Who: Beau Waites and Joel Kulseth Where:The Waites’s house When: 10/8, early evening What: Joel stops by the Waites’s new home to pick up his daughter after a Beau and Mariah approved playdate. Much fatherly bonding ensues.
I guess we’ll never know what Harvard gets us But seeing my family have it all Took the place of that desire for diplomas on the wall And really, I think I like who I’m becoming...
How did they still have so many moving boxes? Beau felt like he’d done nothing but unpack in the three days since they’d moved. No matter how many cardboard boxes Beau opened and emptied, it didn’t seem like there were any less of them littering the rooms and halls of the Waites’s new home. His secret theory that the boxes were somehow replicating themselves didn’t hold water, though; each one he opened held different, poignant memories of the Waites’s life from Chicago. Still, no matter how many tchotchkes, knick-knacks and toys he pulled out and found homes for, the house seemed still seemed so empty somehow. Beau knew that probably had more to do with his own sense of loss rather than the amount of belongings they had brought with them but he didn’t have time to think about that right now.
A peal of girlish laughter carried down the stairs to Beau’s ears. He smiled; maybe the house didn’t seem so empty after all. Brianna had made fast friends with some of the girls in her class on her very first day of classes. His nine year old had come home absolutely filled to the brim with stories of what Kaisha had done, or what Mia had said, or who this child was and what they liked to do. Beau had been so relieved that his middle child was acclimating to the move, even if the oldest was still grumpy about it. The second day of school had gone equally well for Bree; so much so that later that evening he received a phone call from a lovely woman named Mariah, who was Bree’s new friend Kaisha’s mother. Knowing Bree was new to town, she asked if Beau would be comfortable with a play date between the two girls, to which Beau readily agreed. More than a little grateful for the woman’s kindness and generosity, Beau offered to have the girls play at their new house, which Mariah accepted.
The two girls been upstairs for a couple of hours now and the few times Beau had checked in on them they had been playing with Bree’s toys and chattering away like they’d been friends forever. Beau turned and grinned at his youngest child, Lucinda, who was helping him unpack. His four year old’s idea of unpacking, however, was taking a few of the neatly folded bath towels he had pulled out of one of the boxes labeled “bathroom” and arranging them about her shoulders, head and waist in a majestic outfit of her own making.
“Madam Waites, your outfit is stunning,” Beau exclaimed to his youngest. “You must tell me who the designer is.”
Lulu giggled. “Daddy, it’s me,” she replied, in the amused, exasperated way children have, before turning in a slow circle. The towel fitted as a cape slipped off and Beau picked it back up and affixed it around her shoulders with a tie to the ends.
“Silly me, how could I have ever mistaken this beautiful work for anyone else's? You’ll have to design an outfit for me later.”
Lulu nodded enthusiastically and began to rummage through the rest of the towels, presumably to find the perfect material for her daddy’s new look. His daughter was pawing through the second box of towels when Beau heard a perfunctory knock at the front door.
“Sounds like Kaisha’s daddy’s here,” Beau said aloud, more for his own benefit than Lu’s, who was too engrossed in her current objective to pay him much mind. Beau stood and, after stretching his long legs, peered through the peephole to see a man resembling Kaisha standing on the threshold. He opened the door.
“You must be Joel,” Beau said, smiling warmly. He stuck out a hand for the man to shake. “I’m Beau, Bree’s dad. And that’s Lu. Lucinda, can you say hi to Kaisha’s daddy?”
Lu, who had added another towel to her own outfit and resembled a mummy more than his daughter at this point, waved distractedly.
Joel hadn’t actually known about Kaisha’s playdate until Mariah had called him from her office, asking if he could pick their daughter up because there was just no way that she was going to be able to sneak out to do it. He’d been given a short briefing on the who, what, where and when, but Mariah had had that tone in her voice that told him she just couldn’t spare any more seconds so he hadn’t asked for more than that.
“I am,” Joel replied as he shook the hand that had been offered and tried to hold back his laughter at the half-hearted hello from the preschooler, Lu. It was almost a relief to be greeted as something other than Chief. “It’s nice to meet you.” He’d been suspicious -protective tendencies die hard- of his wife letting Kaisha hang out with a new girl from school, but so far Beau Waites hadn’t pinged any of the usual things that made that suspicion valid.
