Chapter Thirty-Five #3
The miracle that gets lost in all of this is Moth himself, that I found him, that we found each other.
Much is made about the miracle of love, but from a place of expectation, even entitlement, not unlike the miracle of babies born to people we expect to have babies.
But I would argue, miracle-wise, Moth is closer to pregnant septuagenarian than pregnant twenty-two-year-old.
It’s not that he came so long after I’d stopped looking for him.
It’s not that he returned to me what I’d surrendered prematurely.
It’s not that he is all I ever wanted, everything I dreamed, my perfect someone arrived at last. It is that he is beyond what I had ever even thought to imagine.
Next time we make this drive, we will bring him with us.
The time after that, you two will stay home together, and he will spend those two days doing science experiments before your wondering eyes.
I will return from the long drive to applesauce on the ceiling, watermelon on the walls, the kitchen floor sticky with orange pulp, and your pealing laughter, not the laugh of a baby, the laugh of a daughter whose father explodes fruit for her.
Eventually, he will use these trips to pass on more practical skills.
He will teach you to roller-skate on the terra-cotta corridor of the hotel.
He will teach you butