Almost An Angel (4 page)

Life would have been easier if he’d arranged for her to meet with Eliza Powell instead. Dr. Powell worked at Amy’s school. Conor wouldn’t have had to cut out of work to chauffeur Amy to Dr. Powell’s office.
 

But Dr. Hoffman had been so good with Amy. And Conor wanted Eliza Powell for himself.
 

Stupid thought. Stupid and selfish. He couldn’t have Eliza Powell, even if he
did
want her—which, honestly, he didn’t. Shouldn’t. Mustn’t. She might be married or otherwise attached. And he was still attached to Sheila. She might be dead, but… God, just thinking about another woman felt like a betrayal.
 

“The Daddy School,” Dennis was saying. “It’s a program set up by my sister-in-law and her best friend to help men become better fathers. I didn’t know which way was up when I first got custody of the twins. Then Gail—” he angled his head toward the stairs, where his wife had vanished a few minutes ago to fetch Amy “—dared me to take a few classes. She wound up taking some, too. Those Daddy School teachers really know how to cut through the crap and figure out what we need to make the whole father thing work.”
 

“Classes?” The idea struck Conor as bizarre. “Like, lectures? And homework?”
 

“No homework,” Dennis said with a laugh. “Lots of discussion, guys sharing strategies. Molly—my sister-in-law—runs a preschool, and her friend Allison is a pediatric nurse. They know their stuff when it comes to kids.”
 

“Amy isn’t a preschooler.”
 

“Doesn’t matter. Molly is an expert. Let’s face it, anyone who can get a toddler to stop whining is a genius.”
 

True enough. “How do I sign up for these classes?” Conor asked, even though the thought of squeezing yet another obligation into his calendar made his head throb.
 

“Just show up at the Children’s Garden Preschool at ten a.m. on Saturday. Tell Molly you’re my friend.”
 

Just show up? That seemed too simple. And then Conor realized it wasn’t so simple. “Finding a babysitter on such short notice…” He sighed.
 

“Yeah, that’s a challenge. Most of the Daddy School students have wives or ex-wives or partners to stay home with the kids. But if you can’t find a sitter, you can bring Amy with you. Molly usually has one of the other preschool teachers keeping an eye on any children who come with their dads.”
 

Conor wasn’t sure how Amy would feel about spending Saturday morning in a preschool, surrounded by toddler toys and overseen by a teacher who spoke in single-syllable words. She might be illogically fixated on the idea of Santa, but she was a smart girl. She devoured chapter books. She drew beautiful, elaborate pictures. She was as comfortable around computers as her father was.
 

Maybe she could sit quietly in a corner of the preschool with a few books, or a sketch pad, or a tablet. She could sketch and read and play computer games while ten feet away, her father tried to learn how to be a better dad. Yeah, right.
 

He’d have to find a babysitter. Or else give up on attending the Daddy School. He wondered if Dennis’s sister-in-law taught classes on how to land a babysitter.
That
was one essential
parenting skill he still hadn’t mastered.
 

*
 

ELIZA TOLD HERSELF she didn’t want the phone call to be from Conor, but she was inordinately pleased when it was. The last time he’d called her, a couple of days ago, he’d told her he had made an appointment for Amy with Rosalyn Hoffman. “I wanted you to know,” he’d said. “It has nothing to do with whether I think you’re a good psychologist or anything. It’s just that Amy knows Dr. Hoffman.”
 

“That’s fine,” Eliza had assured him, and she’d meant it. Continuity and consistency were good things for a child who’d lost so much. Eliza certainly hadn’t felt judged or rejected. In fact, a part of her had been relieved that Conor’s decision removed an ethical barrier. If Amy wasn’t Eliza’s patient, Eliza and Conor could become…
 

What? Friends? Certainly nothing more than that.
 

Yet they’d talked on the phone, as friends, for a good twenty minutes. About his work. About reputable auto mechanics in Arlington; her car would be due for a tune-up in January. About the Adams School’s annual holiday concert. Conor would be there; Amy sang in the school chorus.
 

