Bonus Chapter The Two Lines #2
I went through them. I went through them the way I had gone through every important option of my life, which was systematically, with the small accountant's voice in my head ranking them by suitability.
I could tell him at the kitchen table the moment he came in.
I could tell him in bed, in the dark, in the warmth, in his arms. I could tell him over breakfast in the morning.
I could tell him on Saturday, after the railings deadline, when he would have the bandwidth to take in the information without the deadline pressing against it.
I could tell him by writing it on the small chalkboard we kept on the wall by the door, where we usually wrote each other reminders about milk and dry-cleaning.
I could tell him by giving him a small wrapped gift containing the test. I could tell him by — and I considered this for one long ridiculous minute — texting it.
I went through the options. I dismissed most of them.
I landed on the truth.
The truth was that I did not want to engineer the moment.
The truth was that I had engineered most of the moments of my life with Beckett — the proposal, the courthouse, the cohabitation contract, the systematic monthly division of household tasks, the pegboard, the third bay, the lot — and that the moments that had landed hardest had been the ones I had not engineered.
The fender. The dumpster. The brook. The truck.
The moments that had become the spine of our marriage were the moments I had not, by any prior calculation, arranged.
I was going to tell him when he walked in.
I was going to sit at the kitchen table with my tea and the small lamp on, and I was going to wait until he came up the stairs and through the door and put his bag down, and then I was going to tell him.
He came in at eight-forty.
He was early. He was early because he had finished a spindle that had been giving him trouble, and because the finishing had given him a small extra hour of light that he had decided to spend, instead of starting a new spindle, with me.
He came in through the door. He set his bag down on the bench by the door.
He took off his coat. He hung the coat on the new coat hook he had forged the previous April — the one we still laughed about on the days when we caught ourselves smiling at it — and he turned and saw me at the kitchen table.
He stopped.
He stopped because I had not gotten up. I always got up when he came home.
I always got up because I had been at the desk or in the bathroom or in the kitchen and I always crossed the room to meet him.
I had not gotten up that night. I had stayed at the table.
I had stayed at the table because I had calculated, in the half-hour before he came home, that I could not stand up.
I could not stand up because, when I stood up, I was going to have to start saying the thing, and I did not yet know what the words were going to be.
He looked at me.
He saw something in my face. He saw something in my face the way Beckett saw everything in my face — with the long slow patient attention of a man who had been studying the face for twenty months and had come to know it the way he knew the surface of an anvil.
He said, "Honey."
I said, "Beckett. Sit down."
He sat down.
He sat down across from me at the kitchen table. He did not speak. He waited. He waited because he had learned, in twenty months of marriage, that when I said Beckett, sit down, it meant I was going to tell him a thing and that the thing was going to take me a moment to start saying. He waited.
I said, "Beckett. I — "
I stopped.
I started again.
I said, "Beckett."
He said, "Yes."
I said, "I took two tests this evening. Both of them said yes."
He looked at me.
He did not move. His face did not change in any way I could read for a long second. He looked at me. He let the sentence land. He let it land the way he let things land — without rushing the landing.
Then he said, "Two tests."
I said, "I bought two. Different brands. Different sensitivities. I wanted to be sure."
He said, "Both said yes."
I said, "Both said yes."
He said, "Alma."
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Alma, are you telling me — "
I said, "Yes."
His hands were on the table in front of him.
They had been folded one inside the other on the table top, in the small composed way he kept his hands when he was paying close attention.
I watched them open. I watched them spread flat on the wood.
I watched him press them down against the table the way you press down against a thing to steady yourself.
He said, "Come here."
I got up.
I went around the table. I sat down in his lap.
He put one arm around my back and one hand on my belly, low, flat-palmed, with the lightest pressure I had ever felt from his hand on any part of me, the careful steady pressure of a man who was suddenly aware that the thing under his hand had become, by the new information, the most important thing in his world.
He said, against my shoulder, "When."
