’Tis the Season Page 10
“Oh, man. Ladies. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. Thing is, I’d rather live without ’em. Just bring ’em in for special occasions, if you know what I mean, and then send them on their way. Having a driver comes in real handy if that’s what you want to do,” he added, gesturing toward his chauffeur.
“I suppose it does.”
“So this teacher thinks you ought to take some classes, huh? Is she cute?”
“She’s married,” Evan told him.
“Yeah, but is she cute?”
Evan glared at Tank, who chuckled as if to imply he was joking. At least, Evan hoped that was what he was implying. “What difference does it make if she’s cute?”
Tank shrugged. “Maybe there’d be some cute ladies at the classes.”
“It’s a Daddy School. Why would there be any women in the class? Women aren’t daddies.”
“Well, I’m thinking maybe the instructor’ll be a lady. In fact, I’m thinking it’s got to be a lady. Who else is gonna teach men how to be daddies?”
“Other daddies, maybe.”
“Now that sounds like a losing proposition.” Tank reached into the cooler chest and pulled out a bottle, then gestured for Evan to help himself. Evan declined with a shake of his head. “Seems to me,” Tank said, yanking the cap off, “ladies are the experts when it comes to raising kids. Dads do their part to create the kid, but the ladies are the experts. My mama raised me, and I must say she did a damned fine job. That’s why I love ladies so much—because the first person I ever loved was a lady.” He lifted the bottle as though in a toast to his mother and all the other ladies he loved, then took a swig.
Evan mulled over Tank’s observations about the Daddy School and found his resentment melting away. Maybe Tank had the right attitude: not that Evan might meet cute ladies by attending class, but that he could give it a try and not take it so seriously. His poker buddy Murphy seemed to have survived the ordeal, although it seemed pretty clear to Evan that he hadn’t learned how to turn his two rambunctious kids into quiet, well-behaved youngsters.
Evan didn’t want Billy and Gracie to turn into quiet, well-behaved youngsters. All he wanted was for them never to climb on a roof again. If the Daddy School taught a father how to guarantee that his kids would stay safe and act sensibly, the class might be worth it.
FILOMENA FOUND the Children’s Garden preschool without too much trouble. Driving down Dudley Street, she’d noticed quite a few new stores and businesses, as well as older businesses she remembered from her stays in Arlington years ago. Although Thanksgiving was still a week away, most of the shops were already decorated with Christmas lights, wreaths and smiling Santas waving in windows framed with garlands of holly and tinsel.
She almost laughed out loud when she saw a house with a neon hand glowing in the window, and the sign Readings, Predictions, Tarot. Madame Roussard, Licensed Palmist. She remembered the time—she’d been around nine or ten—when her mother had brought her to visit Madame Roussard. They’d both had their tarot cards read. Filomena couldn’t remember what her mother’s cards had predicted, but her own reading had promised a life of passion. Filomena’s father had dismissed the whole thing as utter nonsense and a waste of money, but Filomena and her mother had had a grand time listening to Madame Roussard describe their futures and then going out for ice-cream sundaes.
As a teenager, Filomena had learned tarot and regular-card reading, but she’d never told her father. She’d wanted him to think she was as wise and dignified as he was. She hadn’t told her mother, either, because her mother tended to take the cards just a bit too seriously. Heaven knew, if her mother had found out Filomena was studying tarot, she might have urged her to quit college and set up a quaint little storefront like Madame Roussard’s, where she could issue prophecies at twenty dollars a pop.
The preschool was less than half a block from Madame Roussard’s, and its parking lot was half-full when Filomena pulled in. Bright lights illuminated the asphalt and the front door. She parked, hugged her suede jacket tightly around her and scampered inside, out of the blustery breeze.
A pretty young woman sat at a desk just inside the door. “Hi,” Filomena said, approaching the desk. “You must be Molly.”
The woman shook her head. “I’m Cara. Molly’s left for the day. Can I help you?”
