Household Gods

there was a spot right near the entrance.

Kimberley and Justin, full of themselves because they’d been there before and their mother hadn’t, were delighted to serve as guides. “It’s this building, Mommy — right through this door,” Kimberley said, tugging at her arm. “Come on! You don’t want us to be late, do you?” She sounded so much like Nicole in a hurry that Nicole could hardly rebuke her, even when she started off at a run across the lot. Nicole got a solid grip on her hand and let her tow the rest of them along.

The building was standard California stucco. It already hummed with activity. There were more kids outside than in, running through the yard and climbing on apparatus and playing in sandboxes filled with bark chips instead of sand. A plumpish woman of about forty stood amid the chaos like an island of calm. Kimberley dragged Nicole right up to her and announced, “Mommy, this is Miss Irma: my teacher.”

Miss Irma smiled at Kimberley, but her warm brown eyes rested on Nicole’s face. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I showed your — ex-husband, is it? — around last week. I’m very glad you’re feeling better.” She didn’t sound dismayed by the fact of divorce, or because Nicole had been ill. Nothing would ever dismay her, Nicole suspected. That had to serve her very well in the middle of this horde of preschoolers — anyone with a nerve in her body would have had a coronary inside of a week.

Nicole thanked her for her sentiments. She’d done that more often since she came back to herself than in the year before that, she was sure. Somehow, in Carnuntum, she’d learned the art of gratitude. “Frank’s my ex, yes,” she said.

“Ah,” said Miss Irma. She smiled again, and took Nicole in hand. “Here, now, I walked him through it all, but I’m sure you’ll want your own tour, yes?”

Nicole nodded — good; she didn’t have to ask. Under Miss Irma’s capable tutelage, she met Miss Dolores, who would be Justin’s teacher: another comfortable, early-middle-aged woman, Hispanic this time, who also had that nothing-fazes-me look in her eye. She nodded approval at the kits Nicole had made up with changes of clothes, instruction sheets, medical releases, and everything else that the children were likely to need — Frank, ever efficient, had left the school’s literature with the bills on the kitchen counter, for Nicole to find and read. Evidently not every parent did: she won points for having the full kit. It was a small thing, but it made her feel good. In this world, by damn, she knew how to cope.

Miss Dolores, good preschool teacher that she was, asked The Question: “And how well are they trained?”

“Very well, I think,” Nicole answered. “Kimberley hasn’t had an accident in months.” She preened at that, too, and stood tall, as a big girl should. “Justin’s still learning.”

“That’s about right,” Miss Irma said. “He’s just a little fellow — aren’t you, Justin?”

“Big!’’ Justin countered, as contrary as any two-year-old worth his training pants.

Miss Irma laughed. “Big, then. But you’re still learning about going potty, aren’t you?”

“Go potty!” Justin replied.

“Now?” Miss Dolores asked.

“Now,” he said firmly.

She held out her hand. He took it. Nicole felt a tug as he trotted away, but she didn’t try to call him back.

Kimberley stayed with Nicole and Miss Irma through the rest of the daily procedure: the sheet on the door of each class on which each child was signed in and out, and the cubbyholes, each labeled, for the child’s work and for communications from the school. It was all very clear, very ordered, very — yes — efficient. Nothing like Josefina’s casual arrangements. Maybe that was as well. It wouldn’t remind the kids too forcibly of what they’d lost.

Just as Miss Irma finished showing Nicole where everything went, Justin came hurtling down the hallway. “Kiss, Mommy! Kiss!” Nicole caught him on the ricochet, whirled him around, and planted a loud, smacking kiss on his cheek. His answering kiss was sloppy enough to smear the powder on her cheek; she’d repair the damage when she got to the car. For now, it didn’t matter.

He was already wriggling to get down. She let him go, and scooped up the waiting Kimberley, whose kiss was a fraction more demure. Then Kimberley too was ready to make the break. For Nicole it was like ripping Velcro, but they seemed quite unfazed.

At the entrance to the yard, Nicole looked back. Kimberley was already playing with another girl about her age. Justin had found a ball and was chasing after it, yelling at the top of his lungs. They both seemed to have forgotten she existed.

She should have been pleased that they were so independent. She felt like crying.

The turn back onto Tampa from that miserable parking lot was a challenge, to put it mildly, but when she finally did get out to the street, she was only ten minutes’ drive from her office. This, I could get used to, she thought as she turned into the lot and found her space vacant as it should be. She’d almost wondered if it would be given away — as if she really had been away a year and a half.

Even before she got to the elevators, the wave of welcome had started. She gave up trying to find variations on Thank you. I never felt better, and settled for that one, canned line.

She’d more than half expected to feel depressed about returning to the place that had relegated her to a dead-end job, but the familiar spaces, the people she’d known for the whole of her working life in L.A., even the sight of her own cubby of an office and her secretary sitting in front of it, gave her a sense of being home again — just as she’d been in her house. This was her life, too, no matter how badly it had treated her.

Cyndi bounced up from her desk to give Nicole a giant hug. “It’s great to have you back,” she said.

“It’s good to be back,” Nicole answered. “You have no idea how good it is.” And isn’t that the truth? “Now let’s see if I remember anything about the law.”

Cyndi laughed, as anyone would who’d welcomed a lawyer back to work after a little over a week off. But Nicole meant it. She’d been away a lot longer than anyone knew.

Still, if her memory had gaps in it, she had her books and she had a computer. She might not be so quick with an answer as she’d been before, at least not at first, but the answers she gave would be the right ones. If law school had taught her nothing else, it had given her a solid grasp of combat research skills.

There was a small silence, which Nicole became aware of somewhat after Cyndi did. Cyndi broke it a little abruptly. “Everyone was upset about the way things happened,” she said. “Very upset. “ She hesitated. Then she went on, “I’m really glad you didn’t…” She paused again, looking for a safe way to say it. At length, she found one: “… you didn’t do anything foolish.”

You have no idea what a foolish thing I did. I had no idea what a foolish thing I was doing. “Not making partner isn’t the end of the world,” Nicole said from the perspective of a year and a half in another world and time. God knew, she hadn’t felt that way when Sheldon Rosenthal pulled the rug out from under her.

Cyndi nodded vigorously. Her curls were elaborately styled and piled, but by no means as elaborately as the styles the wealthy Roman matrons had affected. Those had looked as immovable as marble curlicues on a monument. These bounced as she moved, in a way that was pure modern America, and pure Cyndi. “I should say it’s not the end of the world,” she said, “especially compared to losing your health.”

Like people in Carnuntum, she was putting her own spin on Nicole’s words, making them fit into patterns she found familiar. It was the human way of doing things. Nicole was glad of it, too: it made life easier for those who didn’t fit those patterns. If she even approximated one of them, the people around her filled in the rest.

Not that Cyndi was wrong in this particular instance. Nicole said, “I was never so surprised in my life as when I woke up in that hospital bed.” That wasn’t exactly wrong, either, though it was only about an as’ worth of an aureus of truth: certainly less than a cent on the dollar.

Nicole didn’t linger too long, and Cyndi didn’t try to keep her, though Nicole could tell she’d have been glad to babble on indefinitely about everything and nothing. The office was waiting. Nicole had to face it now or not face it at all.

It didn’t look anything like the cluttered cubicle she’d left. It was jammed full of flowers and get-well cards, arranged by Cyndi, she could suppose. There was just barely room in the middle for the desk and chair, and for the IN basket with its stack of papers waiting to be dealt with.

She’d deal with it. It would take a while, but she’d dig out from under. For sure it was better than grinding flour for hours at a stretch, than keeping fires fed a few sticks at a time, than breathing smoke all day long because