The Devils Teardrop

long!”
    “That’s how long a shark is,” Parker cried. “No, a whale,no, a giant squid. No, I know—a Tufted Mazurka!” A creature from If I Ran the Zoo. Robby and Stephie loved Dr. Seuss. Parker’s nickname for the children was the “Whos”—after the creatures in Horton Hears a Who, which was their absolute favorite story of all time, beating even Pooh.
    Parker and Robby played a game of indoor tag for a few minutes then he caught the boy in his arms for a brief tickle fest.
    “Know what?” Parker asked, gasping.
    “What?”
    “How ’bout tomorrow we cut down all those bushes.”
    “Can I use the saw?” the boy asked quickly.
    Oh, they’re ready for any opportunity, he thought, laughing to himself. “We’ll see,” Parker said.
    “All right!” Robby danced out of the kitchen, memories of the Boatman lost under euphoria at the promise of power tools. He ran upstairs and Parker heard some gentle bickering between brother and sister about which Nintendo game to play. Stephanie, it seemed, won and the infectious Mario Bros. theme wafted through the house.
    Parker’s eyes lingered on the brush in the backyard.
    The Boatman . . . He shook his head.
    The doorbell rang. He glanced into the living room but the children hadn’t heard it. He walked to the door and swung it open.
    The attractive woman offered a broad smile. Her earrings dangled below her sharp-edged hair, which was bleached blonder than usual by the sun (Robby’s was her shade while Stephanie’s was closer to Parker’s brown). Her tan was scrupulous.
    “Well, hello,” Parker said tentatively.
    He glanced past her and was relieved to see that the engine of the beige Cadillac parked in the driveway was still running. Richard was behind the wheel, reading the Wall Street Journal.
    “Hi, Parker. We just got in to Dulles.” She hugged him.
    “You were . . . where were you?”
    “St. Croix. It was wonderful. Oh, relax. God, your body language . . . I just stopped by a minute.”
    “You look good, Joan.”
    “I feel good. I feel really good. I can’t tell whether you look good, Parker. You look pale.”
    “The kids’re upstairs—” He turned to call them.
    “No, that’s all right—” Joan started to say.
    “Robby, Stephie! Your mommy’s here.”
    Thuds on the stairs. The Whos turned the corner fast and ran up to Joan. She was smiling but Parker could see that she was miffed he’d called them.
    “Mommy, you’re all tan!” Stephie said, tossing her hair like a Spice Girl. Robby was a cherub; Stephanie had a long, serious face, which, Parker hoped, would start to look intimidatingly intellectual to boys by the time she turned twelve or thirteen.
    “Where were you, Mommy?” Robby said, frowning.
    “The Caribbean. Didn’t Daddy tell you?” A glance at Parker. Yes, he’d told them. Joan didn’t understand that what the children were upset about wasn’t miscommunication about her travel plans but the fact she hadn’t been in Virginia for Christmas.
    “Did you have a nice holiday?” she asked.
    “We got an air hockey and I beat Robby three games this morning.”
    “But I got the puck in four times in a row!” he said. “Did you bring us something?”
    Joan looked in the direction of the car. “Of course I did. But, you know, I left them in the suitcase. I just stopped by for a minute now to say hi and to talk to your father. I’ll bring your presents tomorrow when I come to visit.”
    Stephie said, “Oh, and I got a soccer ball and the new Mario Bros. and the whole set of Wallace & Gromit—”
    Robby stepped on his sister’s recitation. “And I got a Death Star and a Millennium Falcon. And tons of Micro Machines! And a Sammy Sosa bat. And we saw The Nutcracker .”
    “Did you get my package?” Joan asked.
    “Uh-huh,” Stephie said. “Thank you.” The girl was impeccably polite but a Barbie doll in a pageant dress no longer held any interest for her. Eight-year-olds now were not the eight-year-olds of Joan’s childhood.
    “Daddy took back my shirt,” Robby said, “and got one the right size.”
    “I told him to do that if it didn’t fit,” Joan said quickly. “I just wanted you to have something. ”
    “We didn’t get to talk to you on Christmas,” Stephie said.
    “Oh,” Joan replied to her daughter, “it was so hard to call from where we were staying. It was like Gilligan’s Island. The phones were never working.” She tousled Robby’s hair. “And after all you weren’t