He had noticed the boxes pretty quickly when Beau opened the door, but they only made sense since Mariah had mentioned in her very short briefing that the Waites had only moved into the city in October.
“I hope Kaisha behaved herself.” He hadn’t actually seen his daughter yet, so there was always a chance that she was terrorizing another part of house with Beau’s daughter, Bree.
“Are you kidding me?” Beau laughed. “If anything, I hope her good manners rub off on Bree.” Beau had found Kaisha to be a polite and agreeable girl and was more than a little relieved his daughter had made friends with someone sweet. Considering how nice Mariah had been, and the congenial vibes Joel was giving off, it wasn’t a fluke that Kaisha had turned out so great. He stepped aside, opening up the threshold so Joel could enter. “Come on in. Something tells me it’s going to take a few minutes of cajoling for the girls to get around.”
Beau was slightly embarrassed by the mess of the move but something told him Joel wasn’t going to hold it against him too much. Beau stood at the bottom of the stairs, his hand on the banister.
“Bree, Kaisha’s dad is here! How ‘bout you two start thinking about wrapping it up so they can get home for dinner?”
A preoccupied, giggly, “Mmmkay!” floated down to the two dads and Beau turned to Joel. “Wow, I’m kind of surprised I got an answer at all. When I checked in on them it was hard to get a word in edgewise.”
He inclined his head toward the kitchen. “You want a cup of coffee while we wait? I got decaf, too, if it's too late for regular. To be honest, it’s probably the only thing I have fully set up and ready to go at this point. I think the list of unpacking priorities went coffee pot, every toy the kids own, and everything else at a very distant third.”
“Yeah, I’ll take a cup. You can go ahead and make it caffeinated. I’m a cop, it’ll barely make a dent,” Joel told Beau with a self-aware quirk of the mouth. Beau’s eyes grinned back and nodded; cops, like teachers, were often sleep deprived and could guzzle back caffeine like champs. A look of commiseration passed between them. Joel knew the stereotypes. He knew all the stereotypes, and still managed to embody of a few of them despite that. He stepped around a few boxes on the way to the kitchen, laughing under his breath at Beau’s priority list.
“Sounds about right. Except our priorities when we moved was coffee pot, baby things, then everything else. Between me and Mar, we weren’t settled in for months.” He had lived out of a suitcase, it hadn’t been that bad. “Think the only room in the house that looked good was the nursery.” He had definitely wished that they hadn’t moved the same year that Mina had started college. They could have used her sensibility while they tried to unpack.
Beau nodded; it seemed like only yesterday he was setting up Gabe’s nursery and now his boy was almost a man. It was so odd to him that he wouldn’t need to furnish a nursery ever again. No more babies meant no more midnight feedings and diaper blowouts...but it also meant no more first words or steps. The realization that he hadn’t just lost his wife, that he had lost any children they would have had together, wasn’t a new one for Beau but that didn’t make the feeling any less devastating. He busied himself by turning on the coffee pot and gathering mugs while the mournful moment passed.
The percolator started making its familiar, noisy machinations. Beau leaned against the counter and signaled for Joel to take one of the seats at the table that happened to be clear of junk. Even though there was a large part of him that wanted to ask Joel, both as a cop and as a longterm resident, what he made of the recent geek resurgence in Austin, Beau’s desire to be neighborly prevented him from blurting it out quite so early in their acquaintance. He resolved to hold off on getting into the nitty gritty until he got a better idea of Joel’s personality. He seemed like a cool guy but Beau didn’t want his own personal reservations about Austin to come off like a criticism to Joel or to his fellow officers.
“If the last time you moved was when Kaisha was a baby, you’ve been in Austin for a while then,” Beau concluded. “So you’re the guy I should go to when I need to find a shortcut to the university campus when I’m running late? And when to hit the market when it’s not crawling with shoppers?”
...and zombies, Beau’s mind supplied unhelpfully. Gabe had come home from volunteering at the hospital the day before absolutely brimming with people’s first hand accounts of the recent increase of infected around the city.
