Household Gods Read online

  “Oh, yeah. That’s right.” But, even reminded, Tony Gallagher didn’t come back at once to the subject. At least, for the moment, he wasn’t leering at her. He was staring out the window instead; he had a view as splendid as Mr. Rosenthal’s, as emblematic of both eminence and power.

  Nicole began to wonder if he’d forgotten she was there. She pondered slipping quietly away while he sat there in his semi-stupor, but she couldn’t be sure if he was drunk enough to let her get away with it. She stirred in her chair. As she’d half hoped, half feared, the motion drew his attention back to her. He wagged his forefinger in her direction again, as if it were something else, something not symbolic at all. “Say, I heard a good one the other day.”

  “Did you?” Nicole said. Gallagher told jokes constantly, both out of court and in. He insisted he’d caught several breaks from judges and juries over the years because of it. Nicole could believe it. Not that she’d have cared to try it herself, but with his personality and his — well — attributes, he could carry it off.

  “Sure did,” he said now. “Seems this gorgeous woman walked into a bar and asked the bartender for a six-pack of Budweiser. She…” From the very first line, Nicole hadn’t expected she’d care for the joke, but she hadn’t expected the disgust that swelled up in her as Tony Gallagher went on telling it. When he finished, he was grinning from ear to ear: “ — and so she said, ‘No, give me a six-pack of Miller instead. All that Budweiser’s been making my crotch sore.’ “

  He waited, chortling, for her to fall over laughing. No, she thought. Not even for a senior partner. “Mr. Gallagher,” she said with rigid deliberation, “that was the most sickening, sexist thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” She could have stopped there — should have, if she’d started at all. But something in her had snapped. “Nobody,” she said, shaking with the force of her disgust, “nobody should tell a joke like that, under any circumstances, to anybody. If that’s what it means to ‘cooperate,’ to be ‘one of the boys’ — if I have to crawl down in the gutter with all the rest of you, guzzling pricey liquor and laughing at sick jokes — then frankly, Mr. Gallagher, I don’t want to play.”

  There was an enormous silence. Nicole knew with sick certainty that he’d erupt, that he’d blast her out of her — his — chair.

  He didn’t. His eyes went cold and hard, like green glass. He was, she realized with dismay, much less drunk than she’d thought. “Ms. Gunther-Perrin,” he said with perfect and completely unexpected precision, “one of the complaints leveled against you by your peers and by the senior partners was that you did not get along with people as well as you should. I took the contrary position. I see now that I was mistaken.”

  “What exactly do you mean, I don’t get along?” Nicole asked. Maybe he would give her enough rope to hang him.

  She should have known he wouldn’t. He was a lawyer, wasn’t he? “I mean what I said,” he snapped. “No more, no less.” But even while he played the lawyer’s lawyer, his eyes slid down to her hemline again. Maybe — and that was worst of all — he didn’t even know he was doing it. He straightened in his chair. “Good afternoon, Ms. Gunther-Perrin.”

  “Good afternoon,” Nicole said, with the starch of generations of Midwestern schoolmarms in her voice and in her spine.

  She left with her head high. Oh, he wanted her to cooperate, no doubt about it — in bed and naked, or more likely wearing something vinyl and crotchless from Frederick’s of Hollywood.

  So now she’d offended not only the founding partner but the one senior partner who’d even pretended to be on her side. At least, she thought, she still had her self-respect. Unfortunately, it was the only thing she did have. She couldn’t eat it, put it in the gas tank, or pay the mortgage with it. She’d shot her chance for a partnership right between the eyes.

  On the other hand, if she’d read Sheldon Rosenthal right, she’d never been in line for a partnership. She’d been a blazing fool from start to finish.

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Gunther-Perrin,” Josefina said when Nicole handed her a check that afternoon. “You are the last one. I got to cash this, then run for the airport.” Nicole’s nod was grim. She’d have to get a cash advance from her MasterCard to keep the check from bouncing. She was buying groceries, gasoline — everything — on plastic till she got paid again. The MasterCard was close to maxing out. So was the Visa. Her whole life was on the verge of having its charging privileges revoked.

