Free Maternity Leave by Trish Felice Cohen

conversation? I was defending my dad’s height.
    “I’ll check it out next time I see him at the gym, but I don’t want to measure until I’m completely healed.”
    “You should measure now, that brace has to be making you look taller,” I said, smiling uncontrollably as I pictured David and my dad standing back to back for an official measurement.
    David thought about that for a second, then said, “Let’s go over your case list.”
    I never thought I’d be so happy to talk about subrogation.
    After I left David’s office, I told my co-worker Kimberly about David’s insane height comparison to my father. She told me that when she was in his office hearing the story about his amazing strength and recovery from neck surgery, David had compared himself to Warren Sapp, once a multiple all-pro defensive tackle for the Bucs and retired for several years, but David wasn’t exactly up to date in the realm of sports. Apparently, “pound for pound” David was stronger than that “fat ass” Sapp. What the hell else had David’s mother done to him to make him so delusional? Dropping him as an infant could not have done all of the damage.
    Later in the day, I met my dad for lunch. His office is a few miles away from mine, so we meet once a week. Dad picked up sandwiches and salads and met me at my house to eat them. We sat on the back deck, which was started by Jason during his last summer vacation. Jason is big on starting projects, but not finishing them. He built me a deck that fit one chair on it, then quit. Fortunately, Danny finished the deck and accepted payment in the form of a steady supply of cold beer.
    The weather was a little hot, even in the shade, but it was nice to sit outside. Dad was finishing up a Tootsie Pop when I arrived.
    I said, “Let me guess, cherry.”
    Ten years ago, Tootsie Pops began to celebrate Valentine’s Day by selling bags of special Valentine’s Tootsie Pops, all of which were cherry flavored. This has drastically improved the quality of my father’s life. He calculates that there is an average of fourteen Tootsie Pops per bag. Ideally, he likes to have two per day. Therefore, he buys fifty-two bags of cherry Tootsie Pops every February and squirrels them away in the house, eating a bag a week. It is not uncommon to find him in the big corner office of his CPA firm eating cherry Tootsie Pops like a five-year-old while planning the financial future of large corporations.
    “It is cherry as a matter of fact. How are you, Jenna?”
    “Doing good. How tall are you?”
    “Six-two.”
    “David said you’re five-nine and that he benches eighty more pounds than you, I think you should beat him up.”
    “Excuse me?” Dad said.
    “You going to beat him up?” I asked.
    “I’ll probably let it slide.”
    I give my dad a lot of credit for developing my personality, which may or may not be a good thing. Obviously, there’s the genetics; but mostly he tormented me into having a sense of humor. Looking back, I can fully appreciate how much fun this must have been for my dad, but at the time I cried myself to sleep.
    As a kid, I did not understand that the wailing of the fire alarm did not necessarily mean there was an actual fire. My dad realized this when Mom baked grouper with the oven door ajar. As soon as the smoke alarm went off, I ran out of the house. After this discovery, the fire alarm game became dad’s favorite party trick. Whenever my parents had company, he showed off his little daughter’s intellect by lighting a match next to the fire alarm and laughing his ass off as I ran out of the house screaming. When I finally came back into the house, he said he had to fight the fire all by himself and didn’t appreciate me leaving the rest of the family to burn to death. The next time he did this, I tried to convince him to leave with me but he wouldn’t do it, he had to stay and protect the family. I thought about helping out, but ultimately, I ran out of the house leaving