Joel gave Beau an amused look. “I suppose I got that kind of insider information,” he responded. “I’m better with the shortcuts than the grocery run, though. Picked up the wrong things one too many times, so Mariah downgraded me to only making a run when we’ve run out of an essential.” Though these days he asked her to take someone with her, just in case. Beau laughed and nodded. He opened his mouth to say this happened to him all the time, only Beau was the designated grocery shopper when Rae had returned from the market with too few items too many times...and then closed it. It wasn’t a cute story like Joel’s because Rae was dead and you don’t talk about your dead wife to people you’ve only just met. The coffee maker saved him from explaining his stupid, opened mouthed expression, thank God. Beau took advantage of the moment to pour the two of them piping hot mugs of coffee. Beau set Joel’s in front of him on the table.
Joel didn’t think another zombie event like the one from September was in their near future, but he felt better if his family wasn’t taking any unnecessary risks. The family had been lucky that Mina had been proven immune; a fact he was more than grateful for.
“Traffics not really too much of an issue these days, though.” Maybe in a year or two when Austin looked more like Denver or any one of the other cities that had managed not to fall, but not yet. “Are you planning to teach at the school?” Mariah hadn’t briefed him on what Beau employment was.
“High school and college kids? Definitely not,” Beau replied, letting out a rueful laugh. He blew across the top of his cup. “Trying to communicate with my own teenager on a daily basis is hard enough, I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a whole class of them . No, I’m a preschool teacher, so I’ll have four, five, and six year old students, plus a few toddlers to watch on the side. Already vetted the apps and clearances of some nursery attendants and TA’s so I have some great people on staff. If all goes according to plan, we’ll be set to open on schedule on November 1st.”
Beau turned to the fridge and pulled out a cardboard container of half and half. He poured a small amount into his mug before snagging a pack of sugar from the canister on the counter and shaking it into his coffee. He set the half and half and the sugar canister in front of Joel, in case he wanted them.
“Kaisha mentioned her sisters,” Beau said, taking a sip of his coffee. “Are you dealing with the surly high school stage or are you guys passed all that? My oldest, Gabe, he’s...well, let’s just say he’s not all that stoked about the move. Austin getting hooked up to the internet and to the rest of the world has made things easier for him to keep in contact with his old friends, but, still. It’s an uphill battle.”
Doctoring up his cup, Joel finished before he responded, “I only ever had one surly high schooler, and luckily both my older girls are in their late twenties now. So it’s been almost a decade since I’ve had to walk my way through that.” He gave the other dad a look of commiseration. “With as much as Kaisha is like my oldest, Ahna, I’m guessing I’ll be going through it again in a handful of years.”
Beau let out a sympathetic groan. Even though Bree was a lot more even tempered than her older brother had been at his age, Beau wasn’t exactly looking forward to her going through that teenage phase either. He’d be doing it alone this time, too.
Joel took a drink of his coffee, with silent approval. It was actually good, which was more than he could say about the break room coffee he was occasionally subjected to. “But I keep joking with Mariah that I’m going to let her handle them, since she never had the pleasure of parenting Ahna at her worst. Only Mina, and she was a cakewalk.” Mina really had been his easiest. Even with the recent conversations about her sexuality, and the stressful month that had been her quarantine.
“Well, hopefully my kids follow your model and Bree ends up being the cakewalk that Gabe wasn’t...or isn’t,” Beau replied with a sigh. “Fingers crossed.”
“I don’t think either of them were happy when I moved them to Vegas, though.”
Beau appreciated Joel sharing his experiences and letting him know he wasn’t the only dad to feel the wrath of his kid’s displeasure about relocating. Beau appreciated talking to him about anything, really. Besides the other teachers he had worked with at the daycare back in Chicago (wherein they talked about preschool curriculum and budgetary cutbacks) and the occasional customer or coworker at the bar he had worked at (wherein they talked and Beau mostly just listened), Beau hadn’t conversed with another actual adult for a long, long time. If he was a bit rusty at it, Joel at least had the decency to ignore it.