  Kimberley and Justin hugged Josefina so tightly when she bent to say good-bye to them that she laughed a little tearily and said something half reproving, half teasing, in the Spanish that they understood and Nicole never had. At that, Kimberley, who professed loudly and often that “only babies cry,” wept as if her heart would break. Nicole’s own heart was none too sturdy, either. Damn it, it pulled her apart to see her baby hurt.

  “Oh.” Josefina straightened, wiping her eyes and sniffing. “I got to tell you, Mrs. Gunther-Perrin, we got a virus going around the kids. I had to call two mothers this afternoon.”

  Great, Nicole thought. Why not? The way this day had been going, all she needed was a nice round of the galloping crud. “Thanks,” she managed to say to Josefina, though the last thing she felt was gratitude. She fixed Kimberley with a mock-severe look, one that usually made her erupt into giggles. There were no giggles today, just tears. “Don’t you dare get sick, do you hear me?” Nicole said — as if by simply saying it she could make the virus sit up and behave.

  Kimberley had stopped sobbing, at least. “I won’t, Mommy,” she said, sounding stuffy and forlorn. “I feel fine.”

  “Me, too,” Justin declared, not wanting to be left out.

  Then why were you wailing like that? Nicole thought uncharitably as she buckled her daughter into her car seat and got Justin into his. It wouldn’t be much longer before Kimberley outgrew the one she was in. Another milestone. These days, Nicole measured time by how her children changed. First step, first time dry through the night, first dirty word… Her mouth twisted. Her own life was on the downhill side. First abandonment, first divorce, first partnership lost — first firing next, probably, if things didn’t get better fast.

  On the way home, Victory was slow. Sherman Way would have been slower. The 101 would have been slowest. Nicole had got past White Oak and was heading for Reseda Boulevard — halfway back, more or less — before Kimberley gulped. “Oh, baby,” Nicole said in despair — she knew what that sound meant. “Don’t be sick. See if you can hold it till we get there.”

  “I’ll try.” Kimberley gulped again. She wasn’t saying she was fine now. Nicole tried, too: tried to go faster. She didn’t have much luck.

  Just past Reseda, Kimberley threw up. “Corny dogs!” Justin said gleefully. Nicole hadn’t wanted to find out quite that way what the kids had had for lunch.

  There was a medium-sized shopping center at the corner of Victory and Tampa. Nicole pulled in there among the people stopping for milk and groceries on the way home from work. None of them, she was sure, had to stop to mop up a pool of puke. She fished an old towel out of the trunk and, holding her breath against the acrid reek, cleaned off Kimberley and the car seat and the upholstery under it as best she could, and flung the towel into a trash can. She probably couldn’t afford to replace it. “Who gives a damn?” she said to the trash can.

  Kimberley had the thousand-yard stare of a sick child. Her forehead was hot. A virus, sure as hell. “It still stinks, Mommy,” she said as Nicole buckled her in again.

  “I know it does,” Nicole said, as gently as she could. “I’ll put that goop on it after we get home.” Odo-Clean, the stuff people used to get the smell of dog and cat pee out of rugs and chairs, also worked wonders on making cars livable when kids puked in them. Frank had taught her about it; it was an old family trick of his. At the moment, Nicole was not inclined to give him any credit for it.

  Home came none too soon. Justin had stopped holding his breath and started making imitation retching noises of
his own. Kimberley was mute, which said something worrisome about how sick she was. Nicole got her out of the car and cleaned her up properly and threw her soiled clothes in the washing machine, then settled her in front of the VCR in her pajamas with Toy Story and some water to rinse out her mouth, and fed her a little Tylenol liquid to make her feel better. Nicole hoped it would stay down. In case it didn’t, she equipped her daughter with a red plastic bucket and a roll of paper towels, and went back outside with rags and the bottle of Odo-Clean. Fine way to work up an appetite before dinner, she thought as she held her breath and scrubbed.

  It wasn’t till she’d made it back into the house again that she noticed the smear of vomit on her suit jacket. She shed it with a muffled curse. The tag inside said Dry Clean Only. Of course.

  Justin was waiting for her in the kitchen, perched in his high chair with the tray table up. “Hungry,” he announced, patting his tummy.

