Household Gods

Justin looked up from his mayhem, distracted by the sound of her voice but not curious to know what she meant. Nicole smiled at him. Justin whacked happily away at the coffee table. “Wham! Wham!” he shouted.

“Beat her brains out, kid,” Nicole said. The doll, she thought with malicious glee, looked a little like Dawn.

After he’d worked out all of his hostility and some of Nicole’s, too, Justin went to bed with no more than a token protest. Nicole took a shower, pulled on a clean pair of designer sweats – Neiman-Marcus this time, with blocks of pure strong color, blue and hot pink and acid yellow, as if she could brighten her mood forcibly by livening up her color scheme – and scowled at the telephone. She didn’t think Frank had classes on Wednesdays this quarter. If he didn’t, he could take the kids, and she wouldn’t have to burn a vacation day riding herd on them.

When the hour crawled past nine o’clock and he still hadn’t called, she called him again. Again, she got Dawn on the answering machine. This time, she tried to be more civil. She didn’t know how well she succeeded.

Ten o’clock rolled by. The telephone stayed obstinately silent. Shaking her head, Nicole went into the study and turned on the computer. She used America Online just often enough to keep from quitting the service. One reason she hadn’t quit was times like this. Frank might take too long to answer telephone messages, but he was religious about replying to e-mail the minute he saw it.

As soon as she logged on to AOL, a bright electronic voice announced, “You’ve got mail!” Nicole blinked. People didn’t send her e-mail all that often; the ones who knew she was on line also knew the mail might sit in her box for a couple of weeks before she saw it.

What the hell, she’d read it before she sent her own.

There was only one letter. It was from Frank, from his UCLA Internet address, and sent that afternoon. In the way of e-mail, it was short and to the point: The reason I can’t take the kids tomorrow is that Dawn and I are leaving for three weeks in Cancun tonight, so you might as well stop bugging me for a while, all right? I won’t be around to listen to it.

Nicole stared at the screen. “You son of a bitch,” she said. “You can’t pay child support, but you and Ms. Dumb-Blonde can bop off to Mexico any time you feel like it? You son of a bitch.”

She logged off in controlled fury and shut down the computer. No point to sending e-mail now. Frank was off to sunny Mexico, Frank and Dawn and – god damn her – Josefina, though even in a well-nurtured rage Nicole couldn’t imagine Josefina doing the sights in Cancun with a pair of irredeemably Anglo tourists. Frank didn’t give a damn what happened back here in smoggy L.A. That was Nicole’s job. Women’s work. Sit at home mopping up puke and scouring Teddy Grahams out of kitchen tiles, while the big brave man went gallivanting off to play.

She trudged back into the bedroom. Time was when it had been a sanctuary, a place she’d made for herself after Frank left. She’d hauled the curtains and the comforter and the rest of the bedroom accessories off to Goodwill, got the dresser and the bedside tables refinished, dumped the king-sized waterbed that took sheets the size of Alaska, and bought herself a nice brass bed with a queen-sized mattress. She’d even painted the walls, got rid of the old ugly peach enamel in favor of a nice flat oyster white. She’d been proud of it then, determined to make it a new beginning: Nicole Gunther-Perrin, independent woman.

Now the bold Aztec print of the comforter was crumpled and dingy and flung half on the floor. The sheets still matched, but hadn’t been changed in a week. Justin had tried to climb the drapes and pulled the whole thing down, double rod and all. The window was naked but for the Venetian blinds that she’d used to open to let the daylight in, but she hadn’t done that since she could remember.

Not that, at the moment, there was any daylight to let in. If she bothered to look out, she’d see a dark stretch of yard and the fence that divided it from the neighbors’ swimming pool. She was glad the fence was good and strong and high, to keep the babies safe. She hadn’t had to have it built; just about all L.A. backyards were fenced, which still struck her as strange.