Chapter 12: OrangeHotCouponMama

From where she sat at her kitchen table, Eileen heard raised voices and then silence. She looked up, as if she could better see, but the refrigerator door, partially open, and the mass of a moss-green couch blocked her view out the front door. She put down her scissors with a sigh and stood to close the refrigerator door. The heavy Velcro tape that was supposed to keep it shut had been pulled away again, and Eileen made a note on the list of jobs for Shannon to do next weekend.

From upstairs, Eileen heard a shuffling and then silence. She exhaled with relief, pleased that Ann had not yet woken. When she came down, ready for a cup of tea and Archway oatmeal cookies, Eileen knew that Ann would want to see the newspaper. Eileen took a faded paper from a stack she kept in the pantry and slid it into a yellow plastic bag.

“Looks new enough,” she said softly to herself, returning to the table. In front of her were stacks of coupons, those that Dylan had cut out the night before, and those that she added to the pile. Counting them quickly, like a dealer shuffles cards, she arranged them in stacks of 20 and paper-clipped each pile.

Then she typed a password into a laptop computer and clicked the keys rapidly. She clicked on a bookmarked site, typed in “OrangeHotCouponMama,” her username, which she admitted was a poor choice, and then DYLAN, her password. Once on the site, she clicked busily, stuffing coupons into envelopes and copying addresses from the computer screen.

Only when she heard her mother laboring down the stairs, did Eileen turn off the computer and stash the coupons in a drawer next to the stove.

“Hey, Ma, how was your nap?” asked Eileen, rising to put the kettle on the stove. “I’ll get your tea right away.”

“You don’t do nothing for me,” replied her mother, not meeting her eyes. “You never did. Look at what happened today. You called the fire engines to come and take me away and they almost did. The lady fireman told me so.”

Eileen closed her eyes and sent a brief prayer for patience to St. Anne, Mary’s mother, chosen because she thought a woman might better understand.

“The fire engines were here for our new neighbor. Remember Naomi? The one in the purple pajamas?” Eileen spoke slowly with the exaggerated diction of a preschool teacher. Indeed, she imitated Shannon when she spoke to her mother, and envied Shannon’s patience with the very young – she taught three-year-olds – and with Ann.

Ann sat in Eileen’s chair at the table and looked confused. From the stove, where she hovered over the hot kettle, Eileen understood. She lifted her mother by one arm and coaxed her to her usual spot, where she could see out a window.

“I need my news,” said Ann abruptly. “No one here gives me the news paper.”

“Here it is,” answered Eileen, handing her mother the yellow bag. She watched her mother slide the newspaper from the bag and look wonderingly at it. While holding the kettle with one hand, Eileen reached for the bag with her other.

Ann read aloud from the front page. “Economic numbers strong. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie expecting twins. Missing tanker found off coast of Venezuela. Good weather expected to continue through the holiday weekend.” She turned to see Eileen dunking a tea bag into a mug and asked, “What holiday? It’s not Christmas now.”

“Probably a Canadian holiday, Ma,” said Eileen, serving her mother tea in a blue mug and cookies on a flowered napkin. “I put an ice cube in your tea to cool it. Let me take the paper while you eat.”

When Ann passed her daughter the newspaper, Eileen folded it and stashed in the pantry again. She sat across from her mother and smiled at her. Ann looked down at her snack, raising her head only to say, “Shannon’s home.”

An instant later, the doorbell rang. Eileen opened it to find Shannon, laden with yellow ShopRite bags and Dylan’s green backpack.

“Sorry,” said Shannon. “My keys are buried somewhere in my purse. How’s Ma today?”

“Pretty good,” answered Eileen. “She should be almost ready for bed when I leave for work.”

“No bad news then?” asked Shannon. “When she reads bad news in the paper, she won’t sleep.”
“No,” said Eileen, reaching for the grocery bags. “I keep giving her last summer’s paper, just before fourth of July when there’s no news anyway, and she doesn’t even notice.”

“Dylan’s across the street with Rohit,” said Shannon. “There’s some other kid there too and they need help measuring. Some tension about metric to English conversion. Perfect for Dylan.”

Eileen nodded. Her son, who was picked up and dropped off in front of their house by a small yellow school bus each day, was a child for whom words were difficult and numbers made sense. Abstract ideas of joy and freedom eluded him; he lived in a concrete world full of numbers that were his companions, his friends. It was difficult for Dylan to fill the silence between people unless numbers were involved. Whatever the metric problem, she hoped it would connect him to Rohit, whom she knew as a patient and precise boy.

Considering Rohit, Eileen smiled at herself in the mirrored wall of the living room. She knew that most mothers looked for other qualities in companions or babysitters for their sons. If Dylan were different, she might encourage him to play with an athletic kid or a sci-fi aficionado. But for Dylan, precision and accuracy were valued qualities.

Halfway between the front door and the kitchen, Eileen could see Dylan’s dark hair and yellow shirt from across the street. He was holding a yardstick – meter stick, she corrected herself – and crouching on the ground.