  “Nice to know somebody is,” Nicole said dryly. She wondered if he’d get sick tonight, or if he’d wait till tomorrow or the next day. He’d been massively exposed to whatever bug Kimberley had. But, she conceded to herself, he’d also been good while Nicole took care of his sister and cleaned up the car. She took a package of chicken nuggets and French fries out of the freezer.

  When Justin recognized the box, he slid down out of his high chair and hopped with glee. Chicken nuggets and French fries had no nutritional value whatsoever. So, of course, he loved them. So, also of course, his father fed them to him all the time. Frank was a devout believer in the four basic food groups: sugar, fat, salt, and chocolate. Nicole, cast by default in the role of Health-Food Ogre, often wondered why she even tried.

  Tonight, just for this once, she stopped trying. One meal of solid fat and sodium wouldn’t kill the kid, and he’d earned a little reward for being so good for so long.

  Slacker, her conscience chided her. She shut it down and clamped the lid on it.

  She thrust the tray in the microwave, set the timer, and pushed the button. Nothing happened. The light inside didn’t go on, either. She gave the door a push, thinking — hoping — she hadn’t closed it all the way. It was closed. She opened it and closed it again. Still no light. When she pressed the button, still no action. One dead microwave. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said.

  “Hungry,” Justin repeated. He watched Nicole take the chicken nuggets out of the microwave; his eyes went huge with dismay as she shoved them into the regular oven and twisted the temperature knob up as high as she dared. “Hungry!” he screamed, and started to cry.

  God, Nicole thought, prayed, maybe cursed, give me patience. Give Justin some, too, please, while you’re at it. “You can still have them,” she said. “They have to cook longer in this oven, that’s all.” Half an hour longer. Getting the idea of a half-hour delay across to a hungry two-year-old who was already feeling betrayed made everything she’d gone through at the office seem like a walk in the park.

  In the end, she broke her own rule. She gave him some chocolate Teddy Grahams and milk to shut him up. That killed any chance he’d have of eating a good dinner, but chicken nuggets and fries weren’t a good dinner to begin with, so who cared?

  Absently, Nicole slid a frozen dinner in the oven for herself, too. It was healthier than the one she’d pulled out for Justin, that much she could say for it. Frozen food was all she had time for, all she ever had time for. Sometimes she dreamt of cooking lavish gourmet meals full of vitamins and minerals, fresh vegetables and quality ingredients, then freezing portions and heating them up for all those nights when she had neither time nor energy to spare for feeding herself once the kids were fed and bathed and tucked away in bed. But who had time to cook anything, even on weekends? Who had the ambition to even start? So she lived on Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice and Thrifty Gourmet, and pitched fits when Frank fed the kids hot dogs and frozen chicken nuggets.

  “It’s a wonderful life,” she said to Justin, who ignored her. He was playing happily on the kitchen floor with his cup of milk and his Teddy Grahams.

  In the front room, Kimberley stared through Woody and Buzz, not at them, but she hadn’t thrown up again. That was something. Not much, but something. Patting her daughter on the head, Nicole went into the bedroom to call Frank at his place. She liked that even less than calling him at UCLA, but didn’t see that she had a choice. She’d have to replace the microwave, and for that she needed money — money he owed her.

  Someday, she swore to herself, she’d be in a position to pay for everything without the humiliation of calling Frank. Until that day came, she’d just have to bite the bullet and do what she had to do.

  The phone sat on the nightstand. As she reached for it, the plaque with Liber and Libera caught her eye. There they stood, god and goddess together, equal, as they were supposed to be. She’d never known any Latin that wasn’t strictly legalese — she’d been a business administration major before she got into law school — but what their names meant was clear enough. Liberty, liberalism, liberality. She didn’t have enough of any of those things.

  She dialed the number to Frank’s condo so seldom, she had to look it up. The phone rang once, twice, three times, four. Then, with a faint but distinct click, a sweet — gooey-sweet, Nicole thought — voice came on the line. “Hi, this is Dawn. Frank and I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Remember to wait for the beep. ‘Bye.”

