Daddy

“What do you say we take the kids skiing after Christmas?” he asked as they got in the car. He liked to stay close to home for the actual holidays, because he thought it was more fun to be at home, and he thought it was nicer for his parents. Sarah's parents had her sister and her kids, and they went to Chicago every Christmas from Grosse Pointe, but his parents had only him. And Sarah had no burning desire to go home for the holidays anyway. They had done it once, and she had complained about it for three years. Her sister annoyed her, and Sarah and her mother had never gotten along either, so the arrangement they had was perfect.

“That would be fun. Where? Vermont?”

“What about something a little racier this year? What about Aspen?”

“Are you serious? That must have been one hell of a bonus you got last week.” He had brought in the agency's biggest client ever. He still hadn't told her how big the bonus was, and they had both been so busy in the last week, she hadn't pressed him.

“Big enough to splurge a little if you'd like to. Or we could stay around here, and then go away just the two of us after the kids are back in school, if you want to. My mom would come and stay with them.” She had before, and now that they were a little older, it worked better, “What do you think?”

“I think it sounds terrific!” She gave him a hug, and they ended up necking in the new car, which smelled of men's cologne and new leather.

And in the end, they did both. They went to Aspen with the kids for the week between Christmas and New Year, and a month later, he took Sarah away for a romantic week in Jamaica at Round Hill, in their own villa, overlooking Montego Bay. They laughed about their honeymoon in Bermuda, about how they had never left their room, and barely managed to stay in the dining room long enough to have dinner. This vacation was no different. They played tennis and swam and lay on the beach every morning, but by late afternoon, they were making passionate love in the privacy of the villa. And four nights out of six they made special arrangements for room service. It was the most romantic trip they had ever taken, and they both felt reborn when they left Jamaica. Sarah was always amazed to realize how passionately she still loved him. She had known him for twelve years, been married to him for eight, and yet she felt as though their romance was still fresh, and it was obvious that Oliver felt the same about Sarah. He devoured her with the energy of an eighteen-year-old, and more than that, he loved to talk to her for hours. The sex they shared had always been great, but with the years came new vistas, new ideas, new horizons, and their ideas were no longer as diverse or as sharply polarized as they once had been. With the years, they had grown slowly together, and he teased her about becoming more conservative, while he had slowly become a little more liberal. But he felt as though they had slowly become one person, with one mind, one heart, and one direction.

They returned from Jamaica in a kind of haze, mellowed, slowed down from their usual pace, and the morning after they returned, Oliver sat at breakfast and admitted that he hated to leave her and go to the office. They exchanged a secret look over the children's heads at breakfast. She had burned the toast, left lumps the size of eggs in the Cream of Wheat, and the bacon was almost raw when she served it.

“Great breakfast, Mom!” Benjamin teased. “You must have had a terrific time on vacation, you forgot how to cook!” He guffawed at his own joke, and Melissa giggled. She was still much shyer than Benjamin, and at five she worshiped him as her first and only hero, after her father.

The children left for school in their car pools, and Oliver to catch his train, and Sarah found it impossible to get going. She was disorganized all day, and she felt as though she couldn't get anything done. By dinnertime, she still hadn't left the house, and had puttered around all day, getting nothing accomplished. She assumed it was the price of having had too good a time on vacation.

But the condition persisted for weeks. She barely managed to crawl through the days, and just doing car pools and chauffeuring the kids from here to there seemed to sap all the energy she had, and by ten o'clock at night she was in bed, gently snoring.

“It must be old age,” she groaned to Oliver one Saturday morning as she attempted to sort through a stack of bills, and unable to do even that without feeling exhausted and distracted.

“Maybe you're anemic.” She had been once or twice before, and it seemed a simple explanation of what was becoming an annoying problem. She hadn't accomplished anything in a month, and she had two spring benefits to put on, and all of it seemed like too much trouble.

On Monday morning, she went into the doctor's office for a blood test and a checkup, and for no reason she could think of, when she picked up the children that afternoon she already felt better.