12. Chapter Twelve
Chapter Twelve
Alexander
The front door had barely opened before Prim and Rose raced past Alexander and into the Bel Air house.
“My room!” Rose shouted.
“Our room,” Prim corrected as she ran after her.
“My toys!”
“Our toys!”
Alexander took the two bags from Nicole and watched the girls disappear toward the family wing.
Their laughter bounced back through the hall.
He’d spent the wait for their arrival trying not to look too eager.
Now his daughters were home for their first full weekend with him, and he couldn’t hide anything.
Three weeks of successful daytime visits had led to this. Alexander had completed every pickup, returned the girls exactly when he promised, and called Nicole himself whenever a question came up. She’d agreed to the full weekend only after Prim and Rose began asking to stay overnight.
“They’ve got their sleep toys in the blue bag,” Nicole said. “Clothes and toiletries are in the larger one. Their favorite books are packed too, but most of the books here should still be fine.”
“I entered everything you sent into my phone,” he assured her.
“The schedule helps. It isn’t the same as knowing them.”
The words hurt because they were true. “I know.”
Nicole looked past him as another happy yell came from the playroom. “Maya’s here?”
“Yes. She’ll help if there’s a safety issue or if I don’t know part of the routine. I’m doing the actual work.”
“Don’t refuse necessary help because you’re trying to prove something.”
“I won’t.”
Her blue eyes settled on him. “And don’t hand them back to Maya the second it gets hard.”
“I won’t do that either.”
“Daddy!” Prim screamed from down the hall. “Come see!”
“You should go,” Nicole said.
Alexander wanted to ask whether she was all right. He wanted to tell her he still hated being in the house without her. Neither question belonged at this handoff.
“I’ll have them ready Sunday evening,” he said. “We’ll call before bed.”
“Thank you.”
He waited until Nicole returned to her car before closing the door. Then he followed the girls.
Prim and Rose had already covered the playroom floor with blocks, toy animals, and plastic food. They spoke over each other as they showed him things he’d paid for and barely seen.
“Sit here,” Rose ordered, patting the rug.
“No, here,” Prim said. “Daddy’s on my team.”
“Daddy has two sides,” Alexander said. “One for each team.”
They accepted this and pressed against him from both directions.
He stayed on the floor until Rose announced that she needed a snack or she would “fall all the way down.” Alexander took them to the kitchen and filled a bowl with grapes. He put the bowl on the table, found two cups, and poured water.
Maya, their nanny, came through the kitchen doorway and stopped.
“Mr. Cohan, the grapes need to be cut.”
Alexander looked at the bowl. “They’re small.”
“They’re also round. They need to be quartered lengthwise.”
He felt heat rise to his face. He’d given approvals involving hundreds of millions of dollars without blinking, but a bowl of fruit had just exposed him as an idiot.
“Show me,” he said.
Maya reached for the knife. “I can do the bowl.”
“Show me one. I’ll do the rest.”
She cut a grape into four long pieces and handed the knife back. Alexander began on the next one.
“That’s my cup,” Prim said.
He looked up. “The purple one?”
“No. Yellow. Rose is purple.”
Rose hugged the purple cup to her chest. “Always purple.”
“Yellow for Prim. Purple for Rose,” Alexander repeated.
“You didn’t know,” Prim said.
There was no blame in her voice. That made it worse.
“I do now,” he said.
After the grapes were safe, the twins pulled him back to the playroom. Rose found the white bear with one flat ear on the sofa and hugged it.
Prim gasped. “That’s Smudge! He’s mine.”
“I found him.”
“He’s still mine.”
Both girls grabbed the bear. Alexander put one hand over their small fists before they could pull harder.
“Stop. You’ll tear him.”
“Rose took him,” Prim said.
“He was lonely,” Rose argued.
Alexander looked at the dark mark across the bear’s stomach. He’d stared at this toy after Nicole left and hadn’t known which daughter owned it. The answer had taken one question.
“Smudge belongs to Prim,” he said. “Rose, you can ask to borrow him. Prim, you can say yes or no.”
“No,” Prim said at once.
Rose’s face crumpled.
Alexander almost offered to buy another bear. Money was the quickest answer he knew, and it would solve nothing.
