flipping the script
Alexander
Somehow, I managed to make it to Wednesday. I spent the last three days juggling pickups for the boys, afterschool activities, homework, meals, laundry, everything. It’s a small miracle I was able to get into the clinic and work at all. My mom came through for me in a big way, even though she still works full-time as a kindergarten teacher, she was able to swing over, pick the boys up from school, do homework with them, and then start dinner. If Dani knew I had enlisted my mom, I’d never hear the end ofit.
Dani loves my mom, and she knows I wasn’t coddled by my parents. Still, she’d have to make a comment about how I can’t do it on my own. Anyway, I feel like Dani has the boys overbooked. She’s constantly telling me they need more, but they rarely spend any time being bored.
It’s Wednesday now, time to swap houses, I guess. I got out of the clinic early and was able to bring the boys to baseballpractice; poor Noah sitting on the bench in a sling. I feel terrible. I also feel tired and generally irritated today.
Is this going to be my life? Picking up, dropping off, cooking, folding clothes nonstop, while juggling clinic calls? It’s insanity.
Movement in my periphery catches my eye. Dani is walking down the ramp toward the baseball field bleachers, except that it doesn’t look like her at all. Her dark hair is gone. The only Dani I’ve known is gone. I can only recognize her from the way she walks. It’s a fast saunter, her hips swaying rhythmically, and she has a heel-to-toe motion that’s more dramatic than most people’s, like her feet are rolling a stamp over the outside of someone’s hand. Even in her most casual attire, she always has a splash of her eccentricity on display. Today she’s in jeans and a T-shirt, a rather soccer-mom-ish outfit for her, except that she has a bright orange belt on. It’s impossible for her to look plain. She’s carrying a travel coffee mug and a pile of sheets. They’re our bedsheets.
Oh god.
I get up and meet her at the bottom of the bleachers.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey.”
“Are those the bedsheets from the apartment?” It wasn’t meant to be a snide comment.
“Yeah, Alex, they are. I went to a laundromat and washed them for you this morning because they were stiff. I haven’t been to a laundromat in a hundred years; I forgot how it all worked, so that was interesting. It took way longer than I imagined, so I figured I would bring them here since you’re going to the apartment straightaway and I would’ve had to drive thirty minutes—”
“Fine, whatever,” I tell her. I get the logistics. She doesn’thave to write a goddamn novel about it. “You know they have a laundry room in the apartment complex?”
“All the machines were taken. Are you mad that I did you a favor?” she asks with a deeply furrowed brow.
“No, just had an irritating day. Sorry.”
As I take the sheets from her left arm, she simultaneously drops the mug of coffee in her right hand. It doesn’t have a lid. The mug hits the ground and coffee splashes up all over the sheets.
“Oh no, dammit!” she says. “I’m sorry. Oh shoot, now you’re going to have to wash them again.”
She bends to pick up the mug and drops it again. She’s frazzled and for a moment I actually feel sorry for her, watching her fumbling around. “You okay there, butterfingers?”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me today, just completely out of sorts,” she says.
“Don’t worry about it. I am too. I’m gonna take these to my car,” I say, holding up the sheets. “Your hair looks nice, Danielle,” I say, even though I’m still shocked. I would never tell her this, but she looks better with dark hair.
“Thanks. I don’t know if I’ll keep it. It’s kinda weird…like not me.”
“How was your alone time?” I ask.
“Fine.”
She isn’t going to tell me what she’s been doing over the last three days. I need to get used to that.
“And the apartment?”
“It’s great. It’s all good.”
We’re just looking at each other in awkward silence. I shrug and say, “Well—”
“I didn’t do much. Just shopped, got things for the apartmentto make it feel more like home. I slept a lot. I got some writing in and started organizing the records and going through them. I left them near the cabinet on the floor. Will you just leave them alone? I’m putting them in order.”
“Sure.” I know there is more to it, something she’s not tellingme.
