Seven Minutes to Noon

ifLauren still wasn’t here, then she would decide what to do about Austin.
    Nell was at the front of the second-grade line, swinging her purple lunch box loosely from her hand. Alice waved. Nell said good-bye to her teacher and darted away from her classmates.
    “Hey, sweetie, how was school?” Alice asked.
    “Good,” Nell said. “No homework again today!”
    Alice figured that by Monday, homework would make its unwelcome appearance. But she didn’t want to burst Nell’s bubble, so she just said, “Great!” and took her hand.
    All of the kindergarteners had been picked up. Peter and Austin stood by the fence, thumb wrestling. Their teacher, Gina, was herself now scanning for Lauren.
    “I think I should just take Austin,” Alice told Gina. “I have a funny feeling Lauren might have gone into labor.”
    “Really?” Gina smiled. She was a young woman with long brown hair and tiny but piercing eyes. “How exciting!”
    It had already been prearranged for Alice to pick Austin up from school when the baby came, so Gina didn’t question the suggestion. She told the boys to enjoy their weekends, and to Austin added, “Congratulations, big brother!”
    Alice cringed; she wished Gina hadn’t said that. What if Lauren was just plain late?
    She took the three children back across the street to the park to wait a while longer for Lauren, just in case. Once on the curb, they bolted straight to the big kids’ side of the playground, where the jungle gyms were taller, the slides steeper, and innocence noticeably dampened by age.
    Alice sat on the bench and tried calling Lauren again at both her numbers, but again, there was no answer. Maybe Maggie was still at Blue Shoes; maybe she had heard something. Alice dialed the store phone but it rang and rang. Strange, she thought; Maggie was eitherin the bathroom or she wasn’t there at all. Five minutes later, Alice tried again. And again, no luck.
    A Mr. Frosty truck pulled up at the park entrance nearest to them, and the children hurdled out of play. Nell, Peter and Austin accosted Alice with demands for ice cream money, issuing varied tones of pleases calibrated for results. She dug into her wallet, producing dollar bills. The children took them and raced off, returning a few minutes later with beady-eyed, fluorescent popsicles fashioned after action heroes and their nemeses, which may or may not have derived from actual ice cream. Nighttime baths would remove most of the colored streaks from their faces and arms, but Alice knew that a slight fluorescent shadow would still be visible come morning.
    The children wove themselves back into the cacophony of play. Phone cradled in her hand, Alice watched them reel from ladder to slide to monkey bars. Then she thought to try Maggie’s cell, this time with success.
    “Mags! Where are you?”
    Somewhere behind Maggie, Alice heard the fading wail of a departing siren.
    “Getting Ethan from school. As soon as you left the store, Sylvie called in sick,” Maggie said in her crisp British accent. Sylvie, Ethan’s babysitter, normally picked him up from his private school in the Heights. “Can you imagine? What about a little advance notice?”
    “Do you think she was lying?”
    “She said she’d just come down with a stomachy thing, maybe something she ate,” Maggie said. “Ethan! Please wait for the walk light!”
    Alice could picture them: tall, glamorous, blond Maggie at the mercy of her little boy. Ethan was the spitting image of his father, Simon, whom Maggie had summarily divorced last year despite all evidence that she still loved him. They equally shared Ethan, this little boy with his father’s haunting good looks, tugging on his mother’s hand.
    “Mags, did you try Jason? Maybe he can come intowork this afternoon.” They had recently hired a young college student to help out at the store, to keep it open later at night and also to pitch in on days like today when child-care disarrangements made the schedule difficult for two mothers sharing what amounted to three jobs.
    “He’s got classes. I told him after being so late yesterday, he ought to get his priorities straight, drop out of school and work for us full-time!” Maggie’s laugh was a high cackle.
    “Mags? Why don’t I watch Ethan this afternoon so you can work?”
    “Righto. And tell Lauren I found that phone number she wanted, the baker on Columbia Street.” Alice heard a Mr. Frosty jingle sail by on Maggie’s end of the