'Tis the Season (11 page)

He'd thought Debbie would snap out of her doldrums. Instead, she'd had Gracie and sunk even deeper into the blahs. Evan had tried surprising her, coming home with a baby-sitter and sweeping her out for dinner at Reynaud, the classiest restaurant in town. On their fifth anniversary he'd bought her a diamond pendant. Diamonds were glamorous, weren't they?

Evidently, she'd preferred baseball diamonds to the kind you could wear on a gold chain around your neck. So when she'd seen an opportunity, she'd grabbed it and ran.

Tank was right. Evan was wrapped as tight as an Ace bandage right now. Debbie was gone, but he couldn't control his reflexes. He couldn't control the dread that gnawed at him, the memories of how a professional athlete could destroy his world simply by being rich and cool and glamorous enough to ride around town in a stretch limo piloted by a driver who knew everything.

And if that wasn't enough, he had other things on his mind. He was coming off a sleepless night—a night during which his mind had churned with inappropriate ideas
about Filomena Albright—and a morning during which Molly Saunders-Russo had more or less told him she thought he was an inadequate father. “Do you have any children?” he asked Tank.

Tank chuckled. “None that I know of.” He leaned back against the leather upholstery, obviously quite at home in the limo. “I suppose if I had a child, his mother would be sure to keep me in the loop, given my deep pockets and all.”

“I suppose.”

“So, you got kids?”

“Two. A son and a daughter.” If Tank hadn't asked, Evan would have moved on to other things—the weather, Christmas, athletic equipment. But Tank
had
asked, and since the subject was bugging Evan, he figured he might as well beat it into submission. “My daughter's preschool teacher told me I need to take classes in how to be a father.”

“Oh, man. That sounds bad.”

“Yeah, it does, doesn't it?” Evan grinned, pleased by how easy Tank was to talk to. “The thing is, I'm a fantastic father. I'm raising the kids myself, and they're terrific. Not perfect, but pretty damned close.”

“Never get into trouble, do they?”

“Oh, they get into trouble, but…” He sighed again. “I don't know. Maybe she's right. Maybe if I love them as much as I think I do, I'd be willing to take these classes and become a better father.”

“What does their mother say?”

“She's gone,” Evan said tersely.

“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.

 

F
ILOMENA 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 she 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.