Antonia's Choice (3 page)

I nodded. “But I'm thinking that if I spend more time with him—maybe get him into some sports activities to burn up some of
that energy—he'll start to settle down some. Don't they have soccer and baseball for kindergarten-age kids?”

“Are you kiddin', baby? Every child in Davidson County is on a soccer or T-ball team the minute he leaves the playpen.”

“Then Ben's behind.” I cocked my head at her. “And what's T-ball?”

“Oh, honey, you have got a lot to learn.” She shook her head, wagging the strawberry-blond ponytail. She was the only nearly-forty-year-old woman I knew who could still get away with a ponytail at the office. And if Jeffrey had disapproved, he would have told her so long ago.

She was blinking at me now.

“What?” I said.

“I'm just thinkin'—and mind you, this is just my intuition—but I'm just thinkin Jeffrey is
not
gonna go for that plan at
all
. Not the way he's acting this mornin. First thing he did when he came in here was check to make sure everybody's desk was left neat last night.”

“Why—so the cleaning crew would be impressed?” I said.

“All I'm sayin' is that if you could put it off till another day, you might have a better chance.”

“I can't wait. Either Ben's going to pop a blood vessel or I'm going to haul off and smack him.”

Reggie nodded, her very-round face soft. “I'm so sorry ya'll are goin through this. I'm prayin' for you.”

“Thanks,” I said automatically.

Reggie was always reassuring me of her ongoing prayers, and I didn't have a problem with that. I'd been brought up with Sunday school and potluck suppers and mite boxes during Lent. But right now I just didn't see what good praying was going to do. Even God, I was sure, couldn't loosen Jeffrey up. That was going to be up to me.

I dropped off my briefcase and purse in my office, giving a list for the day to Ginny, my assistant, who greeted it with the usual poorly disguised lip curl. After stopping by the restroom for one last perusal in the mirror, I headed for Jeffrey's office. My pants were so wrinkled in the front they looked like an accordion, but otherwise I had the confident, professional look going on. It was all about attitude.

The oak door with its JEFFREY R. FAUSTMAN, JR. brass plate was closed when I got there. I knocked soundly and pushed it open. I hadn't called first and I didn't wait for an invitation to come in. Where I was headed, it was better not to give Faustman opportunities to say no to anything along the way.

Jeffrey's bald head, still bent over the desk as I stepped into his office, caught the carefully focused track lighting. I'd often wondered how he achieved the perfect shine on the completely hairless part of his head. It was as flawless as the thick fringe of auburn below it. I'd always meant to ask Reggie if she thought he waxed his cranium.

When he looked up, I caught the fleeting irritation behind his glasses, but as soon as he stood up it was gone. Jeffrey Faustman never lowered himself to emotion. With the clients he was cordial and showed an understated charm. Ours were the kind of clients who had been schmoozed over enough to be able to spot it the minute they crossed the threshold, and would turn on their heels to avoid it. With the staff, on Reggie's level, he was crisp and businesslike, bordering on abrupt, at times resorting to rude. With his associates, like myself, he was professional and polite, drawn into our personal concerns only on rare occasions. As I settled back into the Queen Anne chair in front of his desk, I was determined this wasn't going to be one of those occasions.

“Were we scheduled to meet this morning?” he said, glancing at his Day-Timer as he returned to his desk chair. He looked six-foot-three when he sat, or when he was standing over someone's desk, but he was barely six feet tall. I drew myself up as far as my own five-foot-four self would allow.

“No,” I said. “But there's something I need to discuss with you before the day gets going.”

“Mine is already going.”

There were lifted eyebrows, which I ignored.

“I'm going to need to change my working arrangement. The details are outlined here.”

I slid a file across his desk and leaned back against the silk brocade while he glanced over my plan. I had purposely not referred to it as a “proposal.”

He closed the file and lined it up precisely on his desktop. “What's this about, Toni?” he said.

“It's about my needing to change my working hours.”

“Why?”

“It's personal.”

“I don't think I'm overstepping my boundaries by asking you for details.”

