“We are pathetic!” said Eliza. “Our Date Night is a trip to talk about wills.” But she was looking forward to the tapas and the sangria.
They’d sat with Phineas Tarbox, who turned out to be a jocular, suntanned man with large hands and minty breath, and gone over all of the paperwork submitted by the previous attorney’s office. And, yes, Eliza’s eyes did glaze over a little bit with all of the details, and, yes, she did spend some time studying the law school diploma on the wall (Yale) to verify that his name really was Phineas Tarbox.
It was.
Then, suddenly, Phineas Tarbox was frowning.
“There’s just one thing,” he said. He flipped through the papers. “I don’t see that you’ve appointed guardians for your children.” He frowned harder, and the suggestion of a crease appeared between his brows. Only the suggestion, though—he probably got Botox. Men did, these days, rich men.
“I thought we did that,” said Rob. He glanced at Eliza.
Eliza shifted uneasily. “I’m not sure. Did we?”
Phineas shuffled the papers some more. “You didn’t. I don’t see it here—no, no, you haven’t. It’s not here anywhere. So that’s something we’ll want to take care of right away.” He looked up, flashed a courteous smile. “It’s not uncommon, people begin the process before they have children, maybe, and then they forget to complete it, and then they turn around and their kids are—”
“Thirteen and ten,” said Eliza.
“Right,” said Phineas. “Exactly. As long as you’re ready to pull the trigger—just an expression, of course!—we can draw up the papers right now, and you can sign them here, and then you can go on your merry way.”
“Great,” said Rob. “We can pull the trigger anytime. The guardian will be my mother, Judith Barnes.” He said this very firmly.
“Hang on,” said Eliza.
“I adore Judith,” said Phineas. His smile was odd enough (almost coquettish) to make Eliza wonder if something besides paperwork had passed between Phineas and Judith. “I simply adore her,” Phineas added. Eliza could smell the mint on his breath.
“Many do,” said Rob.
Phineas made some notes on a Post-it. Eliza stage-whispered to Rob, “We’ve never discussed this.” She couldn’t believe how easily he’d answered the question. How presumptuously. Like the script had been written, and he was just reading from it. She turned to Phineas and said, “I’m sorry. But I don’t think we’re prepared to—I mean, we haven’t…”
Phineas looked from Rob to Eliza and back to Rob again. He tented his fingers and nodded kindly. He smiled so that the little crinkles around his mouth deepened into rich-person wrinkles, the kind created on ski slopes and sailboats and nurtured by the Monaco sunshine. This probably happened all the time, in his office, in his line of work, this sort of confusion. Didn’t it? Did it?
Rob said, “Eliza.”
“We’re not going to die, Rob,” said Eliza. “I mean, both of us? What are the odds?”
“Probably not,” said Rob. “But people die. Parents die sometimes.” Don’t I know it, thought Eliza. “We need to be prepared.”
Judith, the guardian of her children! Judith was a functioning alcoholic with lots of wonderful shoes, a tiny waist, and pots of money. She might give the girls a place to live, but she wouldn’t give them a home, study their flash cards with them, make them eat kale. Eliza’s stomach twisted. Behind her she heard the whir of pages sliding out of a printer—the sound of her fate being sealed.
“You do need to be prepared,” interjected Phineas, clearing his throat. “Believe me, the right decision now can save a heck of a lot of trouble down the road, in the event of something unforeseen. I’ve seen some doozies in my time.” He walked to the printer and picked up the papers. He tapped them on the edge of his desk to line the edges up perfectly.
“I’m sure you have,” said Eliza. “But even so, I’m not ready to sign.”
Phineas Tarbox cleared his throat again. Did he have some sort of problem? Allergies? It was April: the height of the pollen season. He said brightly, “Why don’t you take the documents home with you? And return them when you’re ready.”
It was agreed.
After, they did go for the tapas, but something dark and nameless had slithered among the gambas al ajillo and the patatas bravas.
The sangria, however, was delicious.
Partway through the meal, Rob put down his fork and said, “Should we talk about the elephant in the room?”
“There’s no elephant,” said Eliza. Not true. Obviously.
Rob waited. Eliza took another gulp of sangria and said, “Okay. Fine.”
“Okay fine what? Say what you’re thinking, Eliza.”
People loved to hear about the way Eliza and Rob had met, the icy street in Providence, Eliza holding the sandwich, sliding into him. What did they call it in romantic comedies? A “meet cute.” Silly name. That wasn’t the whole story, that was just to make it into a neat, packaged tale, the kind people liked to hear at cocktail parties. The whole story was that Eliza had been watching Rob for weeks, months even. She’d watched him with Kitty Sutherland. And she’d said to herself, That one. And one day she’d followed him, and she’d bought a sandwich she couldn’t afford, and she’d thought carefully about what to do next.
It was true about the sliding into him; the street was really very slippery, and it was a hill. She hadn’t meant to slide, but gravity and weather had gotten the best of her. The rest, as they said, was history.
“I’m not comfortable with the choice of your mother.”
She looked down, but even so she could feel Rob’s gaze on hers. She knew what he’d be doing, blinking in that innocent, bewildered way he did anytime the world surprised him by not going his way. Bumps in the road always came as such a personal shock to Rob because he didn’t encounter many. “But why? We don’t have anyone else.”
She was still looking down when she said, “Of course we have someone else. We have my father. He’s the other option.”
“Oh, Eliza. I mean a realistic option.” The tortilla espanola arrived, then the calamares en su tinta. The platter with the garlic shrimp sizzled. Eliza drank more sangria.
“Let’s talk about it another time,” said Rob.
“Okay,” said Eliza. The garlic from the shrimp sat sticky in her throat. The sangria was making her feel tipsy, but it was the hot and uncomfortable sort of tipsy, not the merry sort. “Another time.”
After that, Rob had put the folded sheaf of papers on the kitchen desk, where Eliza took care of the bills and signed permission slips and noted doctor’s appointments on a big wall calendar. Normally Eliza was meticulous about the kitchen desk, but the papers sat and sat; they sat like the final guests at a cocktail party who remained even as the hosts cleared the glasses from around them.