Father of Two

by Judith Arnold

  All of which was really weird, because she’d just transformed a piddly libel case into a six-figure settlement for her client at his client’s expense, and he ought to be ticked off. But instead—Bob Hammond would kill him if he knew—Dennis was gloating on her behalf. For a lawyer whose specialty was as far from libel law as this preschool was from Harvard University, Gail had performed spectacularly for Leo Kopoluski.

  Dennis hooked his sunglasses over the rear-view mirror and climbed out of the car. The morning air smelled of grass and lilacs and that sweet, pungent fragrance of tree roots soaked in dew. He sucked the scent deep into his lungs. Wanting Gail seemed as natural to him as inhaling springtime.

  By the time he joined the Daddy School class in the big room at the end of the hall, the children were filing out the back door with a teacher. “They can play outside,” Molly was saying. “We’re going to have an all-Daddy class today. Well, an almost-all-Daddy class,” she amended, sending a quick smile to Gail, who stood on the outskirts of the crowd, looking less than thrilled.

  She caught his eye, and he saw things in her face he didn’t want to see: apprehension, stress, fatigue. Her eyes didn’t sparkle, her lips didn’t arch into a smile, and her shoulders slumped beneath her shirt. Was she disappointed that she wouldn’t have an opportunity to roll around in the wet grass with him today? Or was she just disappointed to have to be here?

  He had no chance to find out. Molly was corralling the class into one of the partitioned rooms. “You can sit on the floor, on the tables—or on one of the chairs, if you want to risk it,” she said, gesturing toward the tot-size chairs. Murphy didn’t want to risk it. The only risk he wanted to take was to approach Gail and find out what was bothering her.

  Questioning her would have to wait. The instant she settled on the carpeted floor, Avery and another father took seats flanking her, leaving Dennis to find a place to sit on a sturdy table across from her. Her sister perched on a stool in front of the group, with a clipboard of notes in front of her. “Today,” she said, “we’re going to talk about money. About how we teach our children real values—not what politicians consider values, but values like, is a particular toy really worth thirty dollars? Do kids have any idea how much food costs—and should they be thinking about waste when you’re scraping their leftovers into the garbage pail? Should we be paying our children to clear the table or put their dirty clothing in the hamper? In other words, kids and money.”

  The subject piqued Dennis’s interest. He forced himself to stop thinking about the raccoon rings of shadow circling Gail’s eyes and pay attention to the class. He’d been engaged in an internal debate about allowance for the twins, lately. Some of their classmates got several dollars a week, and Dennis wasn’t sure what lesson that taught, other than that kids had the right to expect money for nothing. But maybe he was wrong; maybe Molly would convince him that paying a kid an allowance was a good idea.

  As if in answer to his prayers, Molly opened the discussion with allowances. She reviewed the theories, pro and con, of giving children a weekly cash hand-out. The fathers analyzed, quibbled, disagreed. Dennis raised questions, answered questions, raised more questions. The entire subject of teaching children about money fascinated him.

  Through it all, Gail said nothing. She didn’t have kids, and the conversation must have seemed irrelevant to her. Occasionally he glanced in her direction, but she wasn’t watching him. Her eyes seemed unfocused, as if her mind was far away.

  The two hours might have seemed tedious for her, but for him they raced by at four-minute-mile speed. By the time Molly rose from the stool, set down her clipboard and said, “Go get your children and enroll them in Economics 101,” his head was teeming with ideas about teaching Sean and Erin what Molly had called the “merry-go-round” standard—kids should calculate how many merry-go-round rides a toy is worth, if a merry-go-round ride costs one dollar at the local amusement park. Sean and Erin believed themselves much too old for merry-go-rounds, but the economic principle made sense to Dennis.

  He wanted to try the theory out on the twins. But even more, he wanted to find out why Gail looked so drawn and weary. Maybe she was ill. Maybe she’d been suffering from insomnia.

  Maybe thoughts about him were what had been keeping her awake all night.

