Chapter 17 Arthur Wren Stay in Bed All Day #3
Arthur considered this, his face still serious, unreadable.
“I’m with you,” he said finally. “But there’s just one thing.”
Her heart skipped a beat then. The expression on his face was not one that usually came bearing good news.
“In a few years, I do want to start saving…for my funeral. I have big plans.”
A big grin spread across his face. She gave him a gentle knee to the midsection. The jerk.
“We’ll invite all our friends,” he said.
“Both of them?”
“Shut up. There’ll be an open bar, obviously. And not at the reception, I’m talking in the graveyard. My coffin will be made of glass.”
“Can we stop talking about this? You’re never dying.”
“I’m serious. If you want to be with me, you have to get on board.”
“Fine. I assume you want to be buried in the finest suit money can buy?”
“No, nude.”
She laughed, hard. The image was so utterly ridiculous it pushed out the horrific thoughts of Arthur being dead, sent them hurtling right out of her brain. When she finally regained her breath, she remembered.
“What were you going to say to me? You said you had something to tell me.”
He smiled, leaned in, and kissed her on the nose. “It was nothing important.”
Wren had half a mind to press him, but it was exactly at that moment that her stomach growled audibly. Even Ferdie jumped.
“OK, an update on the status of my various biological systems: I’m hungry.”
“Really? I still don’t think I’ve digested the Pop-Tarts from earlier. Probably because I haven’t moved an inch.”
She scooched closer, flashed him a devious grin.
“I can think of one way for you to work up an appetite.”
“Oh?”
“But…we do have to break the rules a little bit.”
Wren screamed at him, “Pull! Pull! Harder, damn it!”
She had squeezed herself into the back seat of their car and was pressing the entirety of her weight down onto the Graco Lock-tite 4000 XL.
It had taken an embarrassingly long time for the two of them to get it out of the box and attach the headrest and other soft covers, to thread the rage-inducing elastic straps through tiny holes that attached the cloth to the hard plastic.
Now was the final push to tighten the thing in place so they’d never have to do this again.
“It won’t give! There’s no more slack!”
Arthur was tugging on the strap with everything he had. It wouldn’t budge a centimeter.
“If I push down on this seat any harder,” Wren said, her voice strained, “this kid, and probably several different bodily fluids, are coming out. PULL.”
He propped his feet up on the edge of the car and leaned his body completely backward. This was it. Every bit of weight and might and strength in his body flowed directly into the strap, until finally, he collapsed onto the pavement.
Wren contorted herself out of the car and stood next to him. He managed to climb to his feet, embarrassed by how heavily he was breathing.
“Did you ever figure out who gave us this stupid thing?”
“It’s not stupid, it’s a marvel of modern engineering. And, no, I asked around but no one seems to want to take credit.”
“Well, moment of truth,” Wren said. “Wanna give it a wiggle?”
“I’m afraid.”
“Me too.”
She made a religious crossing gesture as Arthur took a step forward and grabbed hold of the back of the car seat.
He gave it a push. He gave it a pull.
By God, it was secure. It didn’t budge more than an inch.
“We did it!” he yelled. “Honestly, I can’t believe it.”
Wren dusted her hands off. All in a day’s work. “Should have asked for my help earlier, jerk.”
“Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson. I can’t do it all on my own. In fact, I don’t think I can do anything at all on my own. Hope you’re OK with that.”
“I’ll allow it if you feed me in the next thirty seconds.”
He wrapped his arm around her, pulled her close.
“I don’t know. I’m still not that hungry.”
“Still?”
“If only there were some other strenuous physical activity we could engage in.”
She rolled her eyes. “Strenuous, huh? If either of us breaks a sweat, I owe you five dollars.”
“So you’re going to pay me to have sex with you? This is the best day ever.”
She grabbed his hand and led him across the parking lot, back toward the apartment. He followed eagerly.
“You know, we technically failed,” he said. “We got out of bed.”
“I think we proved our point.”
In the bedroom once again, they lit the dusty old sex candle that had been gathering cobwebs in the corner the last few months and climbed under the covers.
They both laughed as they realized that it had been a while.
A long while. And that a lot of the angles had changed since the last time.
During one kiss, their teeth bumped together, creating a horrendous clicking sound.
Wren whipped her bra off in what was supposed to be a sexy move and one of the metal clasps hit Arthur in the eye.
Ferdie was staring at them from the corner, ghostlike, asleep with his eyes open, the entire time.
Eventually, they figured it out, and they wondered why they hadn’t been doing this the whole time.
Arthur was sound asleep at 5:03 p.m. Poor guy. Wren supposed he’d earned it. But, in typical fashion, she couldn’t sleep. Far too uncomfortable. And now her thoughts were racing to boot.
Suddenly there seemed so much to do to get ready.
For starters, there was the bassinet she had picked out, still sitting there in the box. She’d heard the old joke about kids liking cardboard boxes more than the toys that came in them, but she figured the baby would probably appreciate it if she actually bothered to put the thing together.
“You want somewhere nice and cozy to sleep, don’t you?” she asked her belly.
She smiled, and it occurred to her that she had never done that before, spoken to the baby.
Arthur had done it here and there, and had mentioned to her that he’d read in a book that it was supposed to help lay the foundation for a strong bond.
She’d read some message boards herself to confirm he wasn’t making it up.
He wasn’t. All the expecting moms did it.
There were apps and devices that helped you talk to the baby, recommended books to read them, lists of songs you could sing to them.
There were even these ridiculous headphones you could attach to your belly.
She had laughed them off at first, then thought that they might be a good way to start the little bugger’s pop punk education early, and then looked at the price tag and laughed them off again.
The apartment suddenly felt so quiet. Like something, or someone, was missing.
“It’s just you and me now, little nugget.
If you want to come out soon, I think I’m ready to meet you.
” OK, her baby voice was a little bit too similar to her doggie voice, but it was a good start.
“What does my womb look like, by the way? I hope it’s nice in there.
Kick twice if you could use more legroom. ”
She laughed. She liked this. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t been doing it the whole time.
It had been a good day. She’d done nothing at all, and it had been good.
She didn’t previously know that that was possible.
Look at her. Sitting here being so responsible, so motherly.
Not trying to skirt the rules of pregnancy, not trying to engage in any reckless behavior whatsoever.
Just sitting quietly with her own thoughts, and with the baby, snapping the various metal and plastic pieces of the bassinet into its cushiony frame, and most shockingly of all, actually enjoying it.
It was satisfying in a strange way, as the metal prongs popped into the holes that would hold them in place, and plastic fasteners clicked into their exact landing spot.