Chapter 6 - The Long Saturday Night
Hell, Carter realized around 6:45 PM, was not a pit of fire and brimstone. Hell was a suburban kitchen on a Saturday evening when six children realize their primary caregiver has vanished and the substitute teacher has no authority, no skills, and no idea where the spoons are kept.
The afternoon had been a catastrophic comedy of errors.
Carter had attempted to change Sam’s diaper, only to discover that changing an active, thrashing, teething fourteen-month-old was roughly equivalent to wrestling an oiled pig in a phone booth. He had somehow managed to get the adhesive tab stuck to the baby’s inner thigh, causing another twenty minutes of hysterical screaming. When he tried to clean the zinc oxide off the rug, he used hot water and dish soap, which only succeeded in transforming the cream into a permanent, milky latex paste that bonded instantly with the wool fibers.
Now came the dinner crisis.
"I’m hungry!" Leo wailed from under the kitchen table, where he had taken up residence with a half-eaten stick of butter he had liberated from the counter.
"What is for dinner, Dad?" Maya asked, sitting on the counter, her eyes wide and accusing. "Mom always gives us mac and cheese with peas on Saturdays."
"I will order pizza," Carter said, his voice trembling with exhausted authority. "A magnificent, large pepperoni pizza."
"I don't like pepperoni," Noah yelled. "It's spicy! I only eat plain cheese from the place with the red boxes!"
"I’m lactose intolerant, remember?" Liam snapped, leaning against the pantry door. "Mom gets me the gluten-free, dairy-free crust from the organic place, or I spend the whole night throwing up in the upstairs bathroom."
Carter froze, his phone hovering over the delivery app. He stared at his eldest son. "Since when are you lactose intolerant?"
"Since *eight months ago*, Dad," Liam said witheringly. "Did you think I just drink almond milk for the aesthetic?"
Carter ended up ordering three different pizzas from two different restaurants, costing him one hundred and forty-two dollars. By the time the delivery drivers arrived, the kitchen looked like an explosion in a nursery school. Shredded paper towels littered the floor, half-drunk juice boxes were tipped over on the hardwood, and the twins were both sobbing in high chairs, refusing to eat the cold crusts Carter desperately shoved toward their mouths.
"Eat it!" Carter begged, kneeling between the high chairs, his white polo shirt now stained with tomato sauce, butter, and baby drool. "Sam, please, just chew it! Look, it’s bread! You love bread!"
Sam sneezed, sending a spray of masticated crust directly into Carter’s face.
Carter closed his eyes. He didn't wipe it off. He sat there on his knees, his hands resting on his thighs, feeling a profound, terrifying humiliation seep into his marrow.
It was 7:30 PM. The bedtime process had not even begun.
In our home, the bedtime routine was an intricate, highly coordinated waltz that Elena had perfected over eight years. It required bathing six children in shifts, applying specific lotions for eczema, administering teething drops, reading precisely three books per child, singing specific songs, and managing a delicate psychological transition from daylight chaos to nocturnal peace.
Carter attacked this waltz like a man trying to defuse a bomb with a sledgehammer.
He threw all four younger children into the master bathtub simultaneously. The result was an immediate tidal wave of soapy water that flooded the bathroom floor, soaked Carter’s khaki shorts to the skin, and ended when Leo slipped, bumped his chin, and began screaming like a banshee.
By the time he wrestled pajamas onto four writhing, shrieking bodies, it was 9:30 PM.
He tried to put the twins in their cribs, but without Elena’s nursing and soothing presence, they treated their mattresses like beds of hot coals. The moment Carter’s back turned toward the nursery door, a synchronized, ear-splitting duet erupted through the baby monitor.
"Sleep!" Carter yelled into the dark nursery, gripping the doorframe until his knuckles turned white. "It is ten o'clock! Why won't you people just go to sleep?!"
From the living room downstairs, the sounds of Liam and Noah fighting over the television resumed.
Carter collapsed against the hallway wall, sliding down the drywall until he was sitting on the floor with his knees pulled to his chest. His hair was wild and damp with dirty bathwater. His designer clothes were ruined. His body ached in places he didn't know existed—his lower back throbbed from bending over the tub, his wrists burned from lifting the twins, and his head felt as though it were clamped in a steel vise.
He pulled his phone from his pocket. It had twenty-two missed calls from his friends in the fantasy football league, four work emails, and zero messages from Elena.
He opened his photos. He zoomed in on the picture she had sent him from the pool.
He looked at her face. For the first time in five years, he didn't see the woman who managed his house; he saw the woman he had courted in college. He remembered how she used to laugh—a full, uninhibited, musical sound that filled up a room. He remembered how brilliant she was, how sharp her wit had been before he slowly smothered it beneath an avalanche of domestic labor and selfish neglect.
*You're just always exhausted. You're no fun anymore.*
The words echoed in his hollow mind, rebounding off the walls of the messy, chaotic hallway.
May you like
"What have I done?" Carter whispered into the darkness, a single, hot tear carving a clean path through the dried tomato sauce on his cheek. "Dear God, what have I done to her?"
---