  “Don’t go yet,” Molly murmured, intercepting him before he could reach Gail.

  “What about Sean and Erin?”

  “They can stay outside on the swings for a few minutes. We need to talk.” She turned to bid one of the other fathers good-bye, and Dennis’s gaze collided with Gail’s.

  She definitely looked as if she was suffering from some physical malady. She probably wanted nothing more than to go home and crawl into bed, where she could shiver and cough and sip chicken soup one teaspoon at a time.

  She wasn’t shivering and coughing, though. She was watching him, her eyes guarded, her mouth taut.

  “What’s up?” he asked cautiously. If thoughts of him were keeping her up at night, it could be a good thing—or a very bad thing. He wasn’t sure.

  “Nothing,” she muttered, shoving a lock of hair back from her face. “Nothing is up.”

  Meaning what? Everything was down? He wanted to delve deeper into the reason for Gail’s dismal mood, but all the other Daddy School students were finally gone and Molly was turning her attention back to him and Gail. With a bright smile, she said, “I think it’s time to settle this bet.”

  That seemed to light a fire under Gail. “What are you talking about? We’ve only come to three classes.”

  “A couple of dads don’t want you here,” Molly told her. “Don’t take it personally, Gail, but—”

  “What do you mean they don’t want me here?”

  “You’re not a daddy.”

  “Neither are you!”

  “I’m the teacher,” Molly pointed out, still smiling. “When it comes to Daddy School students, several of the fathers told me they want only other fathers. They don’t like revealing their insecurities and displaying their ignorance in front of a woman.”

  “You’re a woman!”

  “I’m the teacher,” Molly repeated. She tilted her head slightly, assessing first her sister and then Dennis. Then she shrugged, evidently having reached her verdict. “I’m going to have to call Dennis the winner.”

  “What?” Gail’s eyes lost the unfocused glaze they’d had all during the class. They became diamond-hard, glittering with surprise and resentment. Pulling herself to her full height, she glared down at her sister. “How can you give him the win?”

  “He won the first class, smashing the clay and getting dirty,” Molly explained, obviously not the least bit cowed. “You won the second, Gail—both with the sandbox work and the mud-puddle stuff. That was really good. I was very proud of you.”

  “Thanks a heap.”

  “So the two of you were tied after last week. You lost the competition based on today’s class.”

  “Well—well, but this class was a joke!” Gail protested. “How was I supposed to pay attention to an economic scheme based on the cost of a merry-go-round ride?”

  “I planned this class a while ago, the same as I planned the getting-messy classes. I couldn’t just change the curriculum for you.”

  “Molly...” She gave Dennis a sidelong glance—he really hoped he wasn’t smirking—and then turned back to her sister. “Molly, remember? I explained to you why I made this bet with him. Because he needed some instruction in how to be a better father, and the only way I could get him to attend the Daddy School was to turn it into a competition. I was doing this for the good of his children.”

  “Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Dennis said grandly, trying not to laugh. “Your altruism knows no bounds.”

  Gail’s expression grew desperate. “If I’ve got to attend more classes to win the bet, I will. Molly, don’t declare me the loser. There’s too much at stake.”

  Molly mulled this over. She gave Dennis a though
tful perusal. “What did you wager?” she asked.

  He knew damned well what they’d wagered—and so, apparently, did Gail. One evening of her life, versus one evening of his. He’d just won an evening with her, to spend any way he wanted. If only she didn’t look so distraught about it, he’d be entertaining all sorts of interesting notions about the many ways he might spend his evening with her.

  But she did look distraught. And frantic. And exhausted.

  “An evening,” he remembered to answer her sister.

  “An evening?” Her eyebrows flickered upward and she grinned slyly. “With Gail?”

  “That’s the wager.”

  Molly chuckled and shook her head. “I guess I’d better wish you both good luck. You’re going to need it.” With that, she spun away and headed for the back door, shouting, “Erin and Sean! It’s time to go!”

