of his menu.

Derrick now brandished his dinner knife at his sisters across the table, his jaw set and menacing, crossed his eyes and displayed a macabre grin, all of which behaviors Mary Kay dismissed as typical boy antics. She half bowed again, spun slowly around, and, like a soft summer breeze, glided quietly away.

In the background, from the lounge, Adam heard the house pianist, Carl Lewis, a man some 10 years younger than Adam, beguiling the customers with his piano stylings of the twenty-year-old love ballads of the 1940’s. For some reason, it had always seemed that Carl’s favorite music was that of people twenty years his senior, and it was clear from the intense care with which he played that he loved it the same nostalgic way The Crossroads’ customers loved the music of their youth.

Adam closed his eyes and a decade vanished. He and Evelyn had just returned from their honeymoon in Canada and Adam had just sent Carl a note with a dollar bill inside requesting him to play Cole Porter’s “Night and Day,” the song Adam and Evelyn had decided was “their song..” “Night and day, you are the one, beneath the moon and under the sun. . .. :” the words reverberated in Adam’s head. He saw Evelyn’s green eyes flashing in the dim light of The Crossroads, he heard her throaty laugh and watched her soft breasts undulate under her diaphanous, white blouse.

He shook his head. That before the nightmare began—a nightmare so bizarre, it defied understanding. It was so horrible Adam had not yet discussed it with anyone--not even his best friend. Alex Champion, or his minister, the Reverend Harland Grace, or, for that matter, even with the children.

"I gotta go baffwoom,” Cindy announced, bobbing her blond hair about her forehead, waking Adam from his distraction. She fidgeted in her seat, pulled at her green skirt with both hands, and jiggled up and down in her wooden chair to dramatize the urgency of the situation.

"Me ‘oo,” echoed brunette, eight-year-old Sue-Ann. Sue-Ann had recently lost her two front teeth, and found enunciation of the “d” and “t” consonants difficult. She squirmed in her seat next to Cindy, leaned back in the chair, impatiently fluffed her yellow dress in the air, and stared expectantly at her father.

Adam suddenly realized that whether or not his daughters were lying, their ingenuity had him--as tough a corporate executive as there was--over a barrel. That treachery, that sweet manipulation is what these two midgets can do to me, day-in-day-out, month-on-month, year-on-year, forever and ever, Adam realized, with the icy certainty one has when the inevitable becomes a stone-cold reality.

He bit his lower lip: How am I going to rein in these wild animals? How did Evelyn, sweet, little Evelyn, do it? The home front was her territory: she knew about these things--or did she?

Adam looked towards Derrick, lowered his voice, and adopted the kind of quasi-military

language he often used in board meetings with potentially troublesome corporate executives.

"Ok, soldier, I’m gonna trust you. Your mission is to show your sisters where the little lady's room is. Stand guard for ‘em outside the door ‘til they're done, then bring ‘em right back to the table here so we can order our suppers, Ok?"’

Adam studied Derrick and wondered how to interpret his reaction--which reaction could either be a con in and of itself, or a genuine response. Was there any way of knowing for sure?

Derrick saluted "Yes, sir,” slid forward and upwards off his chair, and landed with a light "thud" feet-first on the carpeted floor. He locked eyes with his two younger sisters, raised his right hand, index finger pointed in the air, grinned, and announced:

"Cummon, privates, I's the General–forward, harch!"

The two girls obediently scrambled down from their chairs, skipped along like bouncing balls behind Derrick, and the three children weaved between the tables of adults, who smiled down on them the smugly muddled way adults look when confronted by the potential chaos of small children.

Adam watched the children vanish, and took a gulp of his martini. Lord, he realized, one week ago the world was my oyster. Now, all hell has broken loose. What the hell can I do about what Evelyn's condition has done? How could sweet, loving Evelyn have become the monster Derrick’s teacher, the psychiatrists, the attorneys, and the Judges said she was? That all of her worrying about Derrick—that, first, he had ADD or, next, was dyslectic or, next, was schizophrenic or whatever, that he needed to take all those medications she got the doctors to prescribe for him—that all of that was lies to the doctors, to Derrick, to me? Was I crazy to stand by her all the way, to pay for all the doctors she took Derrick to see?

