Relativity
By seanmcf
- 201 reads
Relativity
Peter stared down at the expensive mahogany in front of him and
subconsciously examined the intricate patterns of the wood as the
speaker at the head of the table droned on in a monotone voice.
It had been a long stressful morning of answering phone calls from
department heads and sending faxes to the company's customers. Then,
thanks to his useless intern making a botch of his market summary, he
had missed lunch rewriting it.
Now it was 5pm and every minute seemed like an hour. There were nine
other managers seated around the table and they all looked equally
bored and tired.
The meeting was eventually called to an end at 6pm by the Vice
President with the joyful news that it would continue after lunch
tomorrow. There was little conversation as everybody filed out of the
room and Peter wasted no time in heading straight for his car in the
parking lot. He pulled out onto O'Connell Street and groaned at the
sight of the rush hour traffic. An hour later he finally rolled up the
driveway to his house in Blackrock. He now had a full blown headache
from too much stress and a lack of food.
Opening the front door, he was thankful that there was little noise.
Poking his nose around the corner of the living room wall he noticed
that his two sons were lying on the floor watching the Scooby Doo movie
for about the tenth time. No wonder it was so quiet.
David was only a year old and was quite cute with his tubby face and
short black hair. He usually wasn't too much trouble. Finton on the
other hand was a little terror. He was four and needed constant
watching. His fiery temperament was matched only by his curly, bright
red hair, which was always sticking up in a big untidy mess.
Peter tiptoed past them and walked into the kitchen where his wife,
Bernadine, was busily preparing a salad for the dinner. Walking up
behind her he gave her a kiss on the cheek and put his arms around her
ample waist. She had been fit and healthy once but the years had taken
their toll.
"Hi dear," she said with a smile. "How was work?"
"Tiring," he replied.
"Well dinner is almost ready. Why don't you go have a glass of wine
and help Rosanna with her homework?"
"Okey dokey." He wandered into the dining room to see his six year old
daughter sitting at the table, concentrating furiously.
"Hi sweety. What are you doing?"
She looked up with her cute, blue eyes and gave him a big smile. "I'm
drawing a picture of Finton. What did you do at school today?"
He smiled. "Oh not much." For some reason she couldn't quite grasp the
fact that he went to work and didn't go to school. He leaned over to
grab the bottle of wine and glanced at her picture. The only thing he
could discern was a big glob of orange colour which was presumably
supposed to be his son's hair.
"That looks lovely," he said patting her on the head with his
hand.
"Stop it daddy," she said pushing his arm away, "You'll ruin my
hairdo." She proceeded to fix her brown, shoulder length hair as though
she were a model.
Peter sighed in exasperation and took a sip of his wine. Ah that felt
good. Then he remembered that today was supposed to be gym day. To hell
with it he thought. He was too tired.
Bernadine walked in a few minutes later with the dinner and he saw
that it was roast chicken, potatoes and avocado salad. It smelt
delicious and the thoughts of his rotten day started to fade, replaced
with the sweet taste of home made gravy.
They were quietly enjoying their meal together; just the two of them,
since the kids had already eaten when there came a loud roaring sound
from the living room.
Oh Jesus, Peter thought.
"What's going on in there?" Bernadine shouted.
"David's got a dirty nappy," Finton yelled back.
Peter rubbed his temple and took another sip of wine.
"Oh for god sake, I just changed him."
Then the phone rang, adding another decibel to the screaming coming
from the other room.
"Can you change him?" Bernadine asked.
Peter clucked his tongue in disgust. "I've been slaving away at work
all day, I'm tired and I want to finish my dinner in peace. Can't you
do it?"
She gave him a dirty look but didn't argue and grabbed the phone off
the wall on the way out the door.
A little while later, as he was relaxing in the living room and
watching the end of the Scooby Doo movie with the kids, he heard a loud
crash. Uh oh, he thought. Walking into the kitchen with his empty wine
glass, he saw his wife down on the floor picking up bits of a china
Vase.
"What happened?"
"I accidentally knocked the vase off the window ledge."
"That was pretty careless."
"Well maybe if you weren't sitting on your ass watching bloody kids
cartoons instead of helping me, it wouldn't have happened," she
snapped.
"Oh come on, I've had a long day at work. Can't I come home and just
sit down for a few minutes?"
"Well I've just spent the last hour slaving over your dinner and the
least you could do is help tidy up."
"I've been working hard all day for crying out loud. What have you
been doing?"
"Oh never mind," she said bitterly. "Go and watch your stupid cartoons
and don't annoy me."
He knew his wife well enough to know that if he walked out she would
be pissed at him for the rest of the evening so he went into the dining
room and started bringing in the rest of the dirty dishes.
Bernadine loaded the dish washer in a stony silence. She had worked
full time as an editor at the local newspaper until they had decided to
have a family and then she had given it up to stay at home and look
after the children. That had been a fast paced job and it paled in
comparison to babysitting three kids. Peter couldn't possibly
understand how hard it was just being a full time mother and she wasn't
about to try and argue it out with him.
