“Hi, Dad,” said Joey, more shyly.
“Hey, kids,” he replied, kissing his squealing daughter on the forehead and rubbing his son’s hair. “Good morning.”
Kelly had been facing away from them, putting the milk back in the refrigerator; now she turned and smiled. “Good morning, honey,” she said, meeting his eyes. There was nothing unpleasant or angry in her look, she seemed genuinely pleased that he was there. But there was something impersonal about it, like a reaction she might have to a good deed done by a stranger—approving, but somehow removed.
“Good morning,” he answered. “Thanks for getting them fed.”
“There’s coffee here for you. And I could put in some toast. Do you want Cheerios instead?”
“Toast is good.”
“Are you going to work like that, Daddy?” Brooke asked loudly, pointing at his shorts.
He turned in mock confusion. “Like what?”
“Like that!” she repeated, waving her finger back and forth. She hiccupped, then giggled, covering her mouth.
“Well,” he said, taking the chair next to her, “I decided that I like wearing shorts better than wearing suits. Do you think anyone will notice?”
“Really?” Joey asked, glancing up from the comic book he was reading.
Todd nodded, looking from one of them to the other. “No.”
Kelly placed a cup of coffee in front of him and then went back to the toaster. “Actually, Daddy’s going out of town,” she said.
“Where are you going?” Joey asked now, and there was an edge to his voice. When he was four or five, his father’s travels—usually work trips—hadn’t fazed him. Now, at seven, he was suddenly more attuned and more anxious.
“I’m going on a backpacking trip. I’m making a big loop through the mountains, and camping out at night.”
“You’re camping?” Joey said, brightening up. “Like we did last summer?”
The year before, Todd and Joey had gone with a group of other kids and dads to a camp facility in the Malibu Hills. It was pretty cush—they slept on cots in big domed tents, and ate in a mess hall. But it was the closest thing that Joey had had to an outdoor experience.
“Something like that,” Todd replied.
“Why, Dad?”
“Well, sometimes I like to go out where it’s quiet.”
“By yourself?”
“No, I’ll have some friends with me.”
“All right, you guys,” Kelly broke in, hands on hips. “Time to get ready. We have to leave in twenty minutes. And put your bowls and spoons into the sink so Juanita doesn’t have to pick up after you. Go!”
There was the scraping of chairs against the tile floor, the clang of dishes and silverware in the sink, the padding of bare feet out the door and up the stairs. Todd smiled—he had fantastic kids, but he worried about them growing up in such a bubble. They lived in an area so pristine it was like a caricature of a wealthy neighborhood. Some houses, like theirs, were relatively modest; others were mansions locked behind ivy-covered gates. People whispered of neighbors’ excesses—the man with the collection of over fifty vintage race cars, the woman who’d spent half a million dollars on her fortieth birthday party, the couple who’d bought the $18 million estate adjoining theirs to create a bigger play yard for their dogs. (“Shih tzus!” Kelly had said, incredulously. “How much space do they need?”) It all fed into a kind of isolation, a museum-like stillness. You didn’t see people out much—the lack of sidewalks discouraged walking. When dogs were walked, it was usually by servants.
And the kids’ private school, Northgate, was unquestionably strong in terms of academics. But the campus was as nice as a college, and a private one at that. He worried that the kids were getting coddled and soft: even at the luxurious Malibu camp last summer, Joey had had a tough time sleeping on a canvas cot, sharing tents, using a communal shower. Both kids had squealed in horror whenever Roger brought in a dead mouse. For Todd, who’d grown up roaming the countryside, this was all a bit hard to accept. When he suggested, in front of Kelly’s mother, that he take Joey camping “for real,” she’d looked down her fine aquiline nose at Todd and said, “No blood of mine sleeps on the ground.”
Todd hadn’t fully understood at first what kind of family he’d married into. When he’d started dating Kelly back in law school at Stanford, she seemed like the embodiment of his dreams—beautiful, blond, athletic, and from an old Los Angeles family. She had a social grace and confidence that made her irresistible, and he couldn’t believe that she would fall for him, him—Todd Harris, who, sure, had been a star baseball player at UCLA and was third in his law school class, but was really a blue-collar Midwestern boy at heart. There was no doubt he’d enjoyed all that her family’s money had made possible—the kids’ schools, ski vacations in Aspen and Sun Valley, and of course their beautiful house. But he hadn’t been prepared for the nonstop social obligations, the inane conversations at parties, where the women cooed over each other’s outfits and the men bragged about their golf games and stock portfolios. He hadn’t expected to be applying for the kids’ spots in preschool before they’d even reached their first birthdays. Ten years ago, he’d felt pretty good about his life; he’d thought that if his old friends and relatives in Wisconsin could see him, they’d think he was a pretty big deal. Now he would just be embarrassed.
When the sound of the children’s feet stopped, Kelly sat down at the table.
“They sure listen to you,” Todd remarked, not knowing what else to say.
Kelly took a long drink from her coffee. “They listen to you too. We’re lucky.”
“Are you going to be all right with them for a few days?”
She smiled at him and gave him a look he couldn’t read. “I always am.”
She was still a beautiful woman, his wife. At thirty-nine, her face had thinned out, which made her cheekbones more prominent, and there were a few lines around her mouth. She was thin and toned, thanks to regular trips to the gym, and her hair was still naturally blond. A bit of the suppleness of her skin around the jaw and neck was gone, but Todd didn’t mind these little markers of time passing—he knew he had them too. He much preferred Kelly to age naturally than to resort to the Botox, fillers, and face lifts that made so many of the women they knew look like the walking dead.
“What are you up to today?” he asked.
She sighed. “Well, I’ll drop the kids off, and then I’m meeting Leslie for coffee. Then I think we’ll go to Saks—I need a new dress for the museum benefit on the twenty-sixth.”
“Right,” Todd said, remembering. Another event. Another expensive dress.
“Then we’ll meet Dana and Adrienne at the Ocean Club for lunch. And after that, it’ll be time to get the kids.”
She smiled, a formal, distancing smile. Was she really happy with this life of shopping, lunches, and charity events? She’d been an attorney too, a rising star at O’Melveny & Myers. But when Joey was born, she left—just until their son was school-age, she’d said. And then Brooke was born, and she didn’t talk of working anymore. They both knew she wasn’t going back now.
“Sounds good,” Todd said. Then hesitantly, “I’ll miss you.”
“We’ll miss you too,” Kelly said breezily. “Joey especially. And what will you be doing today?”
“I’m going to meet up with the other people in Mount Washington. Then we’ll drive up to the Sierras. There’s a campground near the trailhead, so we’ll stay there for the night. We’ll