He shook his head. Evelyn of the sweet smile, the lilting laugh, the hug for everyone and the apparent horror of saying the slightest thing wrong?

Evelyn a deranged monster?

He breathed slowly through his nose, and fumbled through his menu.

The three children galloped up to the table, giggling and jabbering. The two girls climbed up onto their chairs, and looked supremely happy with themselves for some reason. Derrick went over to the fireplace behind Adam, and violently hurled something into the sputtering flames.

Adam glanced at the whispering and smirking girls then back to Derrick.

"Derrick, get away from that fire.”

Adam turned to the girls.

“And please sit quietly in your seats, girls."

The two girls glanced at each other and shrugged. Derrick shuffled back to the table, and glared at his two siblings--who ignored him and went about tracing the lines in the brocaded white-on-white tablecloth with their fingertips and playing with the shiny silverware.

Adam cleared his throat.

“Ahem.”

The girls looked over at their father..

"Ok, girls, that's enough of that hanky-panky,” Adam snapped, using the language he’d heard Evelyn use when scolding her daughters. He looked at them slowly, one at a time, the way Evelyn had done, and lowered his voice

"I remind you we're at The Crossroads, a very expensive restaurant, not a playground, and I expect you to mind your p’s and q’s, like your mother told you.”

The girls dutifully nodded their heads, folded their hands on their laps, and sat reluctantly silent.

Derrick pouted and glared across the table at his sisters.

Adam lowered his voice.

"Good. Now, let's look at our menus to read what we want to order for supper, Ok?"

Cindy batted her eyelashes, pouted, and whined.

"Daddy, I casn’t do eed."

"Can’t R-r-read,” Adam shook his head, "it's got at 'r' in it. Ok, here, please listen very carefully. I'll r-r-read what kinds of food you can have, then you tell me what you want, Ok?”

He confidently opened the menu before him, having remembered, and rediscovered, the small print English translation of the French

“Me, I'm having a salad, a baked potato, and a steak. And that's what I'm gonna have, just like when I was last here with you and your dear mother before."

Cindy bobbed her head, her hair shimmering like a sheaf of corn silks, stared at her Kiddy Cocktail, picked up her spoon, and turned it around and around in her Lilliputian hands. Adam read to her from the menu and simultaneously grabbed at Derrick's right leg that had started to swung under the table towards Sue-Ann’s knees.

Derrick glowered at Sue-Ann. He was furious with her for calling him names on their way back from the lady's room--names like "Dingus,” and "Dopey,” and "Dumbskull," and wanted to give her a kick in the shin as a punishment for her offense. He swung his leg violently under the table.

Adam caught Derrick’s leg and held on, then relaxed his grip and looked at Cindy, seated next to Sue-Ann.

"Do you know what you want?" Adam asked, praying for an answer..

Derrick’s leg started to swing again.

Cindy stared down between her legs. She had earlier seen something bright and shiny on the floor. She ignored her father’s question, slipped off her chair and crawled around under the table towards the shiny thing.

Adam grabbed at Derrick's leg, and simultaneously looked down between his legs at his daughter crawling around on the floor beneath their table. He growled.

"Cindy Green. Get up from there right now."

Cindy reappeared in her chair and held a dime in her Bantam hand. She beamed angelically, and put the dime in her mouth.

Derrick’s leg swung furiously under the table

Adam scowled at Cindy, slapped futilely at Derrick’s leg, turned towards Derrick, and snarled between his teeth.

"Derrick: stop it, right now.”

Adam locked eyes with his daughter.

Cindy, take that thing out of your mouth, right now. It's unhealthy--dirty, dirty, dirty. And please don’t get back under the table. Stay in your seat--and that goes for you also, Sue-Ann. Stay in your seats."

