Her function
The piercing screams of a two-year-old left in her playpen echo through the house. While her daughter protests, Laura holds her squirmy, ten-month-old son in her arms. Her cell phone, abandoned in the kitchen, bleats a variety of dire, work-related warnings.
Her husband is lying in bed, asleep.
“Honey? Are you awake?”
He snores and rolls onto his side.
“Hey, honey? I have a work emergency. Can you take the kids?”
Nothing. She re-positions the baby and nudges her husband. Gently. And then less gently. He moans and pulls the covers over his head, curling into a ball like a pill bug.
“Goddamn it,” she mutters, stalking out of the room.
Laura is on the phone with her assistant, who has apparently forgotten that he works for her. “No,” she says, “I can’t be there any earlier. I don’t care what the press guy is saying. They’re just going to have to wait.”
Her son, imprisoned in the highchair, slams his sippy cup against its plastic tray. Her daughter, still trapped in the playpen, rips the legs off a plastic doll. Her assistant begins a soliloquy that she’s heard several times before. “Gotta go,” she barks, disconnecting her Bluetooth and checking the bacon that’s just started to sizzle on the stove.
As she’s extracting a tiny, Barbie-sized shoe from her daughter’s mouth, her son throws his sippy cup onto the hardwood floor. The cheap plastic shatters into a zillion pieces, creating a spilled milk Chernobyl in the shape of a starburst.
She’s on her knees, mopping up the mess, when her husband walks in. “I think someone’s a little distracted this morning.” He saunters to the stove and turns off the heat under the now-charred bacon. “Tsk, tsk. That pig died for nothing. You obviously need some help.”
He gazes down at her from his height of six-and-a-half feet, shaking his head. His eyes are clear, and his face is smooth and well rested. She wants to tear it off. Instead, she stands, slowly.
“I could have used some help an hour ago, but you were sleeping.”
He shrugs in a way that suggests she’s wearing a straitjacket. “Well, I’m here now. What can I do?”
Laura is about to tell him, when her phone flashes again. She retrieves it from the counter top and scans a series of increasingly paranoid texts. Things are going from bad to terrible. It’s a code red.
When she looks up, her husband is frowning. “Do you care about me at all?” he asks. “Or do I just serve a function, nice, but not as important as your precious job?”
“I’m sorry,” she says, grabbing her heels from the playpen. “I’ve got to go.”
“What am I supposed to do now?” he asks, eyeing the messy kitchen and restless children.
“Perform your goddamned function.”
She is a short woman with messy hair and mismatched shoes in an elevator full of tall, silent men in black, immaculate suits. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to it, or the innumerable second guesses. I shouldn’t have taken this job, not when the kids are so young. No one can do it all. What was I thinking?
She takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. If she shows even the slightest weakness, they’ll take her down like a pride of hungry lions. And then she remembers: lionesses do most of the hunting. She ponders for a moment, and her lips form a small, wry smile. It still fits.
When the elevator doors open, her assistant, a decorated war hero, former Minority Whip for the Democratic Party, and certified pompous ass, is waiting for her.
“Madame President, you’re late.”
