It Wasn't Enough

Peg Tittle

One day, the women were gone.
It was … an opportunity.

1

Timmy’s crying woke him up. Or maybe it was Tommy’s crying. Diane could always tell which one it was, but he never could. Even though there were two years between them.

“Diane!” he called out to her. With annoyance. She must already be up, he thought, because she wasn’t in the bed beside him. Though, since they’d had an argument the night before—correction, another argument—that didn’t surprise him. She was spending more nights in the boys’ room these days. He’d told her that’s why she couldn’t leave. Because of the boys. He hadn’t meant it to come out like they were holding her hostage. But it did. He sometimes wondered if that’s why he’d pushed her to have kids. To make sure she didn’t leave. Because, truthfully, he didn’t really—oh he loved them, of course, they were his kids, but …

“Diane!” he called out again, more loudly. The other one had started crying as well.

“Mommy …”

“Mommy!”

He groaned, then got up. It was time anyway. He glanced at the clock on the night table. Shit! Past time! No, no, no, he muttered as he raced to the shower, he couldn’t be late today, he was presenting his report to the Board at ten. He’d been working on it all week … Diane usually woke him—where the hell was she?

On his way to the bathroom, he saw that she wasn’t in the boys’ room. Timmy and Tommy were there, wailing away, but Diane was nowhere to be seen.

“Diane!” he yelled. Damn it! He went into the room, picked Timmy up out of his crib, and started jostling him, trying to make him stop crying.

“Shh, it’s okay, Daddy’s here …”

“Where’s Mommy?” Tommy whined. “I want Mommy!”

He carried Timmy out with him, Tommy close on his heels, glanced in the bathroom, then went downstairs. No Diane. Had she left after all? She would’ve gone to her parents’ place. He didn’t see a note, but he was sure there would be one. A long, scathing analysis of each of his many faults. A protracted description about how she was unhappy, unfulfilled, and—

At the moment, he had more pressing concerns. He’d have to get the boys ready and take them to daycare.

He returned to the boys’ room, and started to—truthfully, he didn’t know their routine. He changed Timmy’s diaper. He helped Tommy go potty. He dressed them. He fed them. He dressed them again. It was all very difficult. Apparently he wasn’t doing anything right.

“Juice!” Timmy had insisted.

“Okay, here you go,” Andrew poured some juice into Timmy’s sippy cup and gave it to him. Timmy threw the cup onto the floor, and the juice seeped out.

“Timmy!” He yelled at him then reached for a tea towel to wipe it up. Timmy started crying. Again.

“Sorry, Daddy’s sorry,” he said, taking a cursory swipe at the spill, then lifting him out of his chair. Where the hell was Diane?

“Why isn’t Mommy here?” Tommy asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Why?”

Andrew ignored him.

“When’s Mommy coming home?” Tommy tried a different approach. And then, for good measure, wandered over to the stove.

“I don’t know, Tommy. Please sit and eat your cereal,” Andrew said. He’d put Timmy back in his chair and was wrestling with the coffee maker.

“Don’t want to.” He ran his little fingers over the knobs. Andrew pulled him away and forced him into his chair. How was he supposed to take a shower let alone make a cup of coffee? He couldn’t turn his back on them for a minute …

“Eat!” He’d had enough. It was eight-thirty already.

“No!” Tommy threw his spoon onto the floor. And then his bowl of cereal.

By nine o’clock, Andrew was finally ready to leave the apartment. He’d managed a two-minute shower, but not a shave. And not a cup of coffee. He put Timmy into the stroller, grabbed his laptop case, then went out the door to the elevator, making sure that Tommy was following. He bumped the door in his rush, and Timmy started crying again. Down the hallway, into the elevator—no, Tommy refused to get in. He seemed to have developed a fear of elevators that Andrew knew nothing about. So Andrew pushed the button to keep the doors open, set his laptop case onto the elevator floor beside the stroller, then went back out to pick him up.

At the parking lot level, he managed to push the stroller out of the elevator without setting Tommy down. As soon as the doors closed, he realized he’d forgotten his laptop. Shit! He pressed the button immediately, but someone else must’ve beaten him to it. He waited anxiously, watching the floor indicators light up as the elevator ascended, stopped at the sixth floor, then started re-descending. It stopped again, at the lobby level—damn it, was some good Samaritan taking his laptop to the ‘Lost and Found’? Better that than stealing it, but— When the doors opened, he was relieved to see that it was exactly where he’d left it.

After putting the two boys into their car seats—almost a five-minute ordeal—Andrew drove out and into the street.

At the first stoplight, he called Sharon, his assistant, to let her know he was running late. There was no answer.

At the second stoplight, he called her again. Still no answer. Where the hell was she? He called general reception instead. Brittany or Brianna or whatever could get a message to Sharon. Again, no answer. What the hell? Was she too busy sitting there filing her nails? Actually, he thought a little shamefacedly, he’d never seen her sitting there filing her nails … He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat in disgust, then saw it slide off the seat and out of reach. Damn it!

“Where’s Mommy?” Tommy asked again.

“I don’t know!” Andrew said, again. “She went to Grammy’s.”

“Why?”

Andrew ignored him. Again.

He was surprised to see some sort of traffic jam in the daycare parking lot. Since he was so late, he’d expected an empty lot. He figured all the moms would have been there and gone already. But no, the lot was a mess, with cars haphazardly pulled up around the door. And all he saw were dads.

Andrew slapped the steering wheel in frustration as he pulled up behind the part that most looked like a line. He didn’t have time for this today! He had An Important Meeting to get to!

He watched with some confusion as men got out of their cars, stomped to the door, kids in tow, only to stomp back to their cars, gesticulating and shouting at other men. After a few minutes, during which the car in front of him hadn’t moved at all, hadn’t been able to move, Andrew got out to see what the trouble was.

“Fucking bitches musta gone on strike or something!” a man with a huge belly said. It occurred to Andrew, for the first time, to wonder whose kids his kids were playing with every day …

“Hey!” another one said sharply. “I’ll thank you for watching your language in front of my three-year old!” He put his arms protectively around a little red-haired boy.

“I’m jus’ sayin’—”

“I heard what you were jus’ sayin’,” the other man mocked, “and I doubt that’s true. I doubt the women even know each other.”

Was everyone’s wife gone? Is that what had happened? Or was the guy just talking about the daycare staff—

“Wouldn’t they though?” a bearded man spoke up. “Know each other? I mean, if it’s always our wives who drop off our kids …” he trailed off. A strike didn’t seem plausible, but …

“My wife has no reason to go on strike,” the watch-your-language man said. Smugly, Andrew thought. And, given that, probably incorrectly.

“Is there no one here?” Andrew asked then, walking up to try the door. As if he was the only one with brains enough to have thought to do that.

The door was locked. Of course.

Andrew stood around for another minute, trying to figure it out, but then decided there was no more information to be had, so he went back to his car. He’d have to take the boys to work with him.