25. Zelda
ZELDA
Jeremiah has lost a corner of my sheet.
I can see him through the laundromat window from my kitchen. He has three corners gathered in one hand. The fourth is somewhere beneath him. He gets up, the whole thing falls open, and I laugh with my wrists still in the dishwater.
It is a wet Tuesday in March. I am thirty weeks pregnant, and by this time of day my hips object to everything. I meant to sit down ten minutes ago. Instead I stand here watching my husband wrestle a blue sheet under a pink sign.
Since the scan he has come every Tuesday at six. Last week he brought the basket back while Hedy was on the phone. I pointed beside the table, he set it down, and I watched him go before remembering I could have put the phone down and talked to him.
Tonight he folds the sheet into an uneven square, sighs, and starts again.
My phone lights up.
Your laundry is ready. Shall I bring it to the door?
I dry my hands. There is no reason he has to keep sitting over there alone while I watch him.
Wait a minute. I’m coming down.
He reads it. He puts the sheet in the basket and sits with his hands on his knees, looking at the door.
I check my face in the dark kitchen window. My hair pushed back. I pull it forward, then put it back up because it looks worse now. I am annoyed with myself all the way to the coat hook.
The stairs take longer than they used to. I turn sideways for the last few, holding the rail, and cross the wet road with my coat open over my stomach.
He gets up when I come in. A pillowcase slides from his knee, and he catches it before it reaches the floor.
“You came in slippers.”
“The good ones.”
“The pavement’s wet.”
“They have soles, Jeremiah.”
He looks down. “I see that.”
“I survived the entire crossing.”
His mouth twitches. “I was relieved to see it.”
I laugh. He looks at my face, then at the rest of me, and the smile leaves him in a way that makes my stomach turn over.
“What?”
“You look beautiful.”
I glance down at the soap on my sleeve.
“You’ve been alone with a sheet too long.”
“Possibly. You still do.”
Heat climbs my neck. I am too big to get my coat closed, there is a damp mark on one slipper, and I believe that he means it. I sit before he can see how pleased I am.
He moves the basket out of the chair beside him. A dryer thumps behind us.
“It’s ten past seven,” I say.
“I can see why you thought I needed rescuing.”
“In November you couldn’t get home by nine.”
His face changes. “I know.”
His hands are empty. No phone, no keys ready to leave.
“You said you’d be living at the new plant until June. Who’s running it while you’re here?”
“My plant manager.”
“All of it?”
He nods. “I handed it over on February first. The launch, the customer, the decisions. She cut the ribbon on the fourteenth.”
I stare at him.
I remember a drawing on the back of our gas bill. He was supposed to be checking the total. Instead he drew loading bays and talked until I put the kettle on again. Three years he has wanted that place.
“You weren’t at the opening?”
“I saw the photographs.”
The dryer stops. In the sudden quiet I can hear rain ticking against the window.
“Jeremiah.”
He rubs the seam of his trousers. “I’m still the owner. I didn’t give her the company. I gave her the authority to run the plant without waiting for me to approve every answer.”
“And the ribbon.”
“And the ribbon.”
I had seen the changes in pieces. The calls that came on time. The morning at the scan. His work coat at the library, with no glance at the clock. I didn’t know what he had taken himself out of.
“You wanted that plant. That opening ribbon.”
“Very much.” He looks at me. “I’d written what I was going to say.”
I want to put my head on his shoulder so badly that I have to look at the dryers.
“How did she do?”
“Well.” A breath, almost a laugh. “She hasn’t needed rescuing. I keep wanting her to need help. Then I go home at five and leave her to it.”
I look back at him. He is smiling a little, unhappily, at his own hands.
“Does she know that?”
“She told me.”
I laugh. I wish I had heard her say it. I wish I had been the person he came home to tell.
Otto drives a foot into my side. I grunt and grab the place.
Jeremiah leans forward. “All right?”
“He is. I’ve apparently put my ribs where he wants to stretch.”
His eyes go to my hand and stay there.
All that wanting, and he is trying to ask only whether I’m hurt.
“Here.”
I take his wrist. His skin is warm. For a second that is what I notice, before I guide his palm to the side of my stomach.
“Wait a moment.”
We wait. Someone starts another dryer farther down the room. Jeremiah doesn’t move.
“He was doing it a minute ago,” I say, absurdly apologetic.
“I’m not in a hurry.”
Then Otto kicks.
Jeremiah’s whole body jolts. His fingers spread beneath mine.
“That’s him.”
“Yes.”
“That’s—” He laughs, and it breaks halfway out. “Zelda.”
I watch his face instead of my stomach. I have felt Otto for weeks. I had not thought about being able to give this moment to his father, or how much I would want to see it happen.
“He’s got your timing,” I say.
Jeremiah wipes his face with his free hand. “I’ll take it.”
We sit until Otto stops. I lift Jeremiah’s hand away, slowly. He lets me, then keeps looking at the place where it was.
When I try to stand, I get halfway up and have to sit again.
“Hand?” he asks.
I hold mine out. He braces himself while I pull, and this time I make it. We end up close enough that my open coat brushes his knees.
I don’t want to move away yet. That frightens me a little.
“I’m still staying at the apartment,” I tell him.
His eyes lift to mine. “I know.”
I let go of his hand.
“Bring the laundry up. You can take my recycling when you go.”
He reaches for the basket. I lift a corner of the sheet and find a pillowcase folded inside it.
“And I’ll show you how to do this.”
“It looked worse through the window.”
“No,” I say. “It didn’t.”
He laughs, and I wait by the door so we can cross together.