can tell me who she slept with, but not where she used to cook. Howard always tells me that chefs take their knives to bed. Now I believe him.
My cell phone rings. It’s the theme from Home Alone, which means one of my kids is calling from home. I apologize to Madison, who didn’t even appear to notice, and I take the call. It’s Jesse, who tells me that his father wants to borrow my car. Only he doesn’t call him “my father.” He calls him “your ex-husband.”
Rio gets on the phone. Before he gets past “How ya doing?” I tell him he cannot borrow my car.
“You really get a kick out of busting my balls, don’t you? In front of our kids, too. You don’t even wanna know what I need it for?” he says like it’s an accusation.
I tell him I don’t. “Unless one of my children is bleeding on the floor and you need to take him or her to the hospital, you can’t borrow the car.”
“It’s something like that,” he says. “And I only need it for a couple of days.”
I ask him what he means by it’s something like that.
He says one of his kids needs to go the hospital.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell him, signaling to Madison that I’m sorry, waving to Howard that we’ve got to leave. He’s deep in conversation with Nick and I decide I can get home faster with Drew and his siren. I should never have left the kids alone. I am a terrible mother. I should be arrested for child abuse.
Only, then who’d raise my kids?
I dash out of the restaurant like a maniac, searching for Drew, while I try to get a straight answer out of Rio.
I should know better.
“Who is hurt?” I demand. Drew appears from nowhere.
“What’s happening?” he demands.
The kids, I mouth. “Rio, I swear to God I will kill you if you don’t tell me, this instant, who is hurt and how they are hurt.”
Drew hustles me toward his car.
“Nobody’s hurt,” Rio says. “I didn’t say anyone was hurt. Did I say anyone was hurt?”
I put up my hand to stop Drew, who looks pretty pale for a man who sees dead people on a daily basis. “If no one is hurt, why are you taking my kids to the hospital?”
“I didn’t say your kids,” Rio says. His voice changes like he’s cupping the phone. “I said mine.”
“What? My kids aren’t your kids?” I ask before I realize what he’s saying.
“I’m gonna be a father again,” he says. I lean against Drew’s car. My legs have turned to gummi worms. Relief? Jealousy? Drew leans into me the better to hear Rio’s news. “The kids are gonna have a new little sister, sometime in the next couple a days.”
“Put Jesse on the phone,” I tell Mr. High Sperm Count while Drew laughs at me and Howard comes charging toward us.
“Mom?” Jesse says, and my heart goes out to this middle child of mine who is always caught in the middle.
“Listen to me, Jesse,” I say as evenly as I can. “Go into my office. In my desk, in that little drawer behind the door that opens for the printer, is some money. Give your father fifty dollars and tell him to use it for a cab to take Marion to the hospital when the time comes. Do not, I repeat, do not, give him the keys to my car.”
Jesse asks if I’m sure he should give him the money and I tell him softly that we do not take out our anger at his dad on a pregnant lady and her new baby. Hell, how else is he going to learn to be a good man? A mensch? Surely not from his father.
When I hang up, the men at my side seem to have nothing to say.
“My ex is going to be a father again,” I say, trying to sound breezy about the whole thing. “What does that make me?”
“Mad?” Howard asks.
“Even crazier than usual?” Drew suggests.
“I mean, Marion is my kids’ stepmother, or will be if Rio ever bothers to marry her. But we’re already divorced, so what would his baby be to me?”
“A thorn in your side?” Howard says.
“A pain in the ass?” Drew suggests.
“I’m glad you two are so thoroughly enjoying yourselves. Too bad it’s at my expense.”
Both men stand around with their hands in their pockets as if they don’t want to touch this situation literally or figuratively.
Finally, Howard asks Drew what he’s doing here. Drew claims that he was hungry, saying that even cops eat, and somehow the three of us wind up back in Madison on Park like we’re the best of friends.
Nick comes by to tell us to order freely. Everything is on the house. He brings a bottle of wine, which Howard tries to decline as too generous, but Nick insists.
Drew, making some Everyman statement, orders a beer.
With some difficulty, Madison pulls up a chair and all of us reach to help her a moment too late. She waves away our belated attempts as if to say “It’s nothing,” and declines the offer to join us in any wine, our gazes connecting as she does. Then, as if brushing the moment aside, she asks me what I think of the decor.
I try to find something nice to say and mention the romantic air. Drew looks amused.
“You can be honest,” she says. “God knows, they’re always saying honesty is the best policy.”
“So, what kind of name is Madison, anyway?” Drew asks. I don’t know if he is somehow implying that the woman hasn’t come by the name honestly, or just making conversation. I never can tell exactly what Drew is up to, which is how I wound up in his bed in the first place.
Anyway, she explains that she was born on Madison Avenue to Yugoslavian immigrants. I want to say, “So there.”
I tell her the restaurant has good bones, but the colors are off, and so much more could be done for the place with very little expense. And then I tell her that I would be happy to do the work at cost since the restaurant would be a great showcase for my talents. I tell her that Bobbie and I are still establishing our credentials and that it would be worth it to us to give her a great deal.
“A win-win situation,” Howard calls it while Drew indicates that his phone is vibrating and that he has to go.
“Ask them about Joe Greco,” he whispers in my ear as he gets up to leave. I glare at him while he shakes hands with Howard and takes Madison’s uninjured left hand. “You take care now,” he tells her as she rises along with him and sees him out, greeting new diners at the door.
“So what did Nick want to talk to you about, anyway?” I ask Howard while he waxes on about braised remembrance farm greens, whatever they are.
“Wanted to tell me
