Games to Play After Dark

by Sarah Gardner Borden

  “I can’t pull both.”

  “Just try, okay? For me? Please?”

  Lila picked up the second string. She walked ahead, the sleds bumping together. “I can’t. I can’t.” She began to cry.

  “Oh, Robin, shape up!” Kate said. Holding her, she swatted the girl on her behind through the snow pants.

  Robin leaned into her and bit surprisingly hard through the shoulder of Kate’s down coat.

  “Okay, that’s it.” Kate dropped Robin into the snow by the impromptu tamped-down path. “I’m leaving you here. I really am.”

  Lila sobbed. “Don’t leave her here, Mommy, don’t.”

  Robin began to wail and kick her legs. Kate ran back to her and pulled her up by the collar of her coat. Robin resisted. Kate said, “If you don’t … if you don’t—”

  She seized Robin’s upper arm and shook her.

  “Robin, I am going to spank you till you can’t sit down!”

  Robin stuck out her tongue.

  Kate grabbed Robin’s chin and squeezed. She raised her right hand.

  Lila screamed.

  Kate brought the hand down slowly. Her arm buzzed with irrepressible energy. She took the skin of Robin’s cold pink cheek between two fingers and twisted. Robin’s mouth turned down. Her lower lip protruded. A mighty wail surged from her diaphragm.

  A car pulled over beside them and the driver’s-side window opened. Elaine Hesselgrove looked out. “Everything all right?”

  Kate let go of her child. Sanity and alarm disposed instantly of rage.

  “Yes, we’re okay.”

  Elaine scrutinized them, smiling a squinty smile, her glasses flashing in the sun. A quarter-size red spot blazed on Robin’s left cheek.

  “We’re just coming back from the park.” Kate indicated the sleds.

  “Need a ride?”

  “Oh, please. Bless you.”

  They got into the car. Kate helped Robin with the door and did up her seat belt. Robin stared—suddenly, eerily calm—at the back of Elaine’s head.

  “I should have driven. I thought it would be fun to walk,” Kate said.

  “Of course!”

  Lila was crying, pressing at her eyes with the clumsy waterproof gloves.

  “Are you all right, honey?” Elaine asked.

  Lila nodded.

  “It was at first,” Kate said. “Then, not so fun.”

  “Mommy, there’re no car seats in here,” Lila said. She licked snot from her upper lip.

  “I know, Lila; it’s okay; it’s just a few blocks,” Kate said. She checked Lila’s seat belt. “Thank you, thank you,” she said to Elaine, climbing into the front. “Thank you.”

  “It’s my pleasure.”

  “We might not have made it.”

  “I remember what it’s like.”

  “Do you?”

  “Like a boat full of holes.”

  “Yup. Just like that.”

  “It gets easier.”

  “Hope so.” Kate glanced at Robin, sturdy and stoic in the backseat. The red patch, smoldering.

  “WHAT’S THIS about car seats?” Colin asked.

  “Car seats? What about car seats?”

  “They said that you drove without car seats.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, no. Elaine Hesselgrove did.”

  Kate folded laundry at the kitchen table. Colin leaned against the dishwasher, eating chips.

  What else would they tell, had they told him?

  “And how … did she get ahold of our kids?”

  “We were stuck. On our way back from the park. We were having a hard time. You know how Robin gets. And she drove by and offered a ride and we took it, and you know what, it was only a couple of blocks.”

  “And Robin’s face?”

  Mere hours later, the red had morphed into a light bruise.

  “The sled turned over. And she bumped her face.”

  “Ouch.”

  Lila called out from bed.

  “I got it.” Colin tossed aside the chips.

  “Thanks. I’m really tired from the day,” Kate said. “I’m going to wrap up down here, then lie down for a bit.”

  “I recorded ER.”

  “I’m not really in the mood.”

  She made lunches. She put an extra cookie in Robin’s Hello Kitty insulated pack. She finished folding the laundry. She poured herself a glass of red wine from a bottle she’d opened at the beginning of the week. The wine tasted dusty and sharp but instigated its usual calming effect. She hung up the snowsuits and lined up the boots, as if disposing of evidence.

