Chapter 2
They ate dinner at their favorite neighborhood sub shop. It was called Sub Shop. The place was right in the middle of a nondescript shopping center near the apartment, one of many, sandwiched between a defunct laundromat and an unnaturally well-lit Mattress Firm.
They sat at a wobbly plastic patio table stuffed into a corner of the tiny shop.
Wren tore into a gooey meatball sub the size of her entire torso, while Arthur nibbled on a cheesesteak.
Arthur found he didn’t have much of an appetite.
Too busy replaying the visit over and over in his mind.
Thinking about his great gift, the box of crap, and whether his parents realized or cared that they lived in a one-bedroom apartment with no storage.
“This is the best sub I’ve ever had,” Wren said between bites.
“That’s what you said last time. And the time before that.”
They had eaten here, or had the food delivered, frequently during the pregnancy. It had hit the sweet spot of satisfying Wren’s cravings in the early days, and somehow the sandwiches—despite being soggy with grease and mayonnaise—were among the few things that didn’t make her nauseous.
“And I mean it every time.” She chewed some more, savoring every bite.
“So, you called this meeting,” Arthur said. “What’s on your mind?”
Wren held up a finger, swallowed a colossal lump, and then spoke. “We’re not ready.”
“Not ready for…”
“When your mom and I were talking, I realized we have absolutely no clue what we’re getting into.”
“What do you mean? We have a car seat, we have a booger sucker, we have diapers. I’ve got my time off all set up with the school. We have enough money saved up. Well, enough for now. Speaking of…” He trailed off.
“What is it?” A piece of shredded lettuce shot out of Wren’s mouth and landed on the table in front of him.
“My dad tried to cut me a check. Slip it into my palm like some sort of mobster. Can you believe that?”
“That’s amazing. How much?” She lit up.
“No, Wren, it was not amazing.” It was patronizing, insulting, and infantilizing.
Like Arthur couldn’t take care of his own life, his own family.
Like he hadn’t been scrimping and saving for years to prepare himself for this phase of life.
He’d worn holes in almost every pair of socks he owned just to make sure the baby would have enough bibs—which, come to think of it, he had forgotten to buy—and the absolute gall of his father to think he didn’t have things under control.
He didn’t, to be clear, but still—the gall!
The offer had also come with a lecture on cutting back on “luxuries,” like Netflix, his cell phone, and the odd dinner out. Like any of that was going to make a difference.
“It doesn’t matter, I wouldn’t take it.”
“You’re kidding. Why not?” She shook her head disapprovingly. “If I know anything, it’s that when people feel like being generous, you should let them.”
“It’s not generous, it’s…Can you just be on my side here?” She always did this, especially with his parents. Saw them with rose-colored glasses. Why couldn’t she see that this was a passive-aggressive power move? Her insistence on seeing and believing the best in people could really be obnoxious.
“OK, I’m on your side,” she said, hands up in surrender, then miming zipping her lips shut, locking them together, and throwing away the key.
“Thank you for lying. I just wanted to tell you, in the interest of not keeping secrets. But to your earlier point, we are absolutely ready. We took those classes, practiced our diapering and swaddling. Met pediatricians. What else is there?”
Wren spoke but refused to open her lips. All that came out were stifled mumbles, as if her mouth was duct-taped shut.
“Still locked, right,” Arthur said, reaching over with his own imaginary key and opening her lips back up, zipping them free.
“Ah, thank God. It was getting hard to breathe.” She took a few dramatic, labored breaths. Arthur rolled his eyes. “I was trying to say, we haven’t talked about names. Not once.”
“My mom was grilling you about baby names? We decided not to find out the sex, so…”
“Yeah, but shouldn’t we have a short list or something?”
“OK, so let’s make a short list.”
Wren paused. “But I don’t wanna.”
“OK…I’m confused.”
“She was asking about my birth plan, Arthur. What the fuck is a birth plan?! My plan is to push the baby out and not die. That was like the best-case scenario a hundred years ago; I didn’t know I needed more than that.”
“Did you say that to her?”
“No, because then she started asking me about gentle parenting versus authoritative, and burping techniques for stubborn gas, which just…ew. And was I going to breastfeed exclusively or not at all or a mix? And I had no idea what to say about anything.”
“Well, she’s overly inquisitive and involved; we know that about her.”
“Or maybe she could just tell that we needed help. That I needed help. She was being nice, I think. Wasn’t she?”
Arthur sighed. “She loves you, Wren. You’re like the daughter she never had.”
“Really?”
“Believe me, she never stops talking about it.” His mom had never explicitly verbalized her disappointment at never having a girl, but when Arthur was growing up, it was impossible not to notice.
He was always uncomfortable with the forlorn sort of way she’d look at his short hair.
Always trying to coax him into watching rom-coms with her or attending Shania Twain concerts.
“And as her de facto daughter you’re going to have to master the art of not trying to interpret her motives and just tuning her out when she gets pushy. ”
Wren balled up her sandwich wrapper, picked completely clean, and chucked it in the nearby trash can.
