Chapter 11
When Will had fallen asleep in their hotel following the concert, the glow from the TV acting as a night-light, he’d felt good. The whole show had been great, as evidenced by the fact that when he’d asked Rachel if she wanted to sit down and take a rest, she’d just started singing even harder. Neither of them had sat once.
But he’d gotten something more too. Clarity, maybe, or the beginnings of it, when it came to that question he’d had about how to talk to their future kid about faith. Perhaps it was just about being aware of those things out there, like listening to live music with several thousand other people, that let you feel connected to something bigger than yourself, which in turn opened you up to both our shared humanity and the limits to what we, as humans, can fully understand.
Then there was the song Gretchen Grayson had dedicated to her two-year-old daughter, who, she informed the crowd, was asleep for the night on the tour bus.
“My ex-husband says I’m a bad influence,” she’d said before she’d started playing. “I told him, ‘God, I hope so.’”
The entire pavilion had erupted in cheers, and Will and Rachel had smiled at each other, the idea that being a good parent didn’t mean being a perfect person seeming to hit them both as simple yet profound. It had been a warm, reassuring thought to drift off to.
Unfortunately, however, as is so often the case with the things that bring us comfort, 6:30 a.m. can make last night seem like a million years ago. Especially when you wake up to your wife talking hurriedly in her sleep. He was still groggy when he heard her say:
“I quit.”
That’s what Will thought he heard, anyway. It was surrounded by a lot of indistinguishable muttering, and he wasn’t fully awake enough to trust that his ears had gotten it right.
Regardless, he was fully awake now and spent the next hour staring at the ceiling, thinking Quit what? while attempting to convince himself this further justified his recent engagement in some light identity theft.
“You awake?” Rachel asked at 7:30 a.m. when the Taylor Swift alarm finally rang, but not until Taylor had gotten through the first chorus. Rachel considered cutting her off any earlier to be a crime against nature and good taste.
“I’ve been up for the last hour trying to figure out how to teach our child to blow their nose,” Will said. This was true too. It had been a real witch’s brew of anxiety.
“That seems pressing.”
“Like, how do you explain it to them? The only way to describe it is to say to blow air out of their nose, but that’s like saying you have to breathe by breathing.”
“Okay. No one teaches you how to breathe, either. So you just do it.”
“Right. You just do it. But does blowing your nose work the same way? I don’t think so. I think you have to learn how. Which means someone has to teach you. Ergo my concern. And if you don’t learn, do you get, like, sinus infections or something?”
There was a pause while Rachel shifted under the covers so she could look right at him.
“You’ve really been thinking about this since six thirty?” she asked.
“Well, not the whole time. I was also thinking about the first night we ever spent together.”
Also true. A lot can go through your head in an hour in the dark.
She smiled. “Halloween, junior year. I think I was ready like three months before you. Turns out all it took was a Princess Peach costume showing a non-Nintendo-approved amount of cleavage.”
“If you’d known about my secret Bowser fetish, we wouldn’t have made it past Labor Day.”
“You know, you’re incredibly lucky you found someone who knows what you just said wasn’t serious.”
“Fair point. But as great as our first time was—”
“Whoa,” Rachel said, her nose crinkling skeptically. “Just great? I remember the look on your face afterwards. Great wishes it could elicit that kind of reaction.”
Will pulled her in so she was right up against him, and she laughed as she hooked her right leg over his. He started to rub his hand gently back and forth over her leggings.
“Amazing,” he said. “Fantastic. Life affirming. But in this case, I was actually thinking about the first time I slept over at your apartment. It was like one o’clock in the morning, and we had just finished watching I Love You, Man.”
“A criminally underrated film if there ever was one.”
“Yes, your thoughts on Jason Segel are well documented. Anyway, we were both falling asleep on your couch, and when I got up to leave, you were like ‘Why don’t you just stay?’ You were so out of it, I knew it wasn’t about sex. It was about being near each other and not having to say goodbye. It felt ... I don’t know, thrilling. Like neither one of us wanted to be anywhere else in the world except there with each other. Is that corny?”
Rachel looked up at him from his chest. “A little. But it’s also one of the most romantic things you’ve ever said to me. And that’s saying something.”
There was a flash in his mind, an impulse.
Ask her. Right now. Ask her if she’s sure she doesn’t want to at least take the interview.
But then Rachel leaned in to kiss him, with things progressing quickly from there, and his upright intentions vanished.
