The Chore at Home

          Landon studied the restaurant menu, its photos of golden French fries and honey-roasted chicken and tres leches cake failing to whet his appetite. Around him, patrons munched, leaning over wagon wheel-sized glass tables and chattering in a way that made it obvious that they had much less on their minds than he and Arianna. She’d said only that she wanted to talk about Joshuah, but he could tell by the way her eyes flashed that this would involve her telling him something he didn’t want to hear.

           A chintzy rendition of “I Need a Hero” sliced the air; her phone. Ordinarily, he would have had to fight the urge to tell her a second time that such an antiquated choice would make people see them as old fogies. Today, however, he had bigger things to worry about: something had gone wrong at home. He’d told her that they shouldn’t trust a high schooler who wore “Happy Bunny” t-shirts and listened to Billie Eilish with the life of their ten-year-old son, but she’d insisted, proclaiming Caitlin “very mature and responsible” and assuring him that the teen had earned rave reviews from several other parents for whom she’d babysat. He hated himself for having given in.

           Arianna twisted and dug into the knockoff purse she’d slung over the back of her chair, her hand finally emerging with her three-year-old Samsung. “Spam,” she said, stabbing the screen with a nubby nail. He exhaled. She returned the device to her bag and turned back around just as a waitress came to take their orders. Arianna requested Cobb salad; he, the first thing that caught his eye: a burger and fries. The waitress promised to bring them “in a jiffy” and flitted off.

           Arianna took a breath and glared at him. “You know this isn’t working.”

           That, he couldn’t deny. Day and night, they fought with the child. Arianna, who’d insisted upon home schooling him because she didn’t want to risk exposing him to bullying like that that she’d experienced as a child, said that he’d fallen behind on his work and refused to listen when she tried to teach him new information. They couldn’t convince the boy to clean his room, go to bed at a reasonable hour, or eat his vegetables, despite having raised their voices, offered rewards, threatened punishments—everything short of dropping to their knees and begging. Apparently, though, the child neither feared nor loved them enough to comply.

           “We’re doing something wrong,” Arianna said.

           The thought had crossed his mind, as it would any parent’s. He’d tried to figure out their mistake, or mistakes. He’d reviewed their conduct, their words, their treatment of the child. He’d thought about the gifts they’d given him, the extracurriculars they’d enrolled him in, the language they’d used with and around him, what they’d taught him and hadn’t yet taught him. His dresser drawers teemed with parenting books—he refused to put them on display in the bookcase in the living room—that he’d read cover to cover, searching for answers. He’d come up blank, leaving only one logical conclusion: They simply had a particularly difficult child. Of course, that didn’t make him love Joshuah any less and wouldn’t stop him from doing everything in his power to help him lead a happy, healthy life. But excoriating himself all the while wouldn’t do any of them any good.

           “Don’t give me that look,” she said, scowling. “You know it makes sense, with our…history.”

           Yes; if she’d spoken the truth, it would make sense. He’d grown up in foster care, shuffled from hellhole to undeserved hellhole. Though her biological parents had kept her, she’d fared no better. She still shuddered whenever a man raised a hand or his voice. She had not seen or spoken to her folks in five years and had no plans to do so again anytime soon. He didn’t blame her.

           Perhaps, he thought, that had something to do with this. Her parents had, after all, primed her to blame everything on herself; to see, when she looked in the mirror, flaws that didn’t exist. She would have an easy enough time expanding that criticism to him, he supposed. But he wouldn’t allow her to suck him in.

           The waitress delivered their food. They thanked her but didn’t dig in.

           Once the young woman had left, he told Arianna that she shouldn’t play the blame game. He told her that some children simply went through rebellious phases, especially as they approached their tween years. She listened with eyes as dull as basalt, casting the knot in his stomach even deeper. When he’d finished, she said, “Kids are a product of their environment, Landon. Everybody says it. And what’s a bigger part of his environment than us?”

           “There’re other things that factor into it.”

           “But if we’re not a part of the solution, we’re a part of the problem.”

           He sighed, shaking his head. “What do you wanna do, Ari? Raise him like we were raised?”

           She winced. “No, of course not. But I…we can’t do this on our own. We need help.”

           “What kind of help?”

           She picked up her fork and stabbed a shred of lettuce. Turning it around like a parasol, she said, “You remember that show, Nanny SOS?”

           He did. Family can’t control kid, nanny comes, and poof, everything comes up roses.

           “I looked them up,” Arianna continued. “They’re not doing the show anymore, but they’re still available to hire.”

           He sighed. “Come on, Arianna. You know those shows’re fake, and those quacks charge a fortune.” Not even someone with a Ph.D. in child psychology could change their son’s behavior. As he’d learned, painfully, many times over, at the end of the day, one couldn’t force anyone to do anything. The intervention she’d suggested would waste time, and money. Money they could use for Christmas and birthday presents, classes, tutoring, or, further down the line, college or a car for Joshuah—all of which would benefit the child far more than a woman who scammed hardworking families for a living.

           “Well, what do you think we should do, then?” she demanded.

           “We just keep going. That’s all we can do.”

           “You know that’s not true. You’re just too cheap to—“

           “To hire somebody who’s not gonna make a difference? Yeah, I am too cheap for that.”

           Redness splashed her face, her eyes trying to drill through his flesh. But he hitched his chin out, mirroring her intensity.

           A vein in her neck twitched. “I think we’re done here.”

           “I think we are.”

           They flagged down the waitress. She eyed their untouched meals with genuine concern he found odd in a mere cog in the wheel and asked whether they’d found something wrong with the food. Cheeks flushing, he told her they hadn’t. He accepted her offer of doggy bags not because he intended to eat the meal later, but because refusing them would have made him and Arianna look even weirder. When finished packing them, he paid the tab and followed Arianna to the car.

           They didn’t speak the whole ride home, the air as stiff as graham crackers. Ten agonizing minutes later, they arrived, parked, and headed in. They found the living room empty, but, upon hearing the door open, Caitlin shouted, “In here.” They followed her voice down the hall, to the open door of Joshuah’s bedroom.

Landon’s lungs collapsed. He stared into the room, expecting it to, at any moment, fade and give way to what he knew really stood before him. He blinked hard. Yet, it didn’t happen. Joshuah’s bed had been made, the Ironman comforter and pillowcase as smooth as a cutting board. The action figures on his dark oak dresser stood in an orderly line. The toys that had previously littered the floor—more action figures, board games, Nerf guns, Hot Wheels cars, and more—had been returned to the drawers of the storage units on either side of the door; the clothes that had lain among them, to the closet. Neat as a pin.

           He stared at Caitlin, wide-eyed. “You cleaned?”

           “No. Joshuah did it himself.”

           He flinched, stumped. “Are…are you serious?”

           She nodded.

           Forcing stiff muscles to move, he gestured back the way they’d come. Caitlin rose, and she, he, and Arianna trooped to the living room, where he asked the teen, “How’d you do it?”

           Caitlin shrugged. “I mean, he’s ten—it’s not rocket science.”

           He felt as if she’d slapped him in the face. He wanted to run to his and Arianna’s room and dive into bed, under the blankets, where she and Arianna couldn’t see him. His cheeks and the tips of his ears screamed. But, simultaneously, a hope he’d thought lost tingled in his chest.

           Arianna paid Caitlin, and she left. As Arianna closed the door behind her, he sighed and pulled his phone from the pocket of his jeans. “All right,” he said. “What’s the name of that nanny from the TV again?”