Cindy took the dime out of her mouth and put it down to her right on the table, whereupon Sue-Ann grabbed at it and started a scuffle between them over the treasure.

Adam leaned forward, his chest against the table’s edge, and reached across the table.

"Give me that dime." Adam ordered Sue-Ann, "it belongs to Cindy.”

Sue-Ann pouted.

Derrick now seemed to be swinging both legs under the table.

Adam looked straight across the table, smiled, and addressed the two warriors the crisply articulated way he addressed conflicting associates in corporate meetings, subtly implying sizeable fines and other costs for corporate misbehaviors.

”The dime belongs to Cindy. She found it. She keeps it. I'll give the dime back to Cindy when we get home--or else. Period."

Both girls nodded, and fell silent--much to Adam’s surprise. Empowered by this triumph, he grabbed Derrick's swinging legs, and brought them to a momentary halt.

How, Adam thought as he had watched Derrick pick up and play with his utensils, how am I going to explain it all to Derrick? How am I going to explain to him that his mother is sick in the head?

Adam smiled at his devilish son. Derrick was, well, a house-a-fire. Evelyn had said Derrick was always climbing pine trees in the woods behind their house, always coming home covered head to toe with pine pitch, scratches, and bruises. And she had also complained that he was forever getting hurt playing sports with the other boys in the neighborhood, and suffering daily from bumped shins, scraped knees and elbows, sprains and bruises galore. Someday, Adam realized with a certainly that weighed like a lead coffin on him, Derrick could get himself killed. Or Derrick was maybe going to be killed in a war somewhere. He was fascinated by the news clips he saw at the Saturday afternoon movies he used his 25 cent allowance to go see down at the Cape Cod theater--news clips about the battles that had gone on overseas in WWII, the Korean War, and now, the threat of thermonuclear war over the missiles in Cuba.. He was always shooting off his cap gun, playing "guns" or "war" with his friends, and was forever running around outside, hiding behind pine trees and bushes to ambush his fellow, warring, playmates by shooting his cap gun at them.

And Evelyn had also reported that Derrick was also endlessly teasing his sisters, grabbing them by their wrists and forcing them down to the floor, and telling them horror stories about monkey's paws and ghosts late at night. .

Evelyn had said Derrick’s wild man antics were what made him ADD, and why he needed to take all those medications. Ritalinne. Bractricin. Acidematis.

Now Evelyn was gone, now the civilizing maternal instinct was gone, how was he to teach his son to be calm and gentle? How?

In the past, when Evelyn told Derrick to do one thing, he'd do another. When she'd tell him not to do something, he just did it anyway.

Was it a phase?

Or was Derrick screwy in the brain?

Evelyn would have known about that.

Or would she?

The psychiatrists said she was the nutty one, not Derrick.

Adam took a deep breath, raised his head slightly in the air, and looked down at Derrick.

There was a moustache of fine red hair forming on Derrick’s upper lip, barely visible in the dim light of the restaurant. Derrick was teetering on the threshold of manhood.

Derrick resumed his fingers-as-snakes attack on his sisters..

“At attention,” Adam quietly ordered Derrick.

Derrick bridled at the order. Sure, his father was his father--but he was rarely there, at home, leaving Derrick helpless against his crazy mother and stupid sisters. Why should Derrick care what he said?

Derrick’s lower jaw stiffened. Where was his father last week when the policewoman had taken over at home and Derrick had seen his mother hauled away in a police car that drove away, down the street, and off into the distance, heading towards town. He wanted answers

He looked up..

"Where's our mom, dad?"

The two girls, their lips ajar, watched their father and big brother.

The skin on the back on Adam’s neck crawled: was Derrick rebelling, as Evelyn had warned? A challenge? A challenge of the father’s authority, the father’s place as head of the family?

Adam took a sip of his martini and looked intently at his gold wedding ring with its platinum trim.

