Band-Aids

“Mama!” a howl came from a different room. Jenny was running around upstairs, trying to block out Daniel’s cries and Carrigan’s pestering. Every thought that entered her head was immediately pushed out and she couldn’t focus on a single thing she was thinking about.

“What, Daniel?” she yelled strained as she flipped through her sheet on the bed and dug through the mess of pillows.

Jenny continued sifting through the mess of covers and crap on her bed, throwing blankets in different directions and tossing objects on the carpet. “Damn it,” she muttered when a pillow knocked her bedside lamp over.

She had been searching for Carrigan’s backpack for an hour at minimum. Carrigan’s backpack had everything she and Daniel needed for daycare. It was also simply an item that Carrigan loved having with her. It was always brought along everywhere because of the supplies, convenience and entertainment value inside.

Jenny gave up searching her room for the fifth time and crossed the hall to hunt through the kids’ room for what seemed for the tenth time. As she scurried around the room, rummaging through the toy boxes and tossing clothes around in the closet, her impatience was at zero. She knew she had to get the kids to daycare in couple minutes and she hadn’t looked in the mirror once or changed Daniel out of his footie pajamas.

Jenny’s sweatpants pooled around her feet and a couple strands of her dirty blonde hair fell in her face. When she tried to tuck the piece of hair behind her ear, she tripped on Daniel’s dump truck and stumbled on her long pants and fell down with a loud thump.

“Damn it!” Jenny was about to burst. Her irritation couldn’t be worse and she was stressing out over her head. She didn’t know how she could keep doing this everyday. She needed help. Jenny had been doing this for the longest time but she didn’t how much longer she could last with just herself trying to take care of two kids.

Jenny took a giant calming breath and tried to settle. She picked herself up off the ground and limped around for a couple seconds to walk off the fall. She rushed over to the two beds, returning back to the dash of earlier, and shuffled through the mess of the unmade beds to continue the hunt.

She heard Daniel blubber something she couldn’t make out and let out a frustrated sigh. Daniel’s cries became louder so Jenny gave up her search and ran down the stairs to see what was going on. When she reached the bottom she looked over to the living room. Carrigan had dug out all of the toys from the toy box and had abandoned them and was coloring in one of the coloring books with crayons sprawled out all over the carpet.

“Carrigan, what are you doing?” Jenny ran her fingers through her bed head and put her hands on her hips, exhausted. She had been running around all morning and the kids weren’t making it any easier.

“Did you find my backpack?” Carrigan’s high-pitched voice posed.

“No, honey. I can’t find it anywhere.” Jenny was about to explode. With Daniel’s screams, Carrigan making a huge mess and the clock running down, Jenny needed to get the kids off to daycare so she could get ready and go to work.

“But…I need it!” Carrigan protested.

“I know, I know. I’ll keep looking alright?” Jenny walked over to the empty box of Lincoln Logs and tried tidying up a bit. The place was a disaster. In the midst of all her searching, Jenny had been trying to pick up little messes as she ran around, like sticking a plate in the dish washer or picking up a pillow and putting back on the couch and then got back to looking. It just added to the chaos. “But if I can’t find it in the next five minutes, you’ll have to go without it, okay?”

Jenny didn’t know another place to look; she had looked all over the house at least five times. Another couldn’t hurt. She strode into the kitchen to look for Carrigan’s My Littlest Pony backpack. Where could it be? A tiny blue backpack with pink straps and sparkly ponies on it shouldn’t have been that hard to find.

She thought back to when they used the backpack last. Yesterday, her friend Nora was over all day and they kids didn’t leave the house. The last time she used the backpack to carry things was Saturday when they went to the dentist and then sledding. She could have sworn she left the dentist with it. Jenny groaned inwardly; she couldn’t remember bringing it home from the sledding hill.

“Okay, kiddos,” Jenny said over Carrigan’s fake car sounds and Daniel’s loud tears, “Are you ready to go to?”

“No! I don’t have my backpack!”

“Carrigan, honey, I can’t find your bag. I looked everywhere.” Carrigan pouted her tiny lips and Jenny bent down and ran her fingers through Carrigan’s blonde curls. “But I’ll try looking for it more after you two are at daycare. Does that sound alright?”

The little girl looked down at her feet and nodded slowly.

“Okay!” Jenny clapped loudly to get her going. “Carrigan, find you coat and shoes and I’ll get Daniel changed, then we’ll go.”

Jenny did a once over of the kids. Carrigan’s clothes were thrown on messily due to the fact Carrigan got dressed without Jenny knowing and Daniel’s hair still hadn’t been combed through.

