When We Were Sisters: An unputdownable book club read about that bonds that can bind or break a family. Emilie Richards
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and I welcomed it. I didn’t have enough time to be angry at myself and Robin this morning. I made the obvious choice. Suddenly I missed my wife less.
Pet was already up, which I should have expected. Fully dressed for school, she opened her door and stared at me standing bleary-eyed in her doorway in my pajamas.
“Doesn’t your bus come soon?” I wasn’t quite sure what time it was because I hadn’t checked the clock. And strike two? The bus schedule was posted downstairs.
Clearly, from Pet’s expression, my IQ had dropped a few points this morning. “I have to eat, don’t I?”
“Exactly what are you wearing?”
My daughter isn’t sophisticated enough to hide guilt. She has fair skin like her mother, and now I watched the color in her cheeks deepen before she looked down. “Everybody wears skirts like this.”
The skirt barely covered my daughter’s tush. Maybe everybody wore them, but I was pretty sure that unless they were auditioning for a reality show called Preteen Hookers, they wore them with something else.
I pointed toward her closet. “Wear something under it or change.”
“Daddy!”
“It’s fall. You’ll freeze, and besides you’ll spend the whole day pulling your skirt down. If they even let you stay in school.”
“But I told you, everybody wears skirts this short.”
“Does your mom let you wear that skirt to school without something under it?” The “something,” whatever it was called, wasn’t in my vocabulary. I would Google this mystery later so our next conversation could be more precise.
She didn’t answer.
“Go.” I pointed again.
“Fine, but I’m going to be late!”
That was already clear. I headed down the hall to pull Nik out of bed. As expected, he was still sleeping. The one thing I remembered about the bus schedule was that Nik’s bus came later, because middle school started later. If I was lucky at least one of my children would board a school bus today and not require a personal chauffeur.
Except that, of course, that would mean Nik would be here alone after I left with Pet. Could I trust my increasingly rebellious son to get to his bus stop on time. Or at all? I really didn’t know.
“What do you want for breakfast?” I asked on my way out of his room.
“What I always have.”
“And that would be?”
“What Mom fixes.”
“Then I’ll fix whatever I feel like fixing unless you give me a better clue.”
“Waffles.”
Robin had pointed out the frozen waffles in our freezer. “You want sausage or bacon?”
“I don’t eat pork. Do you know what pig farms do to the environment?”
“You can tell me all about it some other time.”
Downstairs I found the waffles, read the directions and slid them into the toaster. I took out cereal and milk, bananas and berries, juice. I located the syrup and butter, and had everything on the counter by the time Pet arrived wearing something that stretched to her ankles under the skirt. I hoped she didn’t strip off whatever it was as soon as she was out of sight.
As I got bowls and plates my cell phone buzzed. Pet had already informed me she liked toast and strawberry jam with her cereal, so I had popped out Nik’s waffles to replace them with bread.
“Can you pencil in a breakfast meeting first thing?” Buff said without the usual pleasantries. He named three other attorneys on our floor and a local coffee shop. “Everybody else can be there.”
I did calculations in my head. I had to dress and drive Pet to school. I had to figure out what to do about Nik and whether I could safely leave him here to do what he was supposed to. Then I had to drive into work. Since that would be later than usual, I would be hampered by rush hour.
Trying to do the impossible wouldn’t win me points with Buff, because clearly I would fail. And in any law office, it’s all about results.
I told him the truth, then I finished with, “But I’ll try to get there by the end of the meeting and someone can catch me up.”
“Robin left this morning?”
“It may take a day or two to get into the swing of our new schedule.”
“We’ll do what we can without you today.”
I didn’t miss the slight emphasis on “today.”
I called upstairs to Nik, who didn’t answer.
“He’s always slow,” Pet said through a mouthful of toast. “Sometimes Mommy has to go up and shoo him downstairs.”
“Does your mother leave him here to catch his bus if she has to take you to school?”
“I don’t know. She always makes sure I’m on time for my bus.”
“You’re old enough to take on that responsibility, Pet. You can set your alarm.”
“Like you set yours this morning?” She cocked her head in question.
“Let’s just pretend that once upon a time you missed the bus. Let’s say you fell and skinned your knee, and by the time it was all washed and bandaged and you had changed your clothes, the bus had left without you.”
She waited.
“Now your mom has to take you to school, right?”
She shrugged.
“So, would she leave Nik here to finish getting breakfast and out to the bus on time?”
“Are you kidding?”
I had been afraid of that. I tried to sound sure of myself, responsible, in control. “Everybody’s going to have to pull their own weight from now on.”
“You mean like deciding what we can wear to school and stuff?”
Pet had always been so much easier to parent than Nik that I don’t think I’d ever noticed that under that sweet smile a demon was lurking.
Nik slouched down the stairs just as Pet finished her cereal and went to brush her teeth.
“I’m going to drive your sister to school. Then I’ll come back and make sure you’re all set,” I told him.
He put his hand over his heart and widened his eyes. “Gee, you’ll trust me for the what, twenty minutes it takes to get there and back?”
Since I didn’t trust myself to answer, I left him to eat alone, and went upstairs to shave and dress for what was clearly going to be a very long day.
Robin
Late to work. Sorry you didn’t get me up before you left. I assume Pet’s not allowed to wear a short skirt over bare legs. K
As love notes go, Kris’s email sucked. I slipped my cell phone in the pocket of my jeans in case more recriminations were on the way. There was no telling what Kris was really sorry about on this first morning of our new life. That we hadn’t said a fond goodbye? That he had overslept and wanted me to take responsibility for that as well as everything else?
And Pet? The handwriting was already on that wall. Our daughter was testing her father. I doubted this morning would be the last time.
Switching gears from loyal wife to career photographer, I felt disoriented, and I stopped to regroup. I think I’ve forgotten how overwhelming an airport can be. I should remember. In college I chased internships