“Can Rose hold Smudge while you build his house?” he asked.
Prim considered this. “Only till the roof.”
“Rose?”
“Okay. But I do the door.”
The crisis ended. Alexander sat between them and built a crooked wall while Rose held Smudge and Prim issued orders. Both girls remained happy as long as he stayed on the rug.
That evening, he set his phone against a stack of books for their first video call. Nicole appeared on the screen, and both twins crowded so close that Alexander could see only curls.
“Mommy!” Rose yelled.
“Mommy, Daddy cut grapes!” Prim added.
“All of them,” Rose said. “They were little sticks.”
Nicole’s eyes lifted toward Alexander. “Quartered lengthwise?”
“After Maya stopped me from serving them whole.”
“Good catch, Maya.”
“I cut them,” Alexander said.
Nicole’s mouth moved as if she were fighting a smile. “Congratulations on defeating a grape.”
“There were at least twelve.”
“A heroic number.”
Prim pushed her face toward the screen. “My cup is yellow.”
“I know, baby.”
“Daddy didn’t.”
“Daddy does now,” Alexander said.
The girls told Nicole about Smudge, the block house, and the crackers they had rejected because the box was wrong. They interrupted each other, corrected each other, and began the same story three different times. Alexander didn’t hurry them.
When they finally slowed, Nicole asked him whether they’d eaten dinner, what they ate, and whether the mark on Prim’s stomach had bothered her.
Alexander answered each question. He’d checked the faded pink line after Prim complained that her waistband rubbed it.
The skin looked fine, and Prim said it didn’t hurt after he changed her clothes.
“Call me if that changes,” Nicole said.
“I will. They’re both fine.”
He wanted to keep looking at her. Instead, he turned the phone back to the twins.
“Tell Mommy good night.”
After a loud round of kisses aimed at the screen, Alexander said, “Good night, Nicole.”
“Good night.”
He ended the call.
At bath time, he learned how many details he’d missed. Alexander ran the water, tested it, and helped both girls undress. When he started to reach for their pajamas, Maya stopped in the bathroom doorway.
“Are their towels within reach?” she asked.
He looked at the empty counter.
“No.”
“And the pajamas?”
“Still in the bag.”
“I’ll bring them. Don’t leave the bathroom once they’re in the water.”
“I wasn’t going to leave them alone.”
“Good.”
Maya’s calm answer made it clear that she didn’t care how important he was anywhere else. Here, he was a father who hadn’t prepared the towels.
The girls then informed him that he’d forgotten the bath boats. After the bath boats came hair washing, an argument about who got out first, lotion, pajamas, water, and the exact placement of two sleep toys.
Alexander finally put both girls into bed and pulled their blankets up.
“Good night,” he said.
Prim stared at him. “That’s not bedtime.”
Alexander looked toward the chair against the wall. Right. His old part of the routine, the part that came after Nicole had already handled the bath, pajamas, and everything else.
“Books,” he said. “Bear voice. Song.”
“Water,” Prim added.
“Kisses,” Rose said.
He pulled the chair between their beds.
“Which book?” he asked.
The girls chose two, then argued over which came first. Alexander settled it by letting Rose choose the first and Prim choose the second. He read every page, performed the bear voice until Rose laughed into her blanket, and sang their final song.
Prim watched him closely. “Mommy said you’d sing next time.”
“She did,” he said.
“You came next time.”
His throat tightened. “I did.”
He kissed both girls, gave them water, and stayed in the chair until their eyes closed.
The next morning, Alexander made pancakes. Neither child wanted pancakes.
“I have eggs,” Prim said.
“I have oatmeal with bananas,” Rose said.
“You both ate pancakes the last time we had breakfast together.”
Maya glanced at him from the counter. “That was a special breakfast.”
Alexander put down the spatula. “Tell me what to do. Don’t do it for me.”
“Prim likes scrambled eggs with toast. Rose likes oatmeal with banana,” the nanny provided.
“I said that,” Prim informed him.
“You did. Thank you.”
He cooked the eggs, made the oatmeal, cut the toast, and put the correct cups next to the correct plates. By the time both girls were eating, there was oatmeal on his cuff, egg on the counter, and half a banana crushed under Rose’s chair.
