They brought Ben home at night in a head-bandage, with instructions to let him sleep.
Cassie and Ian sat silently in their dark car. Fear and emotional exhaustion had left them trembling and vulnerable – and thus open to growth. Ben was passed out in the back child seat.
“We are not going to wake him,” said Ian decisively, rubbing his face, his stubble making sandpaper noises.
“What are we going to do?” murmured Cassie, closing her eyes.
“Well, for sure we’re not going to raise our voices – and if we have to stay out here all night, so he can sleep, so be it.”
“Look, one bad morning…” Cassie’s voice trailed off.
Ian turned to her, his eyes dark and unfathomable. “Are you enjoying this?”
Silence.
“No…”
Ian nodded slowly. They were both painfully aware that a negative answer to such an unspecific question was about as bad as things could get.
“This is what I’ve been thinking,” he said. “We’ve mostly been doing what everyone told us to do – our whole lives, maybe.” He held up two hands, a few inches apart, in parallel. “Like train tracks. And this is where we are.”
“Don’t blame others,” said Cassie automatically, then took a breath. “We should wait until we are more rested…”
“I actually think that’s about the worst idea,” said Ian shortly. “Then we’re back on the tracks, just chugging along, not lifting our heads to – look anyplace else.”
“Oh, stop being…” snapped Cassie, then bit off her words and sighed. “Go on. Just say it!”
Ian pursed his lips. Ben stirred in the back seat, groaning. His breathing slowed again.
Ian unlocked his phone.
“I did the math the other day…”
“Oh, God help us!”
Ian ignored her sarcasm. “Listen – you make 64k, 52 after taxes. We’re paying 17k for daycare – over 30 with the next one. More than half your salary goes to childcare, Cas. I added up the other costs – we’re spending about 15k on a second car, clothes, gas, insurance. Cassie, seriously - you’ll be making about 3-4 dollars an hour if we put the new baby in daycare. And – Ben brings home every disease known to God and man – and he has – temper tantrums… And today was really dangerous, Cas. If you weren’t known at the hospital, it could have… We might have been investigated…”
“Ian,” said Cassie with dangerously low patience. “My work is my identity.”
He scowled. “How the hell am I supposed to..? Sorry, I’ll be quieter. How am I supposed to negotiate with that? Like I’m supposed to strip you of your identity so that…” Cassie clearly saw her husband deciding not to end the sentence.
Cassie shook her head. “It’s what I do, Ian. I take care of people.”
“But – why is it better to take care of strangers, but humiliating to take care of your own children?”
“God above, stop putting words in my mouth!”
“Shhh.”
“Yeah, yeah… I never said it was – humiliating.”
“Yeah, true. Sorry. But me and Ben – we can’t compete with your work husband!”
“My – what?”
“Gary, you know. Every time he says ‘jump,’ you say, ‘how high?’”
“That is total crap – and you know it!”
Ian glared. “God I hate it when you say that! I don’t know it, Cassie!” He lowered his voice again. “He calls you in on the weekend, you go in on the weekend. He wants overtime, he gets overtime. When was the last time you said ‘no’ to him?”
Cassie pursed her lips. “That’s not the point…”
“You know, whenever you say that, I know you’ve lost the… plot.”
Silence descended on the car. A street or two over, the feral growl of a motorcycle woke some babies. Hungry dogs barked in its thunderous wake.
“I’d hire snipers for those jerks,” muttered Ian.
Cassie turned to him. “You stay home.”
Ian sighed. “Come on… I can’t breast-feed. I’m all taps and no plumbing. We need it for the bonding, the health benefits – everything!”
“So – I’m trapped,” said Cassie emptily.
He stared in shock. “That is a horrible thing to say.”
There was another silence. They both felt as if the car were slowly falling through the darkness.
Ian turned to Cassie and took her hand. He turned on the overhead light and leaned towards her.
“Look, Cassie, I love being a dad, and I know you like – love – being a mom. You are fantastic at it, when you get the time – but there is no time. You have to get up so early, and we have to get – you have to get Ben ready, then we have to get to work, and try to squeeze in some grocery shopping and bill paying over lunch – then we sweat bullets, fighting traffic to get to daycare – and Ben is all wound up and hard to – deal with. Then we fight with him over dinner…” His voice thickened with emotion. “And then we get a little bit of playtime before bath – and then we fight to get him into the bath, and then fight to get him out of the bath – and then it’s time to fight with him about going to bed… I just – it just feels like the whole day is a battle with him, Cas – and it’s not fair on the little guy…” A tear fell from his eye. “He’s just trying to – do his best, in a life he didn’t make. It’s breaking my heart, Cas…”
Her voice softened. “What if I pump? I could fill the fridge, fill the freezer…”
Ian wiped an eye. “Doesn’t that seem a little – weird? Our new baby being raised on frozen mommy milk?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be frozen when…” Cassie sighed.
Another pause. A distant siren whined like a wobbly mosquito.
Ian said: “What about… We could move to the country. I hate the noise we make in this townhouse. It’s not fair to our neighbours. It’s like living in a library…” He leaned closer. “I want us to design our lives, Cassie – not just obey them! And…”
“What?” she asked without emotion.
“I don’t know – I know you hate these men’s rights forums…”
“I don’t hate them, I just feel – displaced…”
Ian chuckled sadly. “Like me, with Gary…
Cassie snorted. “Move on.”
Ian shrugged. “Have you noticed – things being – missing, from stores?”
She blinked. “Well – yeah. Of course. I have to have a backup plan every time I go shopping…”
“Some of the guys on the forums – think that it’s going to get a whole lot worse, and that the city is the last place to be…”
Her lips curled. “So now we’re taking life advice from some randos on the Internet?”
