Story: Role with it (part 2 of 4)

Role with it (part 2 of 4)
By Varian Milagro


Copyright © 2015 by Varian Milagro
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

I awoke to Wendy’s alarm on Monday morning. My first stop was to the bathroom to take a leak. As Wendy took a shower I threw on my robe and headed to Lily’s room. After changing her diaper I carried her to Tyler’s room to get him up. After that I headed to the kitchen to start some coffee and warm Lily’s bottle. I held Lily in one arm while I prepped breakfast, which isn’t easy. They don’t teach you how to mix pancake batter one handed at the Culinary Institute of America, but they should. Wendy appeared with Tyler in tow by time Lily’s bottle had warmed. She held Lily while she drank her formula and I got back to work on breakfast.

“What do you have going on today?” Wendy asked as we ate.

“While Tyler is in school I’ll be shopping for supplies for that catering gig,” I said.

“I get to do show and tell at school. I’m going to show the truck I got on my birthday,” Tyler said.

Lily babbled happily as she smeared her face with a slice of pear.

After kissing Wendy as she went out the door I helped Tyler dress for school. Lily and I waved goodbye to her brother as he walked down the street to his bus stop. I then hurried back to the car, buckled Lily into her car seat and drove to Abbey’s. She didn’t have to work until eleven, so she was going to watch Lily and then I was going to watch Evan after school.

I had three stores to hit before I had to pick Lily up again. My first stop was at The Restaurateur’s BFF, a restaurant supply store. I was catering an event for over a hundred people at Willow Grove lodge in three days. While I was only providing the food and another company was doing the actual serving, it was a big task for a lone chef and I needed to supplement my own meager supplies. I still had most everything I needed to make the food, but I was lacking on the supplies to serve it. Among other things, I’d need half a dozen chafing dishes, a couple insulated food carriers, several large salad bowls, a couple beverage dispensers, and a couple coffee urns.

I’d almost turned down the job since it was on my thirtieth birthday. I didn’t mind cooking on my birthday, but I figured that Wendy would be pissed if I spent most of the day in a kitchen. She’d told me to go ahead since she had to work that day anyway and she knew how much I missed creating food for large groups. We decided to celebrate my birthday in the evening at a nice restaurant with my sister’s family.

I picked out everything I needed, loaded it on a couple flatbed carts and headed to the checkout counter. When I opened my purse I found that it was filled with Wendy’s things, her hair brush, makeup and even a tampon. It had my billfold, but that held her ID and credit cards. I double checked the purse, fearing that I’d grabbed Wendy’s by mistake. It was mine. I couldn’t fathom why Wendy would fill my purse with her things. Luckily, the clerk recognized me from my old restaurant days and let me use Wendy’s credit card for the deposit.

I checked the time. I really needed to hit the other stores today, but I couldn’t without my ID and credit cards. I did not relish the idea of dragging an eleven month old and two eight year olds through both Costco and the commissary. Tyler and Evan were good kids, but they got antsy when bored and had a tendency to misbehave. It took a lot of patience on my part to shop with them normally and patience was in short supply today. I cursed as I loaded the supplies into my Dodge Durango. I pulled out of the parking lot and made a call to Thai Palace, a Thai restaurant on the way to Wendy’s job site. If I was going to drive all the way out there I might as well bring lunch.

When I arrived an hour later I was a little more relaxed. Once I’d accepted the fact that I had to visit Wendy I decided to make the best of it. Besides getting to see my beautiful wife, I’d see her latest project as well. The job was on ten acres that we’d purchased last year. A series of houses, in various stages of completeness, lined the dead end street that ran through our property. At the head of the street were three houses that had been finished and were awaiting sale. In the distance, where the houses were still mere two-by-four skeletons, I saw Wendy’s truck parked next to a construction trailer.

Wendy’s father had owned the construction business while she grew up and it had been a true family business. Each of his kids had helped him build houses after school and during summer breaks. Wendy’s brothers had bemoaned the work, but she’d loved it. She got to spend time with her dad and felt special that he included her in such a traditionally male centric job.