  But the outburst had overwhelmed her as powerfully as lust. Resistance had seemed unavailable, somehow wrong: a contorted and artificial effort, a stifling of essential energies. The discomfort of rage too much to stand.

  But Robin’s bruise—also wrong.

  She chose school outfits from the clean laundry and laid them out. She could tend to Robin’s clothes and give her an extra cookie but she couldn’t bear to look at her, or even Lila, tonight.

  What kind of a mess was she making here?

  She folded over Colin’s chips and put them away.

  She went upstairs with her wine. She got onto the bed and took out her laptop. No return e-mail from Jack. She paid bills. From Colin’s study, Grand Theft Auto. She put the laptop aside and got up and stood at his door.

  “Hey,” she said.

  He glanced around. “Oh. Hey.”

  “How was work?”

  “Work? Fine.” Eyes on the game. Tongue between teeth. “How was the snow day?”

  “It started out well. We did Lila’s egg experiment. Then I fucked it up.”

  “You did? How?”

  “Just, I don’t know, with my impatience.”

  “Impatiens. Aren’t they a little out of season?”

  “Oh. Ha, ha, very funny.” He offered a smile via the screen.

  She loitered in the doorway. “I really lost my temper with Robin.”

  “Yeah? You mean like the toothbrush?”

  “Sort of like that.”

  She waited to see if he’d make the connection: the bruise, the temper.

  “She’s tough,” he said.

  “Sometimes I feel just like my father.”

  Here’s how she would put it:

  A rough patch.

  Their marriage. Midlife, et cetera.

  My adolescence. His little girl, you know. The boy next door.

  Et cetera, et cetera.

  So. Then. We went through this stage. Just a transitional phase. And he bullied me a bit. I’d call it that. Maybe not everyone would call it that, but I’d call it that.

  “Your father?” Colin frowned into the screen. His head moved as he worked the control. “Why not your mother?”

  SHE WOKE A LITTLE before five. The digital clock glowed in the dark, still frigid room. A snowplow chugged down the street. Kate sat up. No Robin beside her, no Lila either. Just Colin, snorting and turning over. His eyelids twitched. His leg jerked, as if he were in a dream of falling.

  Kate got up out of bed and went downstairs. She made a cup of instant coffee. She leaned against the counter, drinking it black. The outfits lay by the door. The lunches waited in the fridge. School would resume this morning; in an hour or two the girls would wake up, call for her, want breakfast. Kate would scramble eggs and allow television or not. She would talk the girls into clothes and clean teeth. Lila would don her ballet skirt. Colin would unload one bowl from the dishwasher and pour Wheaties and finish them and leave the bowl in the sink. He would pull on his big coat and help the girls into their little ones and hustle them out the door.

  Kate swallowed the remaining bitter coffee and put the cup in the sink. Back upstairs, in the master bedroom closet, she took down her overnight bag and packed underwear, socks, skin care, toothbrush and paste, several changes of clothes, her diaphragm. She sat beside Colin on the bed and tapped his shoulder.

  “Hey. Hey.”

  “What?”
He batted at the air.

  “My mother’s sick. Just the flu, I think. I’m going to go take care of her for a couple of days, okay?”

  Kate had once known her mother to be sick. Colin never had. This would work in Kate’s favor.

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “Can you manage? I’ll call Portia?”

  “I’ll call her.”

  “Her number’s on the fridge.”

  She stopped at an Exxon station, then got onto the highway. Light showed in the sky. Already, trucks populated I-95. She took the Blatchley Avenue exit and parked alongside Erector Square. She called Jack from the car. He buzzed her in, and when the freight elevator opened he was standing in his doorway in boxer shorts and a Yale Athletics shirt.

  “Is this okay?” She dropped her bag and put her arms around him and her head into his chest. “I really need a break from my family.”

  “It’s great. Not that you’re having domestic trouble. But that you’re here.”

  He guided her inside. She followed him to the kitchen.