  “Frank, this is Nicole,” Nicole said, ignoring Dawn even in recorded form. “I just want to let you know Kimberley is sick, the microwave is dead, and I need the child support you’re late with. Pay up, dammit. Good-bye.”

  It wouldn’t do much good. She knew that too well. Frank would take his own sweet time answering a message like that, but she’d been too frazzled to come up with anything kinder or gentler. She had a sudden, horridly vivid picture of him and Dawn screwing when she called, and laughing like a couple of loons when they heard who it was.

  The front of the house was quiet when she emerged from the bedroom. Kimberley hadn’t moved since she left. Nicole bent to feel her forehead, then to kiss it. Kimberley was still warm, but maybe a touch less. The longer the Tylenol stayed down, the better. “How’s your tummy feel?” Nicole asked. Kimberley shrugged and subsided back into immobility.

  Loud stomping noises sent her running to the kitchen. Justin had scarfed down most of the Teddy Grahams, then dumped the rest of them on the floor and spritzed them with milk from the three little holes in the Tommee Tippee cup. Now he was having a high old time smashing them up. “Mud!” he told Nicole, delighted.

  “No, not mud,” she barely managed not to scream at him. “Mess. Naughty. No-no!” Her hand itched to give him a good solid spanking.

  No. She wouldn’t do it. She didn’t believe in it. A good parent had no need to strike a child to make it behave.

  Not that she was a perfect parent, either. She’d smacked Justin and Kimberley once or twice, more because she was at the end of her rope than because they had done anything extraordinarily hideous. Each time she’d felt horrible, and each time she’d thanked heaven she hadn’t seemed to do them any lasting harm.

  She pried Justin’s Reeboks off him and carried them over to the sink. Their soles, though formed in miniature, had as many gripping cups and ridges and grooves as those on the shoes she wore on weekends. Milk-smeared chocolate crackers had got into all of them, and refused stubbornly to be scrubbed out. Finally, she found an old toothbrush that did the job — bristle by bristle, crumb by crumb, and ridge by ridge.

  The floor was just as delightful. Paper towels and Formula 409 disposed of most of the mess, but, sure as hell, some of the sodden Teddy Graham crumbs had slithered down between the tiles. She had to rout them out with the toothbrush, too. She couldn’t just let them go. Teddy Grahams were worse than mud. A lot worse, all things considered. If she didn’t scour out every speck, by morning the kitchen would be swarming with ants.
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  By the time she was through cleaning, the chicken nuggets and French fries and her own Lean Cuisine shrimp-and-boring-vegetables were ready. She carefully cut the chicken and potatoes into bite-sized bits for her son and let him practice impaling them with a fork. After four or five bites, he was picking, not eating: the Teddy Grahams had taken their toll on him along with his shoes and the floor.

  She’d managed two bites from the tray in front of her (too much sodium, and low-fat only by comparison to some of the other frozen food out there) when the telephone rang. She got up so fast, she almost overturned her bottle of Evian. Maybe Frank would come through after all. Stranger things had happened.

  “Hello?” she panted, breathless from the dash to the bedroom.

  “Hello, is this Nicole?” asked a friendly and completely unfamiliar male voice.

  “Yes,” Nicole said warily. “Who is this, please?”

  “My name’s Bob Broadman, Nicole.” Too friendly. “Now, I know that a busy homemaker like yourself doesn’t have a lot of time, so I’ll make this quick for you, all right, Nicole?” Way too friendly. “Would you be interested in trying in your own home — ”

  Nicole slammed the receiver into its cradle. She hated telemarketers. She particularly hated telemarketers who, hearing a female voice, assumed the person who owned it was a housewife. She most particularly hated telemarketers who did all that and — insult on top of injury — called at dinnertime.

  Her gaze fell again on Liber and Libera. She could have sworn they looked back at her with sympathy in their stony eyes. The thought wasn’t so absurd as it might have seemed before she went through this day from hell. Nobody in their time could have had to put up with what she’d just put up with. Just look at them, god and goddess side by side, equal and anything but separate. No repressive patriarchy. No fat plaid-jacketed lawyers leering up an employee’s skirt. “And, by God,” she said, “no telemarketers.”