Page 67 of Where It All Began
“Oh, sweet Jesus.” For one shining moment, Phoebe felt a deep and abiding sense of gratitude that they’d decided to get one more year out of the hideous orange linoleum floor.
Forgetting about the older two non-puking sons, Phoebe grabbed Jax under the arms and put him in the sink. He went yellow again, and she had just enough time to hand him a soup pot to throw up into. The phone was ringing, and Phoebe gathered every dish towel from the drawer and sprinted for the puke pond. She tossed the towels down and snatched the phone off the wall.
“Hello?” she shouted into it.
“Is now a bad time?” her dearest friend Elvira asked. Phoebe could hear the smile in her voice.
“Why did you let me get married and have three boys? Why didn’t you tell me to buy a nice little cottage in the woods and not drive myself insane?”
“What’s that beeping?” Elvira asked.
Phoebe muttered a string of curses. “Just the smoke detector. I apparently just charcoaled dinner.” Her beautiful casserole, one of John’s favorites, was pumping black smoke through the oven vents.
She pushed the towels through Jax’s puddle and went running for the stove when it registered. “Oh, my God, Jax, why is your vomit blue?”
“Mama,” Jax wailed, hot tears streaming down his chubby little cheeks.
“What did you eat?” Jesus, did he find drain cleaner somewhere? “El, what color is drain cleaner?”
“Green, or yellowish green I think.” Phoebe breathed a sigh of relief and switched off the oven knob. “But laundry detergent’s blue.”
“Jackson Scott, did you eat laundry detergent?” Her voice was so high Murdock, covered snout to stump in mud, came charging into the kitchen from the side door. His fur was ruffled, ready to fight off whatever invader made his mommy scream like that.
“Mom, I saw him eating booberry pie upstairs,” Carter announced helpfully.
“Blueberry, honey,” Phoebe corrected him automatically.
“That’s what I said.Booberry.”
“Where did he get—” Phoebe turned in his direction and shrieked. “Beckett! Stop cutting your brother’s hair this instant!”
Beckett did a little dance and pointed at his brother. “Look, mama. We match!” Carter was indeed now sporting his own bald spot and lopsided bangs.
“Oh, shit.”
Carter’s little mouth formed a perfect ‘o’. “Mom, that’s a bad word!”
“Murdock, NO!” Phoebe’s scream was loud enough to be heard halfway into town, but it had no effect on the dog that made a beeline for the pile of barf and towels. “JOHN!”
Her husband, her hero, the man who loved her even when she was shrieking like a banshee, sprinted into the kitchen from the side door. The sloppy yellow lab hot on his heels. His entrance scared Murdock who skittered through the outskirts of the puddle, leaving puke paw prints in his dash, to the relative safety of the kitchen table. Phoebe didn’t realize she was still holding the phone, its cord stretched across the room. John didn’t see it either, and it caught him like a trip wire across the shins.
All six-feet two-inches of him went down in a heap. “Mother of God, what am I laying in?”
“What the hell is happening over there? Do I need to call Hazel?” Elvira demanded.
“I gotta go, El. John just fell in blueberry puke.”
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Ten minutes later, John stripped to his underwear was giving Jax and Murdock a bath in the sink while Phoebe worked the vomit and child hair and mud into a manageable pile. Carter and Beckett were sitting at the kitchen table eating cold cereal for their dinner. The casserole had finally stopped smoking on the counter.
“We’re going to need a new broom,” she said, eyeing the bristles of the one she held with the emptiness of a survivor going into shock.
“Do you remember your first summer here?” John asked as he used a dish towel on Jax’s head.
Phoebe closed her eyes and remembered it wistfully. “Just you and me. All those long nights and quiet mornings.”
“No one wanting to watch Mr. Rogers,” John continued.
