Household Gods

Nicole’s mouth twisted. She’d been expecting Frank, if she didn’t just get the machine. But of course it would be Dawn.

Well, no help for it. “Dawn?” she said. “Dawn, this is Nicole. I’m calling from the hospital.”

“Nicole!” Of all the things Nicole had expected, she hadn’t expected this rush of gratitude and relief. “I’m so glad to hear your voice. How are you?”

She really did sound glad, and not just, or not entirely, because if Nicole was awake and making sense, it got her off the hook with the kids. A home-wrecker without a mean bone in her body? A girlfriend who honestly cared that the first wife was all right? Nicole would have laughed at the thought, six days or a year and a half or eighteen centuries ago.

Actually, she sounded a great deal like Julia. The same kind of voice, breathy and light, the kind men went for and women tended to regard with disgust. A Marilyn Monroe sort of voice. The sound of it stabbed Nicole with guilt so sudden she almost gasped. She’d never apologize to Julia now for being so childishly unreasonable. She’d never make it up to Julia. Julia was lost at the other end of time.

That stab of guilt was like a shaft of sun in a dark place. She could see something she’d never have seen before, or wanted to see. Julia had been, not to put too fine a point on it, a slut, but she’d never been either stupid or mean. And neither, Nicole admitted to herself, was Dawn.

She’d think the rest of it through later, when she wasn’t supposed to be holding up one end of a tense and rather awkward phone conversation. “I’m all right,” she said. “At least I think I am. Nobody has a clue as to what happened to me.” Except me. But she wouldn’t say that. “How are the kids?”

“They’re doing all right,” Dawn answered. “They miss you. They keep asking when you’ll be coming back. I haven’t known what to tell them.”

“If I check out all right, it’ll be another day or two,” Nicole said. An entirely different and even more powerful wave of guilt washed over her. She’d done far worse than let her last words to Julia be the end of a quarrel. She’d abandoned her life, her family, her kids — No time now. She had to be glad that she’d only been gone six days. Still, she said something she never would have said if she’d truly been gone for less than a week: “I’m sorry I messed up your trip.”

Yes, she was having trouble working up a good head of loathing for Dawn. Perspective? Maybe just distance? It just didn’t seem to matter as much as it used to. After war, plague, and famine, a little adultery seemed almost unremarkable.

“Don’t worry about our trip,” Dawn said cheerfully, as unperturbed by the ways of the world as ever. “We’ll get away again soon.” Maybe, Nicole reflected, that talent for letting things be explained how she put up with Frank. Why she did was another question, but Nicole wasn’t likely to get an answer for that.

And speaking of Frank… She braced herself. “Let me talk to Frank, would you please?”

“Why, sure,” Dawn said. Her voice faded as if she’d turned away from the phone. “Frank? It’s your ex. She’s awake.”

And, fainter yet, a male voice, with sarcasm that came through loud and clear: “I never would have guessed.”

Nicole’s own thoughts were running on much too similar lines. If I weren’t awake, would I have called? She caught herself with a snap. She wasn’t that much like Frank. Was she?

Then his voice came on the line, with the sarcasm carefully screened out of it. “Nicole? How are you doing?” Was he actually diffident, or was he just playing at it?

She decided to play it calm, be polite, and see if that shocked him. “I think I’m all right,” she said. “I woke up this morning, that’s all, just as I always have.” At this end of time, that is. “The doctor’s still trying to figure out what happened.”

“Yeah, I talked with the neurologist,” Frank said in that faintly snotty tone that always pissed her off. If for any reason he’d been unsure of himself, he’d got his equilibrium back. “No, she has no idea what it was. When I got the call in Cancun, I thought you were so pissed at me, you’d OD’ed on pills just to screw up my vacation. But she says you didn’t. So you didn’t. I’m glad you’re feeling better. “

Good old Frank, just as charming as ever, and just as convinced the world revolved around him. It was like him to make sure she knew what he’d thought, but it was also like him to believe Dr. Feldman when she’d told him it wasn’t so. Nicole had to give him that much.

Now, if he’d just give her what she had coming to her… But this was not the time. It would come, she promised herself, but not yet. First things first.

“Let me talk to the kids,” she said. “I want them to know I’m all right.”

“I’ll get them,“ Frank said. “I haven’t known what to tell them. I’ve said you’re sick, that’s all, and I hoped you’d be well soon.”

That was adequate, Nicole thought. She started to say something more, it didn’t matter what — Good-bye or Thanks or Just put the kids on, will you? But before she could begin, Kimberley’s voice shrieked in her ear: “Mommy!” And, close enough behind it to make it a chorus: “Mommy-mommy-mommy!” Justin must have been swinging on the phone cord, from the way his voice came and went.

Telephone conversations with preschoolers range from incoherent to downright surreal, but Nicole managed to assure both Kimberley and Justin — fighting at top volume over who got the phone — that she loved them, that she was feeling better, and that she would see them soon. Her throat kept locking up, which was annoying. As fond as she’d become of Lucius and Aurelia, as much as she’d mourned Aurelia’s death, these were her babies. Her children. If she’d had any chance at all of getting away with it, she’d have left the hospital right then and there, and gone straight home, and hugged them both so tight they squealed in protest. Even their shrieking, which she’d done her best to train out of them — God, she hated screaming kids — was a blessed thing, because it was theirs.

She hated to let them go, but they were getting overexcited. She heard Dawn round them up, a soft murmur that sounded more than ever like Julia taking Lucius and Aurelia in hand. Then Frank came on the line. “How soon are they letting you out?” he demanded.

Trust Frank not to miss the essentials. “Another day or two,” she answered, “if everything looks good.” Something tugged at her awareness. Something she should be remembering. Some crucial thing about the kids.

Yes. That awful day on top of too many awful days, when she’d prayed to Liber and Libera, and to her lasting amazement, been answered, there’d been one crisis that she couldn’t let slip from her mind. “I’m going to have to look for a new daycare provider,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “I’ve heard all about Josefina — the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’ve been looking for someone to replace her.”

“You have?” Nicole was flat astonished. Frank, exerting himself for anything of that relentlessly mundane sort?

Well. Frank was an asshole, but he wasn’t stupid. If Nicole was going to be incapacitated for some unspecified time, he’d want to get on with his life. He’d been perfectly happy to kick back and let her handle the kids. If they were suddenly thrown into his lap — cold-bloodedly efficient was the term that came to mind. “Any luck finding a new provider?” she asked.

“There’s this preschool over in Tarzana,” he said. “I was going to take them over this morning, see how they liked it, see how Dawn and I like the setup,” he said. “Woodcrest, that’s its name.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Nicole said dryly. “It’s supposed to be good. It’s not cheap.”

“So? What is, these days?”

Frank was perfectly willing to spend the money when it was his convenience that was at stake. But would he pay child support while the kids were in Nicole’s custody?

Stupid question. Nicole would deal with it in due course. Los Angeles had ways and means that had never been dreamt of in Carnuntum, if she only had the will to use them. She’d let things slide too long. It was time to start cracking the whip.

But not just this minute. “Go ahead and take the kids over to Woodcrest,” she said, not so warmly she’d alarm him into wondering what she was up to, but not as rudely as she could have, either. “Tell me what you think