The morning after

Everything looks different on the morning after.

In the morning, coffee had a rejuvenating effect much like water from the fountain of youth. Gene drank three cups with his toast and jam while he read the morning news.
    The newspaper was full of depressing articles about the economy and the wars raging in the Middle East which had somehow all turned into one big War with the same cause and the same name with interchangeable armies and countries. Before rising from the table, he folded the paper neatly and placed it aside for his wife to read whenever she got home from Janie’s school.
    It was her routine to get up from bed, get their daughter dressed and ready for school, pack her a lunch, and drive her to school.
    A car drove by filling the neighborhood with rap music. Gene huffed, and looked out the kitchen window where he saw his wife’s car in the driveway. Leaves around the windshield wipers meant the car hadn’t moved from its spot beside the oak tree. She hadn’t gotten up and taken Janie to school. Lately she seemed to live like a stranger in the house, avoiding rooms where her family gathered, and only the sound of doors closing showed she was still home. She didn’t seem to care for her duties anymore, and her indifference was making everyone else suffer.
    The oven clock showed 8:27. School started at 8:45. Janie would be late again. It was days like this when he wondered why Janie didn’t get up early enough to ride the bus.
    Adjusting his tie and straightening his hair, he rushed from the kitchen into the hallway and pushed gently into his daughter’s room. She was sitting on the bed, dressed and ready for school, backpack on her back, and she was reading a book.
    “Janie, it’s time to go to school.”
    “Is mom ready?” She reluctantly looked up from her book.
    “I’m taking you today. But we’ve got to go or we’ll both be late.”
    
    In the car Janie munched on an apple. She looked up from her book at her father who was anxiously eyeing the dashboard clock. When stressed he always drove like he was wearing lead boots. And he switched lanes every time he saw an opportunity. Nothing made him madder, it seemed, than when the lane he’d just left started moving more quickly than the one he‘d just chosen. He’d mutter things under his breath, shake his head, and sometimes he’d hit the steering wheel. As the car came to a screeching halt at a red light, her father muttered something and shook his head. Then he pounded on the steering wheel.
    “Dad, I’d rather be a little late than get in a crash.”
    “Sweetie, please, okay. Just let me drive.”
    “Okay, okay.”
    “It’s like this from the day you start school until the day you retire from your job. Constantly rushing from one place to the next. It gets tiring. Just be glad you’re in the passenger seat. Right now I’m the chauffeur, so it’s on my back to get you to school on time.”
    “And then you go to your job?”
    The light turned green. Janie’s head jerked back into her seat as they accelerated through the intersection and down the road .
    “Yes, and then I’ll go to my job. And it looks like I’ll be late, too. My boss doesn’t like that just like your teachers don’t like when you’re late.”
    Janie marked her place in her book and put it in her backpack. “Does your boss like your book?”
    He slowed down to obey the last red light before the school entrance. From here on the line of cars would crawl forward with a show of blinking brake lights. He suddenly wondered what all these other cars were doing with their blinkers on waiting to turn into the school’s parking lot. Why don’t kids take the bus anymore? It must be Monday, he thought. The weekend can knock everything out of whack.
    “The book?” he said, finally turning back to Janie.
    “Yeah, the book you’re writing for him. Does he like it?”
    He laughed. “I’m not writing my book for him, Janie. I don‘t even think he knows how to read. No, I’m writing it for me.”
    “For fun?”
    “Well, sort of. I hope to sell it and make a little money. Maybe if people like it enough I can quit my job for good.”
    “Why would you wanna quit? You don’t like it?”
    “Well, my job at the insurance firm isn’t what I always dreamed of doing.”
    She thought about that for a moment.
    Their car inched closer to the entrance. A crossing guard with an orange flag waved at them. A group of children with packs on their backs moved nearly as one along the sidewalk, all laughing and smiling, gossiping about nose picking students and joking about teachers with funny names.     “What did you always dream of doing, Dad?”
    “Well, since I was about your age I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to write books like the ones I read.”
    “But you are a writer. You’re writing a book and you write lots of stories.”
    It was his time to think now. She saw him as a man still following his dream. Living his dream. He saw himself as an aging man who had long ago compromised his dreams, traded in his aspirations for a comfortable life and a little family of his own and a cozy house with a thirty-year mortgage and a mailbox full of bills, a dream which he now viewed as something that might have been  but never was and probably never will be. He wished he could see himself with her eyes. “I guess you’re right, Janie. I am a writer. I am still following my dream.” He smiled.
    An easy solution came to her mind. She lifted her palms and gave a little shrug. “If you don’t like your job then you just quit. Just quit and write your book. I bet it’ll be a movie. Maybe Hannah Montana could be in it. She’s a good actress. And then I could meet her, too.”
    He thought about the family’s car payments, monthly health and car and life insurance bills, mortgage payments, and on and on until he saw himself sitting in a little room surrounded by angry creditors with little knives who were fighting over which part of his body and his soul they would cut away and take for themselves. By choosing this comfortable family life with all the amenities and some of the luxuries, he’d built for himself a beautiful but hard to maintain mansion full of intricate booby traps at every exit. He no longer knew how to disarm these protections, which he’d originally set in place to keep enemies out, and now was a prisoner in his life. “If it were that easy, I wouldn’t be wearing this tie right now,” he said. “I know-quick, trade clothes with me. You can have my job and I’ll go to your classes.”
    She giggled, thinking of her father dressed in her plaid skirt and her extra-small blue shirt. “I don’t think you could fit at my desk. You’d probably get stuck.”
    They were laughing together as the car rolled to a stop before the school’s front entrance. Many children in different colored but quite similar outfits with backpacks on their backs or by their feet were socializing outside by the azalea bushes and near the front doors and along the brick façade.
    “Thanks for the ride, Dad. I love you,” she said. Every time she averred her love for him he felt like hugging her and telling her, Don’t grow up, Janie, Don’t stop loving your old Dad.
    “I love you, too,” he said. “We should do this more often. Have a great day!”
    She got out of the car, slung her backpack onto her back, and told him goodbye again. After she’d shut the door, he said, “Do you-” Now he rolled down the electric window. “Do you need a note, Janie?” She ran back over to the car, looking at her watch. She compared it to the dashboard clock.
    “Your clock’s fifteen minutes fast, Dad.”
    Just then the first morning bell rang. Kids all around came alive, picking up their backpacks and waving goodbye to friends or parents, and then walked or skipped or jogged or ran to whichever entrance was nearest to their homeroom.
    Janie blew a kiss to her father, something she always did when she was younger, and then ran off to jump into the river of students filing into the school. Her father watched her high-five a friend before she disappeared into the crowd.
    Gene put the car into drive and followed behind a river of cars filing out of the school’s parking lot. Before she entered the school Janie turned back to see her father’s car turn onto the highway. She went into the school smiling.
 

