A/N: Getting ready to go offline for a bit and reposting some old stuff to the archives that got deleted. Please review or I'll be lonely when I come back. This is a complete story excerpted/developed from an old/deleted unfinished novel I co-wrote with ICanStopAnytime.
Now that the first football season in Philadelphia was over, and what Dean Taylor called "the admissions season" was picking up pace, Coach Taylor was about to have more responsibilities around the house. Tami informed him: "I expect you to pick up Gracie from extended care after preschool, make sure she gets her homework done, and have dinner on the table when I get home from work."
"Do you now?"
"I do."
"So I'm Mr. Mom now?"
"You're a father and a husband who's home from school by 4 PM is what you are. It's time for some changes in the workload around here. A little more balance."
"Yes, ma'am. Can you pick up my suit from the dry cleaners on the way home from work today? I don't have a clean one for church Sunday."
Hand on hip. Eyes burning into his eyes. "Please tell me you're joking."
"It's three blocks from Breamore! It's completely out of my way. Especially if I'm running herd on Gracie!"
"Fine! I'll get the suit. But homework better be done and dinner on the table when I get back."
"Homework? She's in preschool."
"Welcome to the east coast, sugar." Then Tami was out the door.
/***/
When Tami got home that evening, her expectations were not high. She was already geared up for the fight over what he hadn't done. Gracie, she was sure, would be watching TV. Eric would be sitting at the kitchen table with his second beer of the evening holding his head in his hands because he'd have just fought Gracie tooth and nail over her math worksheet. At best there would be a frozen pizza warming in the oven.
So she was shocked when she found Gracie setting the dining room table. Tami walked through the open door into the kitchen, and there was Eric pulling real food out of the oven. The homework sheets were neatly completed and resting on the little table in the breakfast nook, the two-person one they rarely ate at.
She whispered, "Did you do it for her? The homework?"
"No! She did it herself. I sat with her. I helped her read the directions and questions so she could do the problems. Why do they give them homework before they can even read?"
"I don't know. It's the way they do it here. It's supposed to be an excellent preschool."
"Preschool or prep school?"
"Well she's in the transition class. They want her to get used to being in real school."
"She should get used to being a kid," Eric grumbled.
Tami was still awe struck by his calm demeanor. If he'd had the homework battle, why didn't he seem irritated? It didn't take much to irritated him. "She didn't throw a fit about it?" He shook his head and exited the kitchen and went about putting the meat on the table. When he came back in for the vegetables, Tami said, "She didn't get upset if you told her she got one wrong?" Because Gracie sure did with Tami, screaming - - "No! I meant to put a four! I did put a four!"
"Nah. If she got one wrong, I just said, hey, pumpkin, wanna look at that one again? And she would and then she'd correct it. It was fine. It took eight minutes."
When she'd done homework with Gracie during football season, while Eric worked late at practices and strategy meetings, it usually took Tami thirty minutes - - at least twenty of which involved tears.
Dean Taylor's mouth was open and she was walking from the kitchen to the dining room as if in a daze.
/*****/
The next day, Tami snuck out of work early. She parked on the street so Eric wouldn't hear the car pull up and eased quietly through the front door. She wanted to see how he did the homework. She just couldn't believe he could breeze through it in less than ten minutes with Gracie.
Tami heard their voices in the dining room when she came in and tip toed around and into the opposite side of the kitchen, which had two entryways, one from the hall, and one from the dining room. She flattened herself stealthily against the kitchen wall, just where it opened onto the dining room, and peered around the corner, where Eric and Gracie sat at the dining room table with Gracie's pencil box open and her worksheets spread out.
"How many oranges are in this box?" Eric asked.
He had changed out of his teaching clothes – he was in sweat pants and a white T-shirt. She kind of liked him in undershirts, though. Not to psychoanalyze it, but she thought maybe it reminded her that he was hers. Her man. Because it wasn't like he walked around in white t-shirts too very often outside of the house. It also reminded her that he was beginning to relax, because that's what he always switched into when he was ready to start winding down. And relaxation reminded her of bed. And bed reminded her of sex – and whoa! How had her mind gotten there?
