30. Charly #2
After dinner, after the cake I snuck in, after the sky goes black and the loons start up somewhere out on the water, we end up tangled together on the couch in front of the fire.
The talking winds down. He’s drawing little circles on my shoulder with his thumb, half asleep, easy in a way I never used to believe people actually got to be.
“I’ve got one more present for you,” I say.
He cracks an eye open and smiles without lifting his head. “I thought the whole weekend was the present.”
“It was. This one’s extra.” I make myself get up and dig the little wrapped box out of my bag, and I put it in his hands before I can lose my nerve.
He sits up and turns it over, eyeing me. “It’s small. Is it a key? Did you cave and get me the motorcycle?”
“Just open it.” I sit back down across from him and fold my hands so they’ll stop shaking.
He peels the paper off slow, the way he does everything, lifts the lid, and pulls out the hat.
A plain ball cap. He laughs, this confused little sound, turning it over in his hands.
“It’s a hat. I love it. I’m so confused, but I love it.” He goes to put it on, then stops with it halfway to his head. “Hang on, is there a joke on it, is there...”
Then he sees the front.
BEST DAD EVER.
He goes completely still, the hat frozen in both hands.
He reads it. Reads it again. His mouth opens and nothing comes out. He looks up at me, down at the hat, back up at me, and his whole face is trying to do about six things at once.
“Charly.” It comes out cracked.
I’m already crying. Nine days of holding this in and it just splits wide open.
“I’m pregnant,” I tell him.
For a second he doesn’t move at all. Then his eyes fill and spill over, and the hat drops into his lap.
“Wait. Are you serious?” He reaches for me, both hands, like he needs to know I’m solid. “Charly. Are you being serious right now?”
“I’m serious.” I nod, and the tears come faster.
“You’re, we’re, hang on, I need to.” He’s gripping my arms now. “Are you sure? Like sure sure?”
“I’ve taken nine tests. I could wallpaper the bathroom with them.” That breaks a laugh out of him, right through the tears. “I’m sure. I’m so sure. We’re having a baby.”
And then the steadiest man I have ever known just falls apart. Not a little. All the way. He pulls me into him so hard I lose my breath, laughing and crying into my hair, saying it over and over, “oh my God, oh my God,” like he can’t make it stick, and I’m right there gone with him.
“You’re going to be a dad,” I say into his neck. “I kept telling you it would be okay either way. Telling myself too. And I meant it.”
I pull back enough to see his face.
“Somewhere along the way I just figured, okay. Maybe this isn’t happening for us.
Maybe it’s just going to be the two of us, and that’s fine.
I can live with that.” My voice catches a little.
“I didn’t want to get our hopes up. All those months at the clinic, and I’d basically made up my mind it wasn’t coming.
And then it just happened. The tests came back positive. ”
“It just happened.” He laughs, wet and stunned, like it won’t fit in his head. “After everything they told us.”
“You’re already doing the dad voice. We’re thirty seconds in.”
“Give me a break, I’ve got nine months to get way worse.” He pulls back, both hands on my face, wet-eyed and grinning like an idiot. “Wait, say it again. The actual words. I have to hear it one more time.”
“You’re going to be a father, Clarence.”
“Again. Please. Say it one more time.”
“You’re going to be a dad.” My voice goes all to pieces. “We’re having a baby.”
“I don’t even care how it happened.” He presses his forehead to mine. “You know I meant it, right? Just you was always going to be enough for me. But God. God, Charly. A whole actual baby.”
He sinks down and presses a shaking hand flat to my stomach, careful, like there’s already somebody under there he’s scared to wake, and he just leaves it sitting there.
“Hey, blueberry, my little miracle,” he whispers, down to my stomach, not to me, and I completely lose it.
***
Later we drag the blankets out to the dock and lie there under more stars than I’ve seen in years. His hand stays on my belly the whole time. Every now and then his thumb moves a little, back and forth, like he keeps needing to make sure it’s really there.
“You’re going to wear a hole in my shirt,” I tell him.
“Worth it. I’m not moving it.” He doesn’t. “Somebody’s gotta keep an eye on things.”
“It’s the size of a blueberry. It doesn’t need a bodyguard yet.”
“Too bad. It’s got one.” He turns his head on the blanket to look at me, eyes still wet, that dumb hat still on. “I’m going to be so annoying about this. You know that, right? Like, genuinely unbearable.”
“Good. I want you to be.” I shift in closer under the blanket. “What do you think it is?”
“A girl. I don’t know why, I just got a feeling.” His thumb keeps moving. “Little girl with your eyes. Bossing me around the second she can talk.”
“She’d have you wrapped around her finger in a week.” I poke his side. “You’d never say no to her once.”
“Not a chance in hell.” He catches my hand and holds it against his chest, still grinning at the sky. “Could be a boy, too. Little guy trailing me around the backyard, copying everything I do.” He tips his head toward me. “I really don’t care which. I’d be thrilled either way.”
“Let’s just get through the one before you’re ordering up a whole baseball team.” I knock my knee against his.
“Fair.” He’s quiet for a second, his hand warm where it sits. “I just want them healthy. That’s all I want. Healthy, and funny. Funny like me.”
“Funny like you.” I prop my chin on his chest to look at him.
“Yeah, like me.” He grins down at me and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “I always make you laugh. Don’t even try to deny it, I do it constantly.”
“I laugh because I love you, Clarence. Not because you’re funny.” I keep my face as straight as I can, which isn’t very, and he watches me fight it.
“Wow. Okay. She’s lying right to my face on a dock.” He throws a hand over his chest like I’ve mortally wounded him, and that does it, I lose it, and my laughing sets him off, and the two of us just shake under the blanket until I have to wipe my eyes on his shirt.
“See,” he says, pointing at me. “Funny.”
“That was me laughing at you, not with you.” I shove his shoulder and he barely moves.
“Still counts.” He catches my hand and kisses my knuckles, then goes quiet, his other hand going still on my belly.
“You’re going to be a great mom, Charly.” He says it plain, no joke behind it this time.
It catches me right in the chest. I reach up and lay my palm against his jaw. “You’re going to be a great dad.”
He kisses me, soft and slow, and when he pulls back he slides his hand down to my stomach and I lay mine over it, both of us there together, our fingers tangled up in the dark over the small of everything that’s coming.
God, I think. This baby is going to be so lucky to have Clarence for a dad.
THE END