Saving Elijah

just shopped the day before, in the hour between my morning of seeing patients and the time I picked up Elijah. Sam, who commuted to his job in Manhattan, had been begging me to get a live-in au pair to help out, but I wanted to raise my children and tend my home mostly myself. Not that Nelda, my mother's longtime housekeeper, hadn't done a good job with me.
    "Last time I looked there were some apples." I bent down to pet Poppy, who was panting, barking, and wagging his tail at my side, having briefly broken off his stakeout at the fridge to trot over and say hello.
    "Apples are boring."
    "Turkey sandwich?"
    "Mo-om. A turkey sandwich would be dinner." She raised her upper lip in that gesture of disgust all teenagers have mastered that says, What planet did you just drop in from?
    "Kaaaaaaate!" Elijah sprinted into the kitchen then, holding Tuddy in one hand, both arms outstretched.
    "Hey, little guy!" Kate was half-mother, half-sister to Elijah. She closed the fridge, picked him up. He linked his arms around her neck while she swung him around and tickled him. Still clinging onto Tuddy, he giggled like mad.
    "So, how are you doing, baby? Did you have a good day?"
    He nodded his head vigorously. "I made horse."
    "You did?"
    He nodded and wiggled to get down. "Horse. Picture." He ran into the front hall to retrieve it.
    "I saw these really cool croakies at the Gap, Mom," Kate said. "We should get him one. His is boring."
    Boring seemed to be the word of the day. "What's a croakie?"
    "The thing attached to his glasses that holds them around his neck if they fall off."
    "Oh." I didn't even know it had a name. Elijah's was just plain old blue. I got it at the place we got him his glasses. He was two when the ophthalmologist prescribed them. For four months, I'd put them on him and he'd fling them across the room. I came up with the idea of putting the glasses on Tuddy. He thought that was hilarious and eventually consented to put them on his own face.
    Elijah came back then, holding up the picture.
    "Well, that is beautiful," Kate said, touching his head of glossy red-blond curls. "Such talent our little guy has."
    He pointed to the collection of pictures I'd tacked on the door into the laundry room. "Put up." I took the new addition from him and got out the tape.
    "So, what do you think, Elijah?" Kate bent down so that she could be eye level with him. "Want a really cool yellow croakie with green stripes?"
    "Green." He held up Tuddy.
    "That's right, Elijah, Tuddy is green, too. Look, Mom, he knows green."
    "Of course he does," I said. "He knows all his colors. Don't you, Elijah?"
    "Green yellow purple blue red orange," Elijah said. He often strung words together like that.
    "Well, I'm getting you a croakie," Kate said. "Then you'll know green and yellow stripes. Right, Elijah?"
    Elijah nodded. "Right." He gave her a wide, satisfied smile.
    What was he going to do, say no to his big sister, even if he didn't know what a croakie was? Not a chance.

    *    *    *

    Sam's agency had just gotten a huge new account, one of the major computer companies out in Silicon Valley, and Sam wanted to celebrate. I made a family favorite, chicken Marsala.
    "This is delicious, Dinah." Sam never failed to compliment whatever I cooked, even when I tried something new and it flopped.
    "Tastes kind of boring to me," Kate said.
    "You want something else?"
    "Dinah," Sam said, "it's outstanding. Don't make her something else."
    I sighed. Of course he was right.
    "Is it okay if I stay over at Eddie's on Friday?" Alex was shoveling potatoes in his mouth. "His dad is taking us to a basketball game." My fourteen-year-old had shot up suddenly last year and looked more like his lanky, handsome father than ever.
    "I don't see why not," I said. "But Saturday Dad and I want to go out. Which one of you is sitting?"
    "He is," Kate said.
    "She is," Alex said.
    "No way," Kate said. "I'm going out on Saturday night."
    "Oh yeah, who with? I thought you said males are the enemy." Alex and Kate's bickering reminded me of my own relationship with my brother, Dan, but they cared about each other much more than Dan and I ever had. And they were certainly united in their love for, and protection of, Elijah, although Alex occasionally blurted out a frustrated remark revealing a wish that his little brother could just be normal.
    "None of your business, Alex," Kate said. "And I never said they were the enemy."
    Sam winked at me. "Come on, Katie, tell us who the