After graduating from high school she'd gotten accepted to Berkeley and was working on her business degree, with a desire to follow it up with an MBA, when we met at a party. We found out that we were both from the same town in Oregon. We’d even gone to the same high school, although she’d been a freshman when I was a senior. We fell in love quickly. She got pregnant with Tyler in her senior year and we married a month later. After she graduated we tried to decide what to do; stay in California or move back north. I’d been able to leverage my degree from the Culinary Institute of America into a great job as sous chef at Bei Ricordi, a premier Italian restaurant in the Sacramento area.

It was Donald, Wendy’s father, who enticed us back home to Salem. He offered to stake me in my own restaurant. So, I quit my job, moved north with my beautiful, pregnant wife. She stayed home, raised Tyler and helped with the books while I made a go as a restaurateur. While we got excellent reviews and made enough money to survive, the restaurant never took off.

When Donald died we found out that he’d left the controlling interest of his business to Wendy. It happened just after Tyler’s fourth birthday. Abbey wanted to run her father’s business, but she also wanted to stay home with Tyler. Neither of us wanted him raised by daycare workers. With my restaurant circling the drain, we decided to close it and auction off most of the equipment. I stayed home with Tyler and Wendy worked fulltime running her dad’s business.

Then she got pregnant with Lily. She insisted on working right up to the delivery date. She took three months off while her foreman ran the business, but then she was right back at work. She loved the job and she loved being not only her own boss, but the boss of a bunch of men in a man’s world. I wanted her to be happy, but I also wanted Lily to have more time with her mother. Dads are great, but in the early years kids really need their moms. It bothered me that Lily did not get some of the extra motherly attention that Tyler had received. Tyler had been breastfed until his second birthday. Lily didn’t even make it to six months. Wendy had tried to keep her milk flowing by expressing during work, but it became too much of a hassle and she eventually gave it up.

I parked next to Wendy’s truck which had a decal of the business logo, a black and white graphic of a half finished house above the business name, “Turner Family Construction”. We’d considered changing the name since the owner’s last name was now White, but the company name had a lot of cache in the community.

As I exited the car I grabbed my purse and the takeout bag. I looked around the site, but didn’t see Wendy. I did see a couple familiar faces pounding nails into one of the house frames. There was a lot of turnover in the construction business, but a few of her employees had been working for the company since her father ran it. I always found it a little emasculating visiting Wendy at work, her, the bread winner, and me, the dutiful house-husband.

“It’s open,” Wendy yelled after I knocked on the trailer’s door. She was sitting behind a desk, looking at some blueprints. A cigar butt lay in an ashtray next to the blueprints.

“Hey, sweetie. I brought you some lunch.” I held up the takeout bag of Phad Thai, a favorite of Wendy’s.

“You drove all the way out here to bring me lunch?” She scooted around the desk and gave me a kiss.

“Well, I also came to exchange IDs with you. Yours got in my purse somehow.”

Wendy gave me a worried look. She removed a man’s wallet from the front pocket of her jeans. She flipped it open to reveal my ID and credit cards.

“Why did you put your cards in my wallet?” she asked.

“You don’t carry a wallet,” I said.

Wendy gaped at the wallet and then at me. “Holy shit. It happened again.” She sank into her chair. Her hands trembled.

“What happened again?”

“You don’t carry a purse, Steve. What’s happening to us?” Tears flowed down Wendy’s cheeks.

I scrambled around the desk and took Wendy into my arms. “It’s going to be okay, baby. We’ll get through this. We’ve still got each other and the kids don’t seem to be affected.” Internally I was freaking out as well, but I needed to keep it together for my wife.

After about a half minute she stopped crying. I found a Kleenex in my purse and handed it to her. She dabbed at her eyes.

She scrunched her face in thought. “Did anyone give you grief about carrying a purse today?”

I thought back over my morning. “No.”

“Not even a strange look?”

