Max was in the kitchen dressed for school when Dad came thundering out of the bathroom. He was clearly still pissed off. Mini stayed out of sight. Max ate his breakfast alone and when he was done he yelled out, “Mini, come on we have to go.” Before he even finished the sentence, Mini burst from her room heading for the back door motioning for Max to hurry up. He was out the door on her heals. She couldn’t get out of the driveway fast enough. Max could almost see the smoke coming out of her ears. He kept glancing over at her and she caught him looking. With an angry look on her face, she said, “Why wasn’t that you in the shower instead of Dad?” It was a rhetorical question and he didn’t answer.
Max saw his sister a few times during the day and it was obvious she was still upset. She didn’t show up to drive Max home so he made his way toward the line of buses. Ten minutes later, he was walking up the street from the corner toward his house. Dad’s car was gone. He looked down the side-street and noticed that Nadia’s husband’s car was gone too. ‘If they’re gone-gone; it’s back to normal’, he thought.
Max walked in the back door and shut it hard enough to announce that he was home. Mom’s voice came from the living room. He walked in and saw her sitting on the end of the couch and Nadia sitting ‘kitty-corner’ to her in a chair. They had drinks in their hands and they were both dressed to the ‘nines’. “Wow,” Max said. “You two are really dressed up. What’s the occasion?”
Mom said, “It was a rough morning around here until your dad left. He is certain something is going on and I won’t be surprised if he just shows up for a while to see what it is. We are going to have to be very careful until he settles down. Nadia and I went out to lunch to calm me down and we have been sitting here getting bombed waiting for you to get home.”
Max sat down in a chair and looked at Nadia. “Did things go as planned for you with your husband? You said something about the dining room table the last time we saw you.” Her face instantly changed from confusion to understanding. She laughed and said, “Actually, we used the dining room table first and burned dinner. We wound up going out to eat.”
Mom burst out laughing and said, “I can certainly understand how that could happen.”
Mom turned her attention to Max and asked the question of the day, “Max, your father wouldn’t say what happened in the bathroom this morning. Do you know anything? I know I glared at you but I know you didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Max saw no reason not to tell Mom everything he knew so he said, “It’s pretty simple. Mini and I slept together in my bed last night. Nothing happened though. I went to the bathroom to take my shower like every morning and I was coming out of the bathroom as Dad was coming out of your room. He went in the bathroom. He apparently didn’t lock it though. Mini crept in naked and climbed into the shower thinking it was me. You know everything that happened after that. Mini has been upset about it all day. She didn’t give me any details. That’s all I know.”