Chapter 1: The Terrible Two

There were many times during the bicentennial summer when Carolyn Pierce wondered why she bothered. She was an assistant professor, but she would have achieved that rank -- if ‘achieved’ was the proper verb for such peon work as she did -- if she had never published squat after her dissertation. Between the boys and the teaching, she didn’t have much time during the school year. Which left the summers. While her students were enjoying themselves on the beach, she had to travel from one hardware store to another in the northern suburbs to talk to managers and owners about what factors led them to their locations.

America had been independent for 200 years. She couldn’t get independent for one day. Partly, she’d done it to herself two years ago. Others did regional economics by library research, looking at where the firms of a particular industry were located and using that location to tell why. She went and talked with the people making that decision. What they told you wasn’t necessarily the whole story. She was quite aware that the people moving out to a new suburban development would talk about space for their children; they’d never say that they were moving because the government would subsidize their travel and amenities. Nevertheless, she knew that those subsidies fed the exodus.

Interviews weren’t a foolproof road to insight. They were, however, her trademark road to insight. If she wrote a paper using library research, the review committee would ask themselves why. It could probably get published, but she wouldn’t be asked to present it at a conference. And, if she were ever to get beyond her present teaching peonage, she would need to keep going to conferences and presenting papers.

Still, it was a drag. UIC made sure that it got its money’s worth from her teaching. Her research was fitted into the cracks and into summer. There were days she wondered why she bothered -- why she didn’t just stay home. Then she stayed home for a day and found two good reasons for being out and about. They were named John and Paul.

Mothers of single children talked about the terrible twos. They had no idea. Johnny annoyed her; he annoyed Bill when he was home; he annoyed Barb. He annoyed Paul more than anyone else. And Paul, besides annoying any adult within earshot, returned the favor. The boys had scratched a line down the center of their room. (She and Bill hadn’t told the landlord.) Crossing that line meant instant war. Which didn’t stop either boy from crossing it.

Carolyn left Barb to cope as often as she could. She had an office at Circle, and sometimes drove there to work on her writing rather than suffer the interruptions from the Terrible Two. But Barb only worked 40 hours a week. Bill, theoretically, worked 40 hours a week, too. Bill, however, was expected to be in his office in the Loop at 9:00 a.m. and not to leave before 5:00 p.m. He had evening meetings and dinners, besides. Sometimes, she suspected that Bill looked for evening meetings to escape. That meant that she fed Bill breakfast, fed the boys breakfast, and -- if she were lucky -- fed herself breakfast before Barb arrived. During the school year, she had to be showered and dressed before the boys got up.

Evenings, she got home first. She finished supper prep. Sometimes, when she really wanted to be fancy, she cooked the whole thing. Barb was a good survival cook, but she wasn’t up to planning a gourmet dinner. When Bill got home, he had some time with the boys. Then they all sat down to eat. Then the boys fought against going to bed. Then Johnny got a drink of water; then Paul needed to go to the bathroom; then Johnny needed to go to the bathroom; then Paul got a drink of water. Sometimes, they alternated.

When the Terrible Two were finally sleeping the deep sleep of the utterly conscienceless, she had time for either TV or Bill or another two hours of clear thought for planning out her current paper. Somehow, the paper almost never won.

On this Wednesday, things got worse. Barb was getting her things together to leave. The boys were watching TV but beginning to quarrel over what show to watch. Then Gladys Hagopian called.

“Your woman told me you wouldn’t be back much before now,” she began.

“Yeah. I just got in the door.” And, with a job and children not grown, she was much busier than Gladys was.

“I’ll try to be brief.” Hanging up would be even briefer, but Gladys wasn’t about to hang up. “You know that the UMW is expanding. I’ve got the empty-nesters, Judy the high-school and a little of the college crowd.” These were the mothers of those students. “Beth is handling the grade-school moms. Well, now it’s time for the preschool moms to organize. Really, you guys have more to share than we do.”

“Great, Gladys. And when you have one of the experienced moms from your or Judy’s circle sharing, I’ll try to make time to attend a meeting.” Bill already took the kids every Thursday night for her choir rehearsals. Maybe he’d take them for another night a month. Still, she could tell that this wasn’t why Gladys was calling.

“Now, you know we don’t do it like that. You have your own wisdom to share. If you want an older woman’s opinion, you ask your own mom’s.” Well, Mama was in Arkansas, not that she wouldn’t be willing -- indeed, eager -- to tell Carolyn all the things she was doing wrong. “Anyway, you’re in a rush, and I’ll stop beating around the bush. The committee has talked about it, and we think that you’re the natural leader of that group. The others have mostly been to college, and they’ll really respect Professor Pierce.”

“No, Gladys.”

“Well, think about it. We’ll talk after choir.” How much talking did ‘no’ require? “See you.” When Gladys hung up the phone, she went to separate the twins. You could pick kittens up by the scruffs of their necks, but that didn’t work with boys.

Later, Bill came home carrying his suit coat over his shoulder. He parked close to the EL, and the air in his car never overcame the stored heat before he got home. After he had a couple of minutes before the living-room air conditioner, the show the boys were watching finished. They ran over to mob him. Soon, he was on his knees wrestling with both of them. She could never understand the rules, but it always ended up with him on his back and the twins as victors. She appreciated that he interacted with Johnny and Paul, but she sometimes wished he would do so less violently. What was wrong with reading them a book? She got the table set and the food in the serving dishes while they were distracted.

