Chapter 38
Lex
A Second
"Maeve."
"Yes."
"How far along?"
"Eight weeks. The doctor is happy. Everything looks good."
"Eight weeks?"
"Yes."
"When did you find out?"
"Three days ago."
"You were going to tell me here?"
"I was. I wanted to tell you here."
"Maeve?"
"Yes."
I don’t speak for a full minute.
Maeve doesn’t press. She’s lived with this knowledge for three days.
She’s had time. The time has been hers. She’s now sitting up against the headboard of a lake house bed I have not slept in for nine years, in one of my t-shirts, with the small yellow lamp casting light on the side of her face, waiting for the man who can find words for what she’s just put into the room.
I get out of bed.
I walk to the dresser in my boxers because the cabin is cold, and I have not turned on the small electric heater yet.
I open the second drawer down. The drawer where my father kept things in 1994 when he came up with my mother for their anniversary and where I have kept things since I inherited the lake house.
Inside the drawer, in the back corner, is a bottle of bourbon I bought in 2018 and have not opened.
I take it out. I take two of the lake house tumblers from the small bar by the door.
I pour two fingers of bourbon. I bring the glass and the bottle and a second empty glass back to the bed.
I hand Maeve the bourbon.
She takes it. She looks at it. She looks at me. She starts to laugh.
I realize what I have just done.
I say, "I am sorry. That was. I am not."
Maeve, laughing now, takes the bourbon and sets it on the nightstand. She says, "It is okay. You are processing."
"I gave my pregnant wife bourbon."
"You gave your pregnant fiancée bourbon. There is a distinction. I am going to enjoy it later as a story I tell our daughter."
"Maeve."
"Sit down, Lex."
I sit on the edge of the bed. I look at her. She’s been holding this for three days. I have had it for one minute. The asymmetry is a thing I am going to have to find language for at some point but not at 10:51 PM in a lake house bedroom with the lamp on and the lake outside the window.
My hand goes, careful and deliberate, to her stomach.
She covers my hand with hers.
Her stomach is the same stomach it was at 10:23 PM when I was standing on the dock with Nico.
She’s eight weeks pregnant. There is nothing to feel.
There is nothing externally different about her body that I can detect.
But my hand is on her stomach, and her hand is on my hand, and there is something in there now that has been there for eight weeks and that nobody knew about until three days ago and that, when it arrives, will be the second child Maeve and I have, and the first child Maeve and I made together.
I say, "Three years ago, I was in this lake house alone. I came here to remember how to be a person. I could not."
Maeve says, "I know."
"Now you are in this bed. With our baby. With Nora down the hall, asleep with my mother. With my brothers in the next room."
She says, "Yes."
"I get to have this."
She says, "You get to have this."
I lean forward. I put my forehead against her stomach. She threads her fingers through my hair. I stay there for a long time. The lake house is quiet. The lamp is on. The curtains move.
Then I say, into the soft fabric of the t-shirt against her stomach, in Greek, "‘Geia sou, kardoúla mou.’"
Maeve doesn’t speak for a long second.
Then she says, "Lex."
I lift my head. I look at her.
I say, "Hello, my little heart."
She’s crying. Quietly. The way she cries when she doesn’t want to interrupt a moment by being loud about her feelings. Her hand is still in my hair.
She says, "You had Greek for the baby."
I say, "I have Greek for everyone I love."
"For Nora."
"‘Agápi mou.’"
"For me."
"‘Eísai diki mou.’ ‘Agápi mou.’"
"For ‘Mitéra.’"
"‘Mitéra.’"
"And now for the baby."
"‘Kardoúla mou.’"
She’s laughing through the crying now. She says, "You had a different language ready for each member of the family before they existed."
I say, "I have been waiting my whole life to have a family I needed Greek words for."
? ? ?
We lie down. The lamp stays on. I cannot stop touching her stomach.
She lets me. We talk in the low, careful way couples talk after a piece of news that is going to change everything.
The due date. She had it pegged at June.
The doctor. The one she’s been seeing since the morning sickness started. The names she’s been thinking about.
Then I say, "Maeve."
"Yes."
"My father."
She turns toward me. She’s been waiting fifty-eight days for me to bring my father into a conversation.
I have not said his name in her presence.
I have not said his name out loud in any context throughout our marriage.
I have said ‘my father.’ I have said ‘my father's funeral.’ I have said ‘the morning my father died.’ I have not said ‘the name.’
I say, "His name was Stefanos."
She says, "Stefanos."
"He was named for his grandfather. His grandfather was named after his grandfather. Going back at least four generations on the paternal side that I know about. Maybe further. My mother might know."
