The Queen of Hearts(11)
When someone tapped on the playroom door, the kids looked at me quizzically, but I had no idea who it was. My part-time nanny had taken one look at us and bolted a few days earlier. Maybe one of the neighbors was checking to see why our house was emitting sewer fumes?
It was Emma. At least, I thought it was Emma; it was hard to say for sure, since the voice behind the door sounded weirdly muffled. “Can I come in?”
“Don’t come in,” I said valiantly. “We have the plague. It’s like The Exorcist up in here.”
“I’m coming in anyway,” she said, and pushed the door open.
I took one look at her and burst out laughing. She was covered from head to toe in surgical bio-shield garments. Several layers of OR gloves covered her hands; her legs resembled blue sausages, encased to the knee in thick paper booties.
“What the hell is that?” I said, wheezing from the exertion of having laughed. “Are you wearing a level-four biohazard suit?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said briskly. “I snagged this stuff from the OR.” She set down the bucket she carried, from which protruded the nozzles of a bunch of cleaning supplies. “I’m here to save you.” She gave me a closer look, peering out from under her bizarre hat. “Dear God. Do you think you could possibly make it to the shower?”
You know you have a friendship more precious than rubies when the friend is willing to scrub your bathroom after the detonation of a gastrointestinal bomb. If I hadn’t been so dehydrated, I’d have crawled into her lap and wept tears of gratitude.
So I owed Emma a relaxing day. But now, the anticipation of a lazy morning in the sunshine had evaporated in a flood of unease. Nick. I hadn’t seen or talked to him in well over a decade.
The day started with the usual early-morning cluster. My second grader was an insomniac: something about her brain wiring prevented sleep, although she didn’t need much and generally bounced around loudly and annoyingly when everyone else was still trying to snooze. The six-year-olds were groggy, incoherent slugs in the morning. They didn’t want to be woken, and when forced to rise, they retaliated by acting as unpleasant and helpless as possible. They slumped over the back of the couch, their auburn heads and sturdy little frames motionless, whining because they didn’t want to put on their school uniforms.
“I can’t do it,” Eli sniveled. “It’s too hard.”
“Eli, don’t be ridiculous. Delaney can put on her shirt, and she’s three.”
“Yah,” said Delaney in an uppity voice. “I can.”
“Mom,” Finn said limply. “Delaney is antagonizing us.”
“Please do not think that I will be drawn into this. Put on your shirt, or, or . . . or you will have to go to school shirtless.”
Rowan piped up. “Mom, don’t say things unless you are prepared to follow through on them,” she lectured in my voice. “And you can’t follow through on that, because it will humiliate me to have half-naked brothers at school.”
“That’s not— Oh, shi . . . oot, the eggs are burning!”
A car horn sounded outside. “Mom, the carpool is here!”
“What? What? It can’t be time for— Mother of God! Put on your shirts! Has anyone eaten?” A quick glance outside revealed Betsy Packard’s idling black Suburban.
“I have! Me! I have eaten!”
“I meant, have any of the big kids eaten? Boys, where are your backpacks? Shi . . . oot!”
I stomped outside, slamming the door after me, and then forced a smile onto my face as I apologized to Betsy. “Looks like I’ll have to drive them in late again,” I said lamely. Betsy, who had two children and an army of minions to help her, nonetheless gave me a commiserating look. Everybody’s been there.
Once Rowan, Eli, and Finn had been successfully deposited at the Oak Academy, I turned my attention to getting ready for the pool. This was labor-intensive. Unfortunately, shaving my legs required putting Delaney in the bath too; otherwise she’d be free to roam the bathroom and plunder approximately eight zillion dollars’ worth of makeup, or plug up the toilet with scarves, or eat deodorant or something. Three-year-olds liked to imitate, investigate, and deconstruct, which led to all sorts of havoc when they were left to their own devices.
Then I had to try on all the bathing suits I owned in order to determine which one most successfully hid the results of last night’s food debacle. (A downside to friendship with Emma: she was eight feet tall and weighed four ounces.) Delaney, of course, insisted on trying on multiple suits as well, and preened in admiration at her reflection. At least she hadn’t picked up a case of crushing body dysmorphic disorder yet; she thought her convex toddler tummy and chubby thighs and fat bottom were extremely desirable, probably because everyone else in the family was always trying to squeeze her.
After the fashion show, the pool bag had to be located and packed. Delaney required ten pounds of gear for every pound of body weight in order to be able to leave the house. An hour later, we were finally ready to go. I had successfully avoided any troublesome thoughts during the hectic morning, but now, as I drove to meet Emma to continue yesterday’s conversation, the memories assaulted me.
Nick had not been a nice guy. He was brilliant, he was gorgeous, he was never boring, but nobody would describe him as overly burdened with empathy, at least not most of the time. Even the worst tarantula on the planet has his moments—I could remember his kindness to the families of some of his patients, for instance—but overall Nick had been a black force of disorder and hurt, a swirling dark cloud raining volcanic ash onto a village of innocents. And there was another reason to avoid the thought of Nick, which still caused me to squirm with shame, even now, all these years later: the biggest professional error I’d ever made.