there is no other place I want to be
Dec. 15th, 2006 09:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gone_byebyeThere are times when the good and the bad aspects of a job are the same. For Catherine, this most often happened when she tried to work from her home office rather than her architectural firm's building in Freeport. It meant she could be around her family more- which was good- but it also meant she had to deal with them being around her, which . . . well, was not always so good. If she had to work from home it usually meant that something enormous was in the works. The last thing she needed just then was to be interrupted for anything less than a real emergency. As she pressed the palms of her hands against her desk and counted to ten, telling herself not to go ballistic at Alex just because he was loudly sulking again, she heard the most wondrous of sounds: the front door, opening and then closing.
"DAAAAAD TELL JOEY IT'S MY TURN TO-"
"NUH UH, IT'S MY TURN, I FOUND THE REMOTE-"
Still the noise, still the chaos, but at least it wasn't directed at her. She could practically feel her husband's sympathy from the other side of the door as he deftly navigated the gauntlet of whining boys ("I have to hang up my coat") and made for the rec room ("If you keep this up another two seconds, I'm going to decide what you two watch, and you won't like it at all").
It occurred to her as the boys fell quiet that they hadn't been this whiny the whole time her brother had been working with them. That wasn't a thought she was really prepared for; she pushed it aside and turned her attention back to the-
"But Dad-"
"No buts! You had your chance, the both of you. Now sit."
"But it's the news! It's boring!"
"Look, I told you, if you two kept it up I'd choose what you watched. Boring is as boring does. Sit and watch and consider it your punishment for not behaving."
"But-"
"I said sit down."
. . . no, they'd definitely never needed to be told that many times.
"Joey, put that down right now."
"I'm not touching it!"
"I didn't say stop touching it. I said put it down. If your mother saw you doing that-"
She grimaced, eyeing the convention center schematics on her computer screen, but not really seeing them.
". . . sorry, Daddy."
"Good. Now." And the sounds of the evening news started to flow.
The boys had been sullen at first after she'd banned her brother from the house. Then they'd gone disobedient, and then whiny. It hadn't just been with her and Alan, either. Joey's teacher had reported that none of the other children wanted to play with him because he wouldn't talk except to complain, and Alex- well, Alex's teacher ha d been after her to get him checked for sudden-onset ADHD, particularly the H part. The hockey coach at Mennen had said the same thing. About the only people who hadn't noticed the change in the boys' behavior were. . . well, the people at the karate school. Sensei Chris and Sensei Darren weren't having any problems at all. Not disobedience, not aggression, not anything. They'd even gone so far as to mention Alex's attention to form and discipline several times since-
"CATHERINE!" Alan suddenly bellowed. "GET IN HERE!"
Alan never yelled. One of the boys must've done something really awful. She leapt from her seat immediately. As she arrived in the rec room, though, there was no sign of that. All the furniture was in place, nothing was broken, all the pictures on the walls were where they belonged. Even the boys were sitting on the couch, quietly wide-eyed, next to their father.
Alan gestured mutely at the TV with the remote.
"-not alone. The unidentified assistants, both human and otherwise, have been credited by the Ghostbusters and NASA alike with significant responsibility not only for the rescue of the astronauts, but with foiling a longstanding plot to hold Houston Space Center to ransom with explosives."
There was a text crawl that said something about the first successful orbital passenger flight by a private concern, which probably explained the strange red-and-white planes in the background, but she barely saw it. That was the President on the screen.
And Vice President Lewis.
And Richard Branson.
And her brother.
Shaking hands.
"Wow," said Alex, who was too raptly interested in the news report to turn away. "The Vice President looks an awful lot like Uncle Ray."
"DAAAAAD TELL JOEY IT'S MY TURN TO-"
"NUH UH, IT'S MY TURN, I FOUND THE REMOTE-"
Still the noise, still the chaos, but at least it wasn't directed at her. She could practically feel her husband's sympathy from the other side of the door as he deftly navigated the gauntlet of whining boys ("I have to hang up my coat") and made for the rec room ("If you keep this up another two seconds, I'm going to decide what you two watch, and you won't like it at all").
It occurred to her as the boys fell quiet that they hadn't been this whiny the whole time her brother had been working with them. That wasn't a thought she was really prepared for; she pushed it aside and turned her attention back to the-
"But Dad-"
"No buts! You had your chance, the both of you. Now sit."
"But it's the news! It's boring!"
"Look, I told you, if you two kept it up I'd choose what you watched. Boring is as boring does. Sit and watch and consider it your punishment for not behaving."
"But-"
"I said sit down."
. . . no, they'd definitely never needed to be told that many times.
"Joey, put that down right now."
"I'm not touching it!"
"I didn't say stop touching it. I said put it down. If your mother saw you doing that-"
She grimaced, eyeing the convention center schematics on her computer screen, but not really seeing them.
". . . sorry, Daddy."
"Good. Now." And the sounds of the evening news started to flow.
The boys had been sullen at first after she'd banned her brother from the house. Then they'd gone disobedient, and then whiny. It hadn't just been with her and Alan, either. Joey's teacher had reported that none of the other children wanted to play with him because he wouldn't talk except to complain, and Alex- well, Alex's teacher ha d been after her to get him checked for sudden-onset ADHD, particularly the H part. The hockey coach at Mennen had said the same thing. About the only people who hadn't noticed the change in the boys' behavior were. . . well, the people at the karate school. Sensei Chris and Sensei Darren weren't having any problems at all. Not disobedience, not aggression, not anything. They'd even gone so far as to mention Alex's attention to form and discipline several times since-
"CATHERINE!" Alan suddenly bellowed. "GET IN HERE!"
Alan never yelled. One of the boys must've done something really awful. She leapt from her seat immediately. As she arrived in the rec room, though, there was no sign of that. All the furniture was in place, nothing was broken, all the pictures on the walls were where they belonged. Even the boys were sitting on the couch, quietly wide-eyed, next to their father.
Alan gestured mutely at the TV with the remote.
"-not alone. The unidentified assistants, both human and otherwise, have been credited by the Ghostbusters and NASA alike with significant responsibility not only for the rescue of the astronauts, but with foiling a longstanding plot to hold Houston Space Center to ransom with explosives."
There was a text crawl that said something about the first successful orbital passenger flight by a private concern, which probably explained the strange red-and-white planes in the background, but she barely saw it. That was the President on the screen.
And Vice President Lewis.
And Richard Branson.
And her brother.
Shaking hands.
"Wow," said Alex, who was too raptly interested in the news report to turn away. "The Vice President looks an awful lot like Uncle Ray."