  Dennis studied Gail, now that her sister no longer stood between them. Her complexion was deathly pale except for the smudges of shadow framing her eyes. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She might be tired, but she still had some fight in her. “I was until Molly decided that you’d won the bet.”

  “I’m not kidding, Gail. You look a little under the weather.”

  She dug her hands into the knee-deep pockets of her overalls. “I’m healthy. I just...it’s been a rough few days.”

  “I happen to know you got at least one win under your belt this week,” he reminded her. “You ought to be all pumped up. Your client waltzed out of my office with a six-figure settlement.”

  “Well, I’m not pumped up, okay?” She sighed and gave her shoulders an exaggerated shrug, as if to signal that the subject was off limits. “So I guess you’ll be wanting to...to what? Collect on this bet?”

  “I guess I will.” But only if she was willing. Only if she wasn’t going to turn the collection process into excruciating torture for them both.

  “Fine,” she said, resigned. “When?”

  He wanted to touch her, to take her in his arms and hug her. But unable to interpret her mood, he didn’t dare. “Gail, I’m not kidding. If you aren’t feeling up to it—”

  “No, I’d just as soon get it over with. I’m free tonight, if you are.”

  Well, that sure sounded promising, he thought sourly. She wanted to get it over with. “How does six o’clock sound?”

  If she’d wanted to reply, she didn’t have a chance. The twins came barreling into the school building from the back door, Erin screaming, “Daddy, guess what? We caught three ladybugs!”

  “They walked all over our hands, Daddy!” Sean told him. “And we saw a salamander!”

  “It was kind of an orange-brown. It was over by the trees at the edge of the grass. It was so cute! I named it Brownie. We wanted to take it home and make it a pet, but then we thought it would prob’ly die.”

  “Probably,” Dennis agreed. “Salamanders belong in the wild, not in an apartment.”

  “But we did catch it for a minute,” Sean told him. “We turned it upside down and looked real close, but if it had two penises, we couldn’t see them.”

  Dennis shot a quick look at Gail, hoping against hope that she hadn’t heard Sean. But of course she had—given how loudly he was speaking, people west of the Mississippi had probably heard him. He smiled, hoping she would weather this the way she’d weathered his children’s previous displays of vulgarity.

  She rolled her eyes. “I was right,” she muttered. “Bet or no bet, you need the Daddy School.” One corner of her mouth skewed upward, and she turned and walked away.

  That was a smile, he assured himself. Whatever was irking Gail, whatever might be irking her about the outcome of their Daddy School bet, or about his collecting his winnings, he was convinced that she was smiling as she turned from him.

  Almost convinced, anyway.

  ***

  THINGS COULDN’T GET ANY WORSE, she assured herself as she adjusted the knit skirt of her two-piece outfit so less of her knees showed. The top was short-sleeved with a rounded neck-line, and the cream-colored fabric was bland enough that she could throw a blazer over the ensemble and wear it to work, but without the blazer it appeared reasonably dressy.

  She’d had no idea how to dress to pay Murphy his winnings tonight. What, after all, was the appropriate apparel for a descent into hell?

  She knew it was going to be bad. He would probably make a pass at her, and he’d scramble her mind with his kisses as he had before, and she’d wind up in a godawful mess, shutting him down and thus earning his eternal enmity or else not shutting him down and adding one more miserable sexual encounter to her short, wretched list.

  The second option was the more likely. She hadn’t slept in days; her resistance was low. Worries had been niggling at her ever since Leo decided to turn down the Gazette’s hundred-thousand-dollar settlement. He’d become intransigent, demanding one hundred fifty thousand dollars, demanding two hundred fifty, hiking his request back up to a million dollars and insisting that Gail take the newspaper to court if that was the only way to erase what he considered a terrible insult. “Is this stupid newspaper, it puts these very bad ideas in your head,” he’d explained. “Is their fault, that you ask me do I know these things about nannies who make crimes. I am always with this sorry story, that I am criminal. You think I know these things, is because of bad, bad newspaper.”

