“I have a new tutu,” she said. “And a leotard and tights and those cute little shoes. All pink. I hate pink!”
“I bet you look sweet in them,” he said. “Look, get your mom to take a picture of you in them and send it to me so I can show you off at work.”
“You work on a farm?” asked Bea. “Mom said you did.”
“It’s more like a ranch,” said Austin. On the one hand, he was glad Mona hadn’t said outright where he actually was, because Bea was likely to want to come visit him even more than she already did. Then, when she got there, she was likely to want a pony all her own. “With cows and stuff.”
“Mom said it was a dirty place to work.”
“It can get dirty,” said Austin, thinking of Wednesday morning stacking sacks of grain, which had left him with sticky molasses on his hands, on his new blue jeans. “But it’s fun, too. Like playing in the mud.”
“Mom says—”
“Bea,” said Austin, interrupting her. “Tell me how you are doing. You’re not in school, but you’re taking ballet. Does mom take you to play with your school friends?”
“Sometimes, but not always.” At the other end of the line, Bea sighed. “I miss you, Dad. I want to come see you.”
“Well, you can’t now, Bea. We talked about this. You have to stay with Mom.”
“I don’twantto—”
Bea cut herself off, it seemed like, and when she spoke again it was as if she’d pushed the phone against her ear in order to talk close and low.
“Mom takes me to Miss Minchin’s a lot. A lot. Then she goes out with Uncle Roger.”
“Uncle Roger?” It was really soon for Mona’s new beau to require that kind of title, but while he wanted to believe Mona had told Bea to call Roger Colchet her uncle for the best of reasons, he knew that wasn’t true. “And who is Miss Minchin again?”
“She’s the lady who has a daycare at her house, Dad,” said Bea with all the exasperation of a nine-year-old who can’t believe that an adult could be so forgetful. “The one with the plastic chairs and the yard full of rocks.”
“You mean Mrs. Delgado?”
“Yes, but I call her Miss Minchin. You know, Dad, from the story about the little girl who lost her dad. ‘Cause I’m kind of like that, I lost my dad.”
“The Little Princess,” said Austin, his racing mind grateful to have landed on the right book.
Mrs. Delgado was a middle-aged woman with a big heart, strict rules, and a large yard with a small playground and, yes, rocks. She had a rock garden, and the kids weren’t supposed to play in it, but they did and usually got hurt in the process.
Austin didn’t like Bea going there and had put his foot down about it last summer, but Mrs. Delgado’s was close and the price was right. But if Mona didn’t want to look after Bea, and wanted only to go out with Roger, why had she insisted on keeping Bea all to herself?
“And what would Sara Crewe do? Wouldn’t she pretend to have a good time?”
“I tried, Dad, but I’m not Sara and it makes me sad—”
Now Bea was crying, being quiet about it, but making that little hitching noise in her throat like she couldn’t breathe. Mrs. Delgado’s had been fine when Bea had been a little younger, but now she was nine and needed something else. Only it wasn’t up to him, it was up to Mona, only Mona couldn’t be bothered—Austin stopped this train of thought, on the verge of tears himself.
“I’m sorry, honeybee,” he said, swallowing hard over the fist in his throat. “I miss you so so so much—”
“I miss you, Dad,” she said, the sob breaking through her voice.
Then there was a muffled thump and Mona was on the line.
“You’re only upsetting her when you let her go on like that, you know.” Mona’s voice was icy and pointed. “And I’m the one who has to deal with her.”
“Her life is upside-down right now, Mona, so why don’t you—why don’t you think about what Bea needs for a change, instead of what’s easiest for you? She doesn’t like being at Mrs. Delgado’s house, for starters.”
“Are you telling me what to do?” Mona snapped. “I’m doing the best I can here, and all you can do is complain. Why are you always like this? Why can’t you be more sympathetic to what I’m going through?”
As always, Mona worried about Mona. Only Austin had not realized it until the last six months of their marriage.
