Any Minute: A Novel Read online

  One short sentence. One horrible word.

  Sorry.

  That was all she said. Seven innings into the game, with the Cubs behind by three runs and the organ sounding its scales, with the singer in the press box counting down “a one, a two, and a three,” and her family finally knew that Sarah wasn’t going to make it to Wrigley Field after all.

  “Take me out to the ba-a-all game.” Mitchell’s little voice rang out above the others, senselessly beautiful. Joe halfheartedly sang too while he thought about the drive home tonight. He and Mitchell would have to go by the babysitter’s and pick up Kate. The crowd continued to sing, “Buy me some peanuts and Craaacker Jack. I don’t care if I never get back,” while his thoughts trailed off into what he might say to Sarah later that night.

  By the bottom of the eighth, the guy who’d wedged his way into Sarah’s seat stood and headed toward Waveland Avenue. “Excuse me,” he said as he forced his way out, and they felt like they could breathe for the first time in hours. “Excuse me,” as he blocked everyone’s view and stumbled over women’s purses and trodded on a fair number of toes.

  “Hey, kid,” Joe said, nicking Mitchell’s chin with a crooked finger. “Don’t look so disappointed. The Cubs will win the next one, don’t you think?”

  Silence.

  And of course Joe knew this wasn’t about the game.

  “Hey. Chin up. We’ll try this again with Mom some other time, okay?”

  Mitchell climbed down and sat hard on his seat. He didn’t say it would be okay. He chewed his bottom lip instead. Joe could see he’d been at it long enough to make it raw. Joe would have to get him a ChapStick. He felt resentment well up in him that Sarah could hurt Mitchell like this and not seem to even realize she was doing it.

  Peanut Guy yawned. “If it’s gonna happen,” he commented to all those crazy, hopeful people who had carried the signs, “it’s not gonna happen tonight.”

  Mitchell uttered a sigh that came clear up from his toes.

  Joe asked, “You ready to go?”

  Mitchell nodded.

  “Don’t forget your claw. That’ll be good for another game.”

  Mitchell picked it up and, wordlessly, they trudged over empty nacho cartons and dented cups and crumpled hot-dog wrappers to get to the gate.

  Wrigley Field had emptied fast. But even then, as the lights cast hard shadows along the empty seats and the batboys bagged the gear so they could drag it from the dugout to the locker room, as the janitors donned rubber gloves to pick up trash and someone started sweeping, even then, Joe couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching them. He looked around, but no one seemed to be paying them any mind.

  “Does that guy climb a ladder to get to the scoreboard?” Mitchell asked. “I looked, but I didn’t see a ladder.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Joe asked, finally losing patience. “If you saw somebody up there at all, he isn’t anything special. I don’t see how he’d do God much good, Mitchell. He can’t even help the Cubs.”

  But Mitchell wouldn’t be dissuaded. He kept insisting there was a man in the scoreboard. Joe wondered if Mitchell kept talking to keep himself from thinking about how much his mother had disappointed him. And they had a long way home, first the trip on the “L” and then a stop to pick up Kate after they got the car out of the commuter parking lot. Still, Mitchell went on and on about the guy. Even after they’d joined the throngs of downcast Cubs fans on Addison. Even after they’d climbed the steps to the train.

  Chapter Four

  Sarah didn’t usually cook breakfast on school mornings. She made do with a packet of microwave oatmeal for Mitchell, spoonfuls of Gerber peaches and maybe a teething biscuit for the baby, a cup of coffee for herself—all that just after six thirty—and sometimes a toasted bagel, which she shoveled down while she was driving. Joe fended for himself.

  She’d set her alarm to ring at some horrific hour this morning so she’d have time to make pancakes. It was her way of trying to make up for disappointing Joe and Mitchell the night before. A fresh latticework of sun fell across the counter as Sarah measured flour into a bowl and cracked open the eggs one by one. Kate was sitting in her high chair fingering Cheerios and watching a Baby Einstein show on DVD. “Chat,” the narrator repeated as a cat stepped across the screen. Baby Kate was learning to speak French.