“The clerk at the restaurant supply store is the only person I’ve really interacted with and I don’t remember him giving me any looks. I even sat it up on the counter in front of him while I searched for my ID.” I started to catch on. “On Sunday, Abbey suggested we go shopping together, something she’d never done before.”

“Charlie didn’t think it strange that I smoked cigars while we golfed.”

“It seems that we’re the only ones who notice the changes and even then it is only with the other person. We don’t seem to notice our own changes until they are pointed out,” I said. “Carrying a purse seemed perfectly normal to me until you mentioned it.”

“So, what should we do?”

“I’m going to have a couple bites of Phad Thai and then I’m going to go pick up Lily so Abbey isn’t late to work. It’s early release today so I’ll have to take Tyler and Evan with me to Costco and the commissary.”

“How can you be so calm about this? Smoking cigars is one thing, but now you’re wearing nightgowns and carrying a purse. What’s next?”

“I really don’t know, Wendy, but I don’t have time to worry about it right now, if I don’t get the shopping done today I’ll never get everything ready for Thursday night.” I dumped the contents of my purse on the desk and then pulled Wendy’s ID and credit cards from the billfold.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought that you might want your things.”

“You’re going to carry a purse now?”

“Do you want to carry it?”

Wendy looked at the purse and then the wallet. She pulled my ID and cards out and then filled the wallet with hers. “I’m not carrying a purse; the guys here would never let me hear the end of it.”

I removed the takeout from the bag and handed Wendy a fork. “So, how has your morning been otherwise?” I stabbed a fork into the Phad Tai and took a bite.

“I got a call from the realtor. The Thompson’s financing fell through so we’re stuck with the Lexington street house again.”

“Crap.”

“Yeah, that wasn’t news I wanted to hear today.”

I looked at my watch. “I need to go.” I took another bite of Phad Tai and then grabbed my purse. “Everything is going to be okay. Whatever comes our way, we’ll face it together.”

We kissed goodbye and then I raced to Abbey’s to pick up Lily. After that I drove to Roma Ristorante, an Italian restaurant on the other side of town. Andrew Collins, a former employee of mine, managed the place and was letting me use their kitchen to prepare the food for my catering gig. They only served dinners so the kitchen sat idle in the morning. He was also letting me store my supplies and the two standing rib roasts that I was aging in their food locker. Lily sucked on her pacifier and watched us from her car seat as we unloaded my SUV.

“Thank you so much for letting me use the kitchen,” I said as I carried a chafing dish into the back room.

“You’re welcome anytime, Steve. You taught me so much while I worked for you. I hope this catering is just the start of something regular. You’re too talented of a chef to be sitting on the sidelines.”

“I’ll get back in the game, maybe once Lily is in school.”

“Well, I’m excited that I’ll get to taste your food again. I’ve been having withdrawals since you closed your restaurant.”

“You know the Huberts?”

“No, who are they?” Andrew looked puzzled.

“It’s their party that I’m catering on Thursday night.”

“Oh. No, what I meant is that I figured I’d be able to sample your food as you made it here.”

“It will be mostly prep here,” I said. “I’ll do most of the actual cooking in the kitchen at the lodge.”

“Oh well, maybe next time.”

Once home, I put Lily down for her nap, made myself some lunch and went over my shopping list. Going to Costco and the commissary with two eight year old boys and a baby was going to be tough enough. I didn’t want to make a return trip because I’d forgotten to buy something. Besides, it wasn’t like I had a lot of extra time to waste on multiple trips to the store. Getting all the food prepared by myself was going to be tough enough without extra trips.

Both boys groaned when they arrived home from school and I told them that we were going shopping. They perked up when I promised a trip to the park in exchange for good behavior at the commissary. I promised ice cream for obedience at Costco. The boys were wonderful at both stores. After unloading the supplies at the restaurant I drove to the Dairy Queen drive-thru. After I ordered I moved the car forward to pay and I set my purse on the console between the driver and passenger seats. As I dug in my purse for some cash I heard a gasp from the back seat. I looked into the rearview mirror and Tyler was staring at the purse with his eyes open wide. Evan was staring out the window. Lily was sucking on her pacifier in her sleep.