Then he chose matching dresses for them. That went worse than the pancakes. Prim wanted yellow leggings and a dinosaur shirt. Rose wanted her blue dress with pockets. Alexander accepted their choices and faced their curls with a comb in one hand and no idea what belonged in the other.
Maya held out a bottle of leave-in cream. “Start at the ends. Small sections.”
“Can you show me?”
She worked through one curl on Rose’s head, then gave him the comb. Alexander copied her. Slowly.
“Ow,” Rose complained.
“Sorry. Tell me if I pull again,” he said.
Prim leaned toward the mirror. “I want two puffs.”
“I want one pony,” Rose said.
“I can do that.”
Maya made a quiet sound behind him.
Alexander looked at her in the mirror. “Was that doubt?”
“It was experience.” She chuckled.
Prim patted his arm. “My hair’s not a company, Daddy.”
“Thank God.”
One of Prim’s puffs ended higher than the other. Rose’s ponytail leaned to the left. Both girls admired themselves as if he’d created art.
“Daddy did it,” Rose said.
Their delight made his shame worse than any complaint could have. They didn’t need him to be skilled. They only needed him to keep trying and stay close enough to hear what they wanted.
He spent the rest of the morning on the floor, at the table, and in the garden. He cleaned spilled paint, broke up an argument over a toy truck, and let both girls help make lunch even though their help doubled the mess.
At nap time, he selected a book about a princess and a dragon.
“That’s a nighttime book,” Prim said.
“We read The Sleepy Mouse at nap,” Rose told him.
Alexander exchanged the book. “Bear voice?”
“No,” both girls said.
He read The Sleepy Mouse in his normal voice and stayed until they settled.
Standing between their beds, he understood that none of this knowledge had been difficult to gain. The girls corrected him freely. Maya answered when he asked. Nicole had sent the routine in writing. He’d been ignorant because he’d chosen not to be present long enough to learn.
By the second video call, Prim and Rose had enough news to keep talking without end. They showed Nicole their uneven hair, talked over each other about lunch, and acted out the argument over the truck.
“You did their hair?” Nicole asked.
“Maya showed me how to handle the curls. I did the rest.”
“He pulled one time,” Rose said.
“And I apologized.”
“He did,” Rose confirmed.
Nicole asked about food, naps, and the mark on Prim’s stomach. Alexander answered without needing Maya. When the girls finished, he said:
“They’re bathed next. Then pajamas, books, bear voice, song, water, kisses.”
Nicole held his gaze through the screen. “Sounds like you’ve got it.”
“I’m learning.”
He didn’t ask whether she missed them. He didn’t ask whether she missed him. He wished her good night and ended the call.
On Sunday, Alexander got breakfast right. He remembered the cups, prepared the grapes safely, and let the girls choose their clothes before he opened the closet. He still ended up with oatmeal on his shirt, curl cream on one sleeve, and a star sticker attached to the back of his trousers.
Maya found the sticker and removed it.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Would you like me to take over while you sit down?”
Every tired part of him wanted to say yes.
“No. But I’ll take coffee if you’re offering.”
“That I can do.”
He returned to the playroom. Prim climbed into his lap.
Rose tucked herself against his side. They asked him to watch the same game they’d invented and already shown him four times.
Alexander watched it again. Their happiness required so little.
Time, patience, him in the same room. Proof that when they looked up, he would still be there.
By the time he returned them to Hancock Park, his clothes were wrinkled, his hair was a mess, and his whole body felt heavy. Prim and Rose ran to Nicole, hugged her, and immediately began reporting every mistake he’d made.
“Daddy didn’t know cups,” Prim said.
“Then he did,” Rose added.
“He made bad pancakes.”
“They were normal pancakes,” Alexander said.
Nicole took one look at him. “You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“When can we stay again?” Rose asked.
Prim grabbed his hand. “Soon?”
Alexander crouched in front of them. “Not long. Mommy and I will choose the next day together.”
“Promise?” Prim asked.
“I promise.”
This time, work would change before their plans did. Prim and Rose wouldn’t have to wait long. He would make sure of it.