Jump and Yell

by Jeanne-Marie Fleming

I counted cash for the sitter. She folded the dollars, yelled ‘bye’ to the kid upstairs and ‘bye’ to the kid curled inside the sofa. No answer from either, she raised her eyebrows to the gauzy scarf tied across her forehead. “Whelp,” she said. “You’re it.”

            In the living room, where Victor, age eight, was hiding, I bounced my butt gently on the cushion. I dropped my hand down for Elemental, our cat, to come lick me. She was coming across the rug but swerved to swat a paw at a ladybug. Victor whimpered, and I tugged on his arm. A hug is all I wanted, but he refused. He was upset at something or someone—Blake? Maybe me for being gone all afternoon. I would’ve been nice if the sitter had clued me in. Oh, Whelp.

            I had been at Omega, utilizing a gift from my friend. At her suggestion, I scheduled an appointment with an Intuit who read auras in photographs.  The Intuit, a magenta-haired woman in a long white dress, twisted a turquoise ring as she studied my photo. Her intel said I was in dire need of play.

            With eggplant and garlic on my mind, something healthy, I reached for olive oil. Victor slinked into the kitchen—I knew he would, eventually. He pulled two hard-covered biographies of the thirty-seventh president out of his backpack. “These are due tomorrow.”

            “Tricky Dick,” I said, pouring nibbles for Elemental.

            “Mom!”

            “His nickname!”

            He pressed his hands—their backs blue from faded tattoos—against the glass slider and stared past the battered rock wall that edged the yard. Two ravens rested on the deck railing. The sun was fading; the grass needed a mow.

            The intuit had been emphatic about me needing play. “Raise your arms over your head, jump, and yell weee.” She made me say weee. We said it together. I felt embarrassed and also, duh, I lacked joy. I drove home, sorry I hadn’t tried a hot stone massage instead.

            I told Victor to stop touching the glass. He huffed a long breath, and in the condensation, he bent a sad mouth below two dots.

            Then I saw it, lying in wait, on the table.

            A stapled packet.

            Oh God.

            Stiff pause. A prisoner, now, of the packet. There would be no weee until Richard Nixon was out of the house.

            Blake, a year older and a stone heavier than Victor, clomped down the stairs, seized his brother’s scooter, and scooted into the kitchen. “Starving,” he said.

            No homework, no dinner; what did the hippy chic actually do? Outside, the ravens lifted their dusky wings and took off; my eyes followed, above the tree line and finally out of sight.

            Blake stopped before the refrigerator. Victor charged at him. “Off it, fatty.”

            I set water on the stove to make macaroni for the boys and reached for my eggplant, but its flesh was spongy. I jostled Victor to the table. “You—son, need to start on your packet.”

            An empty milk container stood alongside a pair of drained chocolate milk glasses. This kid—this project sprung on a Sunday night, set me on edge. I had an email from work that needed a response, and I forgot to send a post to the local paper about the tag sale. My fantasy of having us all in bed early for a decent start to the week was vanishing. Victor read aloud: Nixon grew up poor; his brother died at age seven. My head fogged over; the kitchen blurred to watercolors.

            As I slipped out of consciousness, I wondered about a boy, so young, dying.

            Steam was collecting in translucent bubbles on the stainless hood when I opened my eyes. “Jesus,” I whispered, and got up after a few seconds. I slapped cool water on my cheeks and watched Victor chew his eraser.

            Sitting beside him, I held my hand on his back. “Did you see me on the floor?” He shook his head. I rubbed my temples. “Right there,” I said, pointing to where I had gone splat, “for God’s sake.”

            He held the pencil between his lip and his nose, unfazed. “Nope.”

            I blinked hard. What the fuck had just happened? I could’ve been dead. What would these kids even do?

* * *

            I wanted to call my husband, tell someone about my passing out, elicit some empathy, and also have him on alert. Was it an emergency? I guess not. e asked me. Blake interrupted me feeling sorry for myself by complaining that the macaroni and cheese tasted sour. I didn’t want to tell him I used  yogurt not milk, but I also didn’t want to lie.

            “Gross, Mom,” Blake said, narrowing his eyes and staring me down. That was his exceptional talent; he could outstare all of us. The little one gagged, and I pounded my fist. He shoved his bowl away and left.

            I kept my eyes locked with Blake’s and wolfed down Victor’s pasta. When Blake smacked his palm on the table, I flinched. And it scared me, seeing myself.  

            “You blinked.”

            “You win,” I said woefully. “Tell your brother to come back and load the dishwasher.”