Eliza had warned herself that the main reason for his call had been to inform her that Rosalyn Hoffman would be working with his daughter. He would never have a reason to talk to her again. She had no excuse to be disappointed when the only call she’d gotten the following evening had been from her credit card company, offering her bonus points if she spent a thousand dollars on holiday gifts by the end of the year. She shouldn’t have expected Conor to call. She shouldn’t have wanted it.
 

But she
did
want it. And when she answered her phone that evening and heard his voice, her face broke into a giddy smile.
 

“What’s up?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too eager.
 

“I was wondering if you’ve ever heard of something called the Daddy School.”
 

“The Daddy School?” She frowned.
 

“It’s a program to help guys become better fathers. My friend—well, you might know his kids, since they attend Adams, so I’ll keep his name out of it. Anyway, he told me about the Daddy School. I could use a few lessons. I’ll probably be the worst student in the class. I wonder if they have a remedial program.”
 

She heard the humor in his voice and laughed. “You don’t need a remedial program. Where are the classes given?”
 

“The Children’s Garden Preschool. Obviously, Amy isn’t a preschooler, but that’s where the class meets.”
 

Eliza grabbed a pencil and pad, the top page of which happened to contain her shopping list. Below
spinach
,
coffee filters
and
anti-frizz conditioner
, she jotted
Daddy School
. When she had a chance, she would research the program. It sounded like something she, as a child psychologist, ought to look into.
 

“As far as I know,” he continued, “the Daddy School doesn’t have a prom, but they’ve got a damned good basketball team.”
 

She laughed again. “Will Amy attend the classes with you?”
 

“No. They’re just for dads. I’m trying to line up a sitter. The class meets Saturday mornings at ten a.m. For some reason, the teenagers I know who babysit like to sleep late on Saturdays. But I’ve got a few prospects who haven’t turned me down yet.”
 

“How long is the class?” Eliza asked. “Maybe I could stay with Amy.” Then she clamped
her mouth shut. What had made her suggest that? It wasn’t appropriate.
 

It wasn’t inappropriate, either. She’d occasionally helped a parent in a pinch back at her old school in Albany. She knew and enjoyed the children, and she’d been willing to assist the occasional parent who had an essential errand and couldn’t line up a sitter. She’d worked with one student whose father had been undergoing treatment for cancer, and she’d often gone to the boy’s house to keep an eye on him after school while his mother took his father for his chemo. She’d never been the sort of school staffer who believed students stopped existing the instant the final bell rang at three o’clock.
 

Conor hesitated before saying, “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”
 

“You didn’t ask me,” she pointed out. “I offered.”
 

“Do you mean it?”
 

“I’m free Saturday morning. My credit card company wants me to race right out and spend a lot of money on Christmas presents, but that can wait until the afternoon. How long does the class run?”
 

Another pause, and then Conor said, “You’re an angel.”
 

No, I’m not
, she almost responded. The label “angel” had already been applied to Conor’s late wife, and it was causing enough trouble in that context. Besides, angels were supposed to be damned near perfect, weren’t they?
 

Conor’s wife might have approached perfection. Her death would have cemented her reputation. Eliza, however, was alive and very human—flaws and all.
 

Having a serious crush on the father of a student certainly qualified as a flaw. And spending time out of school with that student might turn out to be a mistake. But she’d offered and he’d accepted. Her Saturday morning now belonged to the Malones.
 

She only wished she didn’t feel quite so elated about it.
 

CONOR COULD CALCULATE pretty much to the day the last time he’d been inside a preschool: a late-August morning four years ago, when Amy had been five. He’d taken the morning off from work and gone with Sheila to Amy’s “graduation” ceremony, at which Amy had been handed a helium balloon and a diploma featuring a border of gold stars and red hearts, declaring her the recipient of an ABC Degree. The school had been a bedlam of screeching children, spilled punch and proud parents snapping photos. At one point during the chaos, he’d turned to Sheila and said, “Let’s have another child.”
 

