Nursery Crimes Read Online Free PDF

a few minutes promising Al that I wasn’t involved in anything dangerous before I could gather my things and leave.
    I drove home, strangely excited and energized by my discovery. I walked in the door to find Ruby and Peter immersed in an art project that involved sprinkling purple glitter all over the kitchen floor. I was about to berate the two of them for their sloppiness when Ruby held up a piece of paper covered in glitter and crayon.
    “Look, Mama. This says ‘I love you, Mama, because you are so beautiful.’” My eyes filled with tears as Peter and I smiled hugely at each other over Ruby’s head. Sometimes it just takes you by surprise. Who was this fabulous little person careening around our house, and exactly what had we done to deserve her? How could I possibly consider leaving this delightful creature and going back to work?

Four
    T HAT evening Peter, Ruby, and I went to dinner at one of our regular restaurants, Giovanni’s Trattoria. Giovanni himself greeted us, as usual, and scooped Ruby up in his arms, taking her back to the kitchen to be petted and spoiled by his brother, the chef, and his mother, a sweet old woman in a long, black dress whose sole job seemed to be criticizing her sons and feeding bits of cannoli to my daughter. Peter and I sat down at our usual table in the corner near the kitchen, and ordered a bottle of mineral water. Giovanni had known I was pregnant before my own mother did. He figured it out the night we declined our usual bottle of pinot noir and asked for one of fancy, Italian sparkling water instead.
    “I’m getting the pasta with clam sauce,” Peter said.
    “That’s what I want. Get something else.”
    “You know, Juliet, we can both order the same thing. It won’t kill us.”
    “God forbid. That’s the difference between you WASPsand the rest of us. Two people dining together cannot order the same thing. What’s the point of sharing if we both order the same thing?”
    “What if I don’t
want
to share?”
    “Then you should have married Muffy Fitzpatrick from the tennis club instead of Juliet Applebaum from the delicatessen.” I smiled sweetly at my husband and reached out to take the piece of bread he had put on his plate, just to illustrate my point. “You get the clams. I’ll get the Arabbiata. And we share.”
    Peter smiled and grabbed his bread back.
    “So, Juliet, what are we going to do about preschool?”
    In my investigative zeal I had completely forgotten about what had involved me with the whole Hathaway affair to begin with.
    “Oh, God. I don’t know. We didn’t even get an interview at Circle of Children or First Presbyterian. Maybe we could just forget about it. Do kids
have
to go to preschool? Wait, I have a terrific idea! We’ll home-school her!”
    “Right. I can definitely see you doing that. I can see you preparing elaborate lesson plans with multicolored charts and stickers while you’re cooking up a batch of homemade papier-mâché and creating dioramas of early Colonial life. And all this with a baby attached to your breast. That is just so
you
, Juliet.”
    I shot my husband a glare. “Okay, maybe I’m not the most patient parent in the world, and maybe I’ve never done finger painting or played with Play-Doh or made a model of the Eiffel Tower out of Popsicle sticks, but don’t you think I could handle it for a year?”
    He looked at me balefully.
    “How was your lunch with Marla?” he asked, changing the subject.
    “It was fine. The office is hiring again.”
    Peter raised his eyebrows.
    “No, no. I’m not thinking of going back. I’m seven months pregnant. How could I go back?”
    “But you want to.” Peter was trying to look as if he didn’t care whether I went to work or not. Yet I knew how much he liked having me home. It wasn’t a sexist impulse, but rather a selfish one. He liked the companionship. He liked the idea of being able to rush off spontaneously to Paris or Hawaii or Uttar Pradesh even though, in