Antonia's Choice by Nancy Rue

stared at me almost in horror, as if I’d just asked to borrow her toothbrush, and said, “Honey—you are not serious, are you?”
    I laughed as if I’d just successfully pulled her leg. When Chris called that night, it was the first thing I asked him.
    â€œT-ball?” he said. “That’s what they do with the little guys, to get them started in baseball.”
    â€œI know that much,” I said. “But what does it look like?”
    â€œIt’s a stand where you can set the ball and they can hit it, rather than you pitching it to them. I guess they can’t hit a moving object yet at that age.” Chris gave his signature “huh,” which came out in a short, husky breath. “I figure if they can’t hit a moving ball, they aren’t ready for baseball.”
    â€œWell, too bad, because I’ve got Ben signed up. He starts in May—and he’s playing soccer until then.”
    â€œWhat’s this all about?” Chris said. “I thought you were too busy to get him into after-school activities.”
    â€œI just think he needs some outlets. You know how much energy he has.”
    â€œSo, is that girl—what’s her name, Lindsay—is she taking him?”
    â€œNo, I am. I’m working afternoons at home now so I can be available for Ben.”
    There was a long pause. I could picture Chris taking that all in, his brown-eyes-on-the-edge-of-green pondering some object on the coffee table as he processed information that had come as a surprise to him. His attorney self wouldn’t let him reveal that he’d been caught off guard, of course. It was something he’d learned early in his career: any kind of agitation looked unnatural layered on top of the soft boyishness of his eyes and his smile, as if things negative didn’t fit him. Juries, he said, didn’t like to be jarred that way.
    â€œI like the sound of that,” he said now.
    Like I was waiting for your approval,
I thought. But I bit it back. I actually felt a little guilty about holding back the fact that Ben’s behavior was getting worse.
    â€œWhat I don’t like,” Chris went on, “is that I’m being left out of this equation.”
    Here it came. I closed my eyes and pretended I was talking to Jeffrey Faustman. “You can see him anytime you want to.”
    â€œNot when he’s twelve hours away.”
    I dug my feet between the suede cushions on the study couch.
    â€œTell me something,” I said. “If we were with you in Richmond and we had Ben in sports, would you make homemade granola bars?”
    â€œWhat the heck does that have to do with soccer?”
    â€œEverything, apparently. I didn’t even know until my first soccer meeting that juice boxes are the drink of choice in the kindergarten set—did you?”
    â€œJuice comes in boxes?”
    â€œAnd would you catch balls while he hit them off the T?”
    â€œYou better believe it.”
    â€œReally. When? At 9 P.M., when you get home from the office? Or at 7 A.M. on Saturday before you go to the office?”
    â€œI would find the time for my son.”
    â€œYou’d pencil him in.”
    â€œToni, come on—”
    â€œI’m not trying to pick a fight with you, Chris. I’m just being realistic. I’ve always done it all since the day Ben was born, and I see no evidence that it would change if I came back to Richmond.”
    He stopped to ponder again. I took that time to congratulate myself. I could very easily have inserted the fact that although he had never had time to spend with Ben, he
had
carved out enough hours for a girlfriend. I tried never to lower myself to that tactic. Besides, he would only have countered with, “If you hadn’t insisted on working, you would’ve had time for me and then I wouldn’t have strayed.” And then I would have been up all night with spinal pain all the way to my