Page 9 of Man Flu

Chapter Three

Tuesday: Don’t be fooled, it’s just an extension of Monday

MY ALARM—THAT I haven’t heard in months— blares “Hit Me Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears. I sit up in bed, frantic that I haven’t already woken up. Where’s Cora? Oh no, not today. I can’t today. I have a meeting with a new advertising rep, and Cora cannot be sick.

I pull myself out of bed and push my hair away from my face. Why can’t it be Saturday? For once, I’d love for someone to wait on me hand and foot, have breakfast waiting for me, and maybe even do my hair before I leave the house. That will most definitely never happen, though. I suppose I should try to appreciate that I now have one less person to get ready in the morning because Rick can be Tiana’s problem for as long as she’ll take him.

As I drag my heavy feet across the hall, I hear a cough echo from behind Cora’s closed door. Silently, I cry. Screw you, gummy vitamins. You’re just candy with a label tricking me into believing you’re boosting my kid’s immune system for eight bucks a bottle.

I open the door and find her hiding under the covers. “Cora, sweetie, are you okay?”

She moans and pulls the covers from her head. “I think I’m sick.” I reach over and press the back of my hand on her forehead, but I don’t feel much heat. There’s an ounce of hope, followed by another cough.

She runs her arm under her nose and pulls in a loud, wet snorting sniffle. “Can I have a tissue?”

I jog into the bathroom, grab the box of tissues and bring it back to her. “I’m sorry you’re sick, sweetie.”

She rips the covers off and hops out of bed. “It’s okay, but I can’t miss school today. A farmer is coming in to teach us about cows.”

Holy crap, someone in heaven is watching over me. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” she says. “There’s no way I can stay home today.” Ditto, kid.

“Well, let me take your temperature, and if it’s normal, you can go. Deal?”

“Deal,” she says, following me downstairs into the kitchen.

I run the thermometer over her forehead and get a green smiley face on the display, telling me this girl is going to school today. “Yay!”

“Okay, go get dressed quickly, and I’ll make your lunch.”

Cora runs upstairs, coughing along the way, and I put her lunch together while firing up the coffeemaker. I’m going to need so much coffee to get through today.

By the time Cora comes downstairs, she has green boogers dripping from her nose, and her face is flushed. “You look miserable, sweetie.”

“Can you just do my hair, so we can get out of here?” she asks. Cora never wants me to touch her hair. She’d rather leave the house looking like whatever the Lion King would give birth to.

I pull her hair up and tie it into a ponytail, sparing myself the horror movie screams I’d endure if I braided it.

“Cora, I need you to listen to me,” I say while kneeling in front of her. “If you think you’re well enough to go to school, I need you to try and stick it out for the day.”

“I’ll be okay, mom,” she says with a sniffle.

I do the whole dog and pony show, dragging her to the bus stop and shuttling her onto the bus before finally hopping into my super-hot, gray minivan. Why do I have a minivan for one daughter? I was supposed to have three kids, but kid two and three will probably end up in Tiana’s uterus now. It sounds way more depressing than it is, but really, it’s a blessing. What would truly be a blessing, though, is if I could lose six seats in this God-forsaken spaceship.

I speed into the parking lot of Coffee Me and burn a little rubber while pulling into a front spot.

I jog inside, stopping behind the woman who’s next in line. She turns around to see who’s standing behind her, and of course, we recognize each other. “Hannah, how are you?”

Gill Sanford. Gill, as in Jill but with the twenty-first-century type of spelling, is a twenty-first-century type of mom. We met at a playgroup when Cora was six months old, and her daughter was about eleven months old. We tried to become friends, but it didn’t work out. We live two very different lives, and our parenting techniques are slightly contrasting, to put it mildly. Every time we were together, it felt like the battle between the working mom versus the stay at home mom. We moms should be on a united front, but it isn’t always like that, and it never has been with Gill.

She stopped talking to me when she found out I was going back to work after taking an eight-month maternity leave. I tried to keep our friendship intact, but she had no interest in talking to me at that point.

I’m not even jealous that she wears yoga pants every day, or that she somehow has time to spend at least an hour or more on her hair and makeup. She purposely looks sexy and cute, but like she just came from the gym where she could not have broken a sweat. Oh, and we can’t forget about the tan with no lines and a smile with no flaws—the face of a mother without a hint of worry. I want to ask her how, but I don’t want to hear the answer.

“I’m good, Gill, how are you?” I ask, sounding as exhausted as I feel and look.

“Are you sure you’re good, honey?”