The 8 Mistakes of Amy Maxwell Read online

  I devised what I thought was an infallible plan. I would lure Allie out of her room and the house with the prospect of going to the mall. Allie wouldn’t be able to resist shopping. It was her favorite pastime, other than ignoring her family, texting and telling her mother off. Once in the car, I would just continue to drive. She would have nowhere to run and no choice but to talk to me about what was bothering her or what was going on in her life. At least, I thought it was an infallible plan. What I had not factored in was my daughter not wanting to spend any time with me at all, even at the mall. I should have realized that after she turned down chocolate.

  “I want to go to the mall with you!” sings out a voice behind me. Startled, I nearly jump three feet in the air. Lexie is standing behind me, toothbrush in hand, smiling boldly. “Puleeezeeee, Mommy?”

  Oh, just perfect. I’m not going to succeed in my task of breaking down Allie’s walls and I’m going have to spend the day listening to Lexie babble tirelessly about everyone and everything we pass in the mall? And I wasn’t even planning to really go to the mall to begin with!

  “I need new shoes. Mine are all scuffed up,” she tells me while pointing her toothbrush towards her feet. A blob of toothpaste falls on the floor.

  Well, if you would LISTEN to me and not wear them outside….

  “Sure, Lexie,” I sigh, rubbing my temples. I should take an Excedrin. Maybe I can ward off the inevitable migraine I was going to get from an afternoon with Lexie the Relentless. I halt my negative thinking to admonish myself.

  Stop being a bad mommy! She just wants to spend time with you. You should be grateful any of your children want to be with you. Hopefully, Lexie won’t end up shutting you out like Allie has.

  Lexie happily bounds off in the direction of her room to finish getting dressed and I head downstairs towards the man cave to inform Roger of my plans. On my way to my husband’s sanctuary, I pass Colt and Evan in the living room.

  Colt is carefully unpacking each of his new Lego sets while Evan is sitting off to the side, sucking his thumb, staring at his older brother with adoration. Neither child is speaking out loud but Colt seems to be mumbling to himself. For once, he isn’t ripping something out of his younger brother’s hands or screaming at him. And vice versa.

  Colt was the only boy for four years. During those years, his sisters completely doted on him. They dressed him up, put make-up on him and pushed him around in the stroller like he was their own personal baby doll. The kid didn’t have to set foot on the ground for years. I would find him in their beds and he would follow them around like a little puppy dog all day long. When Evan was born, Colt was unceremoniously dethroned. Lexie and Allie had a new toy to play with and Colt got the shaft. He’s been furious about it ever since and usually takes out his frustration on Evan. He’s never nice to his baby brother…ever.

  Knowing this fact makes me increasingly suspicious of the activity in front of me. It is like watching the calm before the storm. I slide over to the downstairs steps, keeping one eye on the boys and call out to Roger.

  “Honey! Lexie and I are going to the mall! I need you to come up here and watch Evan and Colt!”

  I get absolutely no response. Not an “okay, dear” or even a grunt of acknowledgment. But I guess it’s probably difficult to hear me over the TV blasting. I can actually hear the sound of the waves crashing against the side of the boat on the crabbing show that he’s watching. Why he enjoys half of what he watches and records, I’ll never understand. He isn’t a crabber or a fisherman, nor does he cook, have tattoos or drive a motorcycle. Yet, he is dutifully devoted to at least two hours of “reality” TV each and every day, sitting in front of the flat screen with drool pooling at his collar and chips littered across his beer belly. I guess the “reality” TV show called “Mom going nuts with four kids” that aired 24/7 in our house wasn’t interesting enough for him to partaking in viewing.

  “Roger?” I call out again as I watch Evan stealthily inch towards his brother.

  Damn. Should I intercept this now, knowing full well that Evan will have a meltdown if I pick him up? Or do I take my chances that he is not going to touch Colt or anything around him?

  There is still no response from the man cave. I drop down one step lower and call out to my husband once more, this time louder and more frantically. “Roger?” Still no sound.

  “Good thing the house isn’t on fire,” I grumble as I trudge down the stairs, taking comfort in the fact that Evan is now crawling over to his own toys, leaving Colt alone. I am going to have to physically drag my husband out of his chair in order to assure the boys will be looked after properly in my absence.

