The Perfect Family (3 page)

His chuckle was very male, warming her. “Four times in one week. It’s been a while.”

“Hmm. Nice.” She let out a sigh. “Back to the real world.”

He frowned over at the boys and Maggie tracked his gaze. Brian slouched on a chair next to Amber. “He had too much to drink last night.” Mike’s tone was worried.

“I know. We need to talk about that with him again.”

“He drinks sometimes at home. He says he never drives, but it’s a problem, Mag.”

“A lot of kids drink, Mike. The most we can do is try to contain it. I hate to see him hung over like this, though.”

“Serves him right.” He nodded to Jamie, four seats down, headphones on, fiddling with his iPod. “Jamie didn’t have any alcohol.”

“I don’t think he drinks at all.” Mike stared at his other son. “In some ways, like that, I’m glad he’s different from most kids. In other ways, I wish he wasn’t.”

“Be careful, Mike, you don’t want him to know that you wish he wasn’t who he is.”

His face closed down. “If you’re talking about the church, Mag, I have to be honest about what I want for him.”

Maggie had some suspicions that he wanted Jamie to be different in more ways than his beliefs about church. Despite how close she and her husband were, there were some things they didn’t talk about.

She stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “Think about it, okay?” To change the subject—because this wasn’t the place to get into any of that—she asked, “Did you check our voicemail at home?”

Mike pulled out a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket. “The dog sitter left a message saying she’s bringing Buck home this morning.” Their chow/shepherd mix who was a full-fledged member of the family.

“The boys missed him. I swear they would have brought him along if they could have.” She watched the man behind the counter fiddle with the computer. “Anyone call for me?”

“A Teresa DeAngelo.”

“I don’t recognize the name.”

“She said you didn’t know her, but she needed to talk to you, that it was personal.”

“Huh. So she wasn’t from school?”

“No, and she didn’t leave a number for you to call her back. She said she’d phone you again.”

They were distracted by a commotion at the ticket counter next to them, where apparently a computer was working. “I’m sorry, señor,” the attendant said to a family of three she was waiting on. She glanced at the employee helping Mike and Maggie. “Could you come here a minute, Elena?”

Elena excused herself to assist her colleague.

Rapid Spanish rolled off the man’s tongue. His wife, clearly distraught, clutched a baby to her chest. The parents weren’t much older than Brian. Their attendant spoke to them gently, and the woman burst into sobs.

Elena returned.

Mike asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Those poor people. They’re going to visit family in America. Her father sent two tickets.”

“And?”

“They need to pay for the little one. She’s too old to ride for free.” Elena shrugged. “No Happy New Year for them, I guess.”

“They don’t have the money?”

“No.”

“Is a seat available?”

“Miraculously, one solo seat is available. We could shift people around, too, to get them together. But they’d have to pay.”

Mike studied the family then he pulled out his Visa card. “I’ll pay for the child’s ticket.”

The woman behind the counter dropped her pen. “Excuse me?”

“I said I’ll pay for the third ticket.”

Maggie watched her husband, her eyes misting. He was such a good man, an unselfish one. At times like this, all his flaws faded away.

Open mouthed, the attendant took Mike’s card. “That’s really nice of you.” She went back to the other counter. Words were exchanged, and the father’s head snapped up.

Mike nodded. “
Feliz año nuevo
.”

The man flushed and whispered in his wife’s ear. She started to cry hard. “
Gracias tanto. Dios le bendice
.”

Mike acknowledged the blessing, took his card back, and grasped Maggie by the hand. “We have so much,” he said.

Standing on tiptoes, she kissed his cheek. “Me, especially.”

A few days after they returned from Cancun, Maggie headed into her office at the college to clean up some paperwork and prepare for the upcoming semester. She dumped her books and bag on a side table and sat behind her big maple desk. After being away from school for winter break, she took pleasure in her surroundings. A window overlooking the snow-covered trees behind the building allowed natural light to spill inside most of the day. High shelves stuffed with books she’d collected through the years flanked them. Potpourri in strategic places scented the air. Her life as a teacher had been fulfilling and rewarding and had formed much of her adult identity. Closing her eyes, she savored the moment of belonging and stability the room provided.

“Hey, sleeping on the job?” She looked up to see Damien Kane, also a psychology professor, in the doorway. His loose-limbed, rangy body slouched against the doorjamb, and his brilliant smile gave him oodles of charm. That, and the face of a movie star.

“I’m just enjoying the quiet time.”

“I saw you come in.” He held two cups. “And brought you coffee with a bit of cream, like you drink it.”

Maggie shifted in her seat, disconcerted by how much Damien seemed to know about her preferences. Disconcerted
and
flattered, she had to admit. Gretta said he was interested in her, but he flirted with most of the women at RCC, so Maggie tried not to worry about the…intimacies he exhibited. “Um, thanks. Come on in.”

Dropping down on the couch, he motioned her over. She sat next to him and accepted the cup. The coffee was hot, taking the edge off the chill of the January day in upstate New York. “Mmm.”

“Obviously the Caribbean agrees with you. You look fantastic with that tan.”

“Sun’s bad for your skin. I tried to keep covered with lotion, but it washed off in the water.”

He propped his feet up on the coffee table. “Isn’t it funny how the things that are bad for you feel the best?”

She ignored his comment. Damien seemed to relish double entendres, and it was best not to give him any encouragement. “How’s your vacation been?”

“So-so. I’ve got the girls this week.” He was divorced and his daughters lived two hours away.

“Then why are you here?”

“Missy and Emma wanted to go to the mall. I dropped them off.”

