Sunday night, Fiona was cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, and Michael was giving Charlie a shower. Google had led Michael to understand Charlie was a one-in-a-million kid in that he didn't mind bathing or showering at all, not even getting his hair washed. So showering Charlie was, to Michael's happy surprise, one of his favorite kid-related tasks. It was easy. First Michael turned on the shower in the master bathroom. While the water was warming up, he wet and soaped up his hands, then had Charlie stand perpendicular to him at the very edge of the shower stall, out of the stream, so he could wash Charlie's front with one hand and his back with the other. Then rub, rub, rub from neck to toe. The water was always warm by then, so Charlie would scoot under the water to rinse off and get his hair wet. Then he'd scoot back to the edge so Michael could wash his hair, then go back to rinse off, shielding his face with a washcloth. Michael's part of the whole thing took – no joke – 90 seconds or less.
Then came the best part. For the next five minutes or forty-five minutes – however long the adult wanted, really; water conservation be damned – Charlie would sit on the floor of the shower and entertain himself. Play, sing, look down the drain, splash – whatever. He was happy, so Michael and Fi were happy. And amazingly, he seemed to have grown a survival instinct; he never got up from the floor, so he never slipped. One day Fi brought home a little squeegee, and from that day forward, the bottom half of their shower stall was always clean. Charlie took his squeegeeing job very, very seriously. They learned early on not to talk to him while he was squeegeeing.
While Charlie was playing in the shower, one of the grown-ups would sit in the bathroom and relax. Read. Play on a tablet. Catch up on phone calls. They always had an eye on Charlie, of course, but they could do other stuff at the same time. It turned out to be one of the best parts of their day. Some days they fought over who got shower duty. Today had been such a day, and Michael had won.
See, Fiona had been silly enough to make a bet that her patience could last longer than Michael's.
They had been talking about it at brunch – trading war stories about past ops in which they'd had to be extraordinarily patient. Like once Michael lay on a rooftop for 34 hours waiting to take a shot with a sniper rifle. It was only supposed to have been for 10 hours, but a freak thunderstorm had prevented his target from taking his nightly nine o'clock swim in his private pool. The guy chose to stay in for the night, so Michael chose to stay on the roof an extra 24 hours. While being pelted with rain. And then, after the rain, mosquitos. That guy was responsible for the genocide of about 90,000 Africans, so Michael didn't mind waiting. Or getting soaked. Or blood-let. Got him the next night.
Fiona had once been responsible for the care and feeding of one of the IRA's, umm, guests while her, uhh, co-workers negotiated a deal to trade that guy for one of their other co-workers, who was a guest of some Brits in an undisclosed spot in England. Fine. Fi was her unit's go-to person for hostage-keeping because she was mean enough that she could keep the hostage scared enough without actually hurting him. And for various reasons, as a general matter the hostages couldn't be hurt. Also she was pretty good at home improvement tasks, so while her ward was locked in a bedroom somewhere, she'd unclog a drain one of her drunk co-workers had stuffed potato peelings down the night before, SuperGlue a wooden chair back together where someone had cracked it over another guy's head, that sort of thing.
But this guy was just a pain in the ass. For one thing, her fellow soldiers who'd grabbed him had done a piss-poor job and had managed to break the guy's nose. Which meant he could breathe only through his mouth. Which meant Fiona couldn't shove anything in his mouth to keep him quiet. She tried sedating him, but he had an allergic reaction or something and stopped breathing for a while, so that was out. So for nine days, Fi listened to this jerk sing God Save the Queen, Rule Britannia, There'll Always Be an England, and every other British patriotic song he knew.
At first she'd kept him locked in a windowless room, unrestrained. So he kept moving all the furniture around and/or upending it to create a constant cacophony of thumping. So she removed all the furniture. By herself, by the way, while he was locked in the closet. Then he kicked the walls. He lay on his back and just kicked over and over again with both feet. It took practically no strength and used even less energy. So then she tied him to a chair. He just hopped around in the chair all day.
Finally, on day nine, the deal was done, and Fiona got to get rid of him forever. She elbowed him in the solar plexus as he was leaving. Souvenir of his stay Chez Fi.
So anyway, she and Michael had been comparing capacities for patience when she decided to make it interesting, as they say, because she was jonesing big time for some competition. Since Charlie'd come to them, they hadn't been shooting or sparring or bombing or any of the stuff she's better at than Michael. She was getting itchy.
"I bet I'm more patient than you," she sing-songed.
"I highly doubt it," he answered.
"C'mon, nine days and I didn't lay a finger on the guy, let alone kill him? You don't call that patience?"
"Ever stayed still for a day and a half? While being drenched and eaten by parasites?" he countered.
"Well, I say we see who's more patient now. The winner gets shower duty for three nights," she proposed.
"Whaddya have in mind?"
"Whoever answers Charlie's why questions with the most real answers wins," she replied.
Charlie had recently – like on Wednesday – entered what Michael and Fiona learned was called the "why stage." Everything they said was met with why?. Every. Single. Thing. Each of them was usually good for an average of four real answers before just yelling "BECAUSE" and changing the subject.