Once I bought the ice cream I handed a cone to each of the boys and then drove to the park. When we hit a red light along the way I looked at the boys through the rearview mirror. Evan was devouring his ice cream while Tyler had barely touched his. He was staring at the purse.

“Do you notice anything strange about my purse?” I asked Tyler.

“No.” His face was red. He looked like I’d just caught him playing with matches.

“Evan, do you notice anything about my purse?”

Evan looked up from his ice cream. It was dripping from his chin. “No, Mr. White,” he said and then shoved the last of his ice cream cone in his mouth.

I looked back at Tyler. Ice cream was dripping down his arm. I grabbed some paper napkins from the glove box and handed them to the two boys. “Aren’t you going to eat that?” I asked Tyler.

“I’m not hungry,” he said.

“I’ll eat it if you don’t want it,” Evan said.

As Tyler handed the ice cream to Evan a horn honked, startling all three of us. I looked up. The light had turned green. During the remaining drive to the park I tried to remember a previous time that Tyler had turned away ice cream. I couldn’t, but then again my memory wasn’t very reliable of late.

At the playground I pushed Lily on the swing while the two boys played tag on the jungle gym. It was a sunny day and we all had fun. Taking the boys with me had turned out great. It was getting close to the time to go when the inevitable happened. One of the boys got hurt. I was secretly glad that it was Tyler this time. It seemed that it was Evan the majority of the time and I feared that Abbey would start thinking that I was neglecting her son. I washed Tyler’s elbow with some water and then dried it with one of Lily’s towels.

“That hurts, Dad.”

“It’s just a scratch, champ,” I told Tyler as I pulled one of the few remaining bandages from Lily’s diaper bag. I needed to restock; the two boys went through bandages like Lily went through diapers. “Now hold still while I put the bandage on. You’re tough, you can take it.”

That night Tyler helped me make a red potato salad with kalamata olives, capers and artichoke while Lily took a late afternoon nap. Lily awoke thirty minutes later. I fed her a bottle and changed her diaper while Tyler watched cartoons. When Wendy came home we sat on the back deck and ate our dinner. After dinner we all took a family walk at Lake Salmonberry, one of our favorite family activities.

Lake Salmonberry had a wide, paved path that kept the lake within site, but not so close that we had to worry about Tyler falling in. I held Lily’s hands so she could practice walking while Wendy pushed the stroller and threw a Nerf football to Tyler. A simple walk barely made a dent in Tyler’s nearly inexhaustible energy supply. Wendy would tell Tyler to go long and he’d take off at a sprint. He never caught the ball, but happily chased it down as the ball bounced erratically down the path.

We’d barely made it a quarter of the way around the lake when Tyler tripped on his way back with the ball and fell on the asphalt. He came up crying. I handed Lily to Wendy and ran to him.

“Wendy, get the diaper bag, please.” I sat next to Tyler and scooped him into my lap. I checked him for wounds. Other than a nasty scrape on his knee, he looked fine. I pulled him against my chest. “It’s going to be okay, sweetie. Daddy’s here.” I kissed the top of his head.

Wendy arrived with the stroller a half minute later. She had the diaper bag slung over her shoulder. Lily was in the stroller sucking on her pacifier and clutching her stuffed panda. Wendy knelt next to Tyler and checked out his knee.

“No need for all those tears, sport. It’s just a scratch,” she said as she removed a bandage from the diaper bag.

Tyler pulled away from me. He sat up and wiped at his tears with the back of his hand. I scowled at Wendy. “There’s nothing wrong with crying when you’re hurt,” I said as I stroked Tyler’s hair. I wanted to tell her to let him be a child for god’s sake and not to fill him with that macho “Take it like a man” bullshit. The days of Tyler letting me baby him were quickly coming to an end and I didn’t need Wendy bringing it about any quicker. But I held my tongue. The last thing Tyler needed right now was his parent’s bickering in front of him.

“All right, you’re as good as new.” Wendy said once she’d finished tending Tyler’s wound. “Let’s get back to our walk.”

