It’s nine thirty and the girls are in bed, hopefully asleep. I’m in the bathroom washing my face with my special anti-oxidant foam wash and then applying the anti-aging serum from collarbones to hairline and finally smoothing a layer of moisturizer. But even as I spread the lotions I find I can’t stop thinking about Marta. I know it’s shallow and unkind, but I don’t want her on my auction committee, and I don’t want to her to be Head Room Mom and I don’t want her on my auction committee, either.

Leaving the bathroom mirror I walk into the bedroom where Nathan’s climbing into bed. “I don’t know what to do about her, Nathan, but she’s making me crazy—“

“Because you’re letting her make you crazy,” he answers, reaching for the hardcover book on his bedside table and turning on his reading light, “you don’t even know Marta very well. She might be a very nice person.”

I glare glumly at Nathan. He’s too nice, especially when it comes to women. “Have you seen the way she dresses?” I don’t even wait for him to answer. “She wears smocks, Nathan. Full-on smocks and painted clogs and have you seen her hair?”

Nathan gives me an apologetic look over the top of his book. He loves reading in bed. He does this every night and has since we were first married. “I actually don’t have any idea who we’re talking about.”

“I know. Because if you did, you’d see why I can’t have her on the auction committee—“

“Why would she be on the auction committee if she’s just Head Room Mom?”

“Because she’ll be responsible for the 5th grade class project. And that means, she’ll be working with me. And I can’t. I can’t work with her, not this closely, not talking every day.”

“Then don’t talk every day.”

I sit down on the edge of the bed next to him. “I have to communicate.”

“Use email,” he answers, picking up his book again.

I stare at the spine of his book. Another non-fiction, historical battle book. Why Nathan loves reading about war is beyond me. “Isn’t that the book you were reading last Christmas in Sun Valley?”

“It’s the sequel.”

“Oh.” Rising I return to the bathroom where I study my face and neck in the mirror. Small fine lines at my eyes, deeper line between my eyebrow and creases in my forehead. Probably time to get more Botox. Last year I only did it twice but this year I might need it more. “Speaking of Sun Valley, if we’re going this year, we should make our reservations. The airfare only goes up the closer we get to December.”

“Mmmmm.”

I rub lotion into my hands and up my arms, giving special attention to my elbows. “Remember how last year we waited to the last minute and we paid almost six hundred dollars for our tickets? That’s the same price you’d pay for Hawaii over the holidays.” I squeeze more lotion into my hand and begin smoothing it over my legs and bare feet. “Ridiculous when you think about it since Sun Valley is just a twelve hour drive and Hawaii is what? Five thousand miles?”

“About 2,600,” he answers from behind his book.

Reaching for more lotion I catch a glimpse of my profile, and the skin near my nose. I lean towards the mirror, peer more closely at my reflection. My pores are getting bigger. How is that possible? And I’m beginning to find the odd straggling hair on my upper lip and chin. Scary. “Should we let the girls invite a friend this year or would it better to just keep it us?”

I hear a heavy sigh in the bedroom and then Nathan closes his book with a thud. “What if we didn’t go to Sun Valley this year?”

I lean back, and look around the bathroom door. “What?”

“What if we did something else?” he repeats patiently. “Something...closer to home.”

“But we always do Sun Valley—“

“Maybe it’s time for a change.”

“But all our friends go. It’s what our friends do.”

“And don’t we see enough of them without having to go on every vacation with them? Wouldn’t it be nice to just do things with the five of us?”

I stand there and think about it for a second before shaking my head. “No. It wouldn’t be as fun. I like our friends, and I like the dinners and the cocktail parties. I like how you dads go skiing early and my friends meet up at Java before we go skiing—“

“Or shopping,” he interrupts flatly.

I shrug and return to the bathroom where I pick up my jar of La Mer eye cream and take a small dollop out with my fingertip to pat gently below my eyes and then above on the brow bone. “The point is, its fun—“

“And expensive. Dinner for just the two of us each night is at least $300, and that’s not including the babysitting or feeding the girls.”

Maybe I need to buy the La Mer cream for my throat. “Okay, it’s expensive, but it’s fun, and you know it. You love getting drinks at the Roosevelt, and you’re the first one on the slopes every day.”

“But maybe this is the year we take a break and try to conserve. Protect our finances.”

I lean back around the door. “Why? Are our finances in trouble?”

His chest rises and falls and I notice for the first time he’s put on some weight. Nothing serious but his chest isn’t as thickly muscled as it once was.

“We took a pretty hard hit in the stock market.” His voice is flat, emotionless.

“How hard?”

Nathan shrugs. “Enough that we can’t afford to pull out. We’ve just got to ride it out and hope for the best, and stocks are cyclical. They’ll turn around. They always do. It just might take a couple years.”

A couple years?

I purse my lips. “You’re saying we can’t go on vacation for a couple years?”

“Of course we can go on vacation. We just have to be careful, that’s all.”

“So we can go to Sun Valley.”

“If you can find a way to do it for free.”

His heavy sigh doesn’t escape me. And it stayed with me.