Anarchy of the Mice

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The house was a wreck. The family portrait at Niagara Falls—the only thing of the kids' father I had left up after the divorce—hung at a thirty-degree skew, and Game of Life money was strewn across the coffee table like the banker had sneezed before walking off in a huff.

It was seven a.m., and nobody was awake. I dropped onto the couch, adding my roller bag to the clutter, and for just a moment gave in to despair.

As if my meeting with Piper Jackson later today weren't reason enough to cry, now this. I couldn't keep leaving my children with Granny. There was a time when I would've come home to immaculate cabinets and vinegar-scrubbed toilets, but that time had passed. Every trip I took with the guys or the Mice was a roll of the dice—and with the Anarchy raging, one of them was bound to come up snake eyes.

Zach wobbled downstairs first, in boxers.

I hassled him into a hug and exclaimed, "I missed you guys! So, how was your week? Looks like you had board game night?"

He mumbled past to the kitchen and found cereal in the pantry.

I asked six positive questions before saying, "You might've helped Granny pick up. You and your sister are old enough now—old enough to be taking on responsibilities."

Zach raised a spoonful of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, watching milk drip through its grooves. "Um, who prepared this healthy breakfast? Pretty sure it was me."

Now Karen came prancing down in her Panda pajamas, hopping two-footed down the stairs. "That cereal isn't healthy. It provides zero protein."

"Says she who has no clue what protein is," Zack replied. "You're just copying Mom."

This was accurate—I had said that verbatim, several times—but Karen was undeterred.

"Just because it's a copy doesn't mean it isn't true. I want a balanced breakfast. Something with an egg in it."

"Yeah? Try eating a nest."

"Stop it!"

"Stop what?"

"Nests aren't food, you're making fun." Karen blushed fiercely and frumped her arms.

Now Granny shuffled in, slippers whooshing over linoleum. Her hair, up in curlers, had a new purple tinge.

"Whole time you were gone, it's been this." She flung a hand dramatically toward the ceiling. "At each other's throats."

Quickly Karen was tattling on Zach for sneaking out after curfew on his skateboard; he was needling her about how many Easy Reader books she'd actually read over the weekend, versus how many she'd been supposed to read; and I felt my sinuses start to throb like boils in the middle of my face.

I wanted to yell, "First time you see me in four days and all you do is fight, really?", but I restrained. I knew I should be thankful they were squabbling like this rather than joining riots downtown, or dealing with rolling blackouts, or getting kidnapped. They were still in the bubble of adolescence—a maddening place if you were stuck inside too, but better than the alternatives in today's world.

Badly as I craved sleep, I unpacked my roller bag and announced we were going to church.

"You're joking," Zach said.

"No joke." A jaunt upstairs produced a tie, which I tossed him, and Karen's favorite dress, which I laid over an arm of the couch. "I did a lot of thinking on this trip, and I want to rededicate this household to God. It's easy to neglect church when things get tough. But these are exactly the times we need Him most."

The congregation was sparse but spirited at Blessed Sacrament. Glancing up and down the pews, I felt cheered by the collective will. We'd all risked crossfire and highway IEDs to be here. We'd pulled pantyhose up weary legs, took the time to tuck down our collars. The simple acts of listening to a sermon as one and clutching our fellow parishioners' hands during the Peace felt like victories—small defiances we might stitch together and shield ourselves with.

I returned home feeling better. I couldn't control when the world tipped back to sane, or what Quaid had or hadn't done with Fabienne Rivard in Davos. ("Her style is very direct, refreshingly so," he had told Durwood during the debrief.) I couldn't make Zach and Karen appreciate how lucky they were to still belong to a family, imperfect though we were.

I didn't need to force these things. I just needed to keep going, keep giving my best.