A Room With A View

Chapter Thirty - Elena

October 4th, Wednesday

It was the first day of Tidy Tot's Day Care, and Elena was a wreck. A new child enrichment center had opened on the ground floor of her building, and they were offering classes from birth to age six. Elena and Joshua had thought it might be a good way for Isaac and Jeremiah to meet other kids from the building, but a core tenet of the class was that the parents drop off the kids and leave. Elena already had to drop off her boys at college and leave, why did she have to do so now?

"Mom," Jeremiah hissed. He shook his hand, trying to pry it free from Elena's grip. Her fingers tightened around his, before she reluctantly let go, watching him chase after a group of boys heading toward the slide.

If Elena was being honest with herself, it was an impressive enrichment center. It was a wide open space with windows placed along two walls at twelve-inch intervals, letting in the natural sunlight. There were big plastic slides, bins full of toys, and rubber puzzle pads lining the floor. The center even had a shelf of scientific-looking items that were baffling to Elena. On their previous tour, the head of the center had explained that these would be used to slowly introduce children to complex principles, like physics and astronomy. Elena had almost cried, imagining how brilliant her little boys were going to be.

But now that she looked at the enriching apparatuses—apparati?—all Elena could think was how easy it would be to buy them from Brookstone or Hammacher Schlemmer. She was sure she had seen something similar in their catalogs. Elena could easily teach her twins the same things, just from the coziness of their own—

Isaac tugged at her arm. "Mom," he begged.

Elena looked down at him, her eyes brimming with tears. Not Isaac. Not her younger-by-four-minutes baby.

She squatted down and held Isaac by his shoulders. "Do you want to go play?"

Isaac looked over at the boys laughing and sliding. He nodded.

Elena sniffed. "Okay. Go have fun." She let go. Isaac turned and ran toward his brother, a grin splitting his face.

Elena stood and watched them, her arms tightly crossed over her chest. Her hands felt empty without theirs to hold.

"Mrs. Margova?"

Elena turned. It was Helen, the woman who had given the introductory tour.

"Yes?" Elena said, wiping at the corner of her eye.

Helen smiled. "Every mom goes through the same thing. It's hard to leave them when you've spent so much time with them."

"Do you have kids?" Elena asked suddenly.

Helen's smile froze on her face. "No, I'm afraid I don't."

"Ah," Elena said, letting Helen infer from the sound that she was not about to allow some highly-respected educator to tell her how to feel about her children.

There was a moment of silence. Helen's face was still stuck in a smile, but the corners of her lips sagged and her green eyes hardened.

"Class lasts one hour, then there's a snack break, followed by another hour of enrichment. After that, you can come pick up your sons," Helen said, a bit more brusquely than before.

Elena turned toward the slides. There were about twelve children now, all tumbling and running about. The other mothers—and nannies, Elena supposed—were waving goodbye and walking back out the front door. No one was staying as long as Elena. But then again, according to Helen, the other kids had been to classes before. This dropping-them-off thing was old hat for the other mothers.