Read Online Every Day by Elizabeth Richards - Free Book Online

groans.
    “What?”
    “I’m there five minutes, just long enough to find out where my group is meeting, and he wants my ass,” Isaac says, very matter-of-fact, as if he’s given me a weather report.
    “Isaac!”
    “Mom!” he mimics. Then, more gently. “Chill, Mom. He’s a fag. He likes me. I’m not that desperate.”
    I sit at our beautifully set table. When did my son grow up? Where was I? Why didn’t someone inform me?
    “I just think it’s a little unorthodox for a man like that to be in charge of little boys.” No sooner is it out of my mouththan I feel like Anita Bryant. Someone should dump a bucket of orange juice on my head.
    “There are little girls there too, Mom,” Isaac reasons. “Jane goes there, remember.”
    I cannot resist the notion that the world has never been so monstrous, so full of horror and violence and deviates, but who am I to subscribe to such a view? A woman who has created an extended family with such tenacity and now cannot find the strength to keep herself or it going in the only healthy manner the experts prescribe?
    “I know,” I say. “You’re right. He’s probably a very nice man.”
    “Maybe,” Isaac says. He’s flipping through channels, rejecting everything. “He changed his name though.”
    “He told you?” My own interest isn’t proportionate to the information.
    “Yeah. He kinda likes to talk.”
    “Tell me about him.”
    “I did,” Isaac says with irritation. “Look, when are we eating? I told the guys from the team I’d meet them at the golf course.”
    “When? And when did you have time to call them?”
    How dare I cling to him now?
    “Seven. I just called.”
    “Oh. Okay. Call Simon and Jane. I’ll wake Daisy and put her in her chair.”
    “Why don’t you call them? I like to get Daisy.”
    I smile at him, a sweet, tired-Mom smile. “Just this once.”
    We assemble gradually, Jane bringing a book to the table and Simon bringing a hand towel that he keeps rubbing over his wet scalp. “Wow, Mom,” Jane says. “Is someone coming over to eat with us?”
    Simon hangs his towel carefully over the rungs of his chair and sits. “Not tonight, sweetheart,” he says. “It’s just the familytonight. But maybe your mother will have a guest for us later on in the week.”
    I didn’t think him capable of such indirection.
    “Who?” Isaac says.
    “Muk,” Daisy says.
    “No one,” I tell them all, and I go out to get Daisy’s milk.
    “Your mother has friends we don’t know about,” Simon continues without expression. “Friends who drop in from exotic ports of call from time to time. Not necessarily to visit, you understand, just to call her away.”
    “You guys have a fight?” Isaac asks.
    “Not at all,” Simon tells them.
    Jane looks frightened, and Isaac intrigued. I could dump the spaghetti all over Simon for bringing them into this right now, so soon, before we even know what it is we’re in crisis over: my infidelity, whatever in our life has encouraged it, whatever insecurities this calls up in him, for God’s sake some Jungian bit of projection if indeed he has ever betrayed me and not told me about it, maybe even some missed extramarital encounter he’s kicking himself over not having seized when it came up. I don’t know. But I don’t approve of this sort of cruelty, if I’m allowed that observation in light of my malfeasance. Yes, I’ve led us into uncharted territory, but he doesn’t have to drown the children in it.
    I realize I haven’t moved, haven’t started serving the food, when Jane says, “Mom, are you paralyzed?”
    Again, I go into automatic: Jane’s plate, small portion, Isaac’s and Simon’s plates, man-sized, Daisy’s bowl, noodles chopped up so she can spoon them, generally, into her mouth. I do these, then I pour us wine and them fruit punch and then I sit. I smile. Take aim, my face says to the people I love. I’ve double-crossed you.
    “She’s not eating,” Jane says. “Okay, Mom. Are you