As Husbands Go Read Free Page B

heels, or reading The Idiot for my book club because Marcia Riklis had said, “Enough with the chick lit,” I flopped onto our Louis XV–style marriage bed without my usual satisfied glance at its noble mahogany headboard and footboard with their carvings of baskets of flowers and garlands of leaves. Almost instantly, I fell into an all-too-rare deep, healing sleep. Sure, some internal ear listened for any sound from the boys’ rooms, but one thing I’m certain of: I would have been deaf to the soft tread of Jonah’s footsteps as he climbed the stairs.
    If he had.

Chapter Two

    “What?” I mumbled about ten hours later. I didn’t want to exchange the pleasure of French lavender sprayed on my pillowcase for the daily blast of triplet morning breath, which for some reason reminded me of the cheap bottled salad dressing my mother bought, the kind with brown globules and red pepper flecks suspended in a mucous-like vinaigrette. The boys were fraternal, not identical, triplets. Yet not only did they smell alike, they also had that multiple-birth juju, sharing some magical connection, like their triplet alarm clock that rang only for the three of them at the same instant each day, right before five-thirty.
    Jonah always said if he’d known about the five-thirty business, he wouldn’t have agreed to get them big-boy beds for their third birthdays. But he knew we really didn’t have any choice. Dash and Evan had inherited my height and all three of them had variations on Jonah’s solid musculature. If we hadn’t gotten the beds, we’d have had to deal with three little King Kongs breaking through the bars of their cribs or climbing over the rails.
    That morning, like every other, the boys raced toward our bedroom. Outside our open door, as usual, they merged into a single wild-haired, twelve-limbed creature that climbed up Jonah’s side of the bed. The game never changed: He would grab them one by one and bench-press them up from his chest to arm’s length. Then there would be the usual breathless laughter and shrieks of “Daddy, Daddy, I’m flying!” As he finished with each one, he’d set him down between us.
    So I knew that within a minute, Evan, Dash, and Mason wouldbe climbing all over me, wild from their high flying, to yell into my ear: “Cocoa Krispies!” “My Band-Aid came off! I need a new one!” “Put on Rescue Heroes now!” When I wouldn’t respond, one of them, usually Mason, would remember there was a concept called politeness and scream, “Please!” which would bring forth an earsplitting chorus.
    Except that morning they woke me with something completely different: a quiet question. “Where’s Daddy?” My mind started to reply, Probably downstairs getting a cup of coffee, but before the words made it to my mouth, I turned my head.
    The white duvet over Jonah’s side of the bed was like a pre-dawn snowfall, immaculate. The sham on his pillow with its subtle off-white monogram, SGJ , was pristine. The hideous plastic digital clock with its cracked red and gray Camp Chipinaw medallion that he insisted on keeping on the hand-tooled leather top of his English Centennial nightstand read 5:28.
    “Where’s Daddy?”
    “Where’s Daddy?”
    My gut must have understood something was terribly wrong before I did, because I reacted so primitively. My eyes darted across the white linen field, and an instant later, I took the same path. Like a snake with prey in sight, I slithered over the undisturbed duvet at amazing speed and grabbed the phone on Jonah’s side of the bed. The optimist in me took over. I pressed it to my ear, ready for the beep of a voice-mail signal. I even shushed the children so I could key in our password and hear Jonah’s message. Yet when all I heard was the standard steady dial tone, some small, shadowed thing inside me was not surprised.
    “Where’s Daddy?”
    Say anything, I commanded myself. Don’t let them see you panic. Because there’s no reason for panic yet.