“Ready to go?” Jenny stood up from zipping up Daniel’s jacket and pulling his hat down snug on his head. Carrigan nodded firmly and Jenny directed them out the door in a big pile of turmoil.

Quiet.

That was the first thing noticed when Jenny walked back in the house.

She immediately slipped off her snow covered boots and stepped over a couple of puzzles and dolls to throw herself down on the couch.

“Uhhh….I can do this, I can do this,” she muttered to herself. Stress was bubbling up inside. It was only Monday. Jenny stayed lying on the couch for a couple minutes, listening to the empty noise. One minute there is squealing and crying, running and complaining, but the next there is nothing. There was no middle.

Needing to be at work at ten, Jenny had an hour and a half to clean the house and get ready for work. With that thought hitting her, she picked herself up and went up to her destroyed room to shower.

Dressed in flattering jeans and a plain white tee, knowing she’d put on her vest when she got to work, Jenny was ready for work. Her blonde hair was never worth the time because it always ended up doing what it wanted in the end anyways, and that was messy waves.

She put her room back in order and then went back to the bathroom to tidy up. Once she was done, she leaned over the counter and stared at herself in the mirror.

Her naturally bronzed skin radiated off the complementing bathroom lighting and her button nose scrunched as she looked over herself. Jenny didn’t have a problem with herself, in fact, she thought she was pretty. She wasn’t one of those girls that had to doubt themselves. There were qualities that Jenny knew were good, and of course there were some that weren’t so great, but she didn’t let it get to her.

But her eyes. That was the exception. They were completely proportional to her face: in balance and symmetrical. But that wasn’t what got her. It was the color. Blue, teal, green, aqua and gold swirled, making her eyes look like kaleidoscope. But only one. Her left was the defect. Her left eye swirled blue, teal, green, aqua and gold but only half. The rest of her cornea was brown. Just brown.

To everyone else, Jenny’s eyes were gorgeous and they loved them. To Jenny, it was just another thing to be self-conscious about. As if trucking around two kids and being single wasn’t enough, whenever people looked at her, all Jenny thought about was how they were probably staring at her abnormality. If the things she carried around didn’t show people she wasn’t perfect, her eye, something she was born with, got the point across. It was like imperfection was given to her at birth. She would never escape or grow out of it.

Of course, Jenny was too hard on herself and was self-conscious. She had had plenty of people tell her it was fine, but she never believed them.

At the sound of the phone ringing, Jenny was forced to tear her eyes from judgment and run down stairs. Her brother usually called around this time and she was looking forward to talk to Mark. Skipping the last three stairs, she rounded the corner into the kitchen, but when she laid eyes on the kitchen clock, she knew she would have to let the answering machine get it and call him back later.

Plates and silverware littered the counters and mail scattered about the kitchen. Jenny took a big breath and got to organizing and washing.

“Hey it’s the Moffat’s. Leave a message!” the sound of Jenny’s voice sounded from the voice message system followed by a soft beep. Jenny was fully expecting a wacky greeting from Mark that would make her smile, but she was taken off guard by a new voice.

“Hey Jenny, it’s uh...it’s Alex. Alex from the dentist and sledding?” he cleared his throat nervously. “Well I hope I got the right number…I found Carrigan’s backpack by the bench after you left Saturday. It had a number on the strap…so yeah…I uh, I called it. Well I’m calling it now…which you obviously know since you’re hearing this message…or will hear it I guess…but when you’re listening to it, it will be the present…but not…for me… Anyways! Well I guess it might not be Carrigan’s…In that case…whoever this is, uh, I have your pony backpack…”

Jenny caught herself smiling and even chuckling a little at how ridiculous Alex was sounding. She figured she’d let him sweat a little more before picking up the phone.

“And if you aren’t missing a pony backpack…well actually you are because you wouldn’t have put your phone number on the strap…unless you were just sick like that. In that case, seriously? That’s just sick and wrong in so many ways. I don’t even know what that would do for you.

“Anyways, Jenny, if this is even Jenny……I don’t even know. I’ve confused myself. Call me back because I have your back pack and--”

“Alex?” Jenny smiled into the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hey Alex, it’s Jenny.”

“Oh, hey!” Alex loosened up after hearing Jenny’s voice, knowing he hadn’t made a complete fool out of himself.

“Um, so you’re the one who has Carrigan’s backpack, huh?”

He laughed, “Indeed I do. Rian actually found it lying by the bench after you left.”

