took the place of my wife on the night of the accident.
My wife? While Talya left this earth without a goodbye, this morning Robin left our home without learning how much she would be missed, how glad I am that she survived the accident, how sorry I am that I’ve been acting like an asshole ever since.
Now I heard Michael comforting his daughter, although at this distance the words weren’t clear. But as I slid out of bed and started down the hall to wake my children, I wondered what I would say in the same circumstances.
Michael probably understands what Channa needs, and acts accordingly, despite his own grief. Then there’s me. The man who fully intended to be a hands-on father and found that eking out the time was a lot harder than he expected. Of course I had the perfect stand-in. Robin is a wonderful mother who has always been right here so I can be a wonderful wage earner. And now she’s changed the rules and taken off to leave me in charge of both.
The first glimmer of anger reappeared, 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