“Wouldn’t kill you to traipse around with them.”

“You think?”

“I do. Kids love it when you take part in their activities.”

Steel gray eyes focused across the room. “I don’t relate to them as well as you do to your boys.”

“Start with the mall, Damien.”

“Maybe. They want to go to some concert next month. I might be able to manage that.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

He trained his gaze on her. “So, was it all fun and frolic in Cancun?”

“Uh-huh. Mike got the rest he needed.”

“The perfect husband and father took time for himself? I’m shocked.”

Cocking her head, she asked, “What does that mean?”

“Just that he always seems to do the right thing, pays enough attention to you and spends time with the whole family. Do you ever fight?”

“Of course we do.”

“About what?”

“How did we get into this?”

“I’m feeling nostalgic, I guess. I spent Christmas alone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Maggie?” Her department head, Nancy Schultz, had come to the doorway. About forty-five, with unabashed ambition, Nancy wanted the chair post and had gone after it with verve. Maggie had voted for her. “I didn’t know you were coming in today.”

Glad for the interruption, Maggie stood. “I wanted to get a jump on paperwork and planning. Did you need to see me?”

“Yes, if you have time, I’d like to discuss some budget issues with you.” She gestured to Damien. “I already corralled our Dr. Kane.”

Damien, like some others at the community college, had a PhD. Maggie had settled for a master’s degree when she’d gotten pregnant with Brian and then Jamie.

“When would you like to get together, Maggie?”

“I can do it now.”

A scowl shadowed Damien’s face, but he was his charming self when he stood and bade her and Nancy good-bye.

As Damien left, Maggie felt bad for him because he was alone. She thought about divorce and what it would be like to spend Christmas apart from her kids. She shivered with the prospect of that happening in the family she’d worked so hard to build, especially after the fight she and Mike had that morning about a church event she refused to go to.

“You okay?” Nancy asked.

“Yes, sure. Let’s get to that budget.”

*

Holding a marker, Mike stood in front of a whiteboard on an easel in a meeting room of St. Mary’s Catholic Church. As chair of the Contemporary Issues committee, he’d gathered the members around an oval oak table. Even in there, the smell of candle wax and incense from a funeral yesterday lingered. “As you know, Father Pete’s asked us to come up with topics for discussion in the next six months, issues which the contemporary Catholic Church faces. We’ll study the biblical basis for these areas, then branch out from the texts into analysis and our own opinions.”

Father Pete, a tall, powerfully built man of about fifty-five, sat forward. “Remember, the purpose of these studies is to learn the church’s stance on the issues which confront Catholic men and women today.”

Anita Ruiz straightened to her five-two height. Her turbulent expression reflected an innate intensity. “I have a few questions.”

“No surprise there,” the woman next to her mumbled good-naturedly.

The group joked with her. Anita was a nurse for underprivileged kids in the city and a devout Catholic who struggled unendingly with some of the harsher stances the church took on contemporary issues. Yet she had one of the strongest faiths Mike ever encountered and he admired her for being able to balance both. Things tended to be black and white with him, especially about his religion, a fact Maggie constantly reminded him of when they disagreed.

“Go ahead, Anita.”

“Who’s going to interpret these passages from the Bible?”

“I will,” Father Pete said firmly.

“And whatever you think they mean is what we have to agree with?”

“No, Anita,” the priest added gently, though his gray brows were furrowed, “the church’s stance on the issue is what we’ll accept and talk about how to do God’s will within her parameters.”

Mike hitched a hip up on a table to the left. “What’s your concern, Anita?”

“I’ve got a lot of them. One is how horribly women were treated in the Old Testament.” She cited Hagar’s suffering at the hands of Abraham’s wife. She mentioned Lot’s offering his virgin daughters to the men of Sodom. “I always worry in studies like these that we’re going to conclude physical abuse is acceptable. Or prejudice is all right. That maybe because they’re in the Bible, we have to allow them.”

“I think everybody struggles with passages like that, Anita.” Mike’s own wife did, not that he faulted her for that specific questioning. “It’s one of the reasons we’re here. To gain more insight. Shall we keep that in mind and forge ahead?”

“All right.”

“First, we’ll brainstorm topics. Then we can vet them. We’re hoping for five or six subjects, which would take us through June.”

Lively discussion among the six men and ten women in the group followed. By nine, Mike felt filled with the spirit of God and exhilarated by the enthusiasm of the group. He surveyed his notes on the board. They had their work cut out for them: divorce, the place of women in the church, homosexuality, papal infallibility, and abortion had been chosen.

Father Pete gave the closing prayer. “Dear Lord, be with us in the coming weeks as we examine these issues. Holy Spirit, guide us to know Your word, Your meaning, and do the work of Your church. Help us to accept what the holy fathers hand down on matters of faith, even when it’s difficult. Let us remember You are the most important one in our lives.”

After the prayer, Craig Johnson approached Mike. A stocky man with a receding hairline, he was Mike’s golf partner and best friend. The four of them—Maggie and Craig’s wife Judy—socialized often, worked on church committees together, and spent time at school events, since they had a son Jamie’s age. “Where’s Maggie tonight?”

“She’s not coming to the study group.”

They’d fought about it that morning, and he regretted diminishing their vacation closeness…

How are you going to rectify these issues if you don’t analyze their biblical basis?

Mike, you know I’ll get angry when people say divorce is wrong, but annulments aren’t. When they say homosexuality is a sin against God. And when they profess women have no right to make decisions about their own bodies. I don’t believe in any of that.