Free Julie and Romeo Get Lucky by Jeanne Ray Page A

you.”
    â€œBad night?” she said, artfully lifting one eyebrow. She quickly assembled the kids’ peanut butter sandwiches, folding over one piece of slathered bread and eating it for breakfast while she worked.
    The coffee had reached lukewarm perfection as I managed one last omelet, this one low on cheese but perfectly rendered. I put a place mat and cloth napkin on a cookie sheet, the way the girls used to do for me on Mother’s Day when they were tiny. I was taking Romeo breakfast in bed for the first time since we had been together, and damn the circumstances, I wanted it to be nice. I had the eggs, the toast, and coffee, a miniature glass of juice, the salt and pepper shakers. In a perfect world there would have been a single rosebud in a vase, but if the cobblers’ children had no shoes, the florists’ certainly had no flowers.
    Sandy had applied grape jelly to bread and sealed the sandwiches in their plastic bags and paper bags. She looked at the clock in panic.
    â€œI don’t want to leave you with such a mess,” she said.
    â€œIt’s my mess. Go. You’re a sweet kid. Tomorrow I’ll cook you breakfast.”
    She leaned over and kissed me, then in another minute she had marshaled the troops out the door. Sarah turned back and waved good-bye. Then she winked at me, just like Shirley Temple.
    I left the dishes behind and sailed up the stairs on a cloud of good intentions. I would sit beside my love and cut up the eggs held together by yellow cheese, and feed them to him one bite at a time.
    â€œI’m sorry it took me so long, but there were some kids who cut ahead of you in line,” I said.
    But no one said anything back.
    â€œRomeo?”
    Eat first, then the pain pill—that was the lesson I learned for the future. Romeo and his clean teeth were out cold, and there would be no waking him. I wanted to show him what I had done, the heartbreaking sincerity of food on a tray. But then I realized there would be more food on more trays in the very near future, and I set the tray down on the floor and ate.

Chapter Six
    S INCE THE BEGINNING OF TIME, MOTHERS HAVE tried to figure out how it is possible for something as small as a baby to create such a black hole in space. How does a mammal the size of an average Jack Russell terrier generate six loads of laundry a day? How is it possible that their slightest discomfort can wipe out every trace of logic, forcing you to call your pediatrician at 3:00 A . M . to report the fact that your baby is sniffling? How can they take every ounce of your mental and physical energy when they can’t scoot two inches on their own?
    When I was pregnant with Nora I bought French tapes, thinking that since I had all this time at home, I could finally master the language that had earned me a C my junior year of high school. In fact, the reality of motherhood left no time for vocabulary words and the conjugation of irregular verbs whatsoever. Once my baby was born, I felt a shining sense of accomplishment the weeks I managed to lug the trash out to the curb.
    Having a man with a compressed vertebra in my bed proved not so dissimilar an experience. There was no squalling, of course, and it was a real time saver to have him be able to tell me what he wanted when he wanted it, but other than that, I was working like crazy to keep up. I was up and down those wicked stairs a hundred times a day, taking up sandwiches and heating pads and ice packs and various pills, bringing down trays and plates and glasses and finished crossword puzzles and bundles of wash.
    â€œYou’re a real angel,” he said to me, staring up at my ceiling.
    Yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanted to say, feeling cranky and tired. “It’s not a problem.” Then I leaned over and kissed his forehead.
    When, on the fifth day after what I thought of as Romeo’s “accident,” my need to complain started to feel reckless, I did what any sensible woman