Baby Jay

“Can I please go in peace?”
“I can be peaceful. Listen how quiet my voice gets.” He shifts into a whisper. “Very peaceful. Very easy. How was your day?”
“Holy fuck, I do not miss this,” Michael whispers in return.
“Oh my goodness, do you have someone else in there with you? Mutual pooping time, activate. Ha-ha.”
“Jesus Christ, Dad.”
“Come on, Jay. Just tell me how your day was. We… we need the ‘father-son bonding time.’ We’re not as close as we used to be. So I have to know, okay?”
“I had a good day. It was normal. Please let me use the bathroom. I can’t go when you’re standing out there.”
“Ruh-roh. That’s no good. Removing myself so Jay may commence operation ‘Poop in Peace’—a good operation, essential.”
After Dad leaves, Jay grants himself a moment to breathe before tearing the plastic skin off the dish soap and dumping it in the tub. By now, the smell knifes at his eyes, too.
“He’s worse than I remember,” Michael says.
“It’s not usually this bad.” And he’s home earlier, to boot. More booze in a smaller timeframe—bad combo.
“And Mom?”
Jay tells him how she locks herself in her classroom and doesn’t leave ’til 9:00 PM. She says she’s grading papers, devising lesson plans. Says she concentrates better when she’s at her place of work. Whether that’s true or not, Jay doesn’t know. She might be getting lost in her work. She might be watching things on her phone. Whatever keeps her from home, her husband, and memories of Michael.
Jay doesn’t mention those last bits. “So, she’s not really around,” he concludes.
“Oh…”
“You sound more like yourself, now,” Jay says.
“I’m a fuckin’ blob in a bathtub, but I guess I’m okay.”
Five bottles of cleaning fluid and a Tide Pod, and he’s only “okay.” Soon, he’ll itch and ache and fall apart again—and then what? Should Jay find the nearest Windex factory and dump Michael in a giant vat?
He’s not sure what to do about that, but he at least has to get Michael out of here. Hogging the bathroom all night will be suspicious.
Jay cracks the bathroom door open and peers down the hall. In the living room, a buzz-saw snore shreds the air. Dad’s already passed out in front of the TV. Good. Jay eases the door shut behind him. In the garage, he takes a plastic storage bin, and in the kitchen swipes a ladle. Back in the bathroom, he scoops Michael into the bin and ladles the chemical soup from the tub. When he’s finished, he washes the remaining chemicals away, takes Michael’s bin, and—
Another flash of headlights fills the living room windows. A white SUV stops in front of the house.
Mom is home, despite it not yet being 9:00.
Jay throws himself across the living room and climbs the stairs. Left, down the hall, through his bedroom door. He slides Michael along his floor. The plastic bin strikes the opposite wall, and Michael grunts. “Careful, Baby Jay.”