“Whatever, either way, she’s right! Our bedroom, for example.
Like, that’s what we’re bringing our baby home to?
Why haven’t I been nesting? I keep waiting for this magic maternal instinct to kick in and make me give a shit about burping and blowouts and nursery aesthetics and it just… I feel nothing.”
As much as Arthur wanted to reassure and soothe Wren, he could relate to what she was feeling. The surprise visit from his parents had rocked him, too, left him feeling horribly inadequate.
“So you know how me and my dad disappeared for a while?”
“Yeah, thanks for that, by the way.”
“Well, he found out that our bathroom sink was dripping, and I told him I’d call the leasing office.
And he said, ‘Why wait for those bums?’ And he dragged me out to the hardware store and we bought this little rubber thing called a gasket—I thought he said we were going to get a casket at first; you should have been inside my head for that one—and we came back and he asked me where my toolbox was. ”
“You don’t have a toolbox.”
“Exactly. So that was humiliating. But lucky me, he had his in the Airstream, because of course, and so he popped our faucet open and fixed the leak in like five minutes.”
“Wow.”
He’d imagined himself growing gracefully into the role of “man of the house”—whatever that really meant.
Someone in the family had to have the know-how to occasionally wield a set of pliers, and if there was anyone more hopeless than Arthur, it was Wren.
She was competent enough, it wasn’t that, but he knew she could have lived with the dripping faucet until the Earth simply ran out of water.
Stuff like that just didn’t bother her. So that left it up to Arthur.
During the brief visit, though, it was deflating to see just how far he really had to go.
Not just when it came to fixing things: His dad had always made good money, provided, knew the right way to handle every situation. Arthur was just…Arthur.
“You know, it’s not too late to become a plumber,” Wren added. “You’ve got the butt crack for it.”
“Thanks.”
Wren reached across the table and grabbed his hand with hers. It was so warm. She’d been running hot lately, which had really emphasized the inadequacy of their air-conditioning unit this summer. But right now it felt nice against his own nervously clammy skin.
“You’re being too hard on yourself, like always. Maybe you’re not your dad. But I like you.” She had read his mind. Always could.
Arthur sighed. “I guess it’s not a fair comparison.
When my dad was my age, he had already served in the navy, seen the whole world, and started his own contracting business.
Plus you could buy a big house in the suburbs back then for, like, forty nickels.
The money went farther. The world was so different. ”
“I’m telling you, if women could vote, I would so go back.” Wren sighed.
“OK, my parents aren’t that old.”
“You about ready to go?” She laughed.
He nodded, and go they did. They stood up, exited Sub Shop, made a sharp right, and moments later opened the door to the Mad Cow Creamery two doors down. Its frigid, vanilla-scented air was welcome relief from the hot, oniony atmosphere of the previous stop.
“I’ll grab the table and spoons,” Arthur said as Wren approached the counter.
“You want anything tonight?”
“I’m so full I could explode. I literally don’t know how you do this.”
It had become their ritual. Some nights they even had queso at the Salsa Casita, hitting the three spots in succession like the Big Bad Wolf laying waste to the piggies’ homes.
Admittedly, eating out like this was more expensive than cooking at home, and Arthur hated spending the money.
(In this economy?! he joked whenever Wren wanted to go out.
But he wasn’t really joking. He usually ruled the budget with an iron fist, but there was also a much more serious cost to consider of not keeping the pregnant lady happy.) On the plus side, due to some kind of mailing list error, they received multiple copies of the local coupon mailer every week and always had one freebie or another coming their way. They made it work.
Soon, Wren sat down with a tremendous caramel-drizzled sundae piled up to her chin and dug in.
“I’m serious,” Arthur said. “I know you’re eating for two, but it’s still impressive. Maybe you should go for a spot on the wall.”
Wren’s jaw dropped. “I’ve been telling you that for years!
Look at all these losers,” she said, gesturing to the wall: a row of yellowing portraits featuring customers who’d been able to finish the famous three-pound sundae named the Heifer.
The cheery, optimistic before pictures and the bloated but triumphant afters.
“I could have outeaten any of them, and that’s before I got pregnant.
Now? Not a single person on this wall could hold my jock. But you never let me do it.”
“Whoa, let you? It costs thirty dollars to even try, and what do you get? Your photo on the wall and diarrhea?”
Wren’s eyes flew open, and she put her spoon down. She wasn’t done eating, so the move caught Arthur by surprise. Pregnant Wren was not known for taking breaks mid-meal.
“What are you doing?”
“Shut up, I need total silence. I have a nugget of an idea and I’m trying to sift it out of the brain fog. I think it’s a good one.”
“What is—”
“Arthur, if I lose this idea, I’m gonna make you do maternity photos with me in a pumpkin patch.”
Arthur zipped his lips and watched nervously as Wren paced and chewed at her fingernails for some time, periodically mumbling to herself. Suddenly, she spun around to face him.
“I’ve got it,” she said. “I know what we have to do.”