Ian’s face was very still. “Civilizations last about 250 years. Where are we?”
Cassie shuddered. “I’m not gonna run into the woods because some stranger thinks the sky is falling!”
Ian stared at her for a moment, then sat back in his seat. He tried to clasp his hands behind his head, but the headrest got in the way.
“You know,” he said eventually, “when women went to work, all it did was drive down the wages of men.”
“Please God, I can’t take a lecture right now!”
“Quieter… It matters, Cassie.” Ian jerked his head backwards, towards his sleeping son. “I have to do something to help – build the kind of world that he can succeed in, because – things aren’t particularly friendly for men these days, especially…”
She stopped him with a gesture. “We’re just two people, two average people – we can’t change – much.”
Ian turned to her and leaned forward earnestly. “That’s true, that’s exactly right – we can only change ourselves…” He took a deep breath. “Please, Cassie – I’m begging you, at least consider it… Don’t think about me, don’t think about Gary, don’t think about now - think about Ben, ten years from now – or fifteen.”
He could see that Cassie wanted to react, to stop his words somehow, but that she was frozen, almost waiting…
“Please – think of Ben, in the future, when he asks you why he was in daycare – and these facts are going to get out, about how bad daycare is, you can’t keep everything hidden forever… What are you going to say, Cassie? Are you going to say we couldn’t afford it? We can. We can!” Ian’s eyes darkened. “Because I’ll tell you straight up, love: when he comes to me, I’m going to show him all the math. I am going to show him that you put him in daycare to take care of strangers for four dollars an hour. And that I did my very best to stop you.”
Cassie sat rigid, as if facing a firing squad. Even in the dark, her face was visibly pale.
“Don’t…” she murmured. “Don’t.”
Ian grimaced. “I hate to cause you any kind of pain, my love, which is why I am saying this! If you really think you can justify your decision to Ben when he grows up, then we will just – take our lumps. But think about that conversation, Cassie. Because it’s going to happen.”
Ian and Cassie suddenly felt the urge to crack windows – that they were breathing nothing but their own exhalations.
They both jumped when Cassie’s phone rang.
“Rachel,” she said.
He shrugged tightly, and she answered.
Ian hated the bright transformation in her voice.
“Rachel, hi, sorry about this morning, we had a bit of a crisis. Yeah, nothing – well, not nothing, but nothing that could be fixed in the moment… Ben had a fall, and we had to take him to the hospital… Yeah, he’s fine, but it was really scary… Sure, I will… Thanks. What? Uhh, she wants to talk to you…” said Cassie, turning to her husband.
“O – k…” said Ian, with the furtive expression of a man imagining he is in some kind of trouble.
Cassie put Rachel on speaker, turning down the volume.
“Ian, hi, so sorry to hear about Ben, glad he’s doing well…"
“Thanks… What’s up?”
There was a slight pause, and Rachel laughed tinnily. “Well, I hope you don’t mind, but Cassie has told me a bit about your – interest in men’s rights…”
Ian’s eyes grew darkly alert. “Uh huh…”
“And – well, I’ve been thinking about writing an article, and I’ve had a look at – some of the stuff online, and it all seems pretty horrible – totally unfair, I think… So – I was wondering if you could point me in the right direction for finding out more about this – movement. I mostly hate online research, so is there any kind of – meetup, or face-to-face group I could – look in on?”
Ian laughed incredulously.
“What’s funny?” demanded Rachel.
“Sorry, but…” Ian frowned, lowering his voice. “Look, I can’t bring a - reporter to a meet up. People would go nuts!”
“What? Why?” asked Rachel.
“Because – because of what you read! It’s all so – biased!”
“Well, I wouldn’t be biased!”
“I’m sure you’d try not to be…” Ian took a deep breath, shooting a glance at Cassie. “Look, I don’t know much about your career; we’ve kept things pretty – formal – which is fine – but this wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to bring a reporter in, and it always goes really badly… Rachel – look, there are a million topics out there. I don’t think this is the one…”
Rachel laughed. “You know this just piques my interest even more!”
Ben stirred again, and Cassie turned down the volume of the phone.
Ian shook his head. “I’m sorry, it’s just - really not a good idea. It’s kind of – an underground movement. No one wants to get doxxed or fired – or worse…”
“Worse?”
“One guy got swatted.”
“Swatted?”
“Yeah. Some troll phoned the police saying there was an active hostage situation at his address, and they – kicked his door in.”
“Whaaat?” Rachel’s voice was shocked.
“Yeah,” Ian said grimly. “It’s pretty high stakes, to be honest. And Cassie and I have a lot going on right now…”
“Yeah, of course,” said Rachel automatically, and they could both picture her scribbling furious notes. “But – is there anything I can do to change your mind? I really want to do this, Ian, it means a lot to me – and I will do right by you – you are my brother-in-law, the man who loves my beloved sister!”
Ian wrinkled his nose. “Okay, tell you what… If you can find three sympathetic articles – or at least articles that aren’t totally hostile – from any mainstream outlet, I’ll bring you to a meetup.”
“Three… articles. Mainstream.”
“Yeah.”
“That shouldn’t be – impossible. Unless there really aren’t that many articles at all…”
“Oh, they’re out there,” said Ian heavily.
Rachel’s voice was excited. “Okay, it’s a deal – thanks so much Ian! And let me know if there’s anything I can do for Ben!”
Without waiting for a response, Rachel whooped and hung up.
In the back seat, Ben startled awake and started screaming.
Next Chapter: https://freedomain.locals.com/post/3462116/the-present
