The Queen of Hearts(3)
The quietness of his tone strangled any irritation I might have felt. Drew was a frequent victim of his managing director’s whims when it came to last-minute travel for their private equity business. He’d never complain to me about how much he minded canceling a promise to our little sons, but he didn’t have to: I knew how to read all his inflections.
“You know what?” I said buoyantly. “I will distract them with my own fearsome tennis skills. Don’t worry for a second about it.”
His voice recovered. “That would be spectacular,” he said, refraining from pointing out that I was more inept on the tennis court than a bilateral arm amputee. “Let’s plan on me taking them out this weekend, okay?”
I told him I loved him and hung up. I glanced at my watch. I had an hour and a half, which was the perfect amount of time to knock out the shopping I had to do. I’d bring the vampire with me, and we would have a serious discussion about things.
For once Delaney did not fight as she was buckled into her car seat. She was uncharacteristically quiet as I lit into her, babbling about consequences and limits and privileges. I realized that much of this was over Delaney’s head, but maybe venting would calm me down enough to come up with a plan. I raged all the way to the Target parking lot, finally winding down as I unbuckled Delaney.
“Mommy?”
“Yes. What?”
In a tiny voice: “Are we still in love?”
I looked at Delaney. Her fat cheeks were drooping with guilt and fear, and her great big eyes blinked, dislodging two perfect diamonds of tears. Her little shoulders shook as she fought not to cry. Finally unable to hold it back, she buried her face in her small hands and tried to stifle her sobs.
My irritation melted. A penitent toddler could conquer the hardest heart. I scooped Delaney up, letting my littlest child bury her wet face in my chest. Chubby arms and legs wound themselves around my torso.
“I’m sorry, darling honey. I’m sorry,” cried Delaney. “I didn’t meant to do it!”
“It’s okay, baby,” I said, stroking her heaving little back. “We are still in love.”
—
Seven o’clock in the morning was a ridiculous hour to have a conversation with anyone, at least in my opinion, but it qualified as late morning for Emma. She arrived at work by six most days, but she had negotiated a late start on Tuesdays. She also received two days off every other week, which for her meant an unprecedented amount of leisure time. But then again, Emma has always been a workaholic, so I wasn’t even sure she appreciated it.
I was an early riser too, but not by choice. A few years back, one of my female partners and I had managed to achieve a utopian ideal never before seen in my old-school, male-dominated cardiology practice: job sharing. During the three days a week I worked, I sometimes started early: at least once a week, I needed to be in the OR myself to perform echocardiograms on the little congenital heart patients. And of course, on my two days “off,” I often awoke even earlier to find myself wedged to the edge of the bed by a highly energetic twenty-five-pound intruder who’d crept in during the night. Even though I was amped to find out what Emma had discovered about Nick, I couldn’t suppress a yawn.
After my big kids—eight-year-old Rowan and six-year-old twins Eli and Finn—left for early care at school, I made my way to the car, Delaney hopping in sparky little circles around my feeble trudge. “Mom, is this a skipping?”
I assessed her exaggerated lurch. “Um, not quite.”
“Now is it a skipping?”
“Well—”
“HOW ABOUT NOW?”
Sometimes you had to lie. “Yep. Looks like skipping to me.”
It took forever to load Delaney into the SUV, since she pitched a full-blown fit if you didn’t allow her to buckle her own car seat, despite fat little fingers that could barely manipulate the belt. Sometimes I gritted my teeth and overpowered Delaney in the interest of expediency, but what the hell? Everyone knew I was always late. I fanned myself as Delaney worked at the buckle.
We finally departed. “I’m all wet,” Delaney announced from the backseat.
“What?” I asked, navigating around a slowing driver who apparently did not wish to tip his hand by using a turn signal. “Did you spill your drink?”
“No!” hollered Delaney. “I’m pouring wet!”
“Well, I mean . . . how did you get all wet, honey?”
“I don’t know! Water is coming out of my head skin!”
I glanced in the rearview mirror to see Delaney pointing in alarm to her sweaty forehead.
After a brief discussion about perspiration, we arrived at Queens Road West, where Emma’s home was one in a line of magnificent old trophy houses. I turned into the curved driveway, outlined with confluent rows of dwarf Korean boxwoods interrupted every fifteen feet by blooming crape myrtles. The ten-foot-high whitewashed fences on either side of the house were draped in luscious espaliered pear trees, leading to a half-acre backyard of Edenic splendor: dozens of lime green hydrangeas, pruned camellias grown into perfect small trees, and sculpted beds of cutting flowers in great swaths of bright colors.
Delaney and I traipsed down the driveway through a snowy cloud of floating crape myrtle petals, the oyster shells underfoot making a pleasant critch-critch noise that merged with the faint undertone of buzzing from bumblebees in the flower beds. Even though it was morning in September, it was hot as a waffle iron out here, but the trees in Myers Park—hundred-year-old oaks as tall as four-story buildings—reared up overhead to create a massive green tunnel over Queens Road West, which at least gave the illusion of cool.