Now’s not the right time, anyway,he told himself, his last thoughts before the feel of her completely overwhelmed him. We’ve got this whole week first.
Even after years of being together, when they were together, with hardly anything left to surprise them, they were just as focused on one another as they had been that first time on Halloween dressed as Peach and Obi-Wan Kenobi (the Ewan McGregor 2000s version). And in a hotel room where the only neighbors who might overhear you were people you’d never see again, if you ever saw them in the first place, that focus got a little ... louder than usual.
Once things had quieted down, they lay back next to each other in a swirl of sheets. He reached out and rested his hand atop her wrist, but they remained quiet for a minute or two. Based on everything he’d ever read or heard, becoming parents wasn’t typically a boon for any couple’s sex life. So while he hoped she’d still look at him the same way after the baby arrived, the possibility that she wouldn’t scared him a little.
“Well, I don’t know about you,” Will eventually said when he’d put the lid back on those fears, “but I thought that was great.”
Rachel pulled her pillow out from under her head and whacked him with it. “I’m taking a shower. And then I was promised brunch.”
Will pushed the pillow off his face wearing a big grin, and she kissed him on the forehead before climbing out of bed and walking noiselessly across the carpeted floor toward the bathroom.
He unplugged his phone on the nightstand. He was going to see if he could put their name in ahead of time at any of the restaurants he’d looked at. At least that was his intention. Checking the phony email he had created for Rachel right after they’d been so intimate with one another somehow felt dirty. Besides, there’d been nothing when he’d looked when he went to the bathroom at the concert or when they’d gotten back to the room afterward, and now it was still too early on Sunday morning.
But he couldn’t help himself. Which was why he saw Beatriz hadn’t written back that morning.
It had been late Saturday night, California time.
Hi, Rachel—
So glad you wrote when you did—I think we can still make this work. I’ll send you more details on Monday.
Thank you!
Beatriz
“Forgot the shampoo,” Rachel said. Will hadn’t noticed her reemerge into the little foyer area by the door and was startled enough to drop his phone into the comforter. The room was so dark from the hotel-grade curtains that she couldn’t see his surprise or the guilty look on his face. “Oh, and I’m feeling waffles this morning, so please bear that in mind.”
“Will do,” he said, picking the phone up as she went back into the bathroom and shut the door. Until Beatriz had responded, what he’d done hadn’t quite seemed real. As an IT guy, he knew that the amount people talked about email “eating” the messages they were either supposed to have sent or received grossly overstated how often this actually happened. And yet spam filters did exist, and if his email had been intercepted by Beatriz’s, it would have been like he’d never sent it.
But once he knew she’d read it, it would make Rachel look bad if “she” didn’t respond.
Rachel, who had been talking in her sleep about quitting what he could only assume was her job at the university.
He’d made his decision, and there was no escaping what he’d done now. His only option was to make it work.
Will waited until he heard the shower turn on before tapping out a quick response, as his wife, saying Sounds great—thank you.
Then he hit send and told himself not to look back.
After waffles at a place in the Third Ward and a CVS stop to load up on snacks, which went in the suddenly and weirdly significant Seurat tote, they left Milwaukee and headed for Mackinac Island. Under normal conditions, they would’ve crossed from Wisconsin into Michigan just inside the three-hour mark. However, they hit construction in the form of an extended lane closure and were about an hour behind that schedule.
“Where are we?” Rachel asked, having nodded off listening to an NPR podcast while they were stuck in traffic. “Is this the Upper Peninsula?”
“No, not yet,” Will said. “But we’re really close. And that’s not just the GPS and the road signs talking. There was a billboard a minute ago for a motel with fish-cleaning stations, so I think it’s safe to say we’ve left the trappings of big-city life far behind.”
Rachel stretched her legs out from under her and put her feet back on the floor. “Progress, thy name is fish guts,” she said with a sleepy smile.
They rode along in silence for several minutes as she continued to wake up, driving through Marinette, Wisconsin, and then crossing over a bridge and officially entering Michigan through Menominee.
“I have to admit I’m disappointed it’s the same welcome sign as it is at the Ohio-Michigan border,” Will said.
“Well, it is the same state.”
“I know. But this feels like it should be more of a ... a big to-do. Certainly a bigger to-do than what I can get outside Toledo.”
“I think it is. Look at that view.”
