Autumn

"I love autumn," Emily said to me. "It 'wins you over with its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.' "

"Excuse me?"

"I was talking about autumn," Emily said.

"I got that. I'm just trying to understand what you said."

"Not me. Robert Browning. Well, kind of... I might have gotten a few words wrong here or there. He was an English poet."

"I didn't know you read poetry."

It was October 2002, a few months after Emily and I had been stuck on the Ferris wheel. It was also less than a few weeks after the Great Mistake, the one involving the woman I'd met in the bar. Marge had already warned me more than once not to say a thing to Emily, but I was still agonizing over my terrible secret.

We were, in fact, on a double date with Marge and Liz. We'd taken a trip to the Biltmore House in Asheville, which was for a long time the largest private home in the world. I'd been there before as a child but had never gone with Emily; it had been her idea to go, and also to invite Marge and Liz. When Emily had begun to quote Browning, the four of us were savoring wine from the Biltmore winery.

"I majored in art, but I had to take other classes, too," Emily pointed out.

"I did, too. But I never took one that included poetry."

"That's because you majored in business."

"Exactly," Marge cut in. "Just because you botched your education, there's no need to put Emily on the defensive."

"I'm not putting her on the defensive. And I didn't botch my education... I was just making conversation."

"Don't let him scare you off, Emily," Marge said. "He might be a bit lowbrow, but he's got good qualities, too."

Emily laughed. "I hope so. It's been more than two years. I'd hate to think I've been slumming with him all this time."

"I'm right here," I said to both of them. "I can hear you."

Emily giggled, this time joined by Marge. Liz wore a benevolent expression.

"Don't let them get to you, Russ," Liz said, laying a hand on my arm. "If they keep picking on you, then you and I can go tour the greenhouse, and we'll hold hands and make them jealous."

"Did you hear that, Marge?" I said. "Liz is hitting on me."

"Good luck," Marge shrugged. "I know her type, and you're not it. You've got a little too much of those Y chromosomes for her."

"That's a shame. Because I know a hundred guys who would probably jump at the chance to go out with her."

Marge smiled at Liz. "Of that I have no doubt."

Liz blushed and I caught Emily's eye. In response, she leaned over and whispered in my ear. "I think they're perfect together."

"I know," I whispered back. "I do, too."

Even as I said it, guilt began to eat away at me with renewed fury. Less than a week later, I told her about the Mistake.

Why couldn't I have kept my mouth shut?

"No bruising? No cuts or blood or frantic calls to 911?"

After I dropped London off at school the next day, I found Marge waiting in my kitchen. I'd called her that morning to tell her about my visit with Vivian, but she'd told me to hold off because she wanted the full account in person.

"London's still sore, but she's doing fine."

"I wasn't talking about London. I meant you. Or, I guess I could have been talking about Vivian, too. Depending on how angry she made you."

"It was good," I assured her. "Surprisingly pleasant, in fact."

"What does that even mean?'

"She wasn't angry, and she didn't make me feel like the accident was my fault. She was... nice."

"You do understand that it wasn't your fault," she said. "That's why they call them accidents."

"I know," I said, wondering whether I fully believed it.

Marge turned and coughed; when she reached for her inhaler, I noticed that she looked a little drawn.

"Are you okay? You were coughing a lot the other night," I said, frowning.

"Tell me about it. Last week, I spent two days locked in a room with a client who was sick as a dog. Then, swell guy that he was, he called to let me know he had bronchitis."

"Have you seen a doctor?"

"I went by the urgent care over the weekend. The doctor thinks it's probably viral, which means he didn't prescribe anything. I'm just hoping I have it completely behind me by the time Liz and I leave for Costa Rica."

"When is that trip again?"

"The twentieth until the twenty-eighth."

"I wonder what it would be like to have time for a vacation," I mused, feeling a little sorry for myself.

"It's wonderful," Marge shot back. "Whining, on the other hand, is less than appealing. How are you and Emily getting along? Did you tell her what happened to London?"

"I spoke with her last night. After Vivian left."

"Ah."

"What do you mean by 'ah'?"

"You know the old saying: The quickest way to get over someone is to get over someone else."

"Classy."

"Don't blame me," she said. "I didn't invent the expression. And we both know it goes for women, too. As in, the quickest way to get over someone is to get under someone else."

"Emily and I are just friends."

She reached over and gave my shoulder a squeeze. "Keep telling yourself that, little brother."

After Marge left, getting to the office was easy, but immersing myself in work was more elusive. While the emotional intensity of the last two days didn't come close to rivaling the days immediately following Vivian's announcement that she was in love with Spannerman, my reserves were low. Too much had happened in too short a time; it hadn't even been a month since all the upheaval began.

Nonetheless, there were things to do. At the top of the agenda was ensuring that the filming of Taglieri's fourth commercial was on track. By the time I reconfirmed everything, I was surprised to see an email from the editor, stating that the editing for the third commercial, the one featuring the child actress, was complete.

