TONY'S ANGELS: Chapter One

"Daddy, did you, umm… umm, did you gets shot, Daddy?" his three-year-old glanced up from her dolls and inquired, as she did most evenings when he returned home from work.

"Not today, baby," he mindlessly answered, preoccupied with studying the misty LCD panel on the pink toy palm pilot he'd picked up from the floor beside her.

"Michelle!" he called out loudly enough for his voice to carry across the room, through the door, up the hallway, past the family room and into the kitchen. "Did this thing get left out in the rain?"

He paused and tilted his head, awaiting her standardized "What thing?" response, which never eventuated.

"Where's your mother?" he looked down and asked his female mirror image.

"Michelle!" the dainty three-year-old turned her short-cropped, curly haired head and helpfully hollered out in the same direction and approximate volume, despite the strain it put on her otherwise tiny, quiet voice.

He cocked his head to the side and frowned in disapproval.

"Only I can call her that… remember?" he gently reminded her.

Riley looked up with a wounded expression before returning her attention to the task of gouging the eye out of Barbie's little sister, Skipper, whose hair had also seen better days.

Before he could call out to Michelle again, his question was answered by the large plastic drinking glass he noticed sitting off to Riley's side, filled with some kind of red Kool-Aid-type substance in which a naked Barbie stood submerged up to her neck. Inspecting the pink palm pilot a little closer this time, he noticed a stickiness clinging to the casing and safely put two and two together.

Frowning down at Riley again, he cleared his throat to both summon her attention and express his disapproval, but she kept her head tilted downward, eyes glued to her dolls, pretending not to notice. He decided not to pursue the matter any further at the moment, partially because he was tired and hungry and not in the mood, but mostly because he couldn't bear it when she did that hurt-feelings thing with her eyes.

"Where you good for your mother?" he asked as a matter of routine.

"Yeth," Riley delivered her pat answer, without even giving it thought.

"What happened today? Anything?" he probed, dropping himself into a decadently cushy wing chair and wearily rubbing his eyes, simultaneously motioning his First Lieutenant front-and-center, from whom he sought a briefing every evening around this same time, knowing her intel to be solidly reliable, consistently well-sourced, and usually eye-witnessed.

"Mommy made cookies," she replied in her soft, tiny voice, dutifully and delicately laying the one-eyed Skipper down and rising to her feet to take up her usual position between her father's knees, which as good fortune would have it, stood approximately the same height as the monkey bars at the park.

"Cookies, huh," he replied, sitting back and unbuttoning his cuffs, wondering why he didn't smell smoke in that case.

"Ninety-six cookies," Riley elaborated with an arm positioned on each of his thighs, providing the leverage she needed to pick her feet off the floor, bend her legs at the knees, and dangle.

"What? ... Ninety…?" he asked, barely able to discern her soft words, particularly whenever she spoke them with her head down.

"Six," she added, to be precise.

"Your mother baked six cookies?" he asked, confused.

"Plus ninety," Riley responded.

Forget it, he thought to himself, the conversation having already degenerated into an Abbott & Costello routine before it had even barely begun.

"And how many of them did you manage to swipe?" he challenged her, unable to stifle a grin as he zeroed in on the crusted chocolate encircling her mouth like some kind of Goth lip liner.

Riley stared at him as though she had no idea of what he could possibly be talking about, despite the additional trace evidence she was unknowingly transferring, as they spoke, from her hands onto his pants legs.

"C'mere," he said, sitting up again as she obligingly lowered her feet to the floor and, knowing the drill, jutted her face out to be cleaned.

"Daddy?" she asked as he worked his tongue-moistened thumb around the pudgy pockets on either side of her mouth, trying her best to remain still despite the overwhelming urge to hop up and down on one foot. "Daddy?" she repeated.

"What, baby," he mumbled, hunching in to frisk her for the chocolate chips he intuitively knew she had squirreled away on her person somewhere, just as he had always done at her age, and occasionally still did.

"Daddy, umm... does... does Mommy's baby, umm... Does the, umm... Does the baby, umm..."

"Take your time," he reminded her, finding inch-deep crumbs in both front pockets of her calf-length dress, but ultimately coming up with nothing in the way of whole chocolate chips.

"Daddy, does the baby eat, umm... wiss a fork, Daddy?"

"Stand still," he mumbled, brushing the equivalent of an entire cookie from between the fingers and palms of both hands, then clearing out the front of the catchall lace framing the neck of her pink denim dress. "What do ya mean, a fork?" he asked, scrunching his eyes into a confused squint once her question had finally registered.

"Does the baby eats... wiss a fork?" Riley repeated about ten times louder, as though he were deaf or slow, either condition of which was easily remedied, she figured, by repeating the question at ear-splitting decibels.

"A fork?" he stared, halting his search momentarily to silently question her sanity. "How would a fork get in there?"

She stared back for a moment and shrugged, her mind having already moved on to other things, like why it never occurred to a man so smart as her father to check the cuffs of her socks, which is where she always stashed whatever chocolate she had managed to pilfer.