She did not need to be thinking about that at the moment, because it was still a good four hours until Gracie's bedtime, but she'd been thinking about it a lot since her last birthday. A woman's libido, she was told, often spiked in her forties, while a man's – mercifully - started to decline, which meant, with hers on the rise and Eric's on the down slope, they were, perhaps for the first time ever in their marriage, actually on a level playing field. One day, if projections continued, she might be at a disadvantage and actually find him turning her down, but that hadn't happened yet.
"One. Two. Three," Gracie answered.
Eric watched her count, leaning forward, the shirt tight across his broad, masculine shoulders as - enough of that! Tami Taylor had a mission to fulfill here. A mission to see if her husband was really accomplishing with the homework what he claimed to be accomplishing and, if so, how. But he was cute in that T-shirt. The white set off how very dark his hair still was, which made her notice also how thick it still was, which in turn made her think of how much she liked to clutch those strands while he was – stop it!
"Good," Eric said, "now write that down."
Okay, Tami told herself. Stop thinking about Eric working his way down your body and instead observe. Because he had to be lying about the homework, right? He couldn't possibly be better at it than she was. She was the patient one. He was the one whose hair got set on end every time something didn't go according to plan. Not her.
"And how many apples are in this box?" he asked.
"One. Two. Three. Four," Gracie said.
"Great. Write that down. Now, how many is that altogether?"
"I don't know."
Tami smirked. It would all be downhill from here, she knew, because this is where Tami would say, "Just count them, sweetie" and Gracie would say, "I don't know how."
Then Tami would say, in a cheerful, positive voice, "You just count them. You already counted them separately, you just count them together," and Gracie would say, "But I don't know how," and Tami would say, still quite calmly, "But you do know how, sweetie. You just count the first box and then don't stop and keep counting in the second box."
Then Gracie would say, "But I can't!" and Tami would say, a little less calmly, with a little more strain in her voice, "Yes, sweetie, you can. Just try." And Tami would explain again about just counting the one box and the next box. And then Gracie would howl, "But I don't know hooooooow!" And Tami, in a more strained, commanding voice, would say, "Sweetie, you just count them." Then: "But I caaaaaan't!" And then, finally, at long last Tami: "Come on, now! Just count them why don't you!"
Tami waited for everything to fall apart. Eric turned slightly in his chair, so his back was less toward the kitchen, and she pulled back so she wouldn't be seen by him. There, with her ear to the wall, she could not see, but she listened. She heard her husband say, in a confident, persuasive, but calm tone, "I think you do know how, Gracie Belle."
A short pause and then Gracie's voice, "Seven."
"Well done."
"What the - ?" Tami leapt out from behind the wall and into the dining room. Eric looked up at her with surprise. Gracie looked at her with a smile. A smile smeared with chocolate from the Hershey kiss she'd just unwrapped and popped in her mouth.
"Oh, I see," Tami said. "I see. You bribe her."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Eric replied, placing his hand over the pile of Hershey kisses Tami had not previously seen form her angle.
"Do you give her candy for every single question she answers correctly?" Tami asked. "Is that why she only ate half her dinner last night, asked for three extra stories, and couldn't settle down until a half hour after her bedtime?"
"No, that's because she has a very alert mind, and I've been encouraging her intellectual curiosity and literary enthusiasm. Because that's the kind of excellent father I am."
Tami's gamut of emotions had gone, in the course of sixty seconds, from triumphant, to accusatory, to irritated, and now, amused. She laughed. "Oh, Lord, Eric." She laughed again.
He laughed too. "You want to finish homework with her, since you're home early?"
"No," Tami said. "You do it. I'm taking a shower." She strutted over, lifted up his hand, and claimed all of his Hershey's kisses. She scooped them into an empty basket that had been sitting on the counter and brought the basket with her to the bedroom. She put it on a high shelf in her walk-in closet and shut the door.
"Like to see him try to play the homework master now," she muttered before going to the master bathroom and turning on the shower.
THE END