Cleo

To make ourselves feel more relaxed about our age difference I’d summoned up famous historical love affairs in which the woman was considerably older—Cleopatra and Antony, Yoko and John, and of course, Mrs. Robinson and Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.

Philip used the code name Dustin when he called me at the office. At his work I left messages that Mrs. Robinson had called.

“Who’s Dustin?” Nicole probed.

“Distant cousin.”

“Oh well, I suppose it’s good you’ve moved on from that toy boy.”

The times Philip and I spent together were growing more precious. I looked forward to them the way a child counts the days till Christmas. After two months of clandestine meetings, I wondered how much longer I’d be able to keep my life so neatly compartmentalized. Whenever he stayed the night while the kids were in residence, I woke him before dawn and made sure he creaked safely out the front door before an impressionable eye flicked open. The last thing I wanted was for them to have to deal with a transient adult male. Yet on our weekends alone together I’d see him looking so comfortable with Cleo draped over his knee it felt like he’d always been part of my emotional framework. Always—a risky word in anyone’s language.

“So when do I get to meet the kids?” he asked. “You’ve told me so much about them it’s like I know them already.”

“Soon.” Cleo looked up at me from his lap and winked.

“In twenty years’ time?”

“Not here at the house. I don’t want them thinking you’re invading their territory.”

“Okay. Let’s get together on neutral ground. There’s a new pizza parlor in town.”

He’d obviously thought it through. How could I possibly object to a casual meeting in a pizza parlor? I was in love with Philip, but had ongoing proof that romantic love is like a swimming pool. People fall into it and scramble out of it wet and disheveled, usually in one piece but damaged, all the time.

The love for my children was a different beast altogether. It was fierce and unfathomable. I’d willingly fight to the death for them. Besides, he had no hope of comprehending the grief I carried for Sam. Not that I wanted him to shoulder my sadness in any way, but if he wanted to be part of our lives he needed to acknowledge its existence.

He had every reason to turn around and run. But if he burst into my children’s lives and abandoned them brokenhearted I’d tear his limbs off, preferably one at a time, slowly and with no pain relief whatsoever.

Rob slipped into his favorite sweatshirt, several sizes too big for him, with USA emblazoned on the front. I buckled Lydia’s red shoes, licked a tissue and wiped mysterious goo off her cheek.

“Try and be well behaved,” I instructed them. “He’s not used to children.”

“What sort of person isn’t used to children?” asked Rob. “Anyway, I’m not a kid anymore.”

The pizza parlor was carved out of the ground under a shopping arcade. Descending a fake marble staircase, complete with wrought-iron railings, the kids seemed impressed. Quiet at least. I was grateful the place hadn’t been open long enough to reek of tired fat. Fake ivy clambered over polystyrene columns. Red and white checked tablecloths screamed at the glistening cash register. It felt like a movie set, with us as an unlikely set of actors auditioning for the role of Family Group.

I was relieved when the waiter escorted us to a discreet table under the stairs. Anyone from work could turn up at a joint like this. It would be through the office like chickenpox by Monday morning—“Brown and Toyboy Test Drive Family Outing. Has She Lost Plot?!”

We ordered pizza and Coke. Rob was no longer a bubbly kid; he’d elongated into a thirteen-year-old with a tank full of testosterone. He was sullen, silent and determined to show no interest in someone who wasn’t used to children. I’d warned Philip it was a difficult age. Lydia, who had insisted on wearing three strands of beads around her neck, vacuumed her glass until it was almost empty. Philip seemed slightly unnerved when her slurping noises echoed against the plastic wall panels.

“Don’t do that!” I hissed at the child.

“Why not? It’s fun.”

“It’s not polite.”

“But this is,” she said, lifting the straw from her glass and tipping the remains of her Coke onto her tartan skirt.

“No, it’s not!” I said, dabbing her skirt with a paper napkin. I glanced at Philip, who was studying the menu as if it was a legal document. Now he surely understood why I never wanted this collision of realities to take place.

“Haven’t you got a mother?” Lydia asked, kicking the table leg and making the cutlery hiccup.

“Yes, I do,” he said, lowering the menu to welcome the first unsolicited contact from the children.

“Why don’t you go home and be with her?”

Silence. I waited for Philip to scrape his chair back and run.

“She’s busy tonight.”

“Tell her not to be. We’ve got our mother. You’ve got yours. You don’t need our mother, too.”