20. Bonnie
BONNIE
Igo to the pottery shop because I want to look at something nobody expects me to feed.
The class lasts an hour and a half. I have signed up to paint a bowl, which is within my abilities if the bowl has already been made by somebody competent.
Cleo offered to come, but she has her own afternoon free and intends to spend it in a bookstore without a three-year-old asking when they can leave.
Gage arrives at the cottage at eleven, after a morning with the bay he has brought north and boarded in town.
I have fed Cricket, left expressed milk for the next feed if she wants it sooner than I return, and explained where everything is.
We have practiced the bottle on earlier visits.
He has changed her, soothed her, and asked questions while I was there. Today I will leave.
“You’ve got my number,” I say.
“I do.”
I check the bag again even though I am taking almost nothing. The absence of baby supplies makes it feel wrong.
Cricket begins crying while I am checking that I have my keys. Gage lifts her and tries the movement that worked yesterday. It does not work now. He looks at me.
“She might still have a burp,” I say.
He adjusts her against his shoulder. The crying continues.
I put the keys on the table. “I can wait a minute.”
“You’ll miss the start.”
“I know, but?—”
He sits in the chair with Cricket supported against him. “Let me try for a little while. If I need you, I’ll call.”
I pick up the keys. I kiss my daughter’s head, and she cries directly into my ear. Leaving feels physically wrong for the first ten steps. At the car I almost turn around. Then I remember the bowl I have paid to paint and drive away.
At the shop, the instructor asks which colors I want. I tell her I have no idea. She shows me samples, and I choose a deep blue that looks nearly black before firing. I settle at a table beside a woman painting a mug for her sister.
For twenty minutes I check my phone every time I rinse the brush. Gage has not called. I send one message asking if they are all right.
She settled. We’re good. Paint your bowl.
I put the phone in my bag. Then I take it out and set it face up where I can see it without touching it.
The woman beside me asks whether I have children. I say I have a five-week-old daughter. She tells me about her granddaughter, and we talk while I paint. She knows me as the woman who has chosen a blue glaze and cannot keep the rim even.
Halfway through the rim, the woman nods at my phone. “Waiting on a call? You keep not looking at it.” She is right. I have not touched it since she started on her granddaughter. I laugh.
The woman asks what is funny. I tell her I have paid somebody to let me sit still and do something badly.
“Oh, you can do it badly for free,” she says. “The money’s for the chair.”
I laugh loudly enough that the instructor looks over. When she asks if we need anything, I ask for more blue.
I stay for the full class.
When I return, Gage is on the porch with Cricket against his chest. He is standing because she apparently objected to sitting. His shirt has a pale patch on the shoulder.
“She won,” he says.
“What were the terms?”
“I thought we could sit. She disagreed.”
I laugh and take her when he offers. She turns toward me immediately. The relief of holding her is almost painful, and I bury my face in her hair before asking how it went.
“She took some milk. Then she wanted to be carried. Cleo came by on her way into town to check whether I needed anything and showed me a different way to hold her upright.”
“You called Cleo?”
“She was passing. I asked.”
Inside, I sit down to feed Cricket. Gage brings my water and sits opposite me.
“What did you make?”
“A bowl.”
“Can I see it?”
“They have to fire it. I took a picture.”
He looks at my phone when I hand it over. The bowl is unevenly painted. I tried to add a narrow white line and made it wobble all the way around.
“You used blue.”
“I like blue.”
“I know. I expected a horse.”
“I was trying to have an afternoon off from horses.”
He laughs. “Then I won’t tell you what the bay did this morning.”
“Was it expensive?”
“Just embarrassing.”
“Save it for after I tell you about the bowl.”
He does. I describe the shop, the woman beside me, the instructor who fixed the drip I made down the outside. He asks whether I would go again. I tell him I might try making something from clay next time, which could go badly enough to be interesting.
“You should,” he says.
I talk longer than I intended. I almost tell him how frightened I am about teaching again, about discovering that people wanted the old Bonnie with a famous husband and a place on his circuit.
My throat tightens. I ask him about the bay instead.
He notices the change. I can see the question in his face. He answers the one I asked, and I am grateful, then sad that a story about a horse is all I can manage.
When Cricket is finished, Gage takes her so I can warm lunch. I make enough for both of us because I want him to stay. We eat at the kitchen table, passing the baby back when she needs me. He admits another boarder had been praising his knot when the bay untied it.
I laugh hard enough to have to put my fork down.
“You always tie it too loose.”
“Apparently he noticed.”
After lunch, Gage washes the plates. I sit on the sofa with Cricket asleep in the bassinet nearby and close my eyes. I mean to rest for ten minutes. When I wake, the afternoon light has moved across the floor and Gage is reading a horse-sale catalog in the chair.
“How long?” I ask.
“Forty minutes.”
I sit up, annoyed with myself for losing part of the visit and pleased by how much better I feel.
“You could’ve woken me.”
“I had a catalog.”
He shows me a gelding with a price neither of us believes. We argue about what the seller could possibly be thinking until Cricket wakes and puts an end to it.
That evening, after Gage has gone back to his room in town, I send Cleo a picture of the bowl. She says it will hold soup as well as a prettier one. I tell her she has not seen it after firing.