Peter said nothing either and wondered whether work or home was more
stressful.
The next morning Peter got up as usual at 6.30am and had a shower
before joining his wife in the dining room for breakfast. She had laid
the table and was sitting in her dressing gown with a cup of tea but
still looked half asleep.
"Have fun at work honey," she said yawning as he stepped out the front
door into the cool morning air.
"Yeah, right," he replied sarcastically.
As he drove through town he tried to figure out how many years had
passed since she had stopped kissing him goodbye in the mornings.
Today wasn't too bad except for his damned intern. It seemed the only
thing he could do right was make his coffee. What the hell were
Universities teaching their students these days?
Fortunately the afternoon meeting ended early at 4.30pm, so instead of
going back to work he decided to head home early for a change and beat
the rush hour traffic. Maybe he would treat the missus to a nice dinner
out.
Rolling into his driveway at around 5pm he ran through the light rain
and took off his mucky shoes at the door. Walking into the foyer he
noticed a line of muddy little footprints leading out of the kitchen
into the living room and a whole load of toys lying on the floor
everywhere.
He cursed under his breath at the sight of the mess and walked into the
living room only to stand in something on the carpet. Pulling off his
sock, he looked at the brown mess all over it in disgust. Luckily after
taking a tentative sniff he realised it wasn't what he thought it was
but that it was actually chocolate spread. However, this did nothing to
diminish his anger when he saw that there was now thick chocolate
squished into the threads of the carpet and it would no doubt leave a
stain.
Looking around to find the culprit he instead saw a pile of books had
been pulled off the shelving unit and were all over the floor. He
noticed too that the TV was on and there was a video tape stuck upside
down and sideways into the VCR. The stereo unit was also on and there
was a loud sound of static coming out of it.
Turning everything off, he stormed angrily into the kitchen only to
stop at the doorway in shock as he took in the mess in front of him
unable to believe his eyes. A lamp in the corner had been knocked over
and the tap was running water at full blast. The fridge door was lying
wide open and there was a puddle of spilt milk all over the floor in
front of it. The bin had been knocked over and there were muddy little
footprints everywhere. Not to mention chocolate handprints all over the
cupboard doors which were all hanging open like the place had been
ransacked.
A loud banging noise brought him back to his senses and walking in to
investigate further he saw David sitting on the floor on the right. He
had a pair of somebody's underwear wrapped around his head and his face
was covered in chocolate spread. Laid out in front of him was a series
of upside down bowls and frying pans. In each hand he had a wooden
spoon and was gleefully whacking the bowls and pans like they were
drums. When he saw his daddy staring down at him in amazement he let
out a loud screech of joy. Before Peter could say anything he heard
screaming coming from outside and so leaving David for the minute he
walked through the living room to the back door to see what all the
ruckus was about.
Rosanna was standing in the garden with two big handfuls of mud and she
was rubbing it enthusiastically into Finton's hair.
"What are you doing?" Peter thundered.
"Hi daddy," Finton said with a big grin. His teeth were the only things
that were still white. He was completely covered in mud from head to
toe. "Camouflage," he said excitedly.
Peter looked from him to his daughter and saw that she was only wearing
a pair of shorts and had mud all over her arms and legs. The rest of
her body, including her face, were all tattooed with his wife's make
up. Lipstick mostly from the looks of things.
"I'm an Indian," she said with a smile.
"Where's your mother?" Peter asked in consternation.
They both shrugged. Then Rosanna started screaming and hitting her
mouth with her hand, " Awww Awww Awww Awww."
Finton put on a terrified look and yelled at the top of his voice, "The
Injuns are coming." Then he tore off around the garden screaming with
Rosanna running wildly after him.
Peter turned around in a daze only to see a big dirty handprint on the
screen of his precious computer in the corner of the dining room.
"Dammit," he said angrily. How many times had he warned them to stay
away from his computer? He was about to go out and give them a good
telling off when he saw that the dirty dishes from breakfast and lunch
were still strewn all over the table. Even the milk and butter, which
was now a melted puddle, were still there. He had never seen the house
in such a state of mayhem.
He started getting worried. Where was Bernadine? Oh god, maybe she had
fallen getting out of the shower or something. All sorts of nightmarish
thoughts ran through his head.
"Bernadine," he shouted.
Sprinting through the dining room, he tripped over a fallen sweeping
brush in the kitchen and ploughed straight into the wall. Gritting his
teeth he quickly righted himself and continued on, dodging all the
dirty laundry and debris scattered all over the stairs as he charged up
to their bedroom. Bracing himself for the worst, his heart was filled
with terror as he raced through the doorway.
He stopped dumbstruck and still scared when he saw his wife curled up
in bed all cosy and healthy, reading a novel.
"You're home early," she said without looking up.
"What's wrong?" he gasped, "The place is a bloody disaster zone down
there."
She calmly finished reading the page she was on and then looked up at
him with a condescending little smile. "You know every day when you
come home from work and you ask me what in the world I did all day?"
she said.
"Uh? yeah?"
"Well, today I didn't do it."
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