  “I just made coffee; you want some?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Fight with the husband?” He poured himself coffee and drank some. Energized, he ran his hands up and down her waist.

  “Worse. Robin. I—” Shame stopped her up. “I’ll tell you later.”

  He left for class. She cautiously unpacked. She straightened up the kitchen and fanned Jack’s National Geographics across the coffee table. At ten the radiators shut down. She crawled into Jack’s disheveled bed and slept for an hour. At noon he called to check on her. Colin beeped in and she hung up with Jack.

  “I couldn’t get Portia,” he said.

  “Okay. I’ll try. She doesn’t know your cell. Sometimes she won’t pick up if she doesn’t know who it is.”

  Portia answered Kate’s call and Kate arranged for her to pick the girls up after school. She drove to the Italian market—a new, competing one that had opened six blocks south, where she would be less likely to run into her mother, or Ella Anderson, for that matter. She purchased lamb chops, salad, bread, and two flushed pears.

  “I made dinner,” she told Jack. “Is that weird?”

  He opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. “Not weird at all. It’s cozy, actually. But you don’t have to do all this. Sexual favors are enough.”

  “Yes, well.” She sat at the table. “Now that I’ve made it I’m not hungry anymore. That always happens.”

  “No kidding. Look at you.”

  “I almost hit Robin,” she said. “I totally lost it. I grabbed her face. I bruised her face.”

  She put her head down on the table. She heard him get up and come around to her side. He sat down next to her and rubbed her back.

  “Kids,” he said.

  “She’s a great kid. They both are. I’m a horrible parent.”

  “I’m no authority but I really doubt that.”

  “It’s true. I should be arrested.”

  He refilled her wine. He brushed her hair from her neck. “Stay for as long as you want.”

  “You’re sure? It’s really okay?”

  “Hey. I could use the company.”

  SHE CALLED COLIN the next day to report on her mother. She talked to the girls and said good night. Robin, inscrutably affectionate, made kissing noises into the phone. Then Kate and Jack went out to eat at Thomas Quinn’s. They walked the five longish blocks and got a table in the back.

  “So what was your secret, anyway?” Kate asked. She sipped at her Guinness and looked at Jack from under her eyelashes.

  “My secret.”

  “From the gallery?”

  “Oh. That secret.”

  “Yes, that one.”

  “Don’t know if I should tell you.”

  “Of course you should.”

  “It’s bad.”

  “Worse than the one about the dog?”

  “Worse than that.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Well, okay. Take a swig of that beer, though. Brace yourself.”

  She took a swig. “Okay. Ready.”

  “Jail.”

  She gawked. “Jail?”

  “Yup.”

  “You? Did time?”

  “It was stupid. I was in college. I had a motorcycle and I was doing wheelies on the street outside of my house. We’d been drinking, and, well, I was over the limit. So. Yes.”

  “How long did you spend in jail?”

  “About two months.”

  “Jesus. What was it like, for God’s sake?”

  “Not fun, but not so terrible either. It wasn’t, you know, high-security prison or anything like that.”

  “That’s … I mean, sort of funny.”

  “In a way. Yeah. Well, no. But what was funny was, when I was in there, I got this nickname: the Professor.”

  “The Professor? But you are a professor!”

  “I wasn’t then.”

  “Okay, well, that is funny. How … did it come about?”

  “The other guys, they thought it was hilarious that here was this Cornell guy stuck in there with them. You know. Most of them were not college graduates, or even dropouts.”

  “What were they? I mean, what were they like, what did they do for work, what did they do to get in there?”

  “Some blue-collar guys … some a little rougher than that. White guys, black guys. Some drug dealers, some DUIs like me.”

  “Didn’t you share your oh-so-lowly origins with your jailbird friends? Wouldn’t they have liked you better?”

  “They liked me fine. Let’s see, what else. Manslaughter—you know, bar fights, gang wars. Robberies. Plenty of them were in there for beating their wives or girlfriends. Lots of them in for that. Probably the majority.”

  “Charming.”

  “They weren’t terrible guys, though; they weren’t terrible people. They just … you know …”

  “Just what?”

