Page 11 of Falling for Roxanne

He was so conscientious he hadn’t even shut the door to meet with me about a sensitive legal case—he hadn’t closeted himself in here alone with me. For both my comfort and possibly as a precaution against harassment lawsuits—I knew perfectly well there were people in my classes who would welcome the idea to intern for such a successful firm, just so they could allege that something improper had happened and sue the firm.

There weren’t a lot of students looking to flip the menial tasks of an intern into a payout to settle a false claim outside of court—but I could name four classmates easily who’d do just that. So, a professor had to be careful who he hired. I was glad that Hamilton knew he could trust me. Except that maybe I didn’t trust myself all that much. Not when it came to him.

“Thank you again,” I told him. “I can’t wait to get started on this case. I won’t let you down.”

“It never crossed my mind that you might,” he said, and I got a warm feeling just as he left and shut the door, leaving me alone with a file and my thoughts, heavy and thick, syrupy as honey. I had to quit thinking of him like that. It was a terrible idea, even to entertain the fantasy. I might accidentally slip up and say something really stupid.

CHAPTER 9

HAMILTON

Sunday night dinner at my house meant one thing. We made pizza together. Colin spent more time arranging his tiny chopped up vegetable toppings to make happy faces on the pizza than he probably would spend on eating it, but a man had to try.

It was fun letting him get into the ingredients and decide what would go together well, and to see his concentration. Colin got the cutest crease between his eyebrows when he was thinking hard about cutting up the mushrooms with his plastic knife, so careful and so particular about the slices he made. Even though some of them were paper thin on one side and the others were big, crooked chunks. He wanted to do it well, and he was willing to take his time, at least at first.

Whenever we made pizza together, we always listened to music and talked about what was coming up in the week ahead.

“You’re going to see Dr. Tony on Tuesday after school. Aunt J will take you. It’s just a cleaning,” I said.

“Marnie goed to the dentist and he did a drill on her tooth, and it sounded like GRRRRRRRRRR,” he said solemnly, looking concerned. “It made it hurt in her head and she couldn’t eat carrots after that for maybe a year or some months.”

“When was this?”

“The day we go to music.”

“Well you’re just having a cleaning done. Where he polishes your teeth to make them white and shiny.”

“Will they get sharp?” he said.

“He doesn’t sharpen your teeth,” I said, “but you did this last summer when I took you, remember? He has the chair that goes up and down and you rinse your mouth with the bubblegum stuff.”

“It made me throw up. It tastes so bad,” he said. I shook my head, trying not to laugh.

“You didn’t throw up, buddy. I was there. You made a face and stuck your tongue out, but nobody got sick. It’s gonna be all good.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I better go brush my teeth.”

He started to get down off the chair he was kneeling on at the counter.

“It’s fine. You don’t need to brush them before supper. We got this. All good,” I said. “We brush them every morning and every night. We’ll do an extra good job if you want to, but it’s nothing to worry about.” I gave him a hug. “Want to watch the Daniel Tiger about when he’s scared to go to the doctor? We can watch that one after supper.”

“That’s for babies. I like robots,” he said.

“Okay, let me know if you change your mind,” I said.

We finished up cooking, and Colin took down the plates so carefully. They were the nice plates, the ones Heather registered for when we were engaged—white with a narrow platinum band around the edge, designed by the same woman who made her wedding gown, Vera Wang.

I knew that because she wrote about it in the wedding scrapbook, the one Colin used to love to look at with me all the time. Now we used those special dishes for our Sunday meals and for holidays. My sister had made me use them when I wanted to pack everything away that reminded me of my wife after she died. I had to keep her things out for our son, had to tell stories about her and use the dishes she picked out and teach him to squeeze a lemon wedge into his glass goblet of iced tea the way his mom had always done as long as I knew her.

My sister had been right. It was useful and comforting for him to know about his mom. It had been hard as hell for me, but eventually I got better at being cheerful when I talked about her, and I looked forward to seeing her dishes on Sundays and noticing the resemblance in our little boy when he would raise one eyebrow at me the same way she used to do.

So, when I watched my son, his steps measured and thoughtful as an old man’s as he carried his mother’s special plates to the table, I felt the reverence in him, how important this ritual was. How our routine, our dinners that we made together, the bedtime stories and the wake-up songs were sacred. That I was doing the most important work of my life right here, pouring love and attention into my child.

He set the plates down and then went back for forks and spoons. I mixed up some vinaigrette and let him put the blueberries on the spinach salad. He got the bowl of lemon wedges out of the refrigerator and peeled the plastic wrap back delicately, like he was prizing open an oyster shell hoping to find a pearl.

He selected a slice and licked it mischievously, grinning at me. Then he squeezed it into his tea glass before carrying it to the table, only sloshing a little on his sleeve as he went. I tossed him a dish towel and he wiped up the little spill. I loved this time with him, and I guarded it fiercely. My son would grow up with a loving father, not a workaholic who stared at his phone all the time.

During dinner, he ate the blueberries and picked at his spinach and burned his mouth on the cheese before the pizza was cool enough to eat. He burst out with big news soon after sucking an ice cube on his burnt tongue.

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