Molly had left? Who was this woman? Would she release Gracie to Filomena? Her first day as a baby-sitter, and already she sensed a disaster brewing. “I’m here to pick up Gracie Myers. My name is Filomena Albright.”
Cara swiveled away from Filomena, opened a file drawer and flipped through the files until she found the one she was looking for. She pulled it out, opened it and skimmed a document inside. Then she slid the file back into the drawer and smiled at Filomena. “I’ll need to see some photo ID,” she said.
As if Filomena were trying to board a plane or visit a prison inmate. Was the woman going to frisk her, too? Sighing, she pulled out her wallet and opened it to her driver’s license.
Cara studied the ugly little photo on the license and nodded again, apparently convinced that Filomena was who she claimed to be. “Gracie’s in the back room. Just go down the hall. You’ll see her.”
Filomena tucked her wallet back into her purse and started down the hall, her wool skirt floating around her legs. She loved wearing skirts, long ones that gave her the freedom to sit any way she wanted. Skirts flowed. They billowed. They danced even when she wasn’t dancing. And on cold days like today, she could wear tights under them, so she was just as warm as she would have been in slacks.
One side of the hallway was lined with cubbies, filled with puffy, colorful jackets and parkas and bright plastic lunch boxes. The cubbies were set low into the wall, designed for child-size people to reach the hooks and shelves. High-pitched voices pealed in the room at the end of the hall. Filomena realized she’d never been in a preschool before—at least not since she’d been a preschooler herself.
In New York City, none of her friends had young children. Some of her cousins had started families, but they lived all across the country and she rarely saw them. If she’d been a less confident person, she’d question whether she’d had any right to accept Evan’s job offer. What did she know about children?
She knew she liked them. She knew they were honest more often than not, they saw the world through unbiased eyes, they were a hundred percent potential and zero percent cynicism. She knew they could believe in witches and ghosts and talking animals in books.
And she was confident. She’d climbed mountains. She’d sailed down the Amazon in a flat-bottomed wooden boat. She’d hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up again, carrying everything she’d needed on her back. If she could do that, she could handle kids.
The hall opened into a spacious room filled with tiny chairs and stepladders and play areas. Only about six children were present, although their shrill voices were loud enough to give the impression that the room was packed with noisy youngsters. An older woman was with them, overseeing a game of duck-duck-goose that seemed to entail more shrieking laughter than skill and strategy.
Gracie leaped to her feet and broke from the circle when she spotted Filomena. “Fil!” she bellowed, clearly happy to see her. Filomena realized she was happy to see Gracie, too. She instinctively opened her arms and Gracie ran into them, giving her an enthusiastic hug.
“It’s time to go home,” she said.
“I know.” Of course Gracie knew. She knew much more about preschool than Filomena did. With a self-assurance that bordered on arrogance, she strutted through the room, leading Filomena back to the hall. At one of the cubbies she stopped to get her coat and lunch box. Filomena bent over to assist her with her zipper, but she backed away from Filomena and closed it by herself, then shot Filomena a smug look.
Filomena smiled back. “All set? Let’s go.”
In the car, she checked her old road map of Arlington to make sure the Elm Street School was where s
he thought it was. Gracie sat behind her, buckled into the booster seat Evan had given Filomena last night. The little girl bubbled with energy, yammering about who did what to whom, who swapped cookies at lunch, who spilled the apple juice at snack time, who made the worst painting during art. “He just dumped all the colors on his paper and the whole thing came out brown,” Gracie reported, as stern as a conservative art critic. “It was so ugly. It wasn’t a good brown at all. It looked like mustard.”
“Mustard is yellow,” Filomena pointed out as she eased into the rush-hour traffic on Dudley.
“Dirty mustard. Mustard with mud mixed in it. It was so ugly! I can’t believe he did that!”