Rachel was right. Lake Michigan, specifically Green Bay, was outside of their windows now, and as they left the town on M-35, it became a rolling landscape off to the right of the car, jutting up disconcertingly close to the two-lane road at some points and then disappearing behind the tree line at others. It felt like they were passing through a nature preserve, just one with beach houses and cottages scattered here and there. Even the roadkill seemed majestic thanks to what they were pretty sure was a bald eagle diving down to scavenge it.
“Well, cell service is gone for the time being,” Rachel said. “You wanna play the alphabet game?”
“Sure. But only because there are basically no signs anywhere on this road, and you can’t claim victory unless you make it through z.”
“A in lake,” Rachel said without hesitation, pointing to the TIMMONS FAMILY LAKE HOUSE sign below what was presumably the Timmons’s mailbox.
“This may have been a bad—” Will started. “Ooh, a in place, on that street sign.”
“Nice. Hey, you know another thing I really loved about the concert? The way she talked about being a mom. Like, if she can be a touring musician and figure it out, I’m sure we can figure out day care. Maybe that sounds fan-girly, but it made all that’s coming seem a little less intimidating.”
Will smiled like he had in the stands the night before, not just because of the memory of that moment but also because Rachel sounded like someone rediscovering her confidence.
“B in Escanaba,” Rachel said. Escanaba was the next main town they’d go through, and sure enough, there was a sign telling them it was 34 miles away. “I also got some ideas for my next tattoo.”
He looked over at her, surprised. “I didn’t know you wanted another tattoo.”
“I kind of like the idea of having one on the inside of my left arm, but I’ve been coming up empty on inspiration. Until last night. She had that logo with the vines growing through her initials? Something like that, but maybe with flowers. I’d have to draw it to know for sure.”
“Love it,” he said, squeezing her hand and patting himself on the back once more for pushing her to get the first one. “Hey, while we’re in Ann Arbor, maybe we could go to that place you wanted to try when we were in college.”
“C in Carters.”
“Damn these mailboxes!” Will said, which made her laugh.
“I love that idea,” Rachel said, “but when my doctor saw my other one, she got this real disapproving look and made a point of telling me that it’s not that pregnant women can’t get tattoos, but she wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. Now, as you know, normally with tattoos, I’m all about drawing the ire of my elders. But when it comes to the baby being healthy, I don’t want to take any chances.”
Will didn’t know enough about tattooing to understand what the specific risks would be, or even if they were that significant. But he still felt like he should’ve known better, and just hearing the phrase “baby being healthy” began to take his mind down that path of what would happen if he or she wasn’t, or if something happened to Rachel during birth. Again, he was short on specifics, the image he was imagining hazy, but it’s often in the haze that foreboding and fear do their most effective work.
“D in Dolly’s,” Rachel said as a small bar wedged between the road and the water appeared in front of them. It was the first business they’d passed in miles.
“Maybe we could go back to Ann Arbor after the baby is born,” Will said, trying to push through whatever he was picturing. “You know, so you could get the tattoo then.”
“Yeah, that’s an idea. Although it seems silly to go all that way just for that. Too bad it won’t work this week. That would’ve been really cool.”
Her mild disappointment coupled with the grip of his grim imagination called for something unexpected to combat them both.
Will glanced at her.
“Or,” he said, dragging the one syllable out for dramatic effect.
“Uh-oh. I know that face. That’s your I-have-an-idea-that-my-wife-is-going-to-roll-her-eyes-at-for-legitimate-reasons face.”
“What if I get a tattoo at that place while we’re in Ann Arbor?”
“You? Babe, no offense, but you can’t look at the needle when you get your flu shot.”
“First of all,” he said, resting his wrists on the steering wheel and making a one with his index finger, “B in bar.”
“From the Dolly’s sign?” Rachel asked incredulously. “No. Disallowed.”
“What? Why?”
“The sign is no longer in view, which violates the most basic rule of the alphabet game. Plus I already took the d from that sign, and you know how I feel about double-dipping.”
“These are special M-35 rules on account of the fact that neither one of us will be able to finish before we get to Mackinac.”
Rachel thought about that for a second. “Wanna make it interesting?” she said.
Will knew her mischievous smile meant there was a good chance he was going to come to regret this, but he couldn’t resist her. Particularly not when she was clearly enjoying herself and the trip.
“What do you propose?”
“If I can get through the entire alphabet before we get to the hotel—playing by the real rules handed down to us by the alphabet-game gods, not your made-up blasphemy—then not only do you have to get the tattoo, but I get to pick what it says.”
