In bed I recounted an episode from years ago when the kids were still young and would shout I love you over and over from their bedroom, persistent until I shouted it back. After law school there was a period of years when this exchange was necessary for them to fall asleep. On one such evening Dylan and Shelby called to me in hushed voices from the same bedroom doorway, standing in their matching pajamas.
“Come help,” Dylan said.
A stack of case briefs weighed down on the dining room table. I removed them one by one, carefully peeling back their covers and thumbing through their front matter.
“Daddy please,” I heard, faintly.
Only the most unusual circumstances would have the kids calling for me before their mother, so I slapped the casebook closed and checked the top of the stairs. There they were, standing tearfully in striped pajama shirts, underwear, and Lion King slippers. Dylan was crying, and Shelby, appearing confused, looked up at her older brother as if to check whether it was appropriate for her to continue crying too.
At the top of the stairs I crouched low and asked them what was wrong.
“Why did mommy steal the car?” Dylan said, unsteady on each word.
“Excuse me, what did you just say?”
“Why did momma steal the car?” Dylan repeated, regressing into a stutter.
“What are you talking about, Dylan? The car’s in the driveway.”
“Momma said she stole it.”
“No, no,” I said, hugging them both. Dylan broke down in sobs, joined by Shelby. “She didn’t steal the car. I don’t know what she was talking about. Sometimes when she’s angry she makes things up.
“It’s all a joke.” I held them closer, my head inserted between theirs. “It’s all a big mean joke, okay?”
On the way to their dentist appointment, the kids had sat patiently while their mother slammed her fists into the steering wheel, raging at the windshield. Into the empty passenger seat, Lisa ranted about the family’s personal finances and the many high-interest loans and lines of credit they had taken out to finance their home, vehicles, educations.
Their van sat between two tractor trailers. It was apparent to her, and now the kids, that they needed off the highway if they wanted to make it to their appointment. The exit lane was blocked by three rows of slow rush-hour traffic. Lisa smacked the steering wheel with the butt of her hand and let out a high-pitched scream. Dylan started to weep in the backseat, pleading with his mother, telling her to calm down and focus on the road. Shelby too started wailing in long, drawn-out moans. She wished for a big strong firefighter, or maybe a policeman, to come and rescue her, give her coloring books, hold her tight. She closed her eyes and wished for this.
“You see this car?” Lisa shouted to no one. “We stole it!”
Dylan yelled something indecipherable, then ran out of breath. Shelby banged on the only window she could reach from her booster seat, hoping someone in an opposite lane would notice, see her, maybe get help.
“We never paid for it,” Lisa muttered. “We stole it.”
Later, in the elevator, Dylan asked his mother for the time. “Twelve fifty-seven,” she said. The dental clinic was on the sixth floor of a downtown high-rise, and Dylan counted each as they ascended in silence.
“That means we have three minutes left,” Dylan said, smiling nervously. “I think we’re going to make it.”
“Yes,” Lisa said, with a stunned, expressionless look about her. She took her children’s hands and told them that she was sorry for what they had to see. They hugged her around her waist and then watched the elevator doors spread apart.
	“No,” I told the kids, their feet dangling off their beds. “I don’t know what your mother was thinking. Sometimes she loses it.” They had wiped the tears from their cheeks, leaving gooey streaks caked onto their faces. “Goes a little coocoo.” I twirled a finger beside my ear and made a face and the kids smiled.
“Did you change the channel like I told you to?”
	I’d taught them to change the channel in their heads whenever they want to stop feeling sad. I taught them that their minds were blue as a country sky, like an untuned TV, and they could use their imagination to flip between thoughts: scary, sad, happy, excited.
	“No,” Dylan said. “It didn’t work.”
	“I changed it,” said Shelby, smiling proudly. I gave her a big hug and said “Thank you, Shelby,” and that I knew she could do it.
	The kids watched me break into a grin and asked me what I was hiding from them.
	“Do you want to know?” I asked.
	“Yes!”
	“Do you really want to know?”
	They nodded in silence, with no trace of tears left on their faces.
	“Tomorrow I’ll take you swimming.”
	They threw their arms up and cheered and told me how much they loved me and how much they loved their mom and how much they loved their fish, a little bloodfin scurrying to nowhere in its bowl on top the dresser across the room.