“At least I know the dissatisfaction about moving is universal to all kids, though. Bree’s handling it the best but even she has her moments.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I’m not sure if it's comforting or just weird that some things, like moving to a new town, stay the same despite walkers roaming the streets, you know?”
“Boy do I,” Joel agreed with a small nod, just before a thump sounded from upstairs, followed by the pitter patter of footsteps and a stream of girlish laughter.
“Girls!” Beau called, his deep voice stern but not unkind carrying up the stairs. It wasn’t the first time he used his “teacher voice” at home and it sure as hell wouldn’t be the last. “You’ll see each other at school tomorrow, let’s get a move on, alright?”
Beau heard a low, amused, “ooooh, you guys are in trouble,” from Lucinda in the other room. Beau leaned forward from his countertop perch to look into the living room.
“Mind your business, Miss L,” Beau reminded her gently, before turning back to Joel. “Sorry,” Beau apologized, even though he could see the cop didn’t mind. It was strange feeling even the smallest stirrings of kinship with anyone, even if it was just commiseration over a cup of coffee while their kids made their (very slow and extremely reluctant) way down the stairs.
In the silence while they waited for the girls, Joel tried his best not to profile Beau. He thought there was something there that Mariah hadn’t mentioned, or that the other man wasn’t sharing, but he wasn’t about to start an interrogation in the Waites kitchen just to satisfy his own curiosity. Maybe if Beau had been less welcoming, he would have, but there was just something that Joel liked about the guy, that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
It wasn’t a feeling he got with a lot of people.
There were a few more bangs and thumps, then the cadence of a two sets of feet tromping down the stairs. “Sounds like they won’t need a third warning,” he commented wryly with a half-smile, just as Kaisha and Bree made their appearance.
“Here daddy,” Kaisha greeted, thrusting her backpack up towards Joel. Instead of taking the offending school gear from her, he gave her a long, measured look. “Please,” she added to her earlier statement. Without another word he hefted it to his shoulder and turned his attention to Kaisha’s new friend.
“What do you say to Bree and Mr. Waites?” he asked his daughter after he’d drawn her in for a brief hug in greeting.
“Thanks for letting me come and play!” Kaisha smiled wide at Beau, then burst into short giggles when she grinned at Bree. Joel could tell that that was going to be a good friendship for his youngest.
“You are very welcome, Kaisha,” Beau replied warmly. Beau was more than a little grateful that Bree had befriended a polite and kind-hearted person and, from what he could surmise about Mariah and Joel, the trait obviously ran in the family.
“Next time we’ll have to arrange for Bree to come over to our house,” Joel added. “Maybe Mariah will want to do a dinner. She loves entertaining, and she’d like to meet the rest of your brood, I’m sure.” Joel shifted and set his now empty cup on the counter near the sink.
Joel’s offer had more of an effect on Beau than anticipated; he was quite touched by the easy and friendly way he welcomed his daughter and, by extension, him and the rest of his family. Even though the offer was ostensibly for Bree and Kaisha to spend more time together, it was something Beau could do for himself, too. Putting himself out there, making new acquaintances and refusing to hide in this house with all the ghosts he brought with him from Chicago was a huge step, even if it started with a simple dinner invitation.
“Well, who are we to deny Mariah the opportunity to play hostess,” Beau replied with a laugh, doing his utmost mask how grateful he felt for the line Joel threw him, even if it was simply out of politeness. “I think we’d all like that. Thank you.” He held out his hand for a second time, which Joel shook firmly.
“It was nice meeting you, Joel,” he said, before turning to Kaisha. He was a firm believer of treating children with the same respect and attention as adults. “And you too, Miss Kaisha. You are welcome to come back anytime.”
He followed the pair out of the kitchen and into the living room, patting the still towel-enrobed Lucinda on the head in passing before opening the door for the Kulseth’s. The Waites’s (minus one) waved at the father and daughter as they made their way down the path and Beau watched them drive away down the street before he shut the door. The possibility of making a new friend as an adult was a strange feeling; one Beau found he wouldn’t mind repeating. He looked around at the many still unopened boxes and shrugged, a smile crossing his face. Maybe the day wasn’t so unproductive after all.