Gracie’s indignation lasted until they picked up Billy at his after-school program. Strapped into the back seat next to his sister, he outshouted her, describing all the stupidity he’d had to encounter that day. “This kid Joey Hemmenway? He always belches in class. Sometimes it’s funny, but he did it today when the principal was standing in the doorway, and the principal got upset and Joey had to leave the room. I mean, he is so stupid! Belching in front of the teacher is stupid enough, but in front of the principal?”
“What could he have been thinking?” Filomena said sympathetically.
“He’s really disgusting,” Billy continued. “He calls people ‘mucus-head.’”
“That’s disgusting,” Filomena agreed.
“What’s mucus?” Gracie wanted to know.
Filomena gave Billy a chance to answer his sister’s question, but he gallantly deferred to Filomena. “It’s the fluid that lubricates the inside of your nostrils,” she said delicately.
“Like snot?” Gracie asked.
Filomena choked on a laugh. “Yes, Gracie. Like snot.”
They arrived at Evan’s house and she parked carefully on one side of the driveway, leaving enough room for him to drive past into the garage. The key he’d given her felt strange in her hand—or, more accurately, her hand felt strange holding it. It was a normal, ordinary key, but it wasn’t hers. It wasn’t a neighbor’s or a friend’s. It was Evan’s, the key to his house, and she was going to be entering his house as if it were hers, as if she belonged there.
For the next few weeks she did belong there. In time, she was sure she would no longer feel like a trespasser.
The children seemed to know what to do in the kitchen. They removed their jackets and tossed them onto chairs—Filomena told them to hang their jackets in the closet, and they did, with only minor grousing. When they returned to the kitchen, Billy got to work cleaning out his and Gracie’s lunch boxes. Filomena turned to Gracie. “What does your dad usually do when you get home?” she asked.
“He makes dinner,” Gracie informed her, crossing to the refrigerator. “I help. There’s leftover chicken.”
“I hate leftovers,” Billy said dramatically.
“Well, is there anything else in there?” Filomena asked, peering over Gracie’s head at the refrigerator’s contents. “Maybe I could get something else started for him.”
“There’s hamburgers,” Gracie said, pulling a package of ground beef from a shelf. “You could broil hamburgers.”
“We could make something more interesting than hamburgers.” Filomena checked the package—one pound, and it looked pretty lean. “What else does your father make with ground beef?”
Gracie and Billy gazed at her, both obviously perplexed. “He makes hamburgers,” Billy said. “He broils them.”
“He broils everything,” Gracie added.
“Oh, come on.” Filomena laughed. “He doesn’t broil spaghetti, does he?”
Gracie and Billy exchanged a look and shrugged.
“Let’s cook something more exciting than hamburgers. How about…” Filomena turned back to the refrigerator and surveyed its contents. Tomatoes, green peppers—she could make stuffed peppers if Evan had any rice and tomato sauce. She closed the refrigerator and moved to the cabinets, then opened them one at a time until she found the area where he stored food. When she located a box of instant rice, she tried not to curl her lip. Instant rice lacked texture and taste, but it would work in stuffed peppers.
“What are you going to make?” Gracie asked anxiously.
“Stuffed peppers.”
“Is it broiled?” she asked. “Daddy broils everything.”
“We like broiled things,” Billy concurred.
“You’ll like this, too. And it’s lots of fun to make. Billy, you can scrape the seeds out of the peppers. Gracie, you can help me make the rice.”
The children seemed apprehensive. Filomena kept them too busy to complain or tell her how very much they liked broiled things. Billy did a painstakingly complete job on the peppers once Filomena had cut out the stems. Not a single seed remained when he was done with them. The instant rice cooked as quickly as the box promised, and Filomena let both Gracie and Billy take turns stirring the rice and seasonings into the meat. They had so much fun stuffing the meat into the peppers, they didn’t even notice when Filomena set the oven to the “bake” setting, instead of the “broil” setting.
She’d just slid the tray of peppers into the oven when the sound of jingling keys reached them from the mudroom. “Daddy!” Gracie yelled, jumping down from the chair on which she’d been kneeling. She raced out of the kitchen, Billy at her heels.