“Okay, let Daddy up. He has to wash his hands before he eats.” They got off. He supervised their washing their hands before he washed his. She got Paul that night, and he got Johnny. The menu was meatloaf, mashed, and peas. That was simple enough that they could feed themselves while feeding the boys, but it had its temptations. Johnny considered that peas would taste better, or maybe be hidden unnoticed, if mashed into the potatoes. Bill didn’t interfere, but he did insist that Johnny swallow the nauseating result.

Then, despite her earlier warnings, came more roughhouse. For a miracle, neither kid threw up from being spun around minutes after eating. At 7:30, Bill flipped a coin. Johnny won, or lost, and Bill carried him to the bathroom to get ready for bed. When he came back for Paul, Johnny slipped out of bed. After supervising Paul’s urination and tooth brushing, Bill found Johnny in the closet, spanked him, and put him back in bed. He read them a book. They each got their last glasses of water and lay down with their eyes closed. Having rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, having emptied and rinsed out the potty chair that Bill had left for her to do, she came in for good-night kisses.

“Did you get the vacation days?” she asked when she and Bill were alone. She had a paper to present at a conference in Boulder, and that required either Bill’s presence at home or elaborate baby-sitting arrangements. Barb wouldn’t really leave the kids if nobody else showed up, but she might well quit if she were stuck with them for long after 5:00. Mrs. Donnelly was willing, but she wasn’t really young enough anymore to deal with two tornadoes -- and the kids could be that on any day. Then, too, her health was bad enough that her arrival at 4:30 wasn’t absolutely guaranteed.

“I got them. I’m senior enough to get the days I want on a month’s notice. The problem is that the reason that I’m senior is that they need me to run things, and I’m needed more in August than in any other month. But I got the week.”

“Do you think we could give Barb that week off? She’s entitled to two weeks off a year.”

“Well, she can have them when you’re here to take up the slack. I get three weeks of vacation, total, and I worked years to get up to that. You get three months. I’d think you could use some of those months to actually be with your kids instead of using them to shuttle off to a vacation resort away from our family responsibilities.” Vacation resort?? Three months of vacation!!

“Look, Boulder is a college campus. I didn’t choose the spot, you know. What I’m going to do is present a paper and meet some colleagues. And as for your generous estimate of my vacation time, that’s when I don’t have to teach. That’s when I do economics. They hire me to teach, but they hire me because I’m a researcher. And I do damn little economics in that plenteous free time because I’m looking after those two monsters day in and day out. You moan and groan over one week’s doing what I do after a hard day’s research or a hard day’s teaching, but that’s all you’ll be doing. If you so much as take them to the zoo, you’ll have Barb along.”

“Well, I come home almost every night and play with them. I’m home before they’re in bed more often than you are, with your precious conferences.” Was that really true? She took concentrated periods away, but he had lots of business dinners during the year. Well, he was away evenings during the year, and he said that they were business dinners. For all she knew, he was boffing his secretary. Maybe not Denise Flaherty Davis, who was newly married, but the place was crawling with file clerks.

“And that play is part of the problem. They’ve become violent kids, and that’s because you’re violent with them.”

“Violent? Have I ever bitten Paul? Have I ever kicked Johnny? No. So how come their habits of kicking and biting are all my fault. Hell! You used to complain about their kicking before I’d ever met them.” That was a different kind of kicking, as he well knew.

“Well, you’re rough with them, and they’re rough with each other -- and with anyone else within reach. And you spank them. That’s the sort of example you set.”

“Hell! They hide from me when they know I’m going to find them and spank them. The spanking can’t be that traumatic. If it was, they’d stop hiding.” Well, that spanking didn’t leave them in tears. When Bill got serious, it did. The victim would be sobbing and squirming on his lap before his 10 swats got to three.

“It’s just that they live in a culture of violence. Is it any wonder that they’re violent themselves?”

“They’re two years old. Is it any wonder that they’re violent? A little roughhouse, a roughhouse when they’re not mad at anybody, is just the exercise they need.”

“Yeah. That really helps their meals digest. That really puts them in the mood for sleep.”

“Those kids haven’t been in the mood for sleep since before you weaned them.”

“Now it’s my fault!” And that was damned hypocritical of him considering how much he had wanted his playground back.

“I never said that. What part of the word ‘before’ is too complicated for a professor to understand? It’s just fucking idiotic of you to blame their resistance to going to sleep on something I never did until long after they both started refusing to go to sleep. They’re boys, and I’m going to raise them to be boys. Not that they wouldn’t fight each other anyway.”

“And you’re sure of the ways of boys. Maybe so. I certainly don’t expect you ever to teach them anything about being an adult. Maybe when they’ve learned, they can teach you. It won’t be for another twenty years, but I certainly don’t expect you to learn before then.”

“Let’s see. One of us went to work summers while in college and then full-time right after college. He’s been promoted regularly and supervises others. He earns enough to keep a family. Another stayed in school and stayed in school. She doesn’t earn enough after paying for childcare to feed either herself or her kids, let alone clothing and rent. She is so dissatisfied with the job she finally latched onto that she spends her free time networking in hopes of getting another.

“Now, which one is the adult?” Well, the one he was thinking of sure wasn’t acting like an adult. But they were interrupted right then. Paul wanted another glass of water. How much had he heard? She took him to the bathroom and got him his glass of water. When she’d put him back to bed, she got Johnny up to go to the bathroom. It wouldn’t last either of them through the night. They still slept in diapers, but they’d be happier the longer those stayed dry.

When she got back, Bill had the TV on. It was his usual cop show, but this one looked interesting. By common consent, she and Bill kept quiet in the hope that the boys would, too. Then the news came on. A business economist mentioned “wage-push inflation” during an interview.