Author's Note

This is a continuation of Chapter One- A sleepless night. All thoughts and comments are welcome. Thanks for reading.

Reviews

[Celtic Cat]

aww...another endearing piece...and here's mom. Or not. ; ) This is so great. It touches us working class heroes right at the core. This Janie is a little doll....and looking at life through her little eyes is a treat. This is why I like to hang out with my neices. The 8 y/o is too grown up now for certain things (lol).. but the just-turned three year old has got the right idea. Last year I remember telling Emily (8) that she ought not to be pushing her sister away for her hand-held games....that 2 y/o's really know how to live, and if you want to have tons of fun...just do whatever the two y/o wants. Of course, as Gene (and the rest of the world) sees it.....how can you quit your job and write while still paying the mortgage and bills? This strikes me hard....as I'm in the process of signing my life away for a home in the woods as we speak. I'm hoping it will unleash more creativity...but frightened it may cause me to work too many hours to even think. But...onward we go....because this is how we live right now. Revolution...maybe tomorrow. I didn't drink from the fountain of youth this morning. ; )
Excellent piece....and my apologies for my personal story in review! I'm (sorta) trying to work on that!

That's it.....I'm never reading CBoylan's reviews again. lol She better not be a ghost...or I'm going to have to find out what movie Boylan wants to see next and spoil the ending!!!

Otherwise...nothing to really critique here.....it's a good continuation of the first chapter...and good intro to mom.

[Raef C. Boylan]

I have to ask: is the mum/wife a ghost?
If she is, you'll need to be more subtle about it, as it's been done before.
If not, excuse my jumping to twist-conclusions haha.

Yeah, I liked this chapter [two] too.
It reads a bit differently to the first, in terms of the long-windedness mentioned in Nicole's review. With that in mind, you should perhaps consider some pruning of chapter one.
You've positioned us quite comfortably in his head, and so far I haven't noticed you compromising the style in which you reveal his thoughts to us, which is great. It's slightly at a distance, but a friendly distance - which makes for pleasant reading.

Overall, good work. I'm still absorbed and involved.
[I think I'll keep coming back to this story, so don't feel short-changed with the choppy and not particularly helpful review].