A Room With A View

Chapter Ten - Elena

September 6th, Wednesday 

The sun was piercing through the blue sky on Wednesday morning, and Elena couldn't bear to stay inside. Elena tucked her boys into a double stroller and strapped the diaper bag onto the back. She was already sweating by the time she got downstairs.

     Isaac and Jeremiah were burbling back and forth to each other. Elena had dressed them in matching blue shirts and red-striped shorts, but their shoes were completely different. Somehow, one of them had popped a shoe into the dishwasher the previous night, and it was still sopping wet. Elena would ask Joshua about this tonight. She had a niggling suspicion that he hadn't been watching them carefully enough while Elena was at book club, and it terrified her that one of her boys had been inside the dishwasher alone.

     "Dog!" Isaac shouted. He pointed a pudgy finger at Elizabeth Melman's portly bulldog. Elena had always thought that Elizabeth and "Bowser" looked rather similar. Both had square figures and upturned noses.

     "Elizabeth," Elena said in passing. The boys leaned out of the stroller to pet Bowser as he walked by. The dog sniffed in a highly affronted way and stepped just out of their reach. The boys giggled.

     Elena smiled. She was very glad that Joshua had insisted on the stroller with child-proof seatbelts. Elena had felt barbaric strapping her boys in the first time, but on the one occasion when she hadn't, they had jumped out of the stroller and raced through Central Park after a squirrel, all thoughts of "mommy dearest" forgotten.

     The stroller ticked along the lobby's black and white tiled floors, past Phineas cradling a thick, leather-bound book ("The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" Elena read, craning her neck), and out the building's front door.

     It was a beautiful day in the city. For the first time in two weeks, the dew points were low and the humidity was not quite as oppressive. There was a crisp smell in the air that could be the scent of fall, if not for the weatherman's promise of eighty degree weather in the coming days.

     Elena navigated her way across the few blocks to the park. The boys called out certain plants and animals to her on the way, and she patiently encouraged them. Minus the shoe incident, they had been behaving for the past few days and Elena thought they had earned a visit to the Central Park Children's Zoo. It was just south of them along Fifth Avenue. They had no idea, and Elena was looking forward to their reactions. Isaac and Jeremiah loved animals, probably in the way most kids love animals, but Elena, being a proud mother, believed that this was a sure sign they would become the world's preeminent veterinarians.

     A fellow mom with a double stroller power-walked past, nodding briefly at Elena. Elena watched her go, and picked up her own pace. She, too, could exercise with a stroller.

     When they neared the Balto statue, Elena's thoughts drifted to the conversation she and Joshua had avoided. He wasn't going to budge on this issue with his mother, and maybe he was right not to. Elena hadn't known the back story. She now found it hard to even look at Joshua's mother after hearing what she did to Neil. The woman had tried to speak to Elena yesterday, but Elena had just shamefully buried her chin in her neck and kept walking toward the elevator.

     She checked her watch. It was ten in the morning, too early to call Neil, but Elena still thought over what she might say. She was oddly nervous, but all she wanted to ask was if Neil and Gordon would like to come for dinner. They hadn't seen the boys in a year.

     "Zoo?" Jeremiah asked suddenly. They could see the zoo gate approaching.

     "Yes, we're going to the zoo today," Elena said brightly.