            At midnight, laptop illuminating the room, I sifted through profiles featuring suburban fathers in golf shirts, some with noticeable omissions in their images, and non-dads posing with flashy cars or tongue-wagging companions.

            Who could save me from the kitchen floor? Which of these handsomes might possess the saintly patience for third-grade homework?

* * *

             The fingers of an anxious child who smelled of shampoo and stale bread tapped my neck. A high-pitched voice said, “Out of paper.” I rolled sideways, my breath coming quickly. “I have to print Nixon.”

            Like a boom, Victor’s head lowered onto my chest. I needed a few minutes. God, please, a pause before this petition.

            I tussled his hair, wondering how he got himself up after such a short night. “Go have some cereal, honeybun.”  

            He said there was nothing good left. “So, toast then,” I said.

            Behind the bathroom door, I pulled my hair back in the mirror and forced a grin. My face was ill-at-ease, hollow. I could see it, the deprivation the intuit had sensed. Had I fooled myself into believing my bowl of cherries runneth over, that the wine in the goblet was mine to sip? I swished water over my teeth and swallowed a Zoloft. For God’s sake, she likened my vibe to mashed potatoes. I couldn’t think of a more unkind metaphor for a woman trying to pick herself up after her husband found someone else.

            I ripped open a white package.

            Blake dropped a cardboard box of all the things he no longer wanted on the sofa. “For next weekend,” he said.

            The realtor had given her spiel on clutter, so in addition to paint touch-ups, I’d removed most of the photos, pulled accessories, and emptied closets. We borrowed folding tables and set them up in the driveway. The boys, excited to make money, zipped around, affixing white stickers to their no-longer-loved toys.

            When Adrian and I closed on the house, my mother declared we’d never need to move again. A perfect home. We drank warm prosecco on the front lawn. My father, the passionate Gemini, pulled us into a huddle and said God is good. Blake chased fireflies while Victor, on thick, wobbly legs, chased him. The boys woke the next morning covered in mosquito bites. Victor scratched until his welts bled.

            “Miss. Miss. Hello.” A firm hand employed my shoulder.

            My neck was tight as I lifted my head and blinked.

            “You alright? It’s hot. Maybe you should get out of the sun.”

            I was out again, baffled, wet with sweat, and now looking for the children. My eyes darted with concern. The man hovered.

            “I’m your neighbor, Pete Richards,” he said and held out his hand. Struggling to orientate, blinking, I reached back. I had been waiting for more customers; the boys were tossing the lacrosse ball on the lawn. Now they were gone.

            “We’re new.”

            He was the doctor? He bought the cape? He was.

            “I’m moving,” I said tersely, immediately regretting my tone.

            “I was looking at the tricycle.” He pointed toward the mailbox by the road.

            “A Radio Flyer.” I lifted myself from the sunken well of the Adirondack chair and ambled up the driveway, my head spacey. Holding the red handlebars, I skipped the tricycle to him. Was I coming undone? In a flash of remembrance, I saw myself bent over this bike, holding Victor’s small shoulders.

            Dr. Richards lingered, turning over a ceramic lamp—it had the potter’s initials. I longed to return to the Pennsylvania town, the weekend in the woods when Adrian and I were new lovers, naked till noon, perusing shops. Dr. Richards pushed a Hot Wheels car down an orange racetrack and said his horoscope said he’d be presented with a bargain too good to refuse. I caught myself wanting to blurt out my sign and tell him about junior high when I wrote my own special horoscopes for friends in colorful markers.

            With grace, he hoisted the trike on his hip, and I blushed as I took his money. Then I hid the green ceramic lamp in the storage box under the table. Adrian and I had started out so gently with each other, wanting to make a beautiful home, collecting watercolor prints, and decorating room by room. I felt tired, almost forty, and I wasn’t up for prettifying another place.

            The wooziness passed. The boys were back on the lawn playing. I raised my arms and threw myself into a handstand against the garage wall. A doctor who reads astrology? Head close to the ground, I thought about seeing the world through the eyes of my youngest child.

            Victor had been a difficult toddler. His refusal to peddle that bike for himself, his clawing dependence, triggered me. I remembered my back aching from being stooped, and I couldn’t listen to his caterwauls anymore. I said I was leaving him. Blake, on training wheels ahead of us, about to propel past the invisible net, where I could no longer keep him safe, looked back and fear hurried across his face like an ice fissure ripping over a pond.

            My shoulders ached from my weight. The weary bones of love.

* * *

            The next morning, I popped an apple bread in the oven, and was handstanding again against the cabinets when Blake came into the kitchen rubbing his eyes.

            “Mom, what the heck?”

