“I’ll try.” Kimberley gulped again. She wasn’t saying she was fine now. Nicole tried, too: tried to go faster. She didn’t have much luck.

Just past Reseda, Kimberley threw up. “Corny dogs!” Justin said gleefully. Nicole hadn’t wanted to find out quite that way what the kids had had for lunch.

There was a medium-sized shopping center at the corner of Victory and Tampa. Nicole pulled in there among the people stopping for milk and groceries on the way home from work. None of them, she was sure, had to stop to mop up a pool of puke. She fished an old towel out of the trunk and, holding her breath against the acrid reek, cleaned off Kimberley and the car seat and the upholstery under it as best she could, and flung the towel into a trash can. She probably couldn’t afford to replace it. “Who gives a damn?” she said to the trash can.

Kimberley had the thousand-yard stare of a sick child. Her forehead was hot. A virus, sure as hell. “It still stinks, Mommy,” she said as Nicole buckled her in again.

“I know it does,” Nicole said, as gently as she could. “I’ll put that goop on it after we get home.” Odo-Clean, the stuff people used to get the smell of dog and cat pee out of rugs and chairs, also worked wonders on making cars livable when kids puked in them. Frank had taught her about it; it was an old family trick of his. At the moment, Nicole was not inclined to give him any credit for it.

Home came none too soon. Justin had stopped holding his breath and started making imitation retching noises of his own. Kimberley was mute, which said something worrisome about how sick she was. Nicole got her out of the car and cleaned her up properly and threw her soiled clothes in the washing machine, then settled her in front of the VCR in her pajamas with Toy Story and some water to rinse out her mouth, and fed her a little Tylenol liquid to make her feel better. Nicole hoped it would stay down. In case it didn’t, she equipped her daughter with a red plastic bucket and a roll of paper towels, and went back outside with rags and the bottle of Odo-Clean. Fine way to work up an appetite before dinner, she thought as she held her breath and scrubbed.

It wasn’t till she’d made it back into the house again that she noticed the smear of vomit on her suit jacket. She shed it with a muffled curse. The tag inside said Dry Clean Only. Of course.

Justin was waiting for her in the kitchen, perched in his high chair with the tray table up. “Hungry,” he announced, patting his tummy.

“Nice to know somebody is,” Nicole said dryly. She wondered if he’d get sick tonight, or if he’d wait till tomorrow or the next day. He’d been massively exposed to whatever bug Kimberley had. But, she conceded to herself, he’d also been good while Nicole took care of his sister and cleaned up the car. She took a package of chicken nuggets and French fries out of the freezer.

When Justin recognized the box, he slid down out of his high chair and hopped with glee. Chicken nuggets and French fries had no nutritional value whatsoever. So, of course, he loved them. So, also of course, his father fed them to him all the time. Frank was a devout believer in the four basic food groups: sugar, fat, salt, and chocolate. Nicole, cast by default in the role of Health-Food Ogre, often wondered why she even tried.

Tonight, just for this once, she stopped trying. One meal of solid fat and sodium wouldn’t kill the kid, and he’d earned a little reward for being so good for so long.

Slacker, her conscience chided her. She shut it down and clamped the lid on it.

She thrust the tray in the microwave, set the timer, and pushed the button. Nothing happened. The light inside didn’t go on, either. She gave the door a push, thinking – hoping – she hadn’t closed it all the way. It was closed. She opened it and closed it again. Still no light. When she pressed the button, still no action. One dead microwave. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said.

“Hungry,” Justin repeated. He watched Nicole take the chicken nuggets out of the microwave; his eyes went huge with dismay as she shoved them into the regular oven and twisted the temperature knob up as high as she dared. “Hungry!” he screamed, and started to cry.

God, Nicole thought, prayed, maybe cursed, give me patience. Give Justin some, too, please, while you’re at it. “You can still have them,” she said. “They have to cook longer in this oven, that’s all.” Half an hour longer. Getting the idea of a half-hour delay across to a hungry two-year-old who was already feeling betrayed made everything she’d gone through at the office seem like a walk in the park.

In the end, she broke her own rule. She gave him some chocolate Teddy Grahams and milk to shut him up. That killed any chance he’d have of eating a good dinner, but chicken nuggets and fries weren’t a good dinner to begin with, so who cared?

Absently, Nicole slid a frozen dinner in the oven for herself, too. It was healthier than the one she’d pulled out for Justin, that much she could say for it. Frozen food was all she had time for, all she ever had time for. Sometimes she dreamt of cooking lavish gourmet meals full of vitamins and minerals, fresh vegetables and quality ingredients, then freezing portions and heating them up for all those nights when she had neither time nor energy to spare for feeding herself once the kids were fed and bathed and tucked away in bed. But who had time to cook anything, even on weekends? Who had the ambition to even start? So she lived on Lean Cuisine and Healthy Choice and Thrifty Gourmet, and pitched fits when Frank fed the kids hot dogs and frozen chicken nuggets.

“It’s a wonderful life,” she said to Justin, who ignored her. He was playing happily on the kitchen floor with his cup of milk and his Teddy Grahams.

In the front room, Kimberley stared through Woody and Buzz, not at them, but she hadn’t thrown up again. That was something. Not much, but something. Patting her daughter on the head, Nicole went into the bedroom to call Frank at his place. She liked that even less than calling him at UCLA, but didn’t see that she had a choice. She’d have to replace the microwave, and for that she needed money – money he owed her.

Someday, she swore to herself, she’d be in a position to pay for everything without the humiliation of calling Frank. Until that day came, she’d just have to bite the bullet and do what she had to do.

The phone sat on the nightstand. As she reached for it, the plaque with Liber and Libera caught her eye. There they stood, god and goddess together, equal, as they were supposed to be. She’d never known any Latin that wasn’t strictly legalese – she’d been a business administration major before she got into law school – but what their names meant was clear enough. Liberty, liberalism, liberality. She didn’t have enough of any of those things.

She dialed the number to Frank’s condo so seldom, she had to look it up. The phone rang once, twice, three times, four. Then, with a faint but distinct click, a sweet – gooey-sweet, Nicole thought – voice came on the line. “Hi, this is Dawn. Frank and I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number, we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Remember to wait for the beep. ‘Bye.”

“Frank, this is Nicole,” Nicole said, ignoring Dawn even in recorded form. “I just want to let you know Kimberley is sick, the microwave is dead, and I need the child support you’re late with. Pay up, dammit. Good-bye.”

It wouldn’t do much good. She knew that too well. Frank would take his own sweet time answering a message like that, but she’d been too frazzled to come up with anything kinder or gentler. She had a sudden, horridly vivid picture of him and Dawn screwing when she called, and laughing like a couple of loons when they heard who it was.

The front of the house was quiet when she emerged from the bedroom. Kimberley hadn’t moved since she left. Nicole bent to feel her forehead, then to kiss it. Kimberley was still warm, but maybe a touch less. The longer the Tylenol stayed down, the better. “How’s your tummy feel?” Nicole asked. Kimberley shrugged and subsided back into immobility.