He wasn't. I had to answer.

“My circumstances have changed,” I said.

“Are you getting back together with your husband?”

“No!” I said, and then silently cursed myself. Bad move. Regroup. “No,” I said, minus the exclamation point. “It's nothing like that. My son just needs more of my attention.”

Jeffrey leaned back in his chair, formed a pistol with his two index fingers, and rubbed the tip of his nose with it. I'd only been in his firm for two and a half months, but I'd learned the first week that pistol-fingers meant he felt he had the upper hand.

I will not squirm, I told myself firmly. No more little outbursts. And no more information.

“I have very little experience with arrangements of this kind,” he said, lowering the pistol only enough to uncover his mouth. “And what I have had has not been positive.”

He stopped, obviously waiting for me to defend myself. I didn't.

“If I knew more about what you were up against…” he said.

No way. Nothing doing,
I thought.
You are not going to make me vulnerable.

“Am I prying?” he said.

“I think you're well enough acquainted with my work to know I will get the job done and done well, no matter what schedule I keep.” I looked at the file and then at him and waited for an answer. If he said no, I told myself, then maybe I'd beg.

He pistoled his nose a few more times and, still leaning back like the Godfather, said, “Two weeks.”

“Excuse me?” The words
I'm giving you two weeks' notice whipped
through my head.

“We'll give this arrangement two weeks and then review it. If
you come up short, I'll expect you back in the office full-time.”

I stood up and thanked him coolly—giving him a you-really-didn't-have-any-other-choice smile—and left his office. Then I closed the oak door behind me and sagged against it.
What would I have done if he hadn't said yes?
This was the most lucrative, upwardly mobile job in the entire Southeast for me, and I knew it.

But by the time Reggie came into my office fifteen minutes later, the satisfaction of a victory-over-Faustman had already taken over. I was looking up soccer programs on the Internet. Apparently Ben and I were in luck, because they were just starting to form teams for the spring season.

“How did it go, honey?” Reggie said, setting a cup of coffee on my desk. I was sure it had just the right amount of Sweet'N Low in it. “Fine. I start my new hours tomorrow.” Reggie stared. “You are not serious.” “As a heart attack, girl. Was there ever any doubt?”

“Yes! I thought surely you were gonna come out of there cryin'.”

“Nah. The Kerrington women don't cry. It's in our contract. Our father—may he rest in peace—made us sign it when we hit puberty.”

“Now
you're teasin' me,” Reggie said.

I laughed, but it was almost true. We didn't actually sign on a line; it was more one of those unspoken family agreements that we all adhered to as if it were in the IRS manual. Daddy had definitely been the head of the household, at least as far as our behavior was concerned. All he'd had to do was look at Bobbi and she'd cry and run to Mama, who would attribute it all to Bobbi's “beautiful sensitivity.” Stephanie didn't have to worry about it much because she'd never so much as bent a rule, much less broken one.

I, on the other hand, had tested them all and suffered the consequences—with no compensating psychological excuses provided by Mama. At one point in my early adolescence, I'd found myself in a room stripped of all my personal possessions, marking off each of my thirty days of confinement on a calendar. Interesting. I was the one who had turned out to be most like my father—calm, analytical, and in full control of my emotions.

I
DIDN'T TALK TO MY MOTHER
until after Ben was asleep that night. It had been a long day getting myself organized for my new working arrangement, and Jeffrey's e-mail, which I received right after lunch, didn't make it feel any shorter.

Am still slightly less than optimistic about your new schedule,
he wrote.
This may cause me to rethink some plans I had for your advancement. We'll see.

“Jerk,” I said out loud when I read it.

From the outer office, Ginny said, “Did you call me?”

I smothered a guffaw and told her no. I told myself that I was going to surprise Jeffrey Faustman with my productivity on the new schedule
and
get the advancement. This deal with Ben was only temporary—just until I could get him settled down. Time in itself, I thought, took care of a lot of issues. Not all issues, but this had to be one of them.