  Sarah heard the scraping of a chair behind her and turned to see that Mitchell had appeared at the table. His eyes were still full of sleep, his Cubs hat tilted sideways. His hair resembled a rather ruffled hedgehog. She froze with the electric mixer in hand, engulfed in guilt at the sight of her son. “Good morning,” she said with false cheeriness. Mitchell scrubbed his eyes, trying to wake up.

  She poured the batter onto the griddle, and in no time the hot-cakes began sizzling. She’d made them in the shape of animals, a kitty for Kate and a giraffe for Mitchell. Sarah flipped them with her spatula, pleased to see they’d come out the way she’d intended. She slid the giraffe onto a plate and used chocolate chips to make eyes.

  “Here you are.” She set the plate in front of Mitchell to see what he’d say. Her heart fell as he stared at it without speaking.

  “What’s this?” she asked. “You don’t like it?”

  “Animals are for babies,” he said.

  “No they aren’t,” she said, surprised. “You’ve always liked animals.”

  “Well, I don’t like them anymore.”

  “Really.”

  “No.”

  “Since when?”

  “I just don’t.”

  Sarah sighed. So that was it. She’d been hoping Mitchell wouldn’t take her missing the game so hard. “Look,” she said, “I’m sorry I didn’t make it last night. My job got busy.”

  Mitchell turned his little face up toward hers. Beneath the brim of his cap, she could see tears. It wrenched her heart, but what could be done? “You and your dad both love the Cubs.” She took his plate away, vowing that she wouldn’t let an eight-year-old make her feel this conscience-stricken. “I’m sure you had a perfectly good time without me.”

  She worked at the stove, dripping a small quantity of batter in one direction and then pouring bits of it in another. When it was done, she tried again. “Okay. How about this one?” She made a big deal of getting it on the spatula. “Oops, his arm broke off. There. I’ve put it back on. What do you think about that?” She arranged chocolate chips without letting him see.

  She slid the hotcake onto the plate in front of him, but Mitchell stared at that too with distaste.

  “It’s a baseball player,” she prodded.

  “I know that.”

  “It’s Zambrano. He’s pitching.”

  Mitchell worked his bottom lip with his teeth. He wouldn’t be distracted so easily. “We saved a seat for you for a long time. Everybody kept trying to take it. Everybody got mad at us because we wouldn’t let them sit there.”

  The baby was fussing. “I don’t know what to tell you, honey. I had to go back to work. I’m really sorry.” Sarah was just lifting Kate from the high chair and handing her a biscuit from the cabinet overhead when she heard Joe enter the room. She didn’t turn toward him; even now she could feel his angry eyes boring into her spine. He’d been waiting up for her when she arrived home last night, and a big sponge claw he’d bought Mitchell had been lying on a chair. She’d picked it up and waved it at him, testing the waters between them.

  “Nice of you to bother to show up here,” he’d commented as he slapped his Hemmings Motor News shut, jabbed it inside the magazine basket, and made a getaway toward the bedroom.

  “Don’t you even want to know what happened?”

  “No, I don’t want to know. I’m going to sleep. I only wanted to make sure you weren’t injured or hurt, that there wasn’t some sort of an accident.”

  “Of course I’m not hurt. I was only—”

  He held up his hand to stop her. “Because that’s the only reason I could think of to make you miss time wi
th your son again.”

  “Joe.”

  “I don’t want to discuss it tonight, Sarah.” Then, with a sarcasm she wasn’t used to hearing from her husband: “You can give me all your excuses in the morning.”

  And so they’d each slept fortressed on their own separate sides of the mattress, each staring at the opposite wall, Sarah with her stony shoulders and her pillow punched up beneath her head, Joe’s torso as set and stubborn as a concrete girder.

  Now she heard him pouring coffee from the pot. She heard the clank of the sugar-bowl lid as he added sugar. Joe took one loud slurp, set the mug down hard on the counter, and waited.

  Sarah shut the cabinet door with a little too much zeal. The hollow bang echoed down the hall.

  Joe opened the silverware drawer with such force that every butter knife, teaspoon, and salad fork slid together with a resounding clang.

