Prequel to Evening in Paris - Tamar

(I posted Evening in Paris in October. You can find it if you scroll down our blog!)

I could never get used to the phone ringing in the middle of the night, but I did get to the point where I could sleep through the sirens. The former meant a trip to jail, maybe, or the hospital, or even to the middle of the highway somewhere, where my little red car was waiting for a ride home instead of a tow to the pound. A siren meant the police were once again bringing home one or both sons, and this was a warning sign that they had better get in the house or else.

I spent thousands of nights awake, from the time my boys were the cutest little bald headed people in the world, and they would sing me through the darkness with their needs. When they were old enough to sleep through the night, however, they seldom did. They sneaked out of their cribs in their fuzzy little footed jammies and headed for the kitchen, where destruction awaited in a jar of peanut butter, a pound of ground beef, or a box of rice krispies; or they headed for the living room, and assaulted our sleeping eardrums with the highest volume possible of late night paid commercials for choppers and diet pills.

When, surprisingly, they reached their tween years still alive and kicking, they learned to sneak, and the minute we heard the bedroom window squeak open, and heard the light fall of feet on the ground below, we knew we might at least get one good night’s sleep to make up for the hundreds we had lost over the years.

The first time they were brought home in a police car was a highlight in their young lives. The charge would have been loitering and disturbing the peace, brought about by the two of them knocking on the windows of Myrtle’s Sit ‘n’ Stay Animal Hospital ‘n’ kennels until all the dogs woke up and started barking and yowling. The boys added to the harmony with their highest pitched werewolf howls, the likes of which even Stephen King would never have imagined.

Since there was no physical damage done, but mostly because I answered the door wearing the smallest laciest piece of nightclothes I owned, the policeman decided not to press charges. After the boys were locked in the loft, which was the only place in the house that had no windows, he offered to come around regularly to make sure the boys were contained, and to see what other items in my wardrobe would greet him when he opened the door. I told him to push his eyeballs back in their sockets and leave before my husband dragged his ass out of bed. That was one pretty sight he would never wish to see.

My life turned into a nightmare. There was no way to lead my spawn in a straight and narrow path. I tried religion; somehow, the church burned down. I tried private school; somehow, all the teachers quit over a 3-week period, and there was a rumour the headmaster hung himself on a chinning bar in the gym. Then I tried homeschooling, but the little escape artists managed to play hooky more often than not. Since the local school was not prepared to take them back after the disastrous kindergarten graduation fiasco, there wasn’t much left to do. I decided I was indeed blessed with the children of Satan, and until he saw fit to take parental responsibility and at least use his weekend visitation privileges, my husband and I were stuck with a never-ending life of misery.

My husband actually took a positive attitude in the upbringing of the children. He was positive that evenings spent at Rocky’s Bar and Grill with a side order of stripper was the best way to pass the boy’s formative years. Often when he would stumble up the stairs after the bar was closed, he would meet the youngsters heading downstairs for a nightly ramble through a quiet unsuspecting village. Every morning before I peeled my exhausted body from the sheets, I prayed I wouldn’t find anything dead, bloody, or extraordinarily expensive in my kitchen.

So it was that I lived my life, until the evening I snuck two bucks from hubby’s pocket and headed to the corner store.