"Where's your sisters?" he sat back and asked, satisfied that whatever she'd swiped had since been consumed.

Riley responded with a wounded-looking upward turn of her huge brown eyes in the direction of the bedroom she shared with her three older siblings.

"Tell them I said to let you play," he authoritatively instructed, watching her gleefully scramble to gather the cyclopsed Skipper and Kool-Aid tinged Barbie.

The mystery of Michelle's disappearance unraveled as she materialized at the head of the stairs and began her descent.

"What did they do?" he grimaced, leaping up to meet her midway on the staircase, already annoyed that whatever it was, it had forced her to climb the stairs, which he'd specifically told her he didn't want her doing unless it was absolutely necessary.

"Nothing, honey," she smiled, pausing to exchange a brief kiss as Riley muscled her way past them, yelling at the top of her lungs that Daddy said they had to let her play, adding her own "or else" to ensure a ringside seat for herself. "I just wanted to get them started on learning to fold their own clothes and putting them…"

"You carried laundry up the stairs?" he said in disbelief. "What the hell are ya doing that for? Didn't I say that I'd take care of the heavy lifting when I—"

"Little girls' t-shirts and socks aren't heavy, dear," she gently interrupted, empathetic to the suffocating, overbearing, over-protectiveness he was prone to exhibiting around the seventh month of any given pregnancy, and why, but making a conscious decision not to allow her mind to travel there at the moment. "Besides, climbing the stairs is good exercise," she presented the positive side of the argument. "Remember what Dr. Diez said about getting more exercise?"

"Diez is… Diez is not the head of this household," he fumed, willing to give the obstetrician a significant voice in this pregnancy, but not about to surrender the final word, which as far as he could figure, rightfully belonged to himself; not some doctor they'd only known for a scant seven years. "You just stay off those stairs," he directly ordered, blurring the line between husband and boss as he'd always done from their first date forward.

"I will, dear," she calmly agreed, with no intention of keeping her word, waddling off in the direction of the kitchen with him trailing tight on her heels.

She'd long since given up trying to reason with him beyond the seven-month milestone. It was in the seventh month that they'd tragically lost their first baby, which had devastated him just as deeply as her. His excessive protectiveness every pregnancy thereafter, she knew, was simply his way of dealing with old wounds and fresh fears, and generally getting himself through the final few months with his brains intact.

Once safely out of their three-year-old's eyeshot, she soothed his over-concern with a steamy, extended kiss, silently complimenting herself for her ability to still render him breathless, even with her round, distended midsection separating them by what felt like the length of a football field. Not five minutes later, however, he was back to fretting all over again; not with respect to their unborn this time, but the disturbing "fork" exchange he'd just had with their youngest.

"Is that normal?" he asked, sporting the slightly pained, mildly alarmed expression she knew so well.

"It's fine, dear," she calmly reassured him, stopping everything she was doing to rest a gentle hand against his arm, knowing his tendency to stress over things that she, herself, wouldn't even think to bat an eye about.

"Asking if an unborn fetus eats with a fork is fine?" he pressed, in no way convinced that Riley's question was anywhere remotely within even the broadest definition of "fine." "Who even thinks of something like that?"

"She didn't know," Michelle soothed him. "That's why she was asking you."

She watched the information process itself behind his lost gaze, giving his arm another analgesic squeeze.

"Okay?" she checked, beginning to worry herself, now, about the lineup of pots on the stove that needed stirring. "She was just thinking about how—"

"But how could the baby even get its hands on one?" he reviewed the logic of it all again.

"She wasn't thinking that far ahead," Michelle explained. "She was just thinking about how everyone at the table eats with a fork, and was wondering if the baby—"

"But that's my point," he cut in, his pained eyes conveying his increasing concern. "Did she think ya swallowed one? I mean... how else could the baby even get hold of a fork?"

He stared at her blankly.

"She wasn't thinking about that part, dear," Michelle repeated, smoothing her hand over his arm. "She's only three, remember."

"Uh-huh," he said halfheartedly, his eyes still flickering with mild alarm, but trusting Michelle implicitly when it came to assessing and understanding what the girls were thinking or saying, or trying to say, and what the hell it all meant, even though, technically, it was he who had come into parenthood with the overload of practical experience, having spent so much time with Olivia through the formative years. Oddly, however, once he had become an actual father himself, his recollection of all those years had somehow completely vanished, replaced by a mind-numbing sense of terror that always partially paralyzed him every time he pondered the awesome responsibility of molding the minds of such tiny, innocent creatures into functioning, contributing members of society someday.

"It's a perfectly reasonable question for that age," Michelle consoled him. "Okay?"

"Uh-huh," he repeated, still not entirely convinced, but having no choice but to defer to her judgment.

Following her over to the stove, he assumed his favorite kitchen position, wrapping his arms around her middle and watching over her shoulder as she checked on another one of the dull-as-hell culinary creations her instructor had bestowed upon the class that week, which looked and smelled a little like spaghetti sauce, though he couldn't be sure.