  Entering the darkened den, I can see Roger reclining in his leather armchair, soda in one hand, bag of chips in the other. He is staring wide eyed at the TV, its blue glow illuminating his pale complexion, making him look like some sort of post-apocalyptic zombie.

  “Roger. I need you to come upstairs and watch the boys. I am leaving in a minute,” I state pointedly while staring at my husband. He registers no comprehension of my declaration. I’m wondering if my daydream of his untimely demise may actually be coming true. My heart races with fear.

  “ROGER!” I jump in front of the TV, waving my hands.

  “Wah, wah?” Roger snaps out of his trance, attempting to peer around me.

  Oh good. He’s alive, I think scathingly.

  “Go upstairs and watch the boys. Lexie and I are going out,” I explain, not able to disguise the annoyance in my voice.

  “I can hear them from down here,” Roger informs me as he digs his hand deep into the chip bag.

  “Ha!” I snort. “I was calling your name for ten minutes and you didn’t hear me. They can get into all sorts of trouble alone. Please go upstairs.”

  As if to illustrate my point, we hear a high pitched screech followed by a thud. I briefly glance at Roger with an I told you so look and then without a second thought, I race up the steps two at a time. The screeching continues with sobbing mixed in as I reach the top of the stairs.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Colt standing over his little brother, who is lying next to the pile of Legos, holding his head while bawling.

  I dash over to my younger son and scoop him up, quickly checking for loose body parts and blood. Satisfied that there are none, I hold the sobbing baby close to my chest and glare at my older son.

  “What did you do?” I accuse.

  Colt throws his hands up in the air. “Why are you blaming me? I didn’t do anything,” he answers with the slight whining tone that he uses in all of his less than truthful statements.

  “Wego! Wego!” Evan tells me, pointing at his brother. He faces me and bangs himself in the head with his tiny fist. “Colt bop!”

  “He touched my Legos,” Colt grumbles as he possessively gathers his precious toys into a pile around his body.

  “I don’t care what he touched. I’ve told you time again and time again, keep your hands off of your brother. You call me and I’ll handle it. I’m the parent, not you.” I admonish him as I comfort the crying child. I peek over his head as his tears and boogers soak into my shirt, craning my neck towards the stairs, waiting for Roger to emerge from the den.

  Wasn’t he behind me when we heard the thud? Doesn’t he hear the ruckus up here? Doesn’t he care?

  Instead of Roger entering the room, a hopping Lexie fills my visual field. In addition to hot pink stretch pants and a lime green tank top, she has a silver sequined purse thrown over her shoulder, a blue beret on her head and purple cowgirl boots on her feet. I guess I should be happy she has on a denim skirt and opted to leave the silver sparkly tutu in the closet.

  “Hi, Mom!” she sings out in her customary cheerful oblivion. “I’m ready to go to the MALL!”

  “Not now, Lexie,” I respond in a distracted manner. “Your brothers are beating each other up.”

  “Where is Daddy? Why can’t Daddy take care of them?” she moans, flouncing onto the couch with
her typical melodramatic flair.

  “I’d like to know the same thing,” I mutter as I sway back and forth with Evan who is now hiccupping from crying so hard.

  “I’ll go get him!” Lexie volunteers suddenly, popping up from the couch. Before I can protest and tell her it is futile, she dashes down the stairs towards the man cave.

  “Daddy!” I can hear her screeching. Somehow, Roger does not seem to hear her because she continues to shriek, “Daddy! Mommy needs you…”

  I finally hear the low murmur of Roger’s voice, followed by the high pitched tone of Lexie’s. Moments later, as Evan is sighing contentedly in my arms, drifting off to toddler dreamland, Lexie emerges from the den with a cross Roger in tow. How the hell did she get him out of the chair?

  “Here’s Daddy!” Lexie announces proudly.

  “What do you need?” Roger asks with irritation. “They’re about to find gold in the Yukon.”

  “I told you. I need you to watch the boys.” Apparently, he never actually listens to the words that come out of my mouth.

  “Why can’t Lexie watch them?” he asks with a frown.