He breathed through his nose and spoke to the ring.

"She’s not here, except in spirit. Like when you in church and Almighty God’s there even though you can't see Him. Understand?"

Derrick looked blank, nodded, grimaced, and toyed with his fork. Somehow, it felt like his father was lying to him--but why?

"Be careful, Derrick,” Adam said, "don't hurt yourself now. And sit up straight, like a soldier, at attention."

Derrick sat up straight, and ferociously stabbed his dinner napkin, rocking his full water

Glass; Cindy leaned forward, put her eye at the top of her glass, and studied the shiny red cherry

at the bottom of her Kiddy Cocktail. Sue-Ann watched Cindy silently and wondered if their

mother was mad at her for something she did and why her father and brother were arguing about

whatever it was.

Adam righted Derrick's teetering glass, reached across over the table, and stopped Cindy’s pointed finger short of her Kiddy Cocktail.

"Don’t put your fingers in there, Cindy" Adam whispered hoarsely across the table. "Just drink your drink through the pretty straw, first, and then later I'll get that cherry for you."

Adam glared at Sue-Ann and Derrick, and then back to Cindy.

"I want all of you to behave the ways you did last year, when we were here with your mother for her birthday--or face the consequences.”

Adam lowered his voice to a whisper, locked eyes with each child, one by one, and spoke through his teeth.

“Do you understand?"

Derrick shrunk; Sue Ann smiled vaguely; Cindy looked blank and stared at a spot in front of her nose and wondered what the big word meant..

Mary Kay returned, took their dinner order for Adam’s Steak Maitre D’Hotel and for three hamburgers, with French fries and pickles, for the children.

Adam sat. immobile, and bit his lip. He had no idea of what he was doing--how to control the three wild animals before him. His head still felt light, like it was filled with helium; his mouth tasted dry, like stale saltine crackers; his stomach was a block of ice.

Derrick put his hand on his father’s thick wrist.

"How come we’s comin’ here 'gain, Dad. Are we on vacation or somethin’?"

Adam tousled Derrick’s straight. red hair the way Evelyn used to do, and smiled at his handsome offspring.

"We're here for dinner, like we’ve always done as a family, right?"

“I guess,” Derrick replied, his lips pursed.

A busboy came up behind Adam and dropped several logs down on the floor before the fireplace near their table. The busboy opened the fireplace screen and stoked the fire, sending sparks, fleeing orange birds, up the chimney.

Adam watched the fire as it hungrily consumed the new wood.

The Crossroads, Adam smiled to himself as the pictures flashed by: our honeymoon, Evelyn kissing me and clawing my back, lighting a blazing fire in me and making love, giving to each other our pure, hot virginity, totally giving each other our souls, glowing, two flaming souls interlaced, right there on the floor, before the cracking and dancing fire, my Evelyn.

He felt the soft heat of the fire waft across his cheeks and gently caress his eyebrow, and then looked back down at his gold wedding ring. Across the table there was an empty space where Evelyn had sat a only a week ago, and he was certain he saw the vague outlines of her figure there, like a faded photograph, a haunted presence refusing to abandon the place it once inhabited.

He stared: inside the outline of Evelyn’s figure and saw their past together replayed before him. Home! Home with Evelyn toasting marshmallows, drinking hot cocoa, eating hot peanut butter sandwiches grilled in the waffle iron, home together around the fireplace with the woman of my dreams and our children. So warm. So certain. Home!

Adam rested his head in his hands.

Derrick looked up, his eyes watchful, the way a dog’s eyes look when hoping for a table scrap. He gabbed his father’s wrist and Derrick’s adolescent voice cracked unpredictably as he spoke.

"Is Mom coming hee- here or not? Or is this another one of her stupid tricks on me? I mean, is she dumping mee-e on you like she did in all them doctor’s places?”

Adam clasped his hands together and said nothing.

Derrick glared and squinted his eyes at his father.

”Or are we gonna get a new mommy?"