I said, "I don't know exactly. I'll find out. Six weeks, maybe. Seven. I'm twelve days late."
He said, "Twelve days."
I said, "I kept telling myself it was the contract. The hours. The stress. I was wrong."
He said, "When did you take the tests."
I said, "Five-thirty. Six. Both of them."
He said, "You sat with this for three hours by yourself."
I said, "I wanted to know what to say."
He said, "What did you decide."
I said, "I decided to just tell you."
He said, "Good. Good. That was the right call. Don't — don't ever sit with one of these by yourself for three hours again."
I said, "Okay."
He said, "Alma."
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Alma, I — "
He stopped. He did not stop because he did not know what to say.
He stopped because he was crying. I had, in two years of marriage, seen Beckett Holt cry three times.
I had seen him weep on the day Earl's plaque had come from his father.
I had seen him cry the night his father had read A Christmas Carol by the woodstove.
I had seen him cry in the truck after the brook.
Three times. The fourth was happening into my shoulder, in the kitchen, in the dim warm yellow of the small lamp on the counter, with his hand still flat against my belly.
I held him.
I held the back of his head with one hand and his shoulder with the other and I held him while he cried into my shoulder for what was, by my later estimation, somewhere between two and three minutes. I let him have the time. He had given me three hours. I could give him three minutes.
When he was done, he sat back.
He wiped his face with the back of his wrist. He breathed out, long and slow. He said, "Sorry."
I said, "No."
He said, "I have wanted this for — Alma, I have wanted this since the morning of the fender.
I have wanted this since before I had any right to want it.
I have been not letting myself want it for two years.
I have been not letting myself plan for it.
I have been not letting myself even think the word.
I have been waiting for you to tell me — to tell me, when you were ready, that you wanted to talk about it.
And tonight you told me, and you didn't even have to talk about it, because you came in already pregnant, and I — "
He stopped.
He laughed.
He laughed in the small wet way of a man who has just been crying. He laughed and shook his head and said, "Look at us. You did the whole thing yourself in three hours. I have been preparing for the conversation about whether to have the conversation for two years. You skipped the conversation."
I said, "I'm efficient."
He said, "You are."
I said, "Beckett."
He said, "Yes."
I said, "Are we okay?"
He said, "Are we okay. Alma. We are — we are going to be the okay-est people who ever did this. We are going to be — "
He stopped again.
He said, "I'm going to be a father."
He said it like a man trying out a word in a language he had not spoken before.
He said it again. He said, "I'm going to be a father."
I said, "Yes."
He said, "You are going to be a mother."
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Our child is going to grow up in this loft. Above this shop. In this town. On this street. With these people. With Tomás's Indian in the lobby."
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Our child is going to call my father grandfather."
I said, "Yes."
He said, "Alma."
I said, "Yes."
He said, "We are going to need a bigger loft."
I laughed.
I laughed until I cried. I laughed at the kitchen table in the loft above the shop in Ember Falls in the small warm yellow lamplight, and Beckett laughed with me, and his hand stayed against my belly the entire time, and the world around us did not stop, but it did the thing the world does when a thing changes — it leaned in.
It paid attention. The woodstove ticked.
The streetlights outside the window hummed.
The fan in the small refrigerator clicked on and clicked off.
The town went on doing what the town did. We sat there and laughed.
We did not call anyone.
We did not tell anyone, that night. We had agreed, by silent mutual conclusion, that the news was ours for at least one night before it became anyone else's.
We sat at the kitchen table for a long time.
We talked. We talked about due dates and doctors and which doctor in town was the one I would want to see and which was the one I would want to avoid, and we talked about the loft and the bigger loft and the lot Beckett owned that we had been planning to put the second forge on and might, by his new calculation, also put a small house on.
We talked about names — not seriously, not yet, but the way you talk about names when you have just been given the first sliver of permission to use them.
We talked about my mother. We talked about his father.
We talked about what to do about the railings deadline.