  Sarah gave Kate the biscuit and balanced the baby on her hip. She opened the dishwasher and began to stack clean plates one on top of the other with deadly precision.

  Thankfully, that very moment, Mitchell took pity on her and asked for more chocolate chips. “Ah,” she said, breathing a sigh of relief and bringing the bag over. “Always after more chocolate, just like your mom.”

  “Nope,” Mitchell told her, arranging the chips to his liking. “I want to make a C on his shirt. He’s not Zambrano without a Cubs C on his shirt.”

  “And as soon as he’s got that, you can bite his head off.”

  To Sarah’s satisfaction, he finally dug in with his knife and fork, dismembering Zambrano headfirst.

  To give Joe credit, he waited until she’d gotten Kate settled into the playpen in the other room and Mitchell had run out to get his backpack before he started in on her. “How come you made everyone breakfast?” he asked. “What is that? A guilt offering because you abandoned him again?”

  Sarah’s breath caught in her throat. If Sarah had been about to confess how guilty she felt, she wouldn’t do it now. It was one thing to admit it, another to stand accused. She turned to face her husband. “I was almost to Wrigley when Roscoe phoned. He’d gotten a huge account, and he wanted me to handle it. The whole company’s reputation at stake, that sort of thing. And after I’d lost the Nielsen deal last month, you know I couldn’t turn him down.”

  “I wish you could have seen Mitchell’s face, Sarah. I wish you could have seen your little boy searching for you the whole time, expecting to find you in the crowd.”

  “I saw his face this morning, Joe. Wasn’t that enough?”

  “You told him you’d come through this time, Sarah. You always promise him.”

  His anger had caught her off guard. Blood roared in her ears. She clenched her fists at her sides without knowing what to say.

  “Sarah,” he asked, “what’s wrong with you?”

  “What do you think? That I had another choice besides turning around? You think it was easy for me? I told you, Joe. I was halfway there.” She thought, There’s nothing wrong with me. He is the one who has the problem. If I didn’t have to be responsible for everything around here, maybe I wouldn’t have to work so hard.

  Sarah wasn’t even close to being ready to admit to herself that she did all the things she did because she wanted to. Her sense of worth and value was derived from her accomplishments. Actually, she needed her success much more than her family needed the money.

  “And then there was the awful thing with the seat. I told all those people you were coming. I told people not to sit there.”

  “If you would buy tickets in the reserved section, you wouldn’t have to turn all those people away.”

  “What good would that have done? What good would it have done to buy a reserved seat instead? Mitchell was so hurt, he started making up some fantastic story about the fellow in the scoreboard, some gray-headed guy keeping score for the Cubs, sent to earth to help straighten out his mother.”

  “And did you agree with him? That I needed straightening out?”

  At that, Joe clamped his mouth shut. He could see that their conversation wasn’t going in a good direction.

  “A husband is supposed to support his wife, Joe. Is that what this is? Support? Because it certainly doesn’t feel like it.” Sarah was an expert at blame shifting when she felt cornered.

  Joe was looking past her at the mustard-colored bus slowing at the curb outside the window. Its amber lights flashed in pulsing rhythm. “Mitchell!” he called. “Bus! Get a move on!”

  Sarah didn’t let the interruption distract her. “Joe? Are you going to answer my question?”

  “I don’t know what all of this is, Sarah, or what we’re even doing anymore.”

  “I do. This is the way we’ve chosen to live our lives.”

  And it was true; they’d made most of these decisions together.

  At least Joe agreed to what Sarah strongly felt was a good idea. Sarah was very strong willed, and Joe had a habit of going along with what she wanted just to keep the peace. That had been the reason for buying the house not only in Lake Forest, but in VeryEast Lake Forest, an acre of land for Mitchell and their rambunctious little schnauzer to run wild on, the grassy expanse covered in autumn leaves as large as stationery pages, as full of warm color as flame. Deer Path Elementary was close enough for Mitchell to have only a short bus ride. It was all supposed to be so wonderful, but here they were existing in the same house but growing further apart every day. Joe felt tired and defeated. He didn’t like what was happening to them, but he wasn’t at all sure how to stop it.

