Luis joins us, dressed in jeans and a white shirt, his hair still damp from the shower. He grabs a yoghurt from the refrigerator and slowly spoons it into his mouth, leaning against the kitchen counter. Mateo has gone back upstairs and shouts down that he has lost a sneaker and it’s really bad! because he has soccer practice today. I go up to his room and locate the shoe under his bed along with a bevy of dirty socks and underpants. I add them to a load of washing and turn the machine on.
“Will you please fix the tap today?” I ask Luis. Every day I bring up the dripping tap in the kitchen, and every day, Luis says he’ll fix it. Every day I say something like, If you don’t have time, I can get the plumber in, and every day he assures me that’s a waste of money and he’ll do it himself.
Today is no exception.
“And since you’re up early, would you walk Roxy, please?”
He drops the yoghurt container in the trashcan and kisses the top of my head. “Sorry, I have to get back to the gallery. I’m under the gun.”
I put my hands on his chest. “I know, I remember.” Luis’s upcoming exhibition is a very big deal. He’s been stressed about it for months and my job is to support him when he’s like that. It’s my favorite job, actually, looking after my family. I run my hand through his dark hair, still as thick as ever and always falling over his forehead. Whenever I picture Luis in my mind’s eye, it’s with one hand pushing back a lock of hair between his thumb and forefinger.
“You’ll be fine. Do what you have to,” I say.
Carla reappears, dressed and ready for school.
“Will you put the washing out on the line when you get home?” I ask her.
“Why can’t Matti do it?”
“Because he’s got soccer practice and you’ll be home way before him.”
“Okay.”
Luis hugs the kids, kisses me goodbye. I remind him to pick up Matti from soccer practice this afternoon. “And please don’t be late,” I plead. Mateo gets very anxious when people are late. One time Luis and I had a misunderstanding about who was where when and no one picked up Matti. He sat on a bench at a bus stop and waited for twenty-six minutes—that’s what he said, twenty-six minutes, repeatedly—and by the time I got there he had wet himself. It took over an hour to console him. Luis and I had a huge fight afterwards about who was supposed to pick him up, and we never agreed on it, although to this day I know it was supposed to be Luis.
“And don’t forget tonight.”
“What about tonight?” he says.
“Ha ha, you’re so funny you should have been on the stage.”
“I tried. They wouldn’t even let me audition.”
I laugh. It’s an accidental joke because tonight the kids are putting on a show. Carla has written a play for the Young Playwrights Competition and she is staging a special preview performance for us, having roped in her little brother to play various roles, all in our very own living room. I think I’m as excited as they are.
“Do I need to get anything for dinner?” Luis asks.
“No, all done.”
It’s pizza night tonight. One day, when my children are old enough to go to restaurants by themselves, they will realize that real pizza tastes like heaven, drips with oily, melted cheese, has very few vegetables on it and miles of pepperoni. Pizza, here, chez Sanchez, consists of homemade wholegrain sourdough spread with homemade low-salt tomato passata, truckloads of seasonal vegetables and low-fat cottage cheese. Sometimes I wonder how much of what I do to look after my family will end up as a discussion on a therapist’s couch.
Luis gives me that lovely smile of his that still makes my heart flutter, then with another kiss he’s gone.
I hug my children goodbye, tell them I love them to bits, accidentally mess up Carla’s hair—“Mom!”—and, after they’re gone, I grab the leash and the roll of dog poop bags from the hook behind the door of the laundry and let Roxy out for a quick walk around the block.
Two
“Good morning, everyone.”
Geoff is standing at the white board. We don’t use screens or projectors for small meetings like this, just good old-fashioned magnetic boards. He shoots me an annoyed look over his shoulder.
“Hey, there you are,” he says.
“Yeah, sorry. Dog walking. Lost track of time.”
There are five of us in this committee. Geoff of course, as the department chair, and the other two mathematics professors: Rohan and John. Then there’s Mila, the youngest in the faculty—as she likes to remind everyone on a regular basis—and me.
We’re here because our future funding is tenuous at best. Our generous endowment has been frittered away by our so-called investment advisors who managed to get a return at about a third the rate of everyone else, and now we have to come up with new sources of income. That, in a nutshell, is the meeting.
I nod at each of them and set my laptop on the table.
“So, where are we up to?” I wake up the laptop and open a new document while surreptitiously checking out Mila. She’s wearing a loose top that droops over her bare shoulder in a can’t keep it up, it’s too big sort of way, revealing a thin silver bra strap—at least she’s wearing a bra—over a fine collarbone. I look down at her skinny jeans, fashionably torn at the knees and cut off above her delicate ankles.
I don’t know. She’s obviously smart—after all, she’s an associate professor at twenty-six—but she’s also very pretty, with shiny black hair and olive skin, and eyelashes so long I suspect they’re false. Being sexy shouldn’t be a disadvantage in this job, but I think it is. I’d never dress like that for a business meeting. What was it Luis said this morning? You look conservative. I catch Mila looking at me looking at her and I quickly return to my laptop, my finger poised over the keyboard.
“Since you’re here, will you take minutes, Anna?”
“Sure, happy to.” I always take minutes. I may as well have it tattooed on my forehead. Team player, no job too small or too menial. Then Geoff adds, “I know I always ask you, but you’re the only one I can trust to do it right.”
I smile. Then I think I’m blushing. Am I blushing? I sure hope not. “It’s no problem,” I stress. Of course, it’s not really my job to take minutes. He could have asked June, the department secretary, to sit in, but the truth is, I am the only one who can be trusted to do it right. That’s one thing everyone always says about me: I am dependable. I will always step in and help, and often make things right. Which is probably why I’m always in meetings. When I’m not teaching, I mean. I seem to always put my hand up for things: committees, student support, fundraising, grant applications, acquittals. Sometimes I end up on committees I don’t remember signing up for. But, if the work needs to be done, I am ready. I rally when the going gets tough. I’m a rallier.
“Ideas,” Geoff says now. “Let’s hear them. Anyone?”
At the top of my document, I type: “New Funding Opportunities—Staff Suggestions” and bold it.
Mila takes the pencil she’s chewing out of her mouth. “We could contact our alumni? Organize a fundraising dinner?”