Single with Children. Arlene James

shock, then lax with contrition, and finally narrow with hurt. She closed the books gently, the glossy gold-embossed navy blue one first, then the ragged hemp-colored one. “My apologies,” she muttered softly, sliding the books onto the coffee table. “I didn’t think you’d mind.” She got swiftly to her feet and weaved her way past the table, a displaced footstool and him. He couldn’t help noticing that, though her grace rivaled that of a ballet dancer, she managed to stub her toe twice.

      His indifference fled, and he didn’t have time to question why. He only knew that he didn’t want her to go, and his body reacted to that desire. Stepping back and to the side and throwing out an arm, he managed to block her path and catch her against him at the same time.

      “I, um, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bark. It…it’s been a long day.”

      She bowed her head, standing very still in the curve of his arm. “Yes, I know.” The gaze she lifted to him this time glittered with accusation. “They waited until after nine o’clock.”

      They? His children, of course, though why they would bother to wait up for him, of all people, was pure mystery. Most of the time, they ignored everything about him, including his commands. He dropped his arm, put his head back and swallowed his brandy in one hard gulp that burned all the way down and hit his belly with the force of a fist. He inhaled cooling air through his mouth, bit down on the fiery aftertaste and sighed with satisfaction. He immediately felt better. “Suppose you tell me what they wanted,” he said smoothly, loosening his tie with one hand. Suddenly her anger was back. It leaped like bolts of clear blue lightning in bright green eyes.

      “They wanted their father!” she told him sharply. “We built a snow castle in the front yard today, and they wanted to be told what an amazing structure they’d made, what brilliant children they are.”

      “A snow castle,” he repeated dully. He hadn’t noticed. He stepped over to his chair and sank down upon it, all at once weary beyond bearing. “I’ll tell them in the morning,” he said, pressing the brandy snifter to the ache beginning between his eyes.

      Laura shook her head slowly from side to side, but he was too tried to ask what it was all about. This time, when she muttered, “Good night,” and stalked away, he let her go.

      After a while, the pounding in his head seemed to lessen, and he sat forward, trying to work up the energy to get up and go to bed. His gaze fell on the photo albums on the table. Leaning far forward, he could just reach them. He pulled them into his lap, stacking one on top of the other. He ran a hand over the ragged cover of the first and wondered again why his grandmother had left him this shabby piece of memorabilia in her will. You could never tell about Kate. Her mind had seemed to work in several arenas at once, weighing seemingly unrelated matters and reaching often amazing conclusions. He missed her. He was surprised at how much he could miss her after all those years away in the military.

      What were you doing, Kate, flying off to the Amazon alone, leaving your family to fend for themselves? He had the lowering feeling that he wasn’t doing too well on that score himself. After eighteen months, his children seemed hardly to know him, and he was still drifting, still looking for an anchor.

      Slowly he opened the cover of the photo album and looked once more upon his parents’ wedding picture. They had been the perfect couple, the heir apparent and the unspoiled beauty. It was difficult to think of them apart now, despite the reality of their separation, and yet, when he thought of home and his youth, he thought of his mother and her apologetic explanations for his father’s continual absence.

      “He has the whole weight of the family business on his shoulders,” she would tell him. “So many are dependent on him. He’s doing the best he can.”

      He thumbed through the photos, watching himself grow from infant to toddler to mischief-maker to rebel to man. Here were the hallmarks of his life—first steps, birthday parties, eighth-grade graduation, the football championship, hockey play-offs, proms. In these pictures the family grew, too, from first and only son, to Caroline, then Natalie, and finally the twins, in precise two-year intervals.

      Laura was wrong. He was in nearly every one of these pictures. The only person missing here was, as always, his father. Who did that woman think she was, scolding him for not coming home in time to compliment his kids on a silly snow castle? He came home, didn’t he? When they needed him, he was here, wasn’t he? He was doing his level best, and that ought to count for something. Shouldn’t it? He pushed the photo albums back onto the table and set the brandy snifter on top of them. Then he got to his feet and dragged himself to his bed. He never even opened the second album, the pictorial journal—navy blue, leather-bound, embossed in gold—so painstakingly put together by his late wife, the one that chronicled the years of his own young family’s lives—the one from which he was missing.