  Every time she told him she didn’t think he was a criminal, he would shout her down. Every time she told him she didn’t think he’d get a better settlement from the court, he would tune her out. Every time she explained to him that she had other cases demanding her attention and that if he insisted on pursuing the newspaper he was going to have to find another lawyer, he would swear that she was the best and he trusted no one else.

  The files on her desk had multiplied like rabbits. They must be having orgies day and night. Three weeks ago, Nola had overseen the arraignment of the Body-Odor Maniac, and now she was gone, leaving Gail to sort through the entire history of the case. A client Gail’s brother-in-law had arrested for attempted murder after shooting her philandering husband last December wanted a bail reduction because her husband, who had survived with a mere flesh wound, had since moved out of her apartment and in with his girlfriend.

  Gail could cope with her case load if only Leo would get off her back. Leo and Murphy, both.

  She’d dispense with Murphy tonight, get through the evening, and be done with him. Then she’d contend with Leo. And then, maybe, if luck was with her, she would resume her usual overworked existence, without being pestered by pushy, arrogant men.

  Hearing the doorbell, she glanced at her watch. Exactly six o’clock. A quick final inspection in the mirror told her she should have used a touch of make-up to hide the bags under her eyes, a slick of lipstick to soften her pinched lips. But then, she didn’t want to look good for Murphy. She didn’t want him to get the idea that she was actually happy to be spending the evening with him.

  “We’ll just eat,” she promised herself. “And then I’ll tell him I’ve got a headache—which will undoubtedly be true, and then I’ll ask him to take me home.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  Smothering a curse, she stepped into her pumps and hurried down the hall to the front door. She opened it and blinked.

  Murphy had on the faded old jeans he’d worn to class that morning, a waffle-knit cotton pullover and sneakers. He carried a shopping bag that bore the logo of one of the big hardware-store chains. “Hi,” he said, grinning and stepping past her into the foyer.

  She opened her mouth but couldn’t think of what to say. She didn’t like him marching into her house—but dressed the way he was, and carrying that bag, he didn’t seem terribly dangerous. “Murphy?”

  He’d been inspecting her living room through the doorway off the foyer, but at her voice he turned and inspected her, instead. “You look fantastic,” he murmured, sounding as if he actually meant it.

  “I...” She was stumped
. She’d put on a dress assuming that a Saturday-evening-at-six plan included dinner. If he was planning to eat, he apparently had drive-through burgers in mind.

  “Really,” he said, his smile losing in brightness what it gained in intensity. He shifted the bag to the other hand and ran his gaze down her body slowly, lingering at her calves, at her classic high-heel shoes. “You look wonderful. But I thought we’d do some caulking tonight.”

  “Caulking.”

  “Caulking your windows.” He tilted the bag toward her. “I think I’ve got everything we need. Didn’t you say you wanted to caulk your windows?”

  “If I won the bet,” she reminded him. “But I didn’t. You did.”

  “And I decided I wanted to caulk your windows. If you’d like to help me, you’d better change into something less formal.”

  She stood motionless in the foyer, searching his glittering hazel eyes for a sign that he was kidding. But how could he be kidding when he was carrying a bag that contained tubes of caulk and a caulking gun, a roll of paper towels and who knew what else?

  “You want to caulk my windows,” she repeated, still not certain she believed him.

  He smiled, bombarding her with his dimples. “Why not?”

  Why not, indeed? She did need to seal the six-over-six panes in her kitchen, and she didn’t want to sit in a restaurant and make small talk with Murphy. “I’ll change,” she said. “The kitchen is that way.” She pointed him in the right direction, then headed back down the hall to her bedroom, stopping along the way to yank off her shoes.

  In five minutes she was out of the skirt and blouse and in a pair of old khakis and a lime-green polo shirt. She stuffed her feet into sneakers and jogged back down the hall to join Murphy, hoping she’d done the right thing in trusting him to find her kitchen.

  She had. He was unloading the bag onto her round maple table. The ceiling lamp was on, but dusk light streamed through the windows, as well. Damn, why did Murphy look so at home in the room?