Michael shook his head. "Too subjective," he pointed out. "Some of his questions are easy; some make no sense at all."
"Okay, three questions each then. We'll use the sum of all three," she suggested. "That should level things out enough. And both of us have to be around for the other's questions. Questions to us alone don't count."
"You're on," he said. "Remember when the stakes of our bets used to be a gun or a sexual favor?" Michael said, sighing. "Now we're betting to give a shower to a two year old." And they shook on it.
Fi tried to start a thumb war while she was shaking Michael's hand. Seriously jonesing for competition. Michael pulled away.
They didn't have to wait long to start.
They didn't even have to wait for the check.
"Whatcha drawing, Charlie?" Michael asked, looking at a sheet of paper covered in scribbles.
"Edwuhd."
"Oh, Edward. Looks great. I see you're using a lot of blue, since Edward is blue," Michael observed.
"Why?" Charlie asked, still coloring, not looking up.
"Why is Edward blue?" confirmed Michael.
"Yah."
"Well, a train has to be some color, so I guess the people who painted him decided they wanted him to be blue."
"Why?"
"Why did they decide to make him blue? I don't know. I don't know what they were thinking because I'm not inside their brains."
"Why?"
"I'm not in their brains because I wouldn't fit. And I don't know what they were thinking because in a situation like this one, we just don't know why a person chose to do what he did. There are lots of times we can figure out what motivated someone even if they don't tell us, but here you just can't."
"Huh?"
"Huh what? What didn't you understand?"
"Why boo?"
"We're back to why is Edward blue?"
"Yah, why boo?"
"Because he's not green or red or any other color."
"Why?"
"He's not green or red or any other color because he's blue," Michael said, exhaling deeply.
Fiona pantomimed banging a gong. "Four," she announced. "Okay, Charlie, let's go to the bathroom while Uncle Michael questions his judgment in battling me," she said, helping Charlie down from his chair. "And pays the check."
Fi got her turn in the car.
She and Michael were, well, they were arguing, but quietly and in more civil tones than usual. They'd gotten better at that since Charlie'd joined them. They were arguing about the best way to get home, because Michael and Fi had finally given up and become a 60-something-year-old crotchety couple. Charlie couldn't hear the venom spewing from their hushed voices until Fiona lost it and loudly invited Michael to bite her.
"No Teefee! We dohn bite," Charlie exclaimed, concerned.
Michael snorted.
Fiona turned around. "You're right, Charlie. I know we don't bite. I didn't really mean for Uncle Michael to bite me. I meant that – well, I didn't mean for him to bite me. You're right. We don't bite."
"Why you say bite me?" Charlie asked.
"Oh, it's just a silly thing grown-ups say sometimes when they're mad," Fiona explained.
"Why?"
"Why do grown-ups get mad?" Fi asked, trying to change the question.
"No," Charlie and Michael answered simultaneously.
Fiona punched Michael in his right thigh. "No? They why what, Charlie?"
"Why say bite me?"
The problem was Fiona knew that bite me was a crude derivation of eat me, and she knew what eat me meant. So the question was could she figure out some way, any way at all, to get out of this cleanly.
Nope.
"Oh, I don't know, Charlie. I just said it."
"Wow," Michael declared. "One real answer and you're done. That might be a new personal low. Do you feel the same embarrassment I feel for you?" he asked smugly.
"Charlie," Fiona said, ignoring Michael, "Uncle Michael told me he's going to go to the grocery store. I'm just going to go home to have a dumb old nap. Who do you want go with? You want to go to the store with Uncle Michael and get a cookie or you want to come home with me to take a nap?"
Michael set his jaw firmly and exhaled deeply.
"Uncuh Micuh Uncuh Micuh! Uncuh Micuh! I wahn a cookie!"
"You know, Charlie, I think Auntie Fi should come with us to the store. Wouldn't that be fun?" Michael suggested.
"No Teefee! Teefee's tie-uhd. You take huh home fuhst. She wahnsta seep."
"Yes, Michael, I really am very tired. Charlie, you're absolutely right. Uncle Michael should take me home first because I want to sleep."
"Okay, then, Charlie. We'll take Auntie Fi home. And then you and I are going to have to figure out some way to pay her back for her great idea!" Michael said excitedly. "We'll figure out the best kind of payback for Auntie Fi.
"Auntie Fi might want to sleep with one eye open," Michael whispered ominously.
So as of 12:30, the score was 4-1, Michael. Fi performed admirably throughout the afternoon in fielding questions about why there's no light switch to change the traffic lights and why people are the heights they are, getting all the way to 11. But Michael carried the day with a total score of 12 by trying to answer why a car engine makes noise and why yellow is yellow. And that is why Michael got to kick back and read the entire issue of the Sunday New York Times on an iPad in a steamy bathroom while Fiona cleaned the kitchen.
A/N: Just a light one for a little texture tonight. If you have any requests for situations you'd like to see Michael and Fiona in, either as teachers or as quasi-parents, let me know!