Because the third commercial had turned out so well, my instincts were to start airing both the initial one as well as the third, right away. I left a message at Taglieri's office suggesting that, and soon received the go-ahead. As I locked in the schedule with the cable company, I felt a familiar thrill at the thought that my work and my company would soon reach hundreds of thousands of people.

On a less thrilling note, I also left two messages at the dance studio. Ms. Hamshaw had yet to return my call.

London was all smiles when I spotted her at pickup amongst her classmates, and though she walked more slowly than usual to the car, I could tell already that she'd had a good day.

"Guess what?" she said as soon as she climbed into the car. "My teacher let me be her helper today. It was so much fun!"

"What did you do?"

"I got to help her hand out papers and I got to collect them. And I got to clean the whiteboard with the eraser during recess. But then she let me color on it and I got to erase that, too. And I got to wear a badge that said 'Teacher Helper' all day."

"And you could do all that with your sore wrist?"

"I just used my other hand," she said, demonstrating. "It was easy. And at the end of the day, I got a lollipop."

"That sounds like a pretty amazing day. Do you need my help buckling yourself in?" I'd had to do it for her that morning.

"No," she said. "I think I can do it now. I had to learn to do a lot of stuff with one hand."

I watched as she tugged at the seatbelt. Though it took a bit longer than usual, she was finally able to manage.

I pulled out of the lot and was beginning to accelerate on the road when I heard her voice again.

"Hey Daddy?"

My eyes flickered to the rear view mirror. "Yes, sweetheart?"

"Do I have to go to dance tonight?"

"No," I said. "The doctor said that you should probably take it easy this week."

"Oh," she said.

"How was your head today? And your wrist?"

"My head didn't hurt at all. My wrist hurt sometimes but I tried to be strong like Bodhi."

I smiled. "Is Bodhi strong?"

"He's very strong," she said, nodding. "He can pick up everyone in the whole class. Even Jenny!"

I gathered Jenny was big for her age. "Wow," I said. "I didn't know that."

"Do you think I could go over to Bodhi's house? I want to see Noodle again."

I flashed to an image of Emily. "I'll have to ask Bodhi's mom, but if it's all right with her, it's all right with me. Not this week, though maybe next week, okay? Since you should be resting?"

"Okay," she said. "I like Miss Emily. She's nice."

"I'm glad," I said.

"And it was fun going to the zoo with her and Bodhi. Can I see the pictures I took on your phone?"

I handed my cell phone back to her and she began scanning through the pictures. She reminisced about the animals she'd seen and what they'd been doing, and as she chattered on, I noticed that London didn't mention her mother at all, even though she'd seen Vivian the day before.

London, I realized, had grown accustomed to spending time with me alone, for better or for worse.

Because she'd watched television for much of the day before, I didn't want to park London in front of the electronic babysitter again. At the same time, I had to limit her activity, and we'd already done the coloring thing not too long ago, so I was at a bit of a loss. On a whim, I decided to swing by Walmart on the way home from school. There, I chose a board game called Hoot Owl Hoot! The box explained that the goal of the game was to help the owls fly back to their nest before the sun came up. Each player drew a color card and flew an owl to a color tile on the way to its nest, but if a player drew a sun card, the game moved one step closer to sunrise. All the players won if the owls made it back to their nests in time.

I figured that it was something both of us could handle.

London was thrilled to visit the toy section of the store, and she wandered from one side of the aisle to the other, enthralled by one item after the other. More than once, she pulled an item from a shelf or rack and asked if she could have it; while I was tempted to give in, I didn't. Nearly everything she'd shown me would have held her interest for only a few minutes after we returned home, and her toy box and shelves were already bursting with neglected stuffed animals and knickknacks.

The game ended up being a hit. Because the rules were simple, London got the hang of it quickly, and she was alternately overjoyed or despondent, depending on whether the owls appeared as if they would make it home in time. We ended up playing four games at the kitchen table before she began to tire.

Afterward, I relented when she asked if she could watch TV for a while, and she lay on the couch, yawning. Maybe it was just Vivian's voice harping in the back of my mind, but I felt that I still needed to let Hamshaw know about the accident. Because she hadn't returned my call, however, I felt like I had to do it in person.

I told London about swinging by the studio, loaded her in the car, and spotted Ms. Hamshaw in what I assumed was her glass-walled office. London elected to stay in the car. Ms. Hamshaw had looked over at me as soon as I entered, but took her time before finally making her way over to me.

"London wasn't in class on Monday," she observed, arching an eyebrow in apparent displeasure, before I even had a chance to speak.

"She was in a pretty bad accident on her bike," I said. "I left you a couple of voicemails. She ended up at the hospital. She's recovering, but she won't be in class today or Friday, either."

Ms. Hamshaw's expression did not change. "I'm glad to hear she's all right, but she has a performance coming up. She still needs to attend class."

"She can't. The doctor says she has to take it easy this week."

"Then unfortunately, she can't perform in the recital next Friday night."

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"London has already missed two classes. If she misses a third, she's not eligible to perform. You may feel that to be unfair, but it's one of the ground rules of the studio. She was informed of that when she signed up."