             “No sale today.” I let my legs down and sat cross-legged. “Canceling.” I couldn’t do another full day and return to the office tomorrow. When Victor dawdled in, I asked the two of them how we should spend the loot.

            “We’re saving it, Mom,” Victor said.

            “Come here.” I pulled him into my lap, kissed the back of his head. “What if I want to buy a huge marshmallow sundae?”

            Blake said he didn’t believe me.

            “You’re on a diet, Mom,” Victor said.

            He was watching me, my depreciating habits, listening; they both were.

* * *

            We sat in a sticky red booth, and I fished for a pencil in my bag. I showed the boys a picture on my phone of them hanging by their knees from a metal bar. They glanced at it for a second, and I thought about losing our backyard. “You guys are my world,” I said, and promised it was going to be good—the move. Blake talked about wanting to work here and quitting swim team when he turned sixteen. He was such a skilled swimmer; he could get a scholarship; he had to stick with it. I felt a panic in my chest, but stayed quiet and ate every bit of my triple-scoop sundae. 

            Victor wriggled in his seat as we drew Xs and Os on a napkin. “Do you believe in ESP?” Before giving me a second, he asked, “Am I symmetrical?” I traced my finger down the middle of his forehead, over his perfect nose and lips, to the bottom of his chin. He grinned, jumped topics again, and said Blake never even saw a copperhead.

            “I want to lick the fudge,” I said. Victor looked at me quizzically; Blake shot his eyes to the line of kids and parents and scowled.

            Blake took my bowl. “You’re done, Mom,” he said. I loved that—flipping the tides of responsibility.

            I wrinkled my face like I was about to cry.

* * *

            Xbox is a barren wasteland for boys. I was glad, though, for several hours under a fuzzy blanket with a book. The sun was plunging into a purple sky, and the garage sale mishmash had to be dealt with. I lobbed several requests for assistance into the TV room. The kids lobbed back, “In a minute.” I called them lazy asses. I was as mean as my mother, red-faced, holding a wooden spoon. How easy it was to say a terrible thing.

            In the driveway, Blake saw Victor pocket one of his Gameboy cartridges and punched him between his shoulder blades. “Give it,” he said. There are moments I look away.

* * *

            Victor leaned against me as I unstuck the grilled cheese and tomato sandwich from the pan. “Dad’s are better,” he said, “with bacon.”

            The crusts were left behind along with the carrots and celery sticks after dinner. Did their father make them eat vegetables? Or do chores? Eyes rolled as I summoned them to clean-up duty. They were accustomed to the drill, but still, they bucked. When Adrian and I were together, I exhausted myself trying to be the better person, more accountable, always-on role model parent. He never said no to the kids; he was never my backup. I pressed my eyes closed and went through the pointless rumination again of trying to think of when we last had fun together. Adrian saw me as an ogre. He had stopped loving me long before I even noticed.

            Bluebirds were falling from the sky, only they weren’t birds at all; they were children, and I had to run around, my neck strained, looking at blinding clouds. If I didn’t catch my boys, they would land and die. The backs of my knees were wet when I woke.

* * *

            The slip in my fortune cookie said Life moves fast. Hold your head straight. It reminded me: I couldn’t just sail by the glaring billboard of a woman splayed out needing help and pretend I hadn’t seen it. I made an appointment.

* * *

            Crisp paper crinkled below my thighs. My skin prickled at the touch of the stethoscope. There was a rundown of inquiries—nutrition, alcohol, sleep, work, exercise, and the kids. He said my heart was strong and asked about salt intake. It didn’t help to worry; the doctor, certainly, wasn’t too alarmed. I did though—I worried for my children. Two days later, I would be told my sodium levels were off. Not a tumor or brain aneurysm.

            When the doctor asked, “What do you do for you?” I thought of the intuit and was tempted to raise my hands over my head and trill weee in a mocking tone. I shrugged. Did I want to have an MRI? No. He said, “Get dressed.”

* * *

            On Saturday, the boys were with Adrian; I drove to Long Island, to Jones Beach, playing Fleetwood Mac on repeat. It was a blustery day; the wide beach was deserted. Shoes in my hand, I walked along the tide’s edge for several hours. A friend’s brother, captain of debate, shot himself here in this beach parking lot a few years ago. In the sea of love where everyone would love to drown.

            I found a bathroom, then fell asleep in my car with the afternoon sun beating on the windshield. I took the drive home in silence, recollecting afternoons of grape lemonade, the tingling of lucent seashells in my hands, jumping waves, wiping salt water from my eyes, and scanning beach blankets for our mother’s yellow bandanna to make sure she had an eye on us.

