Until Again by Lou Aronica Page A

needed to be tossed out as part of her housecleaning.
    “Hey, Beck, it’s bedtime,” he said, glancing over at his ten-year-old daughter who was in the middle of reading her first Ray Bradbury book. A few months ago, Chris had given her his signed hardcover copies of The Martian Chronicle and Dandelion Wine, telling her how thrilled he’d been to meet the writer at an autographing back in the nineties. The books had sat on a shelf in Becky’s room since then, but surprisingly she’d brought Dandelion Wine down for reading hour a couple of nights ago. The sight of his little girl enjoying one of his most precious possessions nearly brought him to tears, but that was hardly an uncommon experience right now. He’d practically misted up over the rice pilaf they’d had with dinner tonight.
    Becky looked up at him and then over at the clock. “Yeah,” she said, bookmarking the page and rising from the couch she was sharing with her mother. Chris stood up from his chair as Becky leaned over to hug Polly goodnight.
    Polly squeezed her daughter, closing her eyes as she did so. “Have a good night’s sleep, honey. I’ll drive you to school tomorrow so your project doesn’t get smashed.”
    “That would be great, thanks. Love you.”
    “Love you.”
    As Chris crossed Polly’s path on his way up the stairs with Becky, their eyes caught for an instant, and his instinctively narrowed. Then he looked away and followed Becky to the second floor.
    As Becky entered her bathroom to brush her teeth, Chris continued on to her room and sat on the bed. He patted the white bedspread. They’d bought it just after Becky’s eighth birthday, when she decided that the butterfly spread that had been on her bed since she was four was now too young for her. She’d surprised Chris by choosing a white-on-white geometrical pattern. Considering the level of imagination expressed nightly on this bed, he would have expected the covering to be more ornate. It certainly was more grown-up. She could probably take the thing to college with her someday and no one would think it was out-of-place. The thought of college made Chris shudder. Another separation he’d rather not think about.
    During one of their stiff - but at least in this case not contemptuous – conversations about their split, Polly had suggested Chris not rush to furnish Becky’s room in his new apartment. He’d instantly begun to prepare for war, since nearly all of Polly’s “suggestions” seemed designed to diminish his role in Becky’s life, but he stood down when Polly continued by telling him that she was thinking about getting Becky new bedroom furniture and that this set would be available if that were the case. This was perhaps the most generous thing Polly had said to him in the seventeen days since she’d informed him she wanted a divorce, and he found the gesture momentarily disarming – until he realized its true implication.
    “Remember to floss, babe,” he said when he heard her stop brushing. She intoned something back that Chris understood to be, “Doing so now,” spoken with floss between her teeth.
    He leaned against the wall abutting Becky’s bed. They’d been enacting some version of this process since she’d been three years old, when Chris had taken sole responsibility for putting Becky to bed. Two years later, the process had taken on the aspect of ritual and had shifted from something Chris did to give Polly a break after a long day to something he looked forward to from the time he got up in the morning.
    Now they would have this experience together exactly one night a week. Polly had insisted that Becky spend all school nights in this house, so the only bedtime he would have with his daughter after this weekend would be a Friday or Saturday night. Chris hated the arrangement, but his lawyer and his best friend Lisa had counseled him against contesting it. He’d never been more dubious about taking advice, even though he’d agreed to