Claire Casey's Had Enough

Chapter 1

May 11, 2024

2:20 a.m.

At least the weather was mild, Claire consoled herself as she peed behind her shed like a fugitive. Before tugging down her black dress pants and squatting, the forty-six-year-old mom of three used her phone’s flashlight to check for poison ivy. The insidious weed was practically New Jersey’s state flower and it would be just Claire’s luck to end up with her privates polka-dotted in angry hives by morning. Luckily, it was mid-May, too early for the ivy to begin its invasive creep. 

      Moaning with relief, Claire emitted a stream that could’ve rivaled a racehorse’s. She’d been holding it the entire ride from the airport. Patting her pockets, she fished out a crumpled napkin, hoped it wasn’t the one she’d used to blot pizza grease eight hours earlier, and gave herself a hasty wipe.

      Like a tired sunflower, she slowly lifted her drooping head. If this – using her suburban backyard as a toilet – was captured by a neighbor’s security camera, the video would end up on a community forum, shared by countless parents from her children’s schools, and she’d be forced to flee the country. That sounded pleasant, actually, after the day, maybe even the last decade, she’d had.

      As Claire switched off the phone’s flashlight, her gaze landed on the time (2:23 a.m.) before bouncing to the back entry of her home. Beyond her French doors, Paul, her husband, the man who’d promised to pick her up from the airport, slept soundly, light from the TV casting ghostly shadows on the wall behind him. He looked ridiculous wearing their son Max’s Beats headphones, iPad perched precariously on his lap, one of his employer’s ongoing training modules still playing.

     When she’d arrived home at close to 2 a.m., she’d knocked aggressively on those French doors. Paul still hadn’t replaced the doorbell’s battery at their home’s front entrance, though she’d asked him to do it no less than twenty-seven times. Even if he’d taken care of it, that was no guarantee the soft ding-dong would’ve awakened him. Paul could’ve slept through a Metallica concert. Their sons were surely zonked out too. Claire’s mom had given them noise machines last Christmas. Max favored the sound of ocean waves while Joe slumbered to falling rain. Henry preferred the gentle crackle of the sizzling bacon setting. They’d never hear her either.

     She hadn’t brought keys because she hadn’t expected to need them.

     ‘Idiot!’ she hissed in the direction of her husband, who lay ten yards away on the couch in the comfort of their living room, snoring no doubt.

     Cold dew began to seep through Claire’s cheap black flats. ‘Absolute moron!’ she muttered to herself as she emerged from behind the shed. Her instincts had warned her that flying to Ohio to cover a toy safety conference for MamaRama.com wasn’t a great idea.         But she’d only started writing for the parenting website in January, and she feared that if she refused this assignment she’d be overlooked when better offerings – like that spa review in Sedona her colleague Esme snapped up – came along.

     Still, she’d questioned Paul’s ability to care for their sons solo. She’d imagined returning to find her boys with face tattoos and vaping habits, tending a small petting zoo in the basement.

     When she’d wondered aloud if she should go, Paul had said. ‘Definitely! This sounds too important to miss.’ With an outstretched arm, he’d mimed holding a cell phone in selfie position. ‘“Claire Casey here, reporting live from . . .”’ He shifted, peeking at her from behind the imaginary device. ‘Where is it again? Dayton? Canton? “. . . from somewhere in the Buckeye State, bringing you an update on which brand of building blocks are secretly coated in lead paint. Stay with me as I rank dolls with the most flammable hair and reveal how to stay calm when your toddler swallows his first marble.”’ 

     Claire sighed. It was bad enough when she mocked her job, but hearing her husband do it made her recent career move feel like even more of a massive misstep. 

     ‘Maybe I should stay home,’ she’d said, her hopes of spending two nights in a hotel room alone vanishing faster than an earring sliding down a bathroom sink drain. She’d fantasized about lying like a starfish across a bed free of crumbs or Lego pieces, then awakening to order room service. What bold, new ideas might surface with her freed-up brain space if she didn’t have to worry about her kids’ schedules and fixing dinner?

     As disappointment clouded her face, Paul had insisted, ‘Go, Claire, really. We’ll be fine. The boys are older now.’

     It was true. Max was fourteen, Henry, twelve, and Joe, eight. Still.

    ‘Seriously. I got this,’ Paul assured her.

     Claire peered past his shoulder to the countertops laden with crusty dinner dishes from the prior evening. 

     ‘How tough can it be?’ he asked as he tossed an orange peel in the direction of the garbage can and missed. She’d bitten her tongue to stop from telling him: ‘Pretty damn tough. Managing three children while working from home is more difficult than snagging a last-minute orthodontist appointment or leaving Costco without spending double what you’d intended.’ But she saved her breath. He’d find out.

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