"Those recipes they give ya are pretty bland, honey," he reminded her, temporarily releasing an arm to add a few dashes, shakes, and handfuls of this and that before relinquishing control to her again. "Ya gotta remember to always throw in more than what it says," he encouraged her for the millionth time since signing her up for cooking classes years ago, after she'd accidentally burnt two kitchens to the ground in their first year of marriage alone.

He crossed over to the refrigerator and dug through the one-percents and two-percents and lactose-frees, finally locating the container that bore the skull and crossbones he'd magic-markered over the picture of the cow.

"I'm supposed to follow the measurements exactly," she said with a noticeable element of nervousness in her voice.

"Since when did you start following orders," he grinned on the outside, though inwardly nursing a pang of jealousy over how strictly she always adhered to her cooking instructor's directives as opposed to his own.

She winced for a moment, pausing to rub the small of her back where a kink always seemed to set in around this same time everyday.

"What? What's wrong," he instantly demanded to know.

"Not a thing. Just the usual aches and pains," she calmly stated, hoping to nip his overreaction in the bud, though knowing better than to even try.

"Uh-huh," he was sure, silently putting himself on yellow alert, prepared to ratchet up to orange at a nanosecond's notice. "Did ya lie down today?"

"Of course," she replied, only half-lying.

"Yeah? What time?" he pop-quizzed her.

"Somewhere in between the fifteenth and sixteenth time you called today, dear," she responded with the patience of a saint, silently calculating the sum total of her respite at somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twelve minutes, the rest of the hour having been devoted to answering his pop-phone calls.

"Uh-huh," he grumbled, resuming his position behind her and resting his cheek alongside hers, taking in the sweet, creamy scent of her skin: his favorite perfume. "So, uhh... did you, umm... y'know…"

She waited, knowing exactly what he was about to ask.

"Did I what," she gently prompted him.

"Y'know... feel anything... y'know... different today?"

"Honey," she gently sighed, "I thought you weren't going to drive yourself crazy about that anymore... hmm?" she reminded him.

"I'm not. I'm just asking..." he kissed her ear, smoothing his hands lightly around her middle and intermittently nudging himself against her as if performing some sacred ritual demanded of him by the testosterone overlords if he wanted them to grant his request for a manchild this time around. "It's just that... y'know... if you were feeling anything different, you could tell me. I mean, I don't want ya thinking that I'm not interested in hearing about it."

"Are you sure you don't want to just call Dr. Diez and ask him to tell you the sex of the baby?" she suggested for the thousandth time over the course of the past seven months.

"No," he stood his ground firmly, holding true to his belief, from the first pregnancy forward, that the sex of the baby should be a surprise; that finding out at the moment of birth was half the thrill of having a kid.

"Well, then... if you don't want to know, how come you're asking if I felt anything different… hmm?" she breezily chided him.

He didn't really have a good answer for that.

"Honey," she continued, "you know that no matter which way I answer, you're just gonna get yourself all worked up."

"No, I won't," he promised her in a low whine against her ear, continuing to softly nudge against her, hoping the testosterone gods would count it as extra credit. "C'mon, just tell me... Did ya—?"

Michelle closed her eyes and thought for a moment.

"No," she said quietly. "But that doesn't mean it's another girl," she quickly added before he could begin reeling in disappointment. "Those are all old wives' tales. There isn't one iota of scientific evidence supporting any of those theories."

"Geeziz," he reeled anyway, trying to quickly recoup before giving his abject horror away, albeit a little too late for that. It didn't matter anyhow, since Michelle could always see right through his wholly transparent, pathetically executed calm-cool-and-collected facades.

It wasn't that he'd ever had a moment's regret that his children had all turned out to be girls. He had never felt even a minim of disappointment from the second each had been put in his arms. He adored his girls. He would kill for his girls. He would give his life in the blink of an eye. He would never want to turn any of them into a boy, either; not even if it were possible; not even his First Lieutenant, Riley. It's just that everywhere he turned, he was assaulted by pink; every time he sat down, it was on top of a Barbie doll; every time he threw a ball, someone would invariably scream, or burst into tears, or both, because he had thrown it too fast. And even when he threw it as slow as the law of physics allowed, they still never caught it, always taking the safer route of allowing it to roll to a complete halt before daintily picking it up and throwing it back to him like a girl.

Even the dog was a girl. It caught Frisbees like a girl and wore a pink collar.

All he was asking was to share the house with just one other male — just one — just to break up all the lace and ruffles and hair bows and bunnies with a little dirt and grime and blue; to sit down, just once, on G.I. Joe instead of Ken, whom he despised; to throw a ball with regulation red stitching, not pink or glittery gold, and to watch it actually make contact with a mitt. Was this asking too much of the testosterone gods?

In two of the longest upcoming months of his life, he would have his answer. No problem; he could wait it out. Tony Almeida was a patient man, with unshakable faith and trust in the overlords, who'd definitely be coming through for him this time.