34. Bonnie
BONNIE
Ifind the suitcase while looking for the summer sheets.
It is under the bed, pushed farther back than I remember, with one of Cricket’s missing socks caught beneath a wheel. I pull it out and sit on the floor. The case is empty except for the pillowcase I used to wrap my jacket when I left Texas, and the folder I put underneath it last July.
I open the folder. The lawyer’s questions are there in my handwriting: where the baby will live, who pays for what, whether I am staying in Colorado, what I want from him.
When I wrote them, every one had a blank after it.
I read down the page now, and I could answer each one without getting up.
I close the folder and put it back under the pillowcase.
Today is May seventeenth. A year ago, Beryl put my bags in her truck while I tried to reach the passenger door without turning back.
My phone has brought up a picture Cleo took of the cottage before I moved in. I set it beside me on the rug.
Cricket is awake in the next room, talking to herself. I go to her crib and bring her back to sit with me on the rug. She finds the suitcase handle immediately. Everything in the world is worth investigating if I have just touched it.
“We came with that,” I tell her. “You were smaller.”
She pulls at the handle. I move her away before it can fold on her fingers and give her the clean sock instead.
Gage is coming for dinner. I asked him this morning, and he said yes. I have been thinking about the question I want to ask him for weeks. The answer no longer changes when I am tired or angry. I want to live with him.
I am afraid too. I take Cricket next door and tell Cleo both things while she chops vegetables.
“You want me to talk you into it?” she asks.
“No.”
“Out of it?”
“No.”
She puts down the knife and turns toward me. I laugh and shift Cricket to my other hip.
“I want you to know before I ask him.”
“Then I’m glad you told me.”
“I’m staying here.”
“I hoped you would. You still owe me three afternoons of babysitting.”
“I owe you much more than that.”
She shakes her head. “You’re my friend, Bonnie.”
I look at her kitchen, at the little truck by the back door and the dishes we have passed between our houses for a year.
“I love you,” I say.
She comes around the counter and hugs me with Cricket between us. My daughter complains, and we laugh while making room for her.
“I love you too,” Cleo says. “Now take a bowl of this before I put too much onion in it for your husband.”
Back at the cottage, I put the suitcase away and leave the pillowcase folded on top of it. Then I take the jacket down from the closet and sit on the rug, the lining open across my knees. Five letters are done. The last E has its upright and nothing else.
Cricket crawls over and gets a fistful of fringe. I trade her the clean sock for it and thread the needle.
The E needs three short bars. I put them in one at a time, her hand patting my shin, the silver pulling through blue. At the last stitch I knot off, bite the thread, and hold the collar up to the window. BONNIE, in my own hand. The stitches are uneven.
When Gage arrives, I am cooking rice and Cricket is playing in the playpen we set up beside the sitting room. He kisses me, then crouches to greet her. She pulls herself up against him, delighted by a person who will stay still while she uses him for balance.
“You’re getting strong,” he tells her.
I watch them until the rice boils over.
“Dinner may be late.”
He gets up to help. We finish cooking together, eat at the table, and let Cricket make a mess with the parts of dinner prepared for her. I wait until she is down for the evening in her crib before I ask him to sit with me on the sofa.
I take his hand and turn toward him.
“I want you to live here.”
He does not answer immediately. I can feel him keeping still beside me.
“With you?”
I laugh, a little wetly. “That’s usually what I mean when I ask you to come over.”
He brings my hand to his mouth and kisses it. Then he puts it back between us so he can look at me.
“Yes,” he says. “I want that.”
“I know the cottage’s small.”
“It’s a good house.”
“It is. I’m not asking to move back to Texas.”
“I understand.”
“My program stays mine. I’ll come to your events when I want to and when my work allows. I don’t want us assuming my time’s the flexible part.”
He nods. “We’ll both have to work the schedule.”
“And if we’re angry with each other, Cricket still gets both of us. I can’t have every argument become a question about who’s helping tomorrow.”
“She will.”
I stop because I have reached the end of what I needed to say and could keep talking for another hour out of fear. He waits until I am quiet.
“I want you to be able to tell me when something’s wrong.”
“I told you before I left.”
“You did. I didn’t listen.” He holds my hand more firmly. “I have to listen when I don’t like what I’m hearing.”
“I need you to let me finish.”
“I will.”
I lean against him. He puts his arm around me, and we sit for a while.
“I want the good parts too,” I say eventually.
“Which ones?”
“You at breakfast. You telling me why a horse advertised as quiet is absolutely not quiet. Dinner I don’t have to eat over the sink.”
He laughs against my hair. “I can do all of that.”
“And you in my bed.”
His arm closes gently around me. “I was hoping that was included.”
I turn to kiss him. He kisses me back until I begin crying, and for once I do not resent the tears. I have missed holding him like this. I draw him closer on the sofa.
“Do you know what day it is?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says.
“You knew?”
“I remember the truck leaving.”
I touch his cheek. “I remember being in it.”
We stay close for a while. Then he kisses me again, and I let the present have my attention.
We decide he can fetch enough things to stay tonight and move the rest gradually. He will keep his lease while we work out the practical changes. I have room in the closet. I cleared it three days ago and did not tell him.
When he sees the empty shelf, he starts laughing and crying at the same time.
“You could’ve mentioned this.”
“I was busy being brave.”
He pulls me close. I stay against him beside the closet until I can face making room in the bathroom too.
That night, his toothbrush stands beside mine. His boots are by the door. When Cricket wakes, we both hear her. He gets up first because I have already begun to sit up and he knows I will keep doing it unless he moves.
I listen to him speak to our daughter in the next room. Then I lie back on the pillow and wait for my husband to come to bed.