18. Gage
GAGE
Ireach Pueblo Tuesday night, with no excuse left for being late on Wednesday.
Before I left Texas, I messaged Bonnie about money for Cricket.
She sent back a number, lower than I would have chosen, and I set up the transfer for that amount.
She could have drawn on the joint account any day since May and hasn’t.
She wanted a number for Cricket she could count on without asking me.
It will keep going whether she invites me back or not.
By noon on Wednesday, I have driven past the turn toward Cleo’s place twice without taking it. Bonnie said two. I stop at a grocery store and buy what she asked for when I offered. At the fruit counter I pick up a peach, then another. She likes them ripe enough to eat over the sink.
I put four in the bag before I remember I will not be there to eat the other two. I buy them anyway.
At one fifty-five, I turn down the lane.
Mercy is in the paddock beyond the barn. She raises her head at the truck, then goes back to grazing. Bonnie’s blue mug sits on the porch rail. I know the chipped handle. I bought her two new mugs once, and she kept using that one.
The sight of it makes me slow almost to a stop. She has mornings here. She goes out with coffee and checks her horse. I have pictured her missing home, and all this time she has been living in another one.
Cleo comes out before I reach the steps.
“Gage.”
“Thank you for having me.”
She accepts the grocery bags. “Bonnie’s feeding her. Come in.”
Cleo was at our wedding breakfast. Bonnie kept in touch. I heard half of those calls, usually from another room. Now Cleo is letting me into Bonnie’s home. I hate that I need her to show me where to go, and I hate myself for resenting the woman who stayed.
Bonnie is on the sofa with our daughter against her. A few strands of hair have fallen out of her ponytail, and she has a cloth over one shoulder. One button on her shirt is undone beneath the baby. I know the tired line of her mouth. I have kissed her there at the end of a hundred long days.
I had four sentences ready. I cannot remember one.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
I hang my hat on the peg by the door. Cleo carries the groceries into the kitchen and begins putting them away with the ease of somebody who knows where everything goes.
“How was the appointment?” I ask.
“Good. They’re happy with her.”
“And you?”
“Tired.”
I take half a step toward her before she nods at the chair opposite. Right. Sit down. She is holding the baby, and I’m still standing over them.
Cricket turns her face when she finishes feeding. I’ve enlarged every photograph until it blurs, but I haven’t seen that crease in her forehead before. She makes a dissatisfied noise at the cloth Bonnie moves. I lean forward to hear whether she’ll do it again.
“Would you like to hold her?” Bonnie asks.
I stand too quickly. “Yes.”
“Wash your hands first.”
I do. I dry them on the towel Cleo points out, then return to the chair. Bonnie brings Cricket to me slowly, careful with her own movements. I start to get up to help, and she tells me to stay seated.
“Support her head. There.”
Bonnie puts Cricket into my arms. I keep my wrist exactly where she placed it beneath the baby’s head. Can she breathe against my shirt? I shift the fabric away from her mouth and wait for somebody to tell me I’m doing this right.
“You can bring her closer,” Bonnie says.
I bring her closer. She opens her mouth, shuts it, and uncurls her fingers against the sleeper. A week old. Will Bonnie let me ask about all seven days? I can’t stop looking long enough to ask about this morning.
“Hello,” I tell her.
Bonnie sits back down. Cleo puts a glass of water beside her before taking the other chair. Neither of them speaks while I try again.
“I’m your dad.”
I cannot get anything else out. I cry over my daughter with both arms occupied, unable to wipe my face. Bonnie gets up to pass me a tissue and then takes it back when I cannot manage it. She dabs my cheek once. That hand. I know that hand. I nearly lean into it. She is already sitting down again.
“She had hiccups all morning,” she says.
I try to say something and a laugh comes out, wet enough that Bonnie reaches for the tissue again.
“Does she do that a lot?”
“Enough to get offended by it.”
Bonnie tells me which noise means hunger and which one she hasn’t worked out yet. Cleo asks whether it was the same noise Cricket made in the bath yesterday. They talk it over while I hold her.
I nearly ask Bonnie why she did not tell me about the bath. I could have called. She could have put the phone where I could see.
Cricket closes her hand on my finger. I look down at her and swallow the question. Bonnie was bathing a baby. She did not owe me a camera in the room.
When Cricket begins crying, I rock her too broadly. Bonnie shows me a smaller movement. I try it. The crying continues.
“She may need changing,” Cleo says.
I ask where the things are. Bonnie takes her to the changing pad and lets me help.
I fumble with the fasteners, and Cricket complains through all of it.
Bonnie does not make the task look easy to spare me.
She tells me which way the clean diaper goes and laughs when I apologize to our daughter for taking too long.
“She’ll forgive the diaper,” she says.
I finish the job and throw the old one away.
Later, Cricket sleeps in the bassinet while we eat the late lunch Cleo made. Bonnie sits on a cushion and has to shift before she can get comfortable. I ask if she needs anything, then realize I have asked it three times in an hour.
“The salt,” she says.
I pass it.
Cleo goes next door to meet her son when the sitter brings him home. For the first time, Bonnie and I are alone with our daughter.
“Was it bad?” I ask.
She knows what I mean. “Parts of it. The staff helped. Cleo stayed.”
“I’m glad she did.”
“I needed her.”
I look at the tractor on the windowsill. I ask about it, and Bonnie tells me. I laugh. Then I can’t. A tractor packed for the hospital, and I never saw the bag.
The words come before I have worked out what I am asking her to do with them.
“I should’ve been there. I should’ve been in that room with you.”
Bonnie looks at the tractor. “I used to think so too.”
I want to tell her I would have come the moment she called. I want her to know I would have stayed, whatever she needed, however long it took. Then I remember telling her Mercy would stay in the barn. I remember authorizing the groom to load her anyway.
My word is what I have to offer. I am only now beginning to understand what that sounds like to her.
“Were you frightened?” I ask.
“Yes.” She turns toward me. “And I could say so. Cleo didn’t need me to be easier to deal with.”
I rub my forehead where the hat band sits.
At the fitting, I told her to lower her voice. In the kitchen, I told her somebody had to worry about me. Now I want her to believe she could have asked me for anything in that hospital room.
“I told Tawny you were making everything difficult,” I say. “You were frightened, and I made that another complaint about you.”
Bonnie’s face changes. I have made her remember it in the room where she feeds our daughter.
“I can’t do all of that today,” she says.
“All right.”
I want to keep speaking until I find something that helps. Her eyes are wet, and I want to be the one she reaches for. I make myself stay in the chair.
After a while she says, “I wanted to want you there.”
Cricket wakes before I can find an answer.
Bonnie says I can come for an hour tomorrow before I drive home. An hour. I want the morning. She is already on her feet to see me out. Cleo comes back with her son while I take my hat down.
The grocery bags are still on the counter. I pick them up, looking for another job, and Cleo tells me they keep them under the sink. It takes three seconds to put them there. I have to leave now.
Bonnie comes to the porch with Cricket. I thank her for the afternoon. She is holding the doorframe.
“You look tired,” I say.
“I am.”
There is a chair just inside. There are dishes in the kitchen, things I could carry, questions I have not asked. I put on my hat.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She nods and goes inside.
I drive back to the hotel with my daughter’s milk smell on my shirt. I take the shirt off that night and leave it on the chair beside the bed.