  “She’s coming with me,” I reply, transferring a sleeping Evan into his arms. “I also told you that.” Irritation continues to course through my veins.

  “Well, what about Allie?” Roger asks as he reluctantly takes his son. He shifts Evan’s weight and leans him across his shoulder. Evan doesn’t even stir, which does not surprise me. With three older siblings running around and having to take his naps on the go, Evan is so adept at tuning out noise and being jostled, he could probably sleep through an earthquake.

  “Oh please,” I answer in response to Roger’s question about Allie. “She’s pissed about something. She’s barricaded herself in her room. We’ll be lucky if we see her before Halloween.”

  “Ooo! Can I get a Halloween costume when we go to the mall?” Lexie inquires, bouncing from foot to foot with annoying speed and dexterity.

  “No,” I answer sharply. “It’s September for Christ’s sake. Halloween is nine weeks away.”

  “But all the good costumes will be goooone,” Lexie moans as she sticks out a pouty lip. I pity the poor fool who marries her. He better be rich.

  I, however, am immune to her charms. “Cut it out, Lexie, or we won’t go at all,” I tell her as I crouch on the floor, searching for my flip flop under the couch. When I mention not going at all, I catch a glimpse of Roger’s hopeful expression out of the corner of my eye.

  Damn it. He can’t even spend an hour or two with his children? Why is it always on me? Oh, wait. I know the excuse. He works hard all week and it’s Sunday and he deserves a break and blah, blah, fucking blah. Like I don’t deserve it? What does he think I do all week? Sit around eating ice cream and watching As the World Turns? Is that show even on any more?

  I find one of my flip flops underneath the couch and I reach over to extract the other one from the dog’s slobbery jaw. I lumber to a standing position, sliding my feet into the one dry flip flop and one moist flip flop.

  “You think you can handle this?” I sarcastically inquire of my husband.

  “Of course I can handle this,” he grumbles. Nodding towards Evan, he asks, “He’s going to sleep for three or four hours, right?”

  I snort through my nose. Evan could fall asleep anywhere, anytime, but for twenty minutes, tops. Then he would bounce awake, refueled with energy, raring to go. Roger would be lucky if Evan was still sleeping when I backed out of the driveway.

  “Yeah, sure,” I tell him. Maybe that’s why he thinks I have all this free time. He is under the impression that our youngest child sleeps for half the day. Hell, the kid barely sleeps through the night. In fact, none of the kids were ever really good sleepers. If I added up the amount of sleep I’ve gotten in the last fourteen years, it would probably equal a year’s worth of Roger’s sleep. “Come on, Lexie,” I say as I sling my purse over my arm.

  Sure enough, as Lexie and I sail out the front door, I can hear Evan stirring. “Hurry up,” I hiss to my youngest daughter, practically shoving her on to the porch.

  “I am hurrying!” Lexie whimpers. Lexie’s definition of “hurrying” and mine vary greatly. As she “races” to the car, she skips and brushes her hand across the tops of the tulips that line the front walk, staining her hands yellow from the pistil.

  I grumble to myself as I unlock the car door, knowing she is going to get the pollen all over the car, but there is no way I am going back in the house so that she can wash her hands. If Evan sees me leave, he most likely will have a meltdown.

  As I am buckling myself in, Roger pokes his head out the door with a screaming Evan in his arms. He is frantically trying to wave me down.

  “Mom, Daddy wants you,” Lexie remarks in a very matter of fact voice that I think she borrowed from my sister.

  “Uh huh,” I mumble as I back out of the driveway.

  I can hear Roger call out and I ignore him as I put the car into drive and speed away.

  “Daddy asked you a question, Mom,” Lexie informs me.

  “That’s nice,” I mutter. Daddy can kiss my ass. If he can’t figure out how to take care of a two year old by now, he might as well move out. There was no use for him then. I mean, was it so wrong to want to escape without a cluster of children in my wake? It’s bad enough I have Lexie with me. And Allie doesn’t need anyone to look after her other than to occasional check to see that she’s breathing and not sending naked pictures of herself to the entire high school student body. So really, all he needs to do this is keep an eye on two boys for an hour or two. I am sure he can handle it. After all, he keeps 1,400 hormonal teenagers in check on a daily basis.