Adam’s martini suddenly tasted like Castor Oil. How could Evelyn become a monster? The psychiatrists had said that’s how the sickness happened. It just happened, like people getting a sore throat or something going wrong with their appendix But why had Evelyn wanted to hurt Derrick? Was this the time to tell the kids?

Derrick was insistent.

”You litenin’? Are we gonna get a new mommy? Yes or no?"

Adam took a deep breath. His husky shoulders rose upwards and outwards under his stiffly starched shirt. He looked furtively towards his fingernails, and heard wisdom he didn’t know he had flow from his lips..

"No, you're not getting a new mommy. Please don't say such things. Mothers aren't like fireplace logs that can be replaced--but mothers who go away for a long time are kinda like fires--when they're gone, they're gone forever, except in memories. So, let’s let her rest in peace, like a burned-out fire."

Derrick gritted his teeth. There was just too much lying going on. He glared at his father.

“I thought you says she's here?"

Adam looked at the space across the table and raised his voice.

"She is here, in spirit."

Derrick’s eyes squinted. He grasped his spoon handle tightly between his thumb and index finger.

Sue-Ann’s eyes were moist and plaintiff.

"Is my mom ever comin’ home?"

Her father said their mommy was right there, but she couldn’t see her there. It was hard to understand.

Adam looked at Sue-Ann and touched Derrick lightly on the wrist.

"I understand how you're feeling, but, please try to understand your mommy's gone away, and won't be back for long, long, time. Maybe never."

Derrick grabbed his father’s arm with the vise-like grip of a drowning child. Derrick’s jaw muscles worked under his smooth adolescent skin and he looked straight into his father’s dark brown eyes.

"Who's gonna be our mom, then?"

Adam’s stomach turned into a block of ice. He waved his index finger at Derrick.

"You're not listening to me. I want you to please pay attention to what I say."

Derrick snarled and stomped his feet.

"Why?”

Adam shrunk. Sue Ann studied the underside of her water glass, as if it contained a critical message. Cindy rubbed her nose with the back of her hand.

Adam could find no words.

Derrick fumed and gritted his teeth, his nostrils flared..

Adam rested his head in his hands. He ground his teeth and looked up at his impudent son.

"Why listen to me? Because I’m your only parent right now, and that’s because it was somehow meant to be that way--.”

Derrick avoided his father’s eyes.

Adam shrugged his shoulders.

“I’m what you got--for better or worse, that’s what you got, like it or not.”

Cindy studied her fork. Sue-Ann nodded, squirmed in her chair, leaned towards the middle of the table, tried to shovel up sugar packets from the container with her spoon, and spilled the packets all over the table. She looked at her father.

Derrick scowled. His lower lip quivered as he spoke.

"What does 'was meant to be' mean?"

Adam picked up a couple of the stray sugar packets, stopped, and took a deep breath.

"I guess it means that things happen for some reason--that's what. "

Derrick’s face had the blank, merciless, look of a prosecuting attorney.

“What reason?”

Adam shook his head:

“For some reason--something in God’s plan that will be clear later on.”

Derrick scowled--then got an idea, a strange idea that flew into his head like a bird from out of nowhere and somehow, magically, weirdly, made sense to him. It was perfect! It did everything! It was a way of getting rid of his awful mother and getting his father back from all those lousy trips all over the world—a great idea! Derrick’s eyes popped wide open, he looked straight at his father and grabbed his wrist with both hands.

"Are you now gonna be both our mom and dad, too?"

The hard reality of Derrick’s question felt like an blanket of ice suddenly flash-frozen on Adam’s back and shoulders.

This was new territory.

An unknown land.

He took a deep breath and folded his hands before him, fingers interlocked .

"Sorta like that. But please remember you only get one father and one mother. A family is made up of just one daddy and one mommy and their children. That's the way it's supposed to be, and will never, never change. And, in a way, in that spiritual way I said before, you're mommy's still with us, in spirit, in our hearts, watching you and us all."