“Ei,” called her sister from the kitchen. “Ma says you didn’t make tea. Did you? And what about cookies?”

“She drank the tea and probably hid the cookies,” Eileen called back. “Check the cushion behind the chair. I found some there the other day.” She moved closer to the mirror to study her short hair. What about red, she asked herself, like the new neighbor’s hair, or Marilyn Monroe blonde? What would they say at the hospital if I walked in with a whole new look?
Eileen stepped away from the mirror and smiled at herself. “Not today,” she said. “Not because I can’t, just because I don’t want to.”

“Hey,” she said, walking towards the kitchen. “Let me tell you about the fire truck we saw today. And wait until Dylan hears about this one.” Eileen knew that she could tell the story at least twice more before work and her mother wouldn’t complain. Like the newspaper headlines, it would be new again, every time.

Chapter 11: Love vs Sports. And the winner is...

Tuesdays, like this one, were slow mornings for Joe. He rose from bed after Cole was long gone to school, and made coffee in the kitchen. Joe put Cole’s cereal bowl in the sink and the milk in the refrigerator as he thought about his day. As a sportswriter, weekends were full of competitions and games. Later in the week, he had press conferences to attend – this Thursday he would learn which athletes were selected Prep B Conference First Team – and on Friday, he saw his weekly sports commentary piece into print. Joe knew that many of his younger colleagues at the Star-Ledger longer for seniority to relieve them of covering local sports, but Joe still attended high school games, and brought Cole along to scout the competition for Columbia High School. In writing, Joe described such meets, games and matches as “athletic contests.” He knew this was a formal term for sports writing, but he felt that it accurately described high school events, where luck and chance were as significant as any player on the team.

Joe had known snow in April that favored the underdog Piedmont High School track team, slow runners accustomed to rough terrain, and seen a powerhouse Seton Hall Prep quarterback derailed by the loss of a lucky sweatband. Like any serious sports fan, he appreciated the artistry of a well-executed play, but the athlete in him reveled in the joy of amateur sports, games played by kids who still knew how to play.

Still dressed in his robe, Joe walked to the living room and pulled back the curtains.

“What the hell is that?” he asked Daisy, who ran to the front door and barked at him.

“I’m guessing that you made your mess on the sunporch,” he said to the dog. “And that you’re looking for a meal.”

Joe patted the dog and looked out the window again. “What kind of project is that kid doing now?” he asked the dog, looking across the street at Rohit, now leaning on the side of the house staring into a wheelbarrow. He remembered science projects of past years and thought about the four rolls of toilet paper that Rohit had borrowed last night. Could this big pile of dirt and uneven rectangle be a school assignment? From what Joe could see, Rohit and another kid who looked just like him were spending a morning that most kids had school throwing yard equipment and dirt around the property. Now he watched as they began to measure the bare patch of earth.

“That’s stupid,” he heard Rohit shout.

“No, it’s metric,” replied the other boy, just as loudly.

“Metric is lame. No one uses it. How should I know how long a meter is?” Rohit threw a rake at the wheelbarrow.

Joe opened the door to reprimand Rohit or, more truthfully, to better listen to the conflict.

“Hey,” he called to Rohit across the street. “What’s all this?”


The boy looked embarrassed. “It’s a cricket pitch. Or it’s going to be.” After a long pause, he continued. “This is my cousin, Jairaj.” He turned to the other boy. “That’s Mr. Atkinson.

Jairaj nearly bounded across the street in his enthusiasm. “Call me Jay,” he said. “I understand that we have you to thank for the superior quality loo rolls that my aunt provided.”

Joe shook the boy’s hand. “Your cousin’s trying to brain himself with that hoe, it looks like,” he said, nodding in Rohit’s direction.

“He may prefer not to discuss lavatory issues,” said the boy in a whisper that carried across the street. “Do you play cricket?”

Joe nodded. “Let me get dressed and come over there to see what you’re doing.” He closed the door on Jay’s enthusiasm and walked up to his bedroom. He picked up yesterday’s jeans from the floor, pulled the belt from his straps and heard the thud of his Blackberry hit the carpeted floor.

When he picked it up, Joe turned it on to hear a series of noises, ping, ping, ping. He looked at the email log. You have a message from Match.com read a list of emails. He scrolled down further to see more of the same.

“Holy…” he said aloud, sitting on the edge of his bed in surprise. 172 messages. He clicked on the first, then another and another. He found messages from 172 women, women who collected Lucille Ball stamps and stock options; who played tennis and poker; who worked in finance and family farms. The emails were a virtual catalog of women, a collection of talent and beauty and, above all, thought Joe, words. He wondered how many words had been spilled in response to his advertisement, and he wished briefly that he had seen Cole’s final draft.

He heard the sound of raised voices again from the street. For an instant the pull of women competed with a sport. Joe pulled on his jeans and a t-shirt and switched off the Blackberry.

“Daisy, we’re going out, across the street,” he called, as he and the dog left the house, pulling the door closed behind them.