The Breakup Mix (13 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Grenade

Michelle

At the end of the day, my boss called me into her office. “Close the door, please.”

I felt my peanut butter and jelly sandwich twist in my stomach as my shaking hand reached to close the door. I took a deep breath and sat across from her. “Is something wrong?”

She looked at me. “I was about to ask you the same thing, Michelle. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but you’re short-tempered and irritable with the kids these days, and that’s so unlike you. I have had a few complaints from the other employees, but thankfully none from parents yet.”

I put my head in my hands and willed my throat to reopen. “Ever feel like you’re going insane, Cheryl?”

She chuckled. “I run a daycare. Of course I feel like I’m going insane . . . every day.”

“Am I too young for a mid-life crisis?”

“I don’t think age ever factors into that. I think it’s something we all go through at some point.” She leaned across her desk. “But you have to leave it at the door, Michelle. We all have things going on at home, and when we come in here, we have to set ourselves aside and be healthy, nurturing providers for these kids.”

“Sounds like my house,” I said before I could think.

She stiffened. “This is a hard job, Michelle, especially for parents. But, your behavior here lately is unacceptable and if it doesn’t change, I’m going to ask you to seek employment elsewhere.” She slid a piece of paper across her desk.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a written reprimand to go with the verbal you’re getting right now. You’re putting me in a very difficult position, because some of the complaints I’ve had on you borderline on verbal abuse, and if I’m ever investigated, I have to show that I’ve taken appropriate steps.” She handed me a pen.

“Abuse? Are you serious, Cheryl?”

“Yeah, I know, it shocked me, too. But I’ve watched you this week, and unfortunately I find the complaints valid. I want you to try to find that woman that started working for me three years ago and bring her back. This . . . this angry, sullen woman sitting in front of me is very different than the woman I hired.”

I groaned and took the pen. “I have no choice but to sign it. Guilty as charged, Judge!” I scribbled out my name and slammed the pen on the desk.

“Michelle,” she glared at me and took the paper. “This isn’t personal, but you are giving me great ammunition to make it that way. I don’t want to pry into your personal life, but maybe you could benefit from medication . . .”

“I’m already
on
medication, Cheryl. I just have a shit-hole of a life and can’t do a damn thing about it.” I stood up and grabbed my purse. “Are we done here?” I heard the blood rushing through my ears and felt my pulse in my eyeballs. It reminded me of standing too close to the speakers at Brandon’s gigs and seeing the speakers thump with the beat. Tears brimmed my eyes, and I was about one tooth-grind away from breaking my own jaw to keep them from falling.

Cheryl leaned back in her chair and stared at me. “You’re suspended. One week——unpaid. Get your shit together and come back in here with your head on straight. And I highly encourage you to leave this office and not say one more word if you want to have a job to come back to in a week.”

I stared at her trying to decide if I gave enough of a shit to keep this job or not. I stared at her bad haircut and long-overdue need for a wardrobe update. I saw myself in her. “That won’t be necessary, Cheryl. I quit.”

I glared at my coworkers as I left the building in a blur of swirling colors representing the levels of responsibility I’d just flushed down the toilet. My beautiful purple Del Ray, the serene-but-hopeful blue Martin, my stuck-in-gaming-land yellow Gibson. Mix that with the black-hole Brandon, and I’d just made a mess of our paint-by-number life.

I couldn’t go home. Not now. I couldn’t face my family and tell them I’d just quit my job and had no idea how we’d have groceries or pay the house payment. Dammit, I should have collected my check from Cheryl while I was there. Now I’ll have to wait until payday. I reached in my purse for my cell phone then remembered I’d dropped it under the seat this morning. God, can nothing be easy for me? Does everything have to be such a fucking struggle? I take one step in the right direction and get hit by sixteen Mack trucks with no concepts of brakes or steering wheels. Just splat! Deal with it!

I just quit my job. I just got written up for borderline abusive behavior toward three year-olds and my co-workers. I could see the headlines, now: “Former Sunday School Teacher Jailed for Arguing with Toddler.” Brandon is going to have a fit. I hope he enjoyed his blissful “me time” day off—pecker head. Cheryl wanted me to take a week off and be good as new. That’s almost comical to think about—one week off will just rectify everything in corporate America. Stressed out? Take a day off. Tired of struggling? Take a week, but make sure you come back to work with a new shiny smile and great attitude, and oh, let’s just add to your problems by withholding a week of income that will remove the food from the only room where you have a place in life—the kitchen.

I think I know why Britney Spears shaved her head. Only she didn’t nearly get fired from the lowest-paying, thankless job like I did. I looked in the mirror and tried to envision myself bald. I think I could pull it off. It would save me a ton of money on hair dye to cover the grey that Brandon so eloquently pointed out the other day.

I pointed the car toward the store; if I had to go home and tell my family I’d failed them financially, then at least I could do it while I handed out the goods they needed before the money ran out. I stared at the rows of cars in front of me and how everyone in life is herded by colors and lines. If you’re lucky, green is your ruling color; yellow throws caution toward you, and red just stops you in your tracks. Lines on the highway, lines at the grocery store, lines on your face, lines for a signature stating you’ve become unsatisfied in life and your behavior shows it, and if you ever mix the two phenomenon and fall below the red line in your checkbook, you’re pretty much screwed.

I bought more than I should have at the store, but I really didn’t care. Maybe I’ll put the receipt on Brandon’s hamburger tonight. That would be a great conversation starter at dinner. “Hey, kids! Make that deodorant last, because Mommy’s officially unemployed! Eat up! Pass the ketchup.”

