Best Day Ever. Kaira Rouda Sturdivant
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Unlike me, in the last six months or so, Mia has really thinned out. She’s shed the baby fat even though I swear she eats more, and more often, than I do. And though she looks fit, she’s also a bit worried about the weight loss. I tell her that’s crazy, most middle-aged women would die to have their weight melting away despite eating anything they like. And she looks good. She took up jogging a year or so ago, but cut back on that. Just doesn’t have the stamina these days. Mostly, she uses the free weights in our basement. Sometimes she’ll still walk around our block, if she has the energy.
Maybe she’s so thin because she stopped eating meat—excuse me, “animal protein.” That could be, but I attribute it more to stress; you know how parenting can take a toll on your intestines sometimes. Worry ties your system up in knots, or so I hear, not being prone to worry myself. They checked for ulcers, but she didn’t have any. Just a mystery, I guess.
She even went to this one doctor who had her hold different vitamins and minerals in her hand, and then pushed on her arm. I mean really? What does that do? Spend your money is what. Mia came home with hundreds of dollars’ worth of herbal treatments. None of it has helped, of course. She’s big on drinking water now, too. Staying hydrated. She tries to drink only from glass bottles. Good luck with that here, honey.
Mia has pulled her hair into a ponytail, I notice. I can see her standing at the counter, placing her order. The other thing I see is the other customers, the men, checking her out. Yes, guys, she still has it, I confirm with a nod to myself while watching them all watch her. She is walking toward the car now, a plastic water bottle in each hand and a big tooth-whitened smile eclipsing her face. She was voted best smile in high school, and it’s still there, that smile. Although it’s bigger now, I suppose. Our gums recede with age, making all of us long of tooth, and Mia especially. But don’t get me wrong, only I would notice such a thing. Her bright blue cotton sweater, blue jeans, and white tennis shoes make her stand apart from the rest of the people going in and out of the McDonald’s parking lot. Everyone else seems more muted, a black, gray and navy composite of people dressed for business, farming or trucking. It’s an eclectic yet monochromatic bunch this morning, except for my wife and her bright blue.
Mia pulls open the car door and slips inside. “Good choice. Cleanish bathroom. Short line. Here’s your water,” she says as she hands me the cold bottle. The plastic is cheap and crackles in my hands. It’s the type of water bottle that will spill out half its contents when I open it, I know it is. The bottle will have a label explaining why this cheap, shitty plastic is better for the environment than any other, more sturdy plastic. I know it’s just cheaper. I also know I should have gotten out of the car to open the bottle. I should have gotten out, just to stretch. Perhaps I should have gotten out of the car and opened the door for my wife. I’ll do that when we stop for gas in a little while. We have all day and she could use a reminder that chivalry is alive and well thanks to Paul Strom.
“So you think Taylor Swift is cute, huh?” Mia asks as I pull out of the McDonald’s parking lot.
“Who?” I ask. I know who the pop starlet is, everyone does. I even like her song, “The Story of Us.” But why would my wife ask such a random question?
“I saw you checking out the cover.” Mia holds up the gossip magazine while tilting her head. Her eyes are shining as if she has caught me drinking milk out of the jug. I love drinking milk out of the jug, but alas, if my wife catches me, it’s that same disappointed, shiny-eyed look I receive. Usually, she adds a hand on the hip, but that’s hard to execute in the front seat of a Ford Flex.
“Why would I check out some magazine when I could be checking out my beautiful wife?” I protest, pushing the accelerator hard to merge back onto the highway. I’m glad they finally finished the fifty-million-dollar project to widen this freeway to three lanes on either side. I slide back into the flow of traffic without a problem. They have spent more than a billion dollars on this road since it opened in the 1960s. What I would do for a billion dollars. Taylor Swift has a billion dollars, I’m sure. “She’s a very talented young woman, but I had no idea that was her on the cover. They all look the same with the makeup and airbrushing and all.”
“You’ve got a point there,” she says. She has opened the magazine on her lap, to a different story now I see. She twists open her bottle of water and, as I could have predicted, spills a fourth of it on the magazine. “Darn it.”
How adorable. Mia’s ban on swearing in front of the boys has resulted in this childlike response from my wife, even though the kids aren’t around. I should tell her to express herself freely in my company.
Before I can think to stop her, she has popped open the glove compartment and she’s rummaging around in it. “I don’t have any napkins in there,” I say quickly. I feel my palms begin to perspire. I check myself in the rearview mirror and notice my forehead is shiny, suddenly damp. It’s so hard to keep secrets these days. People can find out anything, ruin all kinds of plans. Sometimes, all it takes is just opening the wrong door. “Just close that back up. Here...” I know my voice sounds terse but I can’t help it. I reach into the back seat to grab my gray cotton sweater, and toss it into her lap. “Use this.” My voice has returned to its normal tone. That pleases me.
“You’re acting weird,” she says, instead of thanks. I’m going to let it go, though. She doesn’t know I have a surprise hidden in there, part of our special day. I can’t tell her that so I say nothing as she mops up the magazine with my sweater. She could have simply ripped out those two pages. Maybe there is someone important in there. All I see is another guy with a two-day beard, sparkling brown eyes and a thick head of hair. Another Buck look-alike. There really aren’t any men in her magazine that look like me, not now anyway. Actually, that’s not quite true. I could give George Clooney a run for his money, and I’m taller, too. When I was younger, watch out world. I would have been on the cover, you know, Sexiest Man Alive, if I had wanted to be. But I hate all that celebrity garbage, as I told you.
“I’m going to call Claudia. Can I use your phone so it’s on Bluetooth? I want her to have the boys call us after school, just to check in,” Mia says. We have been gone for about an hour so far. This is ridiculous.
“We haven’t been driving for that long. The boys are at school, and I guarantee you they’re having too much fun with their teachers and their little friends to spare us a thought. We can call them this afternoon. We don’t need to talk to Claudia.” Sometimes my wife acts like the kids are still babies in playpens. That bugs me; them, too. They’re big guys, both in elementary school. They’ll be men before we know it. My parents started treating me and my brother, Tom, like grown-ups as soon as we started school. Dad wanted us to toughen up, fend for ourselves, especially me since I was older. Ah, the good old days. Speaking of Tom, I wonder if I should tell Mia that I think Claudia is on drugs, but decide not to rev her up further. “You need to relax, let go a little.” I pat her thigh for reassurance.
I feel her eyes on me. “I know. But the thing is, they’re my life. You encouraged me, begged me, not to work outside the home, so I quit my job at the ad agency, the job I loved, and built my whole world around the kids. They just don’t need me so much now that they’re in school most of the day.” Her voice is quiet, her eyes shiny but this time it’s because they are filling with tears.
“You raised them well. Now it’s time for them to learn independence so they can tackle the world. Boys pulling away from their mommy is natural. It’s how they become young men,” I say. “You still baby them too much. But that’s part of what makes you a great mom, the kind of mom I knew you would be when we first discussed your staying home. Don’t cry, honey.” Honey, such an interesting word to apply to a person. I guess she is dripping, sappy, syrupy, her tears like actual honey drizzling from a spoon. “This is our weekend. The boys are fine.” With their druggie babysitter, I don’t add.
I flash Mia my biggest rectangle grin, adding my signature wink, the account-winning combination. It’s the smile that launched a thousand new accounts for the advertising agency—until it didn’t. I swallow, holding the smile to reassure Mia that this is a joyful day filled with fun. “This isn’t a day for tears,” I tell