Sue-Ann's eyes sparkled with insight.

"And daddies goes to work, and fix sings that gets brok-, and are big and s-rong and fig--s in wars and gives you spankings."

Adam sipped at his martini.

"Well, I never fought in any war ‘cause of my bad knees from football--. And I have only spanked you kids when I got home and your momma said you’d been bad."

The girls looked confused; their mouths silently chewed at unspoken thoughts.

Adam cleared his throat. He suddenly he knew where he was. His voice was firm, resolute.

"Ok, now pay attention to what I’m going to say. I can’t be a mother--only a father. One parent. One father. As your father I promise you kids I will be kind and fair to you all. I promise. There's much more to it, you know. As you grow older, I'll explain it all to you. We’ll all learn it together, Ok?"

Derrick stared at him, his eyes glassy and dumb like marbles, and said nothing.

Mary Kay arrived with their dinners stacked on a silver, circular, platter, served them individually, glanced at Adam, and walked silently away.

Adam saw to it that each child started to eat the meal in front of them, grabbed at Derrick's swinging legs, picked up some more stranded sugar packets, and kept a watchful eye on Cindy, who was intently peering down between her legs at the floor.

Adam ate a few bites of his salad, reached across the table, helped Cindy cut her hamburger into bite-sized pieces; and wiped up some of her spilled Kiddy Cocktail.

Suddenly, Sue-Ann screamed "Yuck!" and pointed her finger at Derrick. Adam snapped his head to the left. Derrick had taken several bites of his hamburger, and had suddenly popped open his mouth to display a motley brown mess of meat speckled with ketchup, onion, relish, and hamburger roll.

Adam glared at Derrick.

"Stop that--Damnit!"

His voice sounded authoritative.

It was authoritative.

"Stop that right now, soldier, or I'm going to send you out to the car with no supper and no dessert.”

Derrick cowed, looked up under his eyebrows, and mumbled.

"Sorry.”

He bowed his head contritely, but his half-smile also suggested he was secretly gleeful about the display of his half-chewed food. He dangled his dill pickle spear from his mouth flicked it back and forth with an index finger, and went on swinging his legs--albeit slowly--under the table.

Mary Kay reappeared, and stood solicitously by Adam.

“Is everything to your liking, sir?”

Adam looked up at her.

"How about someone--a female saint would be perfect–-to baby sit? My wife just, ah—has just sorta gone away for a, a while, a long while, you see--I'm sorta new at this one person parenting job and, frankly, I'm going crazy."

Mary Kay wasn’t at all clear what had happened, so she played it safe and directed the focus to herself to take the pressure off Adam. She lowered her voice.

"I'm sorry to hear that, sir. Sorry. I understand how you’re feelin’. Lost my husband oh, some 20 years ago in a freakin’ car accident. Left me with four teenaged brats to raise--two guys and two gals--so I got some idea of how you’re feelin’. It's tough in the beginnin’ ‘cause you're not used to controllin’ the bull--, ah, madness, but you get used to it. You just sorta force yourself into it and teach yourself the job."

All three children kept their eyes on Mary Kay.

“Teach yourself the job?” Adam asked, “how the hell do you do that?”

Mary Kay’s were softened.

“How? The way I guess we all do it—one bummer at a time, like a business, y’know.”

A business? Adam thought, parenting--being both a mother and farther--is a business?

Suddenly Derrick’s bizarre idea it made sense.

A strange kind of sense, but sense nonetheless.

Derrick’s leg stopped flailing under the table; the two girls intently watched the exchange going on between their father and Mary Kay.

Adam’s heart pounded against his ribs.

"You didn't remarry?"

Mary Kay’s shook her head.

“Ha! Who’d have me?"

Adam had not heard her.

"Did you find another relationship?"

Mary Kay shook her head and looked off into the darkness near the ceiling.

"No. Like I said. Who wants a widow with four kids? Had to do it myself."

Adam looked up at Mary Kay the way a rapt parishioner gazes up at a minister.

