all my friends in the same place. When the telephone rang I was still going over the past month in my head. The moment I realized Kris was the caller, I considered not answering, but I knew nothing would prevent him from leaving a message.
I took the telephone into the living room and asked him to wait as I yelled up the stairs to tell Nik and Pet to come down and eat. At twelve Nik likes to ignore my summons, but ten-year-old Pet managed an “okay.” Then I took the phone out to the front porch and closed the door behind me.
“Are you calling from the car?” I asked.
A pause. I pictured a bleary-eyed Kris checking his surroundings to see if he was on the road home.
“I’m still at the office.”
I lowered myself to our porch swing, which was swaying in a breeze growing colder as the sun dropped toward the horizon. “Kris, I have to leave in a little while. I’m riding to the restaurant with Gretchen, and she’ll be picking me up right on time. She’s nothing if not punctual.”
“You need to find somebody else to watch the kids tonight. I’m sorry, but a potential client just showed up, and this is important.”
I watched a heavier gust of wind ruffle the chrysanthemums I’d planted in brass pots flanking our steps. I fill the pots according to season. This fall they’re particularly beautiful, the chrysanthemums in hues of bronze and deepest purple interlaced with silvery dusty miller and trailing sedum.
At one time in my life I didn’t speak at all. No matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn’t push words out of my throat. Even now I sometimes fall mute when I feel strong emotion, but this time I managed a sentence.
“Kris, my plans are important, too.”
His sigh carried the necessary miles, and I pictured him sitting in his expansive Tysons Corner office with its coveted view of a nondescript street below. Without facial clues I couldn’t tell if Kris was upset that I hadn’t just snapped my heels and saluted, or if he was upset with himself for disappointing me. I didn’t want to guess.
He was speaking softly now, as if someone might overhear. “Listen, Robin, I know going out with your friends is important. I really do. But this guy flew in unexpectedly—”
“And Buff assumes you’ll drop everything and take him to dinner because you always do.” Buff is a senior partner at Kris’s law firm and the one with whom he most often works.
He fell silent.
I filled the gap, unusual in itself. “Pet and Nik will be fine alone for the time it takes you to drive home. Leave right now and tell Buff you’ll bring the client with you. Pick up pizza or Chinese. You can return him to his hotel once I’m back.”
“You always seem to be able to find a babysitter. Just call somebody. Promise you’ll pay them extra.”
“I’m supposed to leave in...” I looked at my watch. “Twenty-five minutes now. I can’t find a babysitter in twenty-five minutes.”
“Look, I don’t know what to tell you about that. But I am telling you I can’t come home. I’m sorry. If you can’t go out tonight, maybe you can arrange another dinner with your friends sometime soon.”
I closed my eyes. “Do what you have to, but please come home.”
“You should have arranged something ahead of time. Just in case.”
And there it was. I should have arranged for a babysitter, because I should have known Kris would disappoint me.
“I’m hanging up now.” I ended the call.
When the telephone rang again, I wondered foolishly if Kris was about to apologize. With the client, without the client, I didn’t care, but surely he wanted me to know he was on his way home to be a father to the children who rarely saw him.
Of course the person on the other end wasn’t Kris.
“Robin! Were you sitting on the telephone?”
I stared at the darkening sky and pictured Cecilia, auburn hair waving down her back, expressive, exquisitely pampered face scrunched up in question. I couldn’t picture the spot from which she was calling. She might be in a dressing room, getting ready to go onstage, or at her home in Pacific Palisades looking over the ocean.
“No,” I said, “I just hung up with Kris.”
When I didn’t go on she lowered her voice. “Is everything okay?”
“Not so much.” I blew out one breath before I gulped another. “In the scheme of things it’s nothing.”
“Tell me what it is.”
So I did. Cecilia doesn’t give up, and I had to leave time to call Talya and tell her that Gretchen wouldn’t need to stop at my house on the way to dinner. I wouldn’t be going.
After I finished, Cecilia was silent a moment. She doesn’t like Kris and never has, but she knows that criticizing him will drive a wedge between us. Cecilia would hate that worse than anything, even more than she hates the occasional scathing review of a concert or album.
“Call your next-door neighbor,” she said.
“Talya’s going to the dinner, too.”
“Her husband isn’t going, is he?”
“Michael?” Michael Weinberg is an anesthesiologist and never on call at night. “Ask Michael to babysit?”
“Why not? He’ll be babysitting their daughter anyway. What’s her name?”
“Channa. But Michael bores Nik to death. He’s always trying to get him interested in chemistry or astronomy, and Nik hides when the Weinbergs come over, just to avoid him.”
“Too bad for Nik, but who’s more important, you, a grown woman who needs to see her friends, or a twelve-year-old boy? Besides, Nik’s probably really hiding from Channa. The last time I saw her she was growing up and out, and I bet he doesn’t know what to say around her anymore.”
I carefully weigh advice from Cecilia, at least advice of a personal nature. Her life is larger than mine, larger than almost anybody’s. There’s not much room for simple matters, and other people, like Donny, her personal manager, handle those.
Still, she’s often surprisingly insightful, and this time she was right about Michael, and about Channa, who one day in the not so distant future would be as pretty and well-endowed as her mother. Cecilia has been behind me pushing hard since the day we met. And this time I needed the shove.
“You nailed it again. I’m going to hang up and call him.” I glanced at my watch. “Can we talk another time?”
“Okay, but don’t put me off. Something important’s come up, and we need to talk. So call when you’re free and I’ll drop everything.” She hung up.
I could probably put my children through college on what a tabloid would pay me for Cecilia’s private cell number.
Twenty-five minutes later, Talya and I climbed into Gretchen’s car,