  In protest to my reasoning, the Onstar car phone starts ringing. I glance down at the dashboard and let out an audible groan.

  “Mom! It’s Daddy calling!” Lexie advises me.

  “Thank you, Lexie,” I reply, checking my rearview mirror as I change lanes.

  “Well aren’t you going to get it?” she pesters me.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, what if it’s an emergency?” she asks, dragging out the last word.

  “I am certain that it’s not,” I assure her as I merge into the lane that takes me directly to the mall parking lot.

  “But, but, but what if Colt fell out of his tree house?”

  “We’ve been gone four and a half minutes, Lex. Colt couldn’t have even gotten outside in that amount of time.” I pull into the packed mall parking lot. Tomorrow is Labor Day so of course the stores are celebrating with sales galore. The mall stores have sales for everything from Mother’s Day to Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. That’s April 2nd, in case you were wondering and wanted to mark it on your calendar.

  Snaking around the parked cars, I search for a vacant spot. The phone stops ringing.

  “See?” I tell my daughter with an air of triumph. “It must not be important. He stopped calling.”

  As if to mock my assumption, my cell phone starts to jingle in my purse just as I find a parking spot. I blow out a sigh of annoyance.

  “I bet that’s Daddy!” Lexie calls out in her sing-song voice.

  “I bet it is, too!” I sing-song right along with her. I pull into the parking space, just as Lexie snatches my purse off of the front seat. “Hey! Don’t touch my purse!” I admonish, just a bit tad too late. Lexie already has my cell phone out.

  “Hi, Daddy!” She answers the phone with her usual cheerfulness. “Uh, huh. Yeah. We did. No.” There is a brief pause as I unbuckle and attempt to extract my cell from her hand. I fail miserably. She is too quick for me. She turns her head out of my reach as she tattles on me. “Mommy didn’t want to answer it. I told her it could be an emergency but she said…”

  “Give me the damn phone, Lexie,” I growl.

  “Here’s Mommy!” she chirps into the speaker as she hands me the phone, covered with a pink rhinestone case that I had chosen to impress Allie with my “coolness”. Allie had not been impressed
and I hated the rhinestone case. The rhinestones constantly fell off. I found one in my coffee yesterday.

  “Amy! I’ve been calling you and calling you!” Roger is saying as I press the phone to my ear. “What if it was an emergency?”

  “Is it an emergency?” I ask curtly, turning the car off.

  “Well, sort of…I don’t know where Evan’s binkies are. He won’t stop crying.”

  I lean my forehead on the wheel, fighting off the urge to bang my head against it. “Roger, Evan hasn’t been using a binky since the beginning of the summer,” I inform him.

  Maybe if you paid attention, you would have noticed that. Or if you listened to me when I was telling you I was getting practically no sleep because I was trying to wean him off of the binky.

  “Oh,” Roger replies, obviously stumped. “Then why is he crying?”

  “I have no idea,” I answer as I step out of the minivan. Lexie is bouncing in place next to my door, way too eager. “You’re his father. Figure it out,” I snap as I practically punch the end call button. Reaching for my daughter’s hand while she will still hold it, I grumble, “Come on, Lex. Let’s get this over with.”

  ~

  “Could you believe the size of that hot dog, Mom? And that guy ate it in two bites? Well, I guess I can believe that he would eat it in two bites because he was so fat. Do fat people eat more food or are they born fat? Can you get fat if you weren’t fat before? If Daddy eats too many potato chips will he be fat like the man at the food court?” Lexie pauses for a second and inhales. “Mom? Mom? Why aren’t you answering me, Mom? Can’t you hear me, Mom?”

  We are trudging through the parking lot after an intense three hours of shopping. Well, I am trudging. Lexie is skipping and twirling and prattling on and on like the Energizer Bunny. As I unlock the minivan (curse you, minivan), Lexie points towards the exit of Sears. “Hey, isn’t that the kid who was at our house yesterday?”

  I stare at the door of the department store where she is pointing. Exiting is a teenaged boy. From our vantage point, it does indeed look like Sean. I furrow my brow.