“Okay,” he said, thinking out loud. “My second of all was going to be that I totally watched the needle at my last flu shot, so I think I’m more than prepared for the pain.”
She smirked. “Sure you are.”
“And in terms of you picking, you’d have to live with me having gotten whatever it is, so I’m fine with that. My only condition is that it’s text only, so no pictures of, like, that bald eagle eating a squirrel.”
“Agreed.”
“And what do I get if you lose?”
She leaned across the center console and put her hand on the inside of his thigh. “Remember when I said I hadn’t ruled out sex in the botanical gardens, and you assumed I was joking?” she whispered in his ear.
He swallowed hard. “Uh-huh.”
“If I lose, it turns out I wasn’t.” She kissed his earlobe, and it took a heroic act of concentration for him to keep the car steady behind a pickup that looked like it belonged in a monster-truck rally.
“Deal,” he managed to say.
“Oh, and, Will?” Rachel was still whispering.
“Yeah?”
“E on that truck’s license plate,” she said with a laugh as she pulled away.
Somehow in the midst of seducing him, Rachel had clocked another letter, a testament to just how likely it was Will was going to lose the bet and have to count on his wife’s aversion to permanently and embarrassingly defacing the person she woke up next to every day. Given they were both distracted, it took them an extra beat to notice what else was on that truck, plastered prominently in its back window: a decal evoking a stick figure family, except the parents were a pair of assault rifles and the kids were three handguns. It was right next to a Jesus fish.
“Well, this took a depressing turn,” Will said. “I mean, beyond my impending defeat.”
Rachel sighed. “Just another day in the USA.”
The conversation around guns had always boggled Will’s mind a little bit. He didn’t begrudge someone wanting to own a rifle to go hunting, but the argument that the Second Amendment gave people unfettered access to assemble their own armories seemed a particularly egregious violation of common sense. Nobody was making the case that civilians should have tanks and fighter planes (well, a few probably were), so how could anyone possibly think giving them automatic weapons was a good idea?
But as upsetting as it all was, it was too easy to feel like it was removed from his reality—until he knew he’d be a dad. Now every school shooting and lockdown drill he read about left him feeling like they’d miscalculated in thinking they could ever provide a kid with something resembling a childhood.
It was a lot to hang on one truck, whose plate was from out of state. And even if it had been local, it was still just one person’s opinion. It would’ve been unfair to take it as speaking for an entire region.
Yet an uneasy silence fell over the car, exacerbated by the intermittent cell service. They were still in a dead zone, which pointed to the ways the alphabet game and their flirtation could give way to some truly unsettling circumstances within a matter of seconds.
“What do you think someone does if their car breaks down on this road?” Will asked, purposefully redirecting from the truck’s decal and framing his question to be about some unknown third party rather than him and Rachel so as to keep the thought exercise from hitting too close to home with their current situation. “I’ve seen, like, one gas station this entire stretch, and assuming there’s no phone, what’s left? Walking up to someone’s house and asking for help?”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“Can you imagine that? Rolling the dice on who answers the front door and their views on firearms and/or trespassing? I’m stressed just thinking about it.”
“Me too. And we’re white. There’s a lot less Get Out potential for us.”
Will didn’t know what to say to that. Because what was there to add? There were things that their son or daughter would one day ask about, and they’d have to try to answer to the best of their ability, knowing full well as they did that those answers would be unsatisfactory, never fitting neatly into a Disney movie–style resolution. It was different from wondering how you’d answer the God question. Because for all the advantages this country brought—and to be sure, Will knew there were many—these types of issues surfaced a sense of despair in him about the state of society and their kid’s safety as a part of it.
He supposed he could’ve said that and shared more with Rachel about how nervous he was that he wasn’t up to the challenge of parenting—you know, in terms that didn’t involve tissues and boogers. He’d in fact felt himself edging up to that line just a minute or two earlier in the wake of seeing the truck.
But he couldn’t bring himself to get the words out. He knew that might’ve made it easier, wrestling with the darkness together rather than letting it fester alone.
He just didn’t know how to say he was scared their child might go to school one day and not come home and still tell people he was excited to be a dad.
They both watched the trees flashing by on either side of the road for a while. When they passed a homemade sign advertising fireworks for the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, Rachel didn’t bother to call out the f. Will didn’t think she’d given up on the game. If he’d had to guess, she just needed some time before she was ready to play again. It was a shared sentiment.
He reached for her hand, and they drove on.