It was nearly six before I made it home and walked into mass chaos. Del Ray was in mid-rant when she wheeled around and yelled, “Mom, geez, where were you? Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

My heart pounded in my chest. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe that no one picked me up from school and the door was locked, so we couldn’t get in the house after we all
walked
home?”

I glared at Brandon. “Where were you?”

He tossed the remote on the coffee table. “I had some errands to run! Where were you? We all tried to call you.”

Del Ray yelled at me, “You said we were going to the store after school today, but you never showed up!”

“I
went
to the fucking store, dammit!” I slammed the bags on the coffee table. “My phone fell under the car seat this morning, and no one ever calls me anyway, so I didn’t think it would fucking matter!”

“Michelle, language!” Brandon yelled.

I looked at the wide-eyed, gaping-mouthed faces of my children and hung my head in shame. I gestured to the bags. “Dig out what’s yours and I’ll put the rest away.” I walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Brandon came up behind me and slammed the door out of my hand.

“You and I need to talk. Bedroom, now.” He stormed off.

Maybe I’ll get written up for this, too. Maybe I’ll get put on a week’s unpaid leave from my home life,, then I can come back with a new attitude and fresh outlook on the same life I had when I left. Maybe that will happen. Sure. I shuffled down the hallway and closed the door to our bedroom. I crossed my arms and looked at everything but Brandon.

“What in the hell has gotten into you, Michelle?”

I walked around the bed and climbed in on my side. I clutched my pillow to my chest and buried my face in it. “I don’t know,” I mumbled.

He pulled the pillow away from my face and sat across from me. “Seriously, Michelle. What’s going on with you? You’re not even close to the same person you were even two months ago.”

I stared at his face, the same face I’ve envisioned shredding with my fingernails, and there looking back at me was my Brandon—the man who won my heart as a young boy, who bought me flowers (cheap gas station roses, but hey, they were flowers) every week while I was pregnant with Del Ray and sang to me from stage like I was the only girl in the room even though hundreds of other girls would have gone home with him that night. He looked at me with those eyes for the first time in years, and my dam exploded. I threw my arms around his neck and let go of months of frustration and misery. I envisioned each tear as a memory of wrongdoing that I was no longer going to hold.

He held me until my memory was wiped and pulled away from me to look me in the eyes. “I just have one question for you, Michelle. Just one, and I want an honest answer, okay?”

I nodded and wiped my face with a corner of the sheet. “Okay.”

He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “Are you seeing someone else?”

Out of the fifty questions that ran through my mind, that was the last one I would have ever considered. I chuckled at first then burst into laughter. I caught a glimpse of the relief softening his features and stopped laughing. “You were serious?”

He shrugged and smoothed the pillow on his lap. “Well, yeah, I guess.”

“Brandon, what on earth makes you think I’m seeing someone else?”

He twirled his finger in the air. “All of this . . . your outbursts, your dissatisfaction with the life we’ve worked so hard to build, your new fascination with the gym . . . I don’t know, I just thought maybe someone else had taken my place.” He choked on the last few words, which made my heart seize.

I put my hand on his face and made him look at me. “No, Brandon, no one has taken your place. I just don’t know where mine is anymore. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m a mess. I don’t know who I am!”

He sighed and looked at me. “You’re Michelle Morehead; wife, mother, employee, and you’re good at all of those things. You’re beautiful, smart, and a little quirky, but that’s one of the things I love about you.”

“Well, about that employee thing . . .” I turned my head. “I lost my job today, Brandon.”

He stood up. “What the hell? Are you kidding me?”

I held back the tears trying to form in case they needed to be a memory to release later. “No, I’m not kidding. I’m so sorry, Brandon.”

“What happened?”

My lip trembled as I lied, “Downsizing I guess.”

“At a daycare? They can’t do that.”

I squirmed on the bed and reached for the pillow. “I—”

“You’re lying, and I know you’re lying. Michelle, I’ve known you half your life.”

“I got wrote up for my attitude, and it escalated from there,” I mumbled.

Brandon sighed and threw his hands on his hips. “So this isn’t just something you save for home—you’re spreading your crazy all over your life, is that what I’m hearing?”

“I said I was sorry. I don’t know what happened. She was all up in my shit and I lost it. She tried to suspend me for a week, but before I knew it, I was unemployed.”

“Call her tomorrow and tell her you’ll take your week and see if she’ll let you come back. We can’t afford for you to not work right now, Michelle.”

“I can try to find something else.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, like maybe an office job or something at the bank. Maybe Katie can pull some strings and get me a teller job.”

“You don’t have any experience in any of that,” he snapped.

“Maybe I could look at taking some college classes?” I felt like I should welcome Brandon into my pity pool where he was drowning in my reality.

“No, Michelle, we can’t afford for you not to work, and I sure the hell can’t afford to put you through college when I’m trying to plan for the kids’ education first.”

“I’ll look tomorrow, Brandon. I’m really sorry.”

“You’re unbelievable, you know that? You act like your life is so freaking miserable, and you don’t really have that much to worry about, Michelle. Kids, house, and dinner—boom, that’s it, and—”

“‘That’s it?’ That’s it! Do you even hear yourself, Brandon? That’s a lot! And I work on top of it!”

“Correction—you
did
work before you flaked out and lost your job today.”

I flew off the bed and stood in front of him while remembering why I spent most of my time wanting to claw his eyes out and shove them up his ass. That look—that look of annoyance and boredom he gets when he looks at me—that’s what makes me want to barrel into him like a linebacker after the boy who took his girl to prom. “When did you get so pompous?”

“Oh, big word alert; you’ve been reading again.” He rolled his eyes and started toward the door.