“Oh gosh, you have no idea how much of a relief this is. Carrigan has been driving me crazy and I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

“That’s because I have it.”

“I guessed that much,” she smirked. “I’m going to be headed to work soon. Do you mind if I swing by your house later when I’m headed to pick up the kids and get it? I’ll just leave work a little early.”

“Well…I could drop it off for you. I wouldn’t want you to go out of your way.”

“I think you dropping it off is going a lot more out of the way than me swinging by..”

“No really, it’s the least I can do. Plus, I need to get out of the house. You have no idea how bored I am. I have nothing to do.”

“Well…I guess if you really want to…”

“Yes! Please!”

Jenny laughed, surprised Alex would do something so generous for her. Alex was just excited to get out of the house for a couple minutes. He had already unpacked and taken care of everything that needed attending to after his long tour. Rian, whom he lived with, was off visiting some family and friends, so Alex was stuck at home.

After giving him her address, Jenny and Alex said their goodbyes. Giving a quick farewell to his dog, Alex slung the tiny backpack over a shoulder and headed to his truck.

A couple minutes later, Alex was taking unfamiliar turns through Jenny’s neighborhood, surprised that Jenny’s house was so close. The neighborhood looked nice; most all of the houses were small, with a maximum of two stories. Once he laid eyes on the numbers that matched the messy scrawl on his paper, Alex pulled into the small driveway with a white house towering above him.

With a squirmy feeling in his stomach, Alex jumped down from the truck and trudged up the icy sidewalk. He wasn’t really sure why he was feeling so nervous. He had talked to Jenny more than three times and spent time with her family. It wasn’t like he was meeting someone for the first time; he knew what to expect.

“Hey Alex,” Jenny said excitedly after she opened the door. Alex smiled back and stepped in the door. Her jeans fit around her curvy hips perfectly and her plain white t-shirt and light make-up made her seem so natural, in a good way. “Thank you so, so much for dropping this off! You have no idea how much we have missed and needed this damn thing.” Alex chuckled at her buoyant attitude, surprised to see her so cheery, so early.

He detected the distress in Jenny’s voice. “Hard couple days?”

She threw her blonde head back tiredly. “Ugh. You have no idea. Taking care of the kids by myself is draining. This week especially.”

“Is dad out of town or something?” Alex asked curiously.

Jenny tucked one hand in her front pocket and the other started to scratch the back of her neck. Alex knew immediately he brought up an uncomfortable topic because her mood completely changed. “Umm…he’s not really around,” she said shyly.

“Oh, Jenny. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to--”

Jenny shushed him by putting a hand on his shoulder. “Alex, you didn’t know. Don’t worry about it.” She smiled and Alex shyly smiled back, still ashamed at his stupid statement. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, revealing her mismatched eyes.

Alex found himself staring a little too long. Her eyes were brighter than he remembered. “Right,” he said hurriedly. “Well, here’s the backpack.” He slipped it off his shoulder and handed it to Jenny.

“Thank youuu,” she sang. Alex was surprised at how different she acted when she didn’t have to be the mother figure in front of her kids. She acted like a regular 20 year old. He liked it.

“You’re very welcome, Jenny.” Alex ruffled his hair and fixed his bangs. “I better let you get to work. You need to go soon, yeah?”

She nodded and checked the time on the wall. “Yeah, I actually should get going now. But Alex, thank you so much for bringing this over. Carrigan will be so happy.”

“Aw Carrigan and Daniel. Tell them I say hi.” Jenny slipped her right arm through her jacket and struggled with her left arm until Alex helped her out. She smiled in appreciation.

After locking up the house, Alex and Jenny walked out together into the chilly winter air. They were in the middle of a laugh but they had been laughing for the last ten minutes at Alex’s tour stories.

“Well thanks for keeping me entertained this morning,” Alex said warmly and unlocked his door.

“Thanks for bringing over Carrigan’s stuff.”

There was an awkward silence where they didn’t know how to say goodbye. Finally Alex held his arms out impulsively. Jenny walked into them bashfully and gave him a warm hug.

“I hope I see you later, Jen,” Alex said raspy. The way those words sounded coming out of his mouth made him poignant. “Don’t forget to say hi to Carrigan and Daniel for me. Don’t. Forget.”

Jenny laughed hesitantly, not sure what to say. Alex hopped up in the cab of his pickup truck and waved goodbye. Jenny waved back bitter sweetly. As he drove off, he felt strange. He felt like he had some connection to Jenny and her family. There was so much he didn’t know, but he assumed so much about her that he felt like he was a part of her. He decided he was going to see her again.