“We can go home, if you’re knee hurts too much,” I said.

“He doesn’t need to go home for a tiny little scratch like that, do you, sport?” Wendy said as she ruffled his hair.

He looked at me and then back to Wendy, his face twisted with uncertainty.

“Come on, I’ll give you a ride on my shoulders,” Wendy said.

“Yay!”

Wendy lifted Tyler onto her shoulders. Tyler no longer looked sad or confused. He looked like he’d just won the lottery. I lifted Lily out of her stroller and held her hands as we resumed our walk.

***
The next morning I took Lily with me to the restaurant. She sat in her highchair and worked at eating a handful of Cheerios while I worked on the marinades. In addition to the prime rib I was also providing lamb and chicken and I wanted them to marinate for 48 hours. I felt a thrill run through me as I got to work. It had been too long since I’d been in a proper kitchen.

Within an hour I found myself wishing that I’d found a babysitter for Lily. Abbey had commitments that morning and couldn’t watch her. Lily is a wonderful child, but at eleven months old she needs a lot of attention. I took frequent breaks to play with her. It was fun as always, but it put me behind. My hair deciding not to corporate didn’t help matters.

I was in the middle of whisking the ingredients for the lamb marinade when my hair got into the act. It kept falling in my eyes and threatening to fall into the marinade. I tossed my head to the side, but it fell back into my face. I threw my head back with the same result. I blew at my hair and Lily burst into giggles. I looked at her and blew at my hair again. She laughed even harder. I kept this up until the marinade was ready.

Before I started pouring the marinade over the meat I decided to do something about my hair. I looked in my purse, but, besides my billfold, it was empty, nary a hair clip, bobby pin, or even rubber band. I didn’t even have my brush. I scoured the kitchen and finally found their stash of hair nets. I pulled one over my head and tucked my hair away. It wasn’t easy. I think the things were designed for shoulder length hair at the most, not my unruly mane. Lily began to get antsy so I lifted her out of her high chair and helped her walk around the restaurant before I tried to get back to work.

When Tyler arrived home from school that day he took one look at me before bursting into tears and running to his room. When I entered his room he turned away from me and buried his head in his pillow. I tried to get him to tell me what was the matter, but he shook head into his pillow and wouldn’t talk. I tried to console him. He said he wanted to be left alone. I sighed and let him be. I fed Lily a snack and filled my purse with my hair accessories.

Tyler wasn’t the only one to lose it that evening. I ended up crying over my hair as well. I was playing “Do Re Mi” on Lily’s colorful xylophone while she shook a toy tambourine rattle when Wendy came home. I looked up, saw her crew cut, and nearly laughed. My mirth died quickly when I saw the look of confusion on her face.

“What’s with the hair, Steve? Are you wearing a wig?” Wendy asked.

“No, it’s the same hair I’ve always had,” I said as I tugged on a handful. “Why did you cut yours? I loved it long.”

“I’ve always kept my hair short, Steve.”

“This morning your hair was to your shoulder blades.”

Wendy’s eyes widened, looking like she'd been slapped across the face. Recovering quickly she said, “We’ve changed again, Steve. You had short hair this morning.”

Suddenly I remembered all of the recent changes, Wendy smoking a cigar, me carrying a purse, all of it. I had memories of growing my hair long when I was young, my mom teaching me how to care for it, Abbey braiding my hair for me, shopping for specialty shampoos and hair accessories. I also remembered keeping it short all my life, hating when it got long enough to cover my ears.

“Oh my god. Why is this happening to us? Why do we keep changing?” I started sobbing. I’d tried to keep it together the last couple days, wanting to be strong for Wendy, but it was too much. My life was being rewritten and I was scared.

“It’s going to be okay, baby. We’ll figure this out, somehow.” Wendy knelt next to me and put her arms around me.

Lily started crying, clearing confused by her parents being upset. Wendy let go of me and picked up our daughter. I tried to pull myself together for my daughter and after a few minutes we both stopped crying.