“We’ll see,” she’d hedged, clearly not wild about the idea. She’d wanted more time for herself. More time for her painting and her long-distance cycling. She’d started training in earnest once Amy was in kindergarten, and a year later she’d participated in her first 100-mile bike ride to raise money for diabetes research. He’d appreciated her civic-mindedness—to say nothing of the way all that cycling had toned her body—but he would have rather had a second child.
 

After another year, he’d persuaded her. And they’d been trying. They’d had a lot of great sex that year, which made her inability to conceive less than a tragedy, although it had been disappointment. Perhaps they should have started sooner. Perhaps all that biking had lowered her
percentage of body fat too much. Perhaps one more try and they would have succeeded…if she hadn’t died.
 

The Children’s Garden reminded him of the preschool Amy had attended: an interior of bright colors, shelves stacked with books, toys and art supplies, and teeny-tiny furniture. No screeching children, though. He heard the rumble of men’s voices drifting toward the entry as he stood inside the front door, orienting himself and trying to shake his mental image of Eliza from his mind.
 

She’d insisted that he call her Eliza when she’d arrived at his house that morning. She’d been wearing jeans and her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail. Small gold hoops had adorned her ears, and the tip of her nose had been pink from the winter air. “Amy can call me Dr. Powell,” she’d said as Conor had greeted her at the front door. “But today I’m your babysitter. I think you should call me Eliza.”
 

Using her first name had seemed so personal. Brushing her shoulders with his hands as he’d helped her off with her coat had seemed even more personal. The scent of her shampoo, the vivid darkness of her eyes, the ease of her smile…
 

Daddy School
, he firmly reminded himself as he gazed at the row of cubbies lining the entry, each one labeled with a name and equipped with a coat hook and a shelf.
 

A dark-haired sprite of a woman emerged from an office near the entry and scrutinized him, her smile measured. “Can I help you?”
 

“I’m Conor Malone. My friend Dennis Murphy told me about the Daddy School.”
 

Her smile relaxed. “Yes—welcome! Dennis mentioned you might be coming.” She gestured down the hall. “Go on in. We’ll be starting in just a few minutes.”
 

Conor wandered down the hall, past the cubbies, past a wall display of snowmen composed of cotton balls glued to construction paper, to a vast room broken into small play areas separated by waist-high walls. A group of men were gathered in one of the areas. Some sat on the knee-high tables, some on the floor, and a few managed to perch themselves on tyke-sized chairs. Conor experienced an inexcusable spasm of relief that he didn’t recognize any of them. He wouldn’t want the fathers of Amy’s classmates and friends to know that he needed classes in how to be a dad.
 

A couple of the men welcomed him with a nod and a smile. They were probably at the Daddy School because they felt as incompetent and insecure as he did. He smiled and returned the nods, and found a spot to sit on the floor, leaning his back against the half-height wall. No way was he going to fit his six-foot frame onto one of those tot-size chairs.
 

The woman who’d greeted him when he’d entered the Children’s Garden Preschool strode down the hall and joined the group. She radiated an odd blend of pep and tranquility, a useful combination for someone who ran a preschool. “Let’s get started,” she said briskly. “I’m Molly Saunders-Russo, and we’ve got a few newcomers today. Class attendance always increases just before the holidays. I wonder why that is.” Her grin implied that she knew damned well why that was.
 

One of the men informed her, anyway. “It’s because our kids turn into monsters just before the holidays.”
 

“Not mine,” another man said. “It’s the only time of year my two behave well. They’re trying to get on my good side. It’s kind of creepy. Why don’t they behave so well the rest of the year?”
 

“Maybe you have to dangle the possibility of presents all year long,” someone else suggested.
 

“But that’s bribery,” yet a fourth man said. “Do we really want to program our kids to think that every time they behave well they’ll get rewarded?”