"You hired baby-sitters?"

Mary Kay shook her head again.

"Couldn't afford ‘em, sir, and my family lives at the other side of the country, in California, too far away to help. Had to juggle sh--, stuff, if y’know what I mean?"

Adam swallowed.

His ears rang.

His mouth tasted metallic, like nickels.

He frowned.

"And you did it yourself, I mean, one parent raising four teenaged kids?"

Mary Kay smiled–an inward smile, pungent with untold stories. Her eyes scalded with painful memories.

"Yes, did it myself. Like I said, you just kinda force yaself to do it. You do what ya gotta do"

Adam stared at her.

"What you gotta do?"

The three children stared at Mary Kay. Was she was talking about them?

Mary Kay pursed her lips. She knew it was contrary to restaurant ethics to engage in such a personal conversation with a customer, but Adam was a very, very old friend, almost family.

“What you gotta do.”

Adam looked her straight in the eyes.

“And allowances? Bribery? Stuff like that? Corporate stuff?”

Mary Kay smiled.

“Yeah, and blackmail, lots of carin’ time--and tons and tons of the good stuff they ain’t got the right to get yet, but needs to fill up on.”

` Adam cocked his head:

”Which is--?”

Mary Kay smiled. Her lips closed; the skin crinkled at the corners of her eyes; her jaw was set firmly.

“Just plain ‘ole respect. Without no respect, there’s just explosions. They becomes little demons--monsters who drive you bonkers. Scares the sh--phooey outta you.”

Adam stared at her. That’s what he, the corporate executive, was afraid of! Dealing with those crazy little dwarfs! Afraid of children? His children?

Mary Kay started to clear the kids’ empty plates.

Adam touched her arm.

“And your kids--?”

“They're all workin’ now—includin’ Carl, the piano player right here--have their careers, all married. I’m the grandma of six young’ns."

“That’s, ah, wonderful,” Adam choked and toyed with his uneaten steak.

“Something else., sir?” Mary Kay asked as she cleared some spilled French fries.

"No, the food's fine. That's not it."

The children’s eyes fastened on Mary Kay.

"Then, sir, what is it? How can I help?"

Adam looked around to his left at the faintly glowing fire in the fireplace. He shook his head slowly from, side to side, and looked up, his lips parted.

Mary Kay cocked her head; the children watched.

"Sir?"

Adam looked at his golden wedding ring and twisted it on his finger.

"Respect? "

Mary Kay bowed.

"Yup, respect. "

Adam shook his head.

“But h—how?”

Mary Kay looked Adam straight in the eyes.

"You just do it. That’s how. It’s your job."

Adam only vaguely understood what Mary Kay meant by "just do it,” but he suddenly knew for certain that the if Derrick’s silly adolescent idea of a single man being both mother and father was what Mary Kay called a “job” that required respecting kids, then, by Christ, he could do it.

No. He would do it. His family was sinking, like a business in trouble. It needed fixing.

There was no one else. It was his job, and his alone.

He rested his forehead against his right fist and felt his stomach squirming around inside him.

Mary Kay backed away and stood erect, poised, by the table.

"Will there be anything else, sir?"

He took a deep breath.

“No. I think I’ve got it. I’m pretty sure I’ve got it all.”

He looked down at his wedding band, and took I off. He put it in his pocket, and suddenly everything seemed to change for Adam Green, like things change when the sun breaks through at the end of a terrible, black storm.

Derrick’s voice squeaked as he spoke to his father.

“You gonna do it, Dad?”

Sue-Ann frowned; Cindy stared at her thumbs.

Mary Kay cocked her head.

"Excuse me, sir, I--."

Adam Green said nothing. He paid his bill, left Mary Kay a handsome tip, and walked out with the children flanking him, addressing them as “ma’am,” and “sir,” mumbling something unintelligible to himself about the “a corpora--getting to, at the job ” that Mary Kay did not hear clearly, but somehow felt she fully understood.