Free Confessions Of A Falling Woman And Other Stories by Debra Dean Page B

how the ladder raises and lowers, how the red light flashes, how the truck can scale the bookcase and walls of his room. Just like that, another twenty minutes have passed.
    Mike leaves his son herding plastic farm animals up the ladder of the toy fire truck, and checks again the slow progress of his wife's dressing. The babysitter is fifteen minutes late and Rachel is still half-dressed, sifting through a heap of panty hose on the bed. She runs her hand through each leg and holds it up to the light, appraising the nylon with the concentration of a jeweler looking for flaws.
    She is wearing a lace bra and matching panties, less familiar than the cotton underthings she usually wears. Her breasts and buttocks billow out of the skimpy lace, and Mike can almost feel in his fingertips the swells and hollows of her flesh. It feels like the itch of a missing limb. Now's a bad time for this train of thought, he tells himself. Now usually is. They had a hard time conceiving Noah, and the three years of calendars and thermometers and injections left the hardened imprint of obligation on their lovemaking. Even after the triumph of their son's birth, they approach each other measuredly.
    Mike checks his watch: 2:35.
    "Why don't you throw them out if they have runs in them?"
    "Not runs, snags. If I threw out a pair of panty hose every time they had a snag, I'd wear them once."
    "Then wear them once," he snaps. He snatches a pair off the bed and lobs them into the wastebasket.
    "Mike, those are four-fifty a pair. What's with you today?"
    I'm going crazy, he thinks. He's not, but he wants to. What he would give for one day, just one, when he could blow it through the roof, get drunk, sleep with a stranger, and not live with the consequences. One day, and then he'd come back. Happily. It's not that he doesn't love Rachel and Noah. He would crawl over glass for them. But just one day.
    He can't tell Rachel all this, though: the price of being given a second chance is that for the rest of his life he will weigh his words and be careful not to do anything irrevocable.
    He retrieves the stockings, but she's already found a pair to her liking and is stretching the filmy material up the length of each calf.
    "I'm sorry. I'm feeling squirrelly today."
    Rachel bounces on her toes, tugging the waistband up over her buttocks. "You're nervous about seeing your old girlfriend." She says this as calmly as stating the time of day. Even as he is denying it, Mike realizes that his mind is as familiar to Rachel as her body is to him.
    The babysitter finally shows. Mike watches his son gallop down the hall and thrust the toy fire truck into the girl's hands. The boy's eyes are round and hopeful, like an eager suitor's. He tugs at her knee, trying to scale the leg of her jeans, until she absently scoops him up. Mike tries to imagine what is different about her from a string of rejected sitters, but there is nothing he can see that might account for his son's violent adoration. That's the way of it, he thinks. It's just there, inexplicable as electricity. He wonders again how it will be to see Caitlin.
    While Rachel gives the sitter a few last-minute instructions about naps and fruit and phone numbers, Noah croons the girl's name and tries to seduce her away with Curious George videos. Mike wants to kiss his son good-bye, but he is clearly a fifth wheel. He remembers the tearful scenes that used to precede every exit. He's surprised to find he misses them.
    "We'll bring you back a piece of cake," he offers.
    "Don't push your luck," his wife whispers, and they slip out the door.
     
    The Sunday afternoon traffic is stop-and-go. Mike pulls out around some moron trying to make a left turn on Flat-bush and has to lie on the horn and gun the sluggish engine just to get back into the left lane before he gets nailed. For all that, they get stuck at the light. He still misses his old Fiat, a spry little gem sacrificed on the altar of adulthood. Rachel hated it, insisted