On my way home, I picked up a soccer ball to surprise Ben and, admittedly, to sneak him into a better mood. I'd signed him up for a soccer team on-line that afternoon, and had decided it might not be so bad. I'd been athletic in high school and college—okay, I'd been a cheerleader. Ben had some of my genes. And as for the job thing, I was too determined to make it work for it not to. What I did was, after all, who I was.

All was actually quiet on the home front when I slipped in through the front door and into the family room in the back part of the house. Ben was sprawled out on the Oriental rug right in front of the television, where the
Rugrats
had him entranced. He looked smaller than ever in two stories of cherry paneling and oversize burgundy leather chairs, with an impressive copy of Stuart Mill's portrait of George Washington surveying him from over the fireplace. Kevin Pollert, my client who owned the house and who
was in Europe for two years, had a thing about his American heritage. The twelve-foot-high bookcases, complete with a sliding barrister ladder, always made me feel like I was sitting in the Library of Congress.

“Hey, Pal,” I said to my son.

He rolled over and looked at me.

“Do I get a hug?” I said.

He shook his head.

“Do you want the surprise I brought you?”

Ben sat up slowly. “What is it?”

“Give me a hug and you'll find out.”

He crawled to me and shinnied up my leg to put his arms briefly around my hips. They had all the enthusiasm of a pair of wet noodles.

“What's the surprise?” he said.

I reached into the shopping bag I'd parked next to the teakwood fern stand and produced the soccer ball.

“Cool!” he said.

“Cool” was encouraging. I tossed it to him. He missed and had to go scrambling to the marble hearth to retrieve it.

“I can't catch it,” he said.

“Sure you can. They're going to teach you.”

Ben took his hands off the ball as if I'd just announced he was holding a python.

“Who's ‘they'?” he said.

“The people that coach your soccer team. You get to play soccer, Pal.”

“I don't want to.” His eyes began to cloud. There was a storm brewing, and I hadn't even gotten out of my panty hose yet.

“We'll talk about it later,” I said. “You want pizza?”

“What kind?”

I sucked in air. “Whatever kind you want, Pal.”

“Just cheese. No stuff on it.”

“You got it,” I said.

He inventoried my face for another fifteen seconds before he seemed satisfied that I would not try to finesse pepperoni or anchovies on there. Then he returned to the
Rugrats.
Angelicas
tantrums were obviously preferable to anything I had to offer.

I moved on through the breakfast room to the kitchen, where I knew Lindsay would be happy to see me. She was the most cheerful human being I had ever encountered. I was sure I hadn't been that way as a seventeen-year-old. I wasn't that way now, for Pete's sake.

She was emptying the dishwasher, singing along with the Dixie Chicks on the radio and swaying her negligible hips. She was petite everywhere but her rather voluptuous chest, which she didn't necessarily downplay in a collection of snug shirts. Today's was pink. It had always seemed an injustice to me that any female actually had a figure like that when the rest of us could only dream.

When Lindsay saw me she snapped off the radio and then came at me with a hug. Her tanning-bed brown face lit up from smile to blue-shadowed eyes. I gave one of her blond tendrils a tug.

“How's it going, Lin?” I said. “Has Ben been good?”

“As long as I don't touch him,” she said cheerfully. “He beat me in a game of Chutes and Ladders, and when I went to high-five him, he ran behind the chair.” Lindsay dimpled. “I forgot how he is about that. Anyway, I hope it's okay that I just let him watch TV after that. It was the only thing I could think of.”

“You did fine.” I perched on one of the stools at the granite countertop and pressed my fingers against my temples. “Why don't you grab us each a Coke and we'll talk. I want diet.”

“Is there something wrong, Mrs. Wells?” Lindsay said.

“Just stressed out over Ben.” I watched her take two tumblers out of the cherry cabinet and move smoothly to the fridge for ice. It occurred to me that she was much more at home in a kitchen than I had ever been. And she'd probably make a better mother.

Lindsay set a Diet Coke, still spitting bubbles, in front of me and hiked herself up onto a stool.