I tried to look on the bright side. I could always cut my hair if I wanted and Wendy could re-grow her hair. Besides, after the initial shock wore off I found that I kind of liked her with short hair. It made her look kind of handsome.

Wendy carried Lily to Tyler’s room to coax him out for dinner and I headed into the bathroom to check out my new locks. I’d seen my hair since coming home from the restaurant, but I wanted to see what I looked like with thick, wavy auburn hair now that I knew that it wasn’t supposed to be on my head.

“I think Tyler can tell that our hair has swapped,” Wendy said.

“What did he say?” I looked at our reflections in the mirror, me with auburn hair down to my waist and Wendy with colorful makeup applied to her delicate facial features beneath a buzz cut. It seemed strange and unnatural and yet also as normal as Tyler refusing to eat peas.

“Other than saying ‘sorry’ at one point he wouldn’t say anything. I told him that he could eat dinner in his room tonight.”

Tyler finally emerged from his bedroom after dinner. We had to promise that we’d play Super Smash Brothers on the Wii for a full hour in exchange for his presence. Even then, he’d barely look at us and he covered his ears with his hands every time we tried to talk about our hair.

“Why do you think Tyler can tell that our hair is different when no one else can?” I asked Wendy as we lay in bed together that night. She was on her back and held me securely with her arm. I had my head on her shoulder and ran my hand over her smooth belly.

“It could be a family thing. Perhaps anyone in the family can see the difference in the other, but not themselves, not until it is pointed out to them. Lily is too young to tell us that she can see the difference.”

I mulled over Wendy’s theory for a moment. “Maybe, but remember that time my mom removed her wig and Lily started crying? Don’t you think she’d have reacted to your hair if she could tell that something had changed?”

“Perhaps.” Wendy lifted my chin and kissed me. After a moment she moved her hand behind my head and pulled me into a deeper kiss, her tongue diving into my mouth.

When she grabbed my ass through my nightgown, giving it a hard squeeze, I pulled away and her face fell. It lit up again when I removed my nightgown and boxers and threw them on the floor. She shucked her panties and climbed on top of me. I stroked her chest as she eased herself onto me. She teased me at first, only letting the head of my cock inside and then pulling back like she was going to pull all the way off me. She hovered above me, and watched me pant with need.

“Please,” I begged.

“Please, what?” she asked with a coy look on her face.

“Please fuck me. I want you.”

She slid a little more of herself over my cock and then pulled back again. I bit my lip and pulled at my hair. She was driving me insane. Again she lowered herself and again she pulled back until I was nearly out of her.

“Stop teasing me,” I said a little louder than I’d meant to.

She laughed and said, “Don’t wake the kids, sweetie.”

“Then fuck me already.”

“As you wish.”

She slid all the way down my cock until her pussy lips touched my balls. She built up a nice rhythm and I was getting close to an orgasm when her chest diminished in my hands. It went from soft and bouncy to hard, firm and hairy in less than a second. I removed my hands. Her areolas were now tiny dimes and her once proud nipples tiny stubs.

“You’re chest just changed,” I shrieked.

She tore her gaze from my chest and glanced at her own. She looked back at mine and said, “Let’s keep fucking.”

“But…” I said before she cut me off with a kiss.

She sat up on me and grinded her hips into mine. I moaned when she ran her hands over my breasts and I squealed when she pinched my nipples. The jolts of pleasure ricocheting from my nipples to my cock made me forget her chest.

“I want to switch positions,” she said.

We rolled over, trying to stay connected. We almost made it, but I slipped out at the last moment. Wendy grabbed my cock and pulled it into her soaked pussy. I leaned on my elbows as I slid in and out of her, my breasts swinging back and forth over her face. She stuck out her tongue and licked my nipples as they passed. God, that was hot. I started going faster, but had to slow down after a minute. My tits were flopping all over the place and it was beginning to hurt. Wendy reached up and cupped them, holding them in place while I rocked in and out of her. She soon came with a roar. I lay on top of her, my cock held securely by her pussy, and felt more connected to my wife than I had in a long time.

Role with It - Part 3