“In fairy tales, I think there’s one way …” EJ says, winking from below me. “But we can improvise.”
Kissing him. That’s the way. And I’m definitely not kissing him in front of my boys while he’s lying on the floor of Kroger. He knows it, too. But just the mention of kissing him has my skin tingling with the memory of his touch.
I squat down next to EJ and tell my boys, “Would you look at that? Mr. EJ’s not actually dead. He’s just mostly dead,” borrowing a line fromThe Princess Bride. And then I take my hands and compress EJ’s chest like I’m doing CPR.
He looks up at me and whispers, “No mouth to mouth?”
I give him a scolding glance and whisper back, “You’re trouble.”
He just smiles and stands up, looking at Jack and exclaiming, “I’m alive!”
Not for long, because Jack raises his fingers and shoots EJ with a dramatic bunch of gun sounds. EJ repeats his performance, landing on the floor for the second time.
Tammy Jo Rutgers turns the corner where we’re taking up the bulk of the aisle with our two carts and a man on the floor.
She stares down at EJ. “Is everything alright?”
“Oh!” EJ jumps up in one fluid movement. “Yeah. We’re just playing.”
Tammy Jo’s brow furrows. “Playing?”
“The boys and I …” EJ’s face turns a little red.
“We were hunting him!” Levi explains.
“Hunting?” Tammy Jo asks.
“Yeah,” Jack says. “Like bread. But we shot him with our finger guns. And he falled down.”
“Oh. I see,” Tammy Jo looks from EJ, to me, to the boys. “Well, have fun.”
“We do!” Levi says.
“Bye!” Jack shouts as she pushes her cart further down the aisle.
EJ chuckles. “I wonder how this story will be told through the grapevine.”
I can only imagine.
“We’d better get our milk,” I tell EJ.
He brushes his hands down the back of his pants. “Did you already eat?”
“No!” Levi says at the top of his lungs, or at least it feels that way to me after Tammy Jo passed by. “We didn’t eat our dinner at all. Not even a snack.”
Jack adds, “We’re really hungry. We need food.”
“I want Pop Tarts!” Levi shouts.
I feel my grip on their composure unraveling. Most creative mom-tactics work with my boys, but not for longer than five or ten minutes. Fifteen if I’m lucky. Hunting is over now that they got to shoot EJ to the ground.
“Boys, may I ask your mom a question?” EJ asks.
“Sure,” Levi says.
Jack nods, looking to Levi for confirmation.
“Sit still,” I tell the twins. “Guard that bread, okay?”