"Stefanos Konstantinos."
"Yes."
Pause. The lamp is on. The lake is outside the window. The baby is eight weeks.
I say, "If this baby is a boy, I would like him to carry his grandfather's name."
Maeve looks at me.
She says, "Stefanos."
"Stefanos."
"Stefanos Konstantinos."
She says it again. Slowly. Trying it in her mouth.
The Greek pronunciation she’s been learning for two months is correct.
The accent is on the second syllable. ‘Steh-FAH-nos.’ She says it the way Eleni says it.
The way I say it. The way Stefanos Konstantinos, who has been dead for fifteen years and who held this family together until the morning he didn’t come home, would have said it about a grandson he would never meet.
She says, "And if it is a girl."
"Then she’ll be your daughter. You will name her. I will sign the paperwork."
Maeve laughs softly. She says, "I do not know yet. We do not know yet. But Lex."
"Yes."
"If it is a boy."
"Yes."
"He’ll carry his grandfather's name. Stefanos. With Brendan in the middle. Stefanos Brendan Konstantinos. So both grandfathers get to walk with him."
I close my eyes for one full second.
I open them.
I say, "Yes, Maeve. Yes."
She kisses me. The kiss tastes like the salt of a woman who has been crying for fifteen minutes about a name.
The lake house is quiet. The lamp is on.
We sleep, eventually, with my hand on her stomach and her hand on mine, and the baby, whose gender isn’t yet determined, as the contained, fierce weight of the future this family is now organizing itself around.
? ? ?
Eleni knows. Maeve told her over coffee at 5:00 AM, while the rest of the cabin was still asleep, in the kitchen with the small yellow light over the sink and the lake outside the window.
Eleni already knew. Eleni knew before Maeve told her.
Eleni had been looking at Maeve at the dinner table the night before and registered the tells of a daughter-in-law who was eight weeks pregnant.
And Eleni did what she does: wait to be told by the person who has the right to tell.
Maeve told her at 5:00 AM. Eleni said, in Greek, ‘I have been waiting for you to say so.’ Then they cried in the kitchen for ten minutes. Then they started breakfast.
I come down at 7:23 AM.
The kitchen smells like coffee and the familiar Eleni breakfast architecture, unchanged since I was a child.
Bacon in the pan. Greek yogurt and honey in a bowl on the counter.
Fresh bread sliced. Eggs Eleni is cracking into a separate bowl for the omelets she’ll make in three batches because the lake house has only one good pan.
Maeve is at the kitchen island with a coffee. Eleni is at the stove. Cormac is at the kitchen table with Nora, who is eating a piece of toast cut into the shape of a dinosaur because Cormac decided that was a thing he could do with a knife, and Nora has not stopped eating it.
Nico and Siobhan come down at 7:34 AM with Sofia. Siobhan in pajamas and one of Nico's sweaters. Sofia in a small green sleeper with a duck on it.
We sit. We eat. The kitchen is warm. The lake is outside the window. The light is the small, clear winter light that means a perfect day.
At 7:51 AM, I stand.
I hold my coffee.
I say, "I have something to tell you."
Cormac says, "Christ. What."
I say, "We are having another baby."
The lake house erupts.
Eleni cries openly. She’s been pretending not to know since 5:00 AM because she wanted me to make the announcement, and now she’s crying with the freedom of a woman who no longer has to pretend.
Cormac shouts something incomprehensible that involves the word ‘Christ’ twice.
Siobhan stands up and hugs Maeve with Sofia balanced on her hip.
Nico is grinning. Nico is not a man who grins.
Nora climbs me like a tree.
She’s in my arms before I have fully registered that she’s moving. Her small fists are around my collar. Her face is at my face level. The look in her eye means she’s made a decision about an important new piece of information.
She says, "Daddy."
I say, "Yes, ‘agápi mou.’"
"A baby?"
"A baby."
"For me?"
"For all of us. The baby will be your brother or your sister."
"Brother or sister?"
"Yes."
Pause. Nora considers this with the gravity she brings to all important new information.
Then: "Will the baby share Brontos?"
The kitchen breaks. Cormac is hooting. Siobhan is crying with laughter. Eleni has both hands over her mouth.
I say, very seriously, "That is a question for Brontos."
Nora says, "Brontos says yes."
I say, "Brontos is generous."
Nora pats my cheek with her small hand. She says, "Okay, Daddy. The baby gets Brontos sometimes. Not all the time. Sometimes."
She climbs back down. She returns to her dinosaur toast. The negotiation is concluded.
I look at the room.
Every person I love. In one kitchen. Around one table. In a house I used to come to alone.
My face does what it does.