Filomena smiled, refusing to take their abandonment personally. Evan was their father—obviously a devoted, loving father, given how eager they were to greet him. Once again she wondered why his wife had left him and their children, and why no other woman had staked a claim on his heart.
The children were chattering loudly, dragging Evan into the kitchen. “It’s not broiled,” Billy was saying, half a warning and half a cheer.
And then her gaze met Evan’s, and the kids and their clamor seemed to vanish.
Only for an instant. Only for the briefest blink of time, she gazed into his glowing silver eyes and felt as if he were her man coming home to her, tired but content, wanting only to be where she was, where she waited for him.
He did look tired, she recognized as reality rushed back in, the spell broken as the children continued to yap about the stuffed peppers and their contributions to the meal. “I got the seeds out,” Billy boasted. “All Gracie did was measure the rice. I did the hard part.”
“Measuring the rice was hard!”
“Anyone can measure rice. Getting the seeds out—”
“Okay, guys,” Evan cut them off. “I’m sure you both did plenty. Now, why don’t you scram for a few minutes so Filomena can explain what’s going on.”
“Fil,” Gracie corrected him as she headed out of the kitchen. “She likes to be called Fil.”
The children were gone. The room grew peaceful, silence wrapping around her and Evan until she felt uncomfortable in its intimacy. She turned to the oven and lowered the door to check on the peppers. Evan remained where he stood, on the other side of the counter near the table, the warrior returning home after a day of battle, tie loosened, leather briefcase in hand.
“I didn’t hire you to cook for us,” he said quietly. He didn’t sound angry. More bewildered, and a bit concerned.
“I know,” she said, still facing the oven. She was afraid that if she turned around, she’d experience that same strange sensation she’d felt when he’d first entered the room—only, now they were alone, without the children to shatter the mood. She didn’t want to feel as if anything beyond employer-employee existed between her and Evan. It was foolish, pointless, her imagination performing cartwheels. Nothing more.
“I thought preparing a meal would be a fun way to keep the kids busy,” she explained.
“Apparently it worked. Billy got the seeds out.”
She couldn’t tell from his voice whether he was annoyed. It occurred to her that if he was, he’d be fully within his rights. Mustering her courage, she turned back to him. “I’m sorry. It was presumptuous of me to fix dinner. I guess you prefer things broiled.”
She suffered a pang of regret. “I should have just prepared hamburgers,” she said. “Then you could have broiled them and the kids would have eaten them and—”
“Thank you,” he cut her off, sounding so sincere she believed his gratitude was real. “If you can perform miracles in the oven, you can probably perform miracles on the children. Can you do me one favor, though?”
“Anything.” His thanks notwithstanding, she felt guilty about having meddled in his meal plans.
“Stay for dinner and make them eat it.”
She wanted to protest that he didn’t have to feed her. He was paying her to do a job, and she’d already skirted close to blowing it. The last thing he ought to be doing was rewarding her by including her in his family’s dinner for a second night in a row.
But when she analyzed his invitation, she realized he really was asking a favor of her. Since the kids had helped her prepare the meal, they’d be more likely to eat it if she was present. They’d be less likely to complain that it wasn’t what they were used to.
Besides, Evan looked exhausted. She couldn’t imagine him coming home after a draining day and having to prepare dinner himself, and deal with Billy and Gracie. Maybe he wanted her there just because he didn’t have the strength to take on his rambunctious children right now. He might simply be asking her for help.
“All right,” she said. She did want to help. Not because he was paying her, not because she felt guilty, but because he was Evan and for that one simmering moment she’d felt so strongly connected to him, she couldn’t bear to leave him when he needed her.
Right now, he needed her. She knew it as well as she knew the shade of her back porch, the scent of her candles, the messages the queen of spades and the five of hearts carried in a plain old deck of playing cards. Evan Myers needed her.