            Later that night, I stepped out of the shower and into a light cotton dress. My skin glowed bronze, red. I dried my hair, applied lipstick, and snapped a dozen selfies. It was awful being forty-four. My face had a permanent tuckered-out look; I had a paunch. Still, I added the new shots to my profiles.

* * *

            The accountant rubbed his thumb against my palm as we shared a palette of small plates in an outdoor courtyard, and later schooled me on the virtues of a dual-controlled cloud mattress. I had forgotten what it was like to house my body as a sexual being, and when he said everyone had a different comfort zone, probably referring to the bed, I thought he was speaking some zen magic. My body buzzed with longing to see him again. The women in my divorce club told me to wait at least three days before texting. I followed their counsel, and still, I got ghosted.

            My ego was bruised to think I had allowed myself to mean something to him. I swallowed my rejection and got back online. I had some riotous, frank conversations across the sites, dinner with an in-between-jobs man who owed his undeserving ex from New Jersey a lot of money, drinks with a depressed fireman who had one kidney, coffee with a man who attended church with my revivalist sister-in-law, and then dinged a man who looked an awful lot like Dr. Richards.

* * *

            Dr. Richard’s doppelganger, reeling from a recent separation as well, was a noteworthy date. He was revved about a recent course he took in something called “Imago dialogue.” The gist of which, careful listening to your partner’s words and evidencing it by summarizing their intentions, seemed simple. He was also a master gardener, and on our second date, he unloaded a few cubic yards of mulch in my front yard, and side by side, we dug holes and planted several sapphire hydrangea bushes interspersed with ornamental grasses. Afterward, I put a blanket on the lawn. We admired our work and talked for hours. When I showed him a picture of the run-down complex where the kids and I would be moving, he chirped out some promising ideas for flower beds alongside the cement stoop.

* * *

            A family of six from the Bronx made an offer. Our realtor said the curb appeal clinched the sale. I was relieved, but also glum, thinking of our time here coming to an end.

            I brought home three half-gallons of ice cream: cookie dough, mint- chocolate, peanut butter, whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and M&M’s to celebrate. “We did it. We sold the house,” I told the boys. We’d make the move. We’d manage. “Have at it. As much as you want. Just clean up. Okay, guys? Deal?”

            They came to me in the living room, wearing moon stickers on their foreheads. Victor swiped my book. “I’m saving your page,” he assured. They pulled me off the chair into the kitchen for a surprise.

            The ice cream tubs and toppings were gone. “What’s my surprise?” I asked. A guilty grin spread over Victor’s face. Blake was about to erupt.

            Victor waved an arm over sticky bowls and spoons–remnants of their feast. “You get to, ahh, ahh,” he guffawed, “lick the bowls.”

            They had tricked me into thinking…. For a moment—I honestly expected something special, had my hopes up—but these two were busters. I raised my fist and feigned indignation to play along. In truth, I was crestfallen.

            Victor fell to the floor laughing. “You said you always wanted to lick the bowl.”

            Nice. I swallowed hard, then pinched my lips, and got down to tickle my youngest son. Elemental, on her soft paws, crept over to us. She mewed and pressed her ears on my calf.

            Blake crossed the kitchen with a hand on his hip. He opened the microwave. “Ta-daa!” He beamed. And under a neon light sat a lopsided, candy-covered sundae with a single yellow candle hailing sideways from a scoop of pink ice cream. It was a sight—a tattered ship struggling to stay afloat, with an unlit, unbirthday candle, a tipping flag of surrender.

            I slid my rump across the floor and sat on Victor’s scooter. Knees by my chest. Not surrendering. I got the feet moving—I may be skewed like that yellow sail, there may be storms and harrowing days coming our way, but I would never give up, never submit; I’d motor on and carry us to the next harbor. My arms flew up in the air, and I said it like a squealing pig, like a believer.

            “Weee,” I shrilled, spinning in circles, and then scooting my feet intrepidly toward my ice cream sundae, toward my sons, holding the long e until I was out of breath.

BIO

Jeanne-Marie Fleming sought guidance from an intuit IRL when she was a single mother of three, and “Jump and Yell” is derived from the advice she actually received. She is the author of Write to Reach: Writing as Transformation. Her prose is published or forthcoming at Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Flash Fiction Magazine, trampset, JMWW, The Los Angeles Review, BULL, Black Fork Review, MER Literary, Pangyrus, The Chronogram, and elsewhere. She is working on a collection of stories and poems about the heartache of a mother. Additionally, she hosts an online accountability group and serves as a writing mentor for incarcerated citizens via Transforming Lives NY.

Connect on Insta or Twitter @jmlgsf. You can find more of her work at www.jeannemariefleming.com