Shayla Frandsen
The summer after my husband left me for his coworker Instagram shamed me into becoming a fun mom, so we decided to drive up to my parent’s place outside Portland and the first day of the road trip was fine and the kids were excited by the newness of it all, the coolers of food and the cities slipping away out our windows, and we obviously weren’t a big road trip family because the kids were amazed by the gas station and I was so charmed by their awe I told them they could each pick out one gas station treat. I had to call it quits because they were so overwhelmed by all the candy options they started to cry, I mean all of them wailing in front of the Slurpee machine while the orange-haired girl behind the counter went What’s wrong with them and I was like We mostly go to Costco for our gas so they’re not used to any of this and she said Are all these kids yours? and I said Yes. And she said I can see why you’d need a Costco membership.
The drive could’ve been done in a day or two I think but we took a week because I was worried about falling asleep at the wheel and when the kids fought in the back seat I’d give up and stop at a hotel where they swam in the pool until they were so exhausted they’d barely finish dinner before collapsing in bed. If the hotel didn’t have a pool we’d go to the lobby and ask if the kids could take turns standing behind the front desk and usually they’d be all No freaking way lady but at one place the guy said Sure because I think he thought of it as a pilot-letting-the-kids-see-the-cockpit sort of thing and the kids picked up the phones and started calling random rooms to say Wake up call dummy! or Jesus is here!! or I regret to inform you that your wife has died, and the guy pulled the phones away and said into them, one after another, Please ignore that, Please ignore that, Please ignore that.
The car collapsed on a hill far outside Portland and I shifted into neutral and we rolled down and crept into the parking lot of a mechanic shop. The mechanic was this older guy with skin like an apple left out in the sun and he looked at us as we paraded out of the car and said Jesus, are all these kids yours? and I was like Can you take a look at our car? and he did but the clock was ticking and soon he was all, I gotta close up, even though he wasn’t done with the car yet and I looked for a hotel with either a big pool or a big concierge desk but nothing was close by and there were no Ubers big enough to fit all of us and the mechanic goes, If you need a place to stay you can stay with me, I live above the shop.
I looked around and said All of us?
Just me up there, I got a lot of floor space and I do overnight oats.
I said You don’t look like the type to do overnight oats and he said Well I’m religious as if that explained it, and I tried to make eye contact with my oldest to see what she thought of this entire situation, but she was trying to keep a herd of younger siblings from using the skeleton of a 1976 Ford f250 as their own personal playground while some of the others had snuck behind the front desk and pulled up the guys client list to call them up to say I regret to inform you that your wife has died or Jesus is here!!
I looked at the mechanic and said Well alright that’s kind of you and we all trooped up the stairs and have you ever had a bag full of groceries split open at the bottom so all the food spills onto the sidewalk because that’s sort of what the mechanic’s place looked like if that makes sense, but he didn’t seem ashamed and instead started counting us out and I said Don’t bother, and then he started spreading blankets on the floor and in my head I was like Maybe I should call somebody and tell them where we are?
But the floor wasn’t so uncomfortable and in fact when we were all huddled together the collective body heat was so intense that several of my boys went and slept outside and it was the best sleep I’ve gotten in a long time and in the morning over overnight oats the mechanic says So there’s this story in the Bible. And then he’s telling us about how this woman wanted a baby so bad she promised the Lord her baby’s entire life in service as long as she could have baby in the first place.
Quite a story I said, not exactly the religious type, spoon feeding half the toddlers while my oldest daughter spoon fed the rest and the overnight oats really were quite good and I said After breakfast do you think you can finish up the car?
The man was all You don’t understand, I let your—he started counting the kids again and said How do you have more kids now than you did last night? and I said They’ve been arriving on my doorstep about once a month ever since my husband left and the mechanic said Good god but anyway, I let your whole crowd sleep here last night so now you gotta leave one of your kids to train with me, learn to be a mechanic.
Train with you?
He said, And take over the garage when I die.
I must have been making a horrified face because he said You’ve got yourself a professional football team’s worth of children here you can certainly spare one.
My oldest daughter was trying to meet my eye. I really was so tired and the kids wouldn’t stop showing up. Maybe I could spare one? I told him I’d have a decision for him by the time I was done with breakfast.
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Shayla Frandsen earned her MFA in fiction in Utah. She previously earned an MA in English in New York City. Her writing can be found in New England Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Under the Sun, Literary Mama, Exposition Review, and others. In 2024, she was awarded first place in the Smokelong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction. In 2023, she was awarded first place in both the Plentitudes Prize in Fiction and the Blue Earth Review Dog Daze Flash Fiction contests. Her writing has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions. She is represented by Jill Marr at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency. You can find her at shaylafrandsen.com.