  As Mitchell pounded downstairs, his knapsack seemed enormous, all buckles and straps bouncing on his back. Mitchell straightened the brim of his Cubs hat and galloped out the door. Sarah was glad to see he’d found his glasses somewhere; they seesawed precariously on his nose. “Hey,” she called him back. “Don’t forget your lunch.” She dangled the brown paper bag in front of him. He grabbed it from her, slammed the screen door, and scampered across the yard. The driver had started to close the doors and pull ahead just as Mitchell appeared. Sarah and Joe watched as the bus held up, the doors opened again, Mitchell launched himself up the stairs and gave the driver a high five. He didn’t glance again in their direction.

  When Sarah turned to Joe, he was still staring down at her with sorrow. “I just don’t know how much longer I can do it. I don’t know how much longer I can stand by and watch you disappoint him.”

  It was too much. “Don’t you think it upsets me too? But someone has to take care of this family, don’t you think? Someone in the family has to have a steady income.”

  She realized she’d just slammed him, telling him his job wasn’t nearly as important as hers, but she didn’t care. She saw him flinch as if he’d been hit.

  “Joe. I don’t know what else I can say.” He knew how much it cost her to disappoint Mitchell. How could he use it against her? “It’s an important, professional job. I keep this position for another few years, and we’ll almost have the house paid off. We’ve made so much progress on the credit cards already. It’s what we decided we would do, remember?” Then, “We can’t all tinker around in a garage and wait for some car collector to stop by and buy something.”

  He began to bluster. “You said you didn’t mind if I started this business.”

  “I didn’t mind. I don’t. Only when you use what I have to do to make up for it and turn it around and punish me with it. That’s when I mind.”

  A loud clatter from the playpen interrupted them. Kate must have toppled something over on herself because by the time Sarah rushed in there, she found the Sit-to-Stand Giraffe sideways and Kate beneath it, howling. “Oh, there you are.” Sarah gathered up the baby, bouncing her to calm her down. She showed Kate her face in the mirror. “Shhhh. What are those tears? Did that toy attack you?” Then, “You mustn’t be sad. Mrs. Pavik is going to be here any minute to play.”

  Almost the instant she said it, the nanny van pulled into the driveway with its magnetic sign on the sid
e: How’s My Nanny Doing? Joe was still trying to talk to her, but she opened the door halfway and let Kate see the woman who was shuffling up the sidewalk. Having Mrs. Pavik arrive this way always made Sarah feel so satisfied. But, even so, when she turned toward Joe again, her eyes remained grim.

  She brandished the baby against her chest as if she were brandishing a shield between them.

  “There’s nothing else I can do about this,” she said to her husband, her voice rough with frustration. She saw something click shut in his face. “Will you make sure to be here when Mrs. Pavik has to leave this afternoon? And tell her I’ll be checking on Kate via computer during the day.”

  Sarah could depend on www.nannyrating.com. The high-tech baby Web site was a conscience soother for her. If Sarah knew she wasn’t spending enough time with the baby, well, she could turn on her laptop screen and know exactly what Mrs. Pavik was doing. And, after that, because she’d gotten the Cornish account and would be very busy today, Joe would have to take over.

  “You’re not going to come home again tonight? Even after this discussion?”

  “This hasn’t been a discussion,” she said. “It’s been you flinging accusations.”

  He stood there helpless and staring while Kate stuck out her tongue and blew, making noise and spit bubbles, daring either one of them to ignore her presence. The baby pitched forward and sinuously launched herself into her father’s arms. He balanced her inside the crook of one elbow and straightened her tiny pink playsuit.

  “We have to do this,” Sarah said. “We have to work together and get through this. I promise things will change soon.” She read it in his eyes. That’s what you said last time, Sarah.

  Why can’t you ever stop taking on new things and just for once put your family first?

  “You can’t back out on me now.”

  The baby nestled against her father’s chest, her little blue eyes troubled, as if even a child this young could sense the stress between them.

  “I’ve got meetings with my new clients tonight,” Sarah said, her voice flat. “I don’t have any idea when they’ll let me come home.”