  “They work construction or whatever; they’re garbage collectors or janitors or security guards or factory workers. They work shitty jobs, shitty hours. They come home, they want sympathy and a little TLC after the long shitty day; they want to eat dinner and drink something and get laid, and then they get home and the kids are screaming and the wife or girlfriend is on the phone or on the rag or on their case, or maybe even on the couch with another guy. So they lose it a little bit. They lose their tempers, one thing leads to another, and so it goes.”

  “Oh, I see. And the wives, the girlfriends, they don’t work shitty jobs? Shitty hours?”

  “I’m sure they do. Anyway,” he went on, “the gist of it is, because I was a college kid, the guys called me the Professor. ‘Hey, Professor’ this, ‘Hey, Professor’ that. A couple of months after I got out I went to the grocery store with my roommate. And we were waiting to pay for our stuff, and the guy bagging the groceries—I looked at him and he looked at me, and neither of us could place each other—and then this big grin sprang out over his face and he yelled, ‘Hey, Professor!’ So everyone called me the Professor after that. Everyone at school.”

  She stared at him and bit her lip.

  He reached under the table and squeezed her thigh. “Not funny?”

  “No, sure. Funny. Yes.”

  BY MONDAY, Colin seemed, if not irritated, at least on the verge, at least perplexed. “Your mom, is she … can she … are you—”

  “Portia made cake. I’m saving you a piece,” Lila said.

  And Robin said, “I miss you, I’m so lonely without you.”

  Kate said to Jack, “How long can my mom have the flu?”

  “You might just tell him you needed a break.”

  “And then—no, then he’d just be mad at me. So mad.” She hurled herself into the corduroy couch and put her face in a corduroy pillow.

  “And?”

  “And, I don’t know. He wouldn’t understand.”

  “You sure?”

  “I feel like she’s never going to feel safe
with me again. And I wouldn’t blame her.”

  He sat on the edge of the couch.

  “I have to go home soon. Or not. They’re all probably better off without me. Seriously.”

  She visualized shacking up with Jack, clearing out drawers and hanging dresses in his closet, doing ordinary couplelike things with him: movies, flea markets, cooking, socializing. Going back to work at Yale. Running into Ella Anderson at the Italian market. Seeing the girls on the weekends. Observing their growth spurts, their missing teeth, the way Portia did their hair. Then that would be it, the end of whatever romance she wanted from this version of motherhood. She would proofread essays when they applied to college. She would attend parents’ weekends. She would do their taxes when they moved to big cities and acquired real lives; she would visit and take them out to dinner; she would call to check in while Lila wrote for the mayor and Robin slept around.

  “You’re being way too hard on yourself.”

  “Oh, how strange. I dreamed last night that the girls’ pediatrician said that exact thing to me. Or to Colin, rather, about me. Dr. Epstein. He said to Colin, ‘Don’t be so hard on your wife.’ And as he said it he was taking foot-long hot dogs out of a pack and sort of picking them up and stroking them and dusting them off. ‘Don’t be so hard on your wife.’ ” Kate laughed.

  “You’re asking for it.” He put his hands on the seat of her black Lycra-blend pants.

  “I know; I know I am.”

  THEY ORDERED PIZZA. She folded her slice in half and walked around, eating it, examining his very few family photographs. “Look at this.” She wiped her hands on her pants and pulled a photograph in a plastic frame from behind a pile of books. “The great Professor Allison himself. Wow,” she said. “Look how young you are.”

  He came up behind her. “My graduation. My parents showed up but left right after. They were freaked out by it all. Your dad took me out to dinner with his colleagues. It was incredibly sweet of him.”

  “To the club?”

  “Chart House.”

  “Oh, I love that big fireplace.”

  “I ordered lobster because I’d never had it before. But then I had no clue how to go about eating it. Cracking the shells and all and which parts were good. I started with the body and in on the mushy gray stuff. I got a couple of funny looks. Then your dad set me straight.”

  “Awww.”

  “Yeah, well, he was like that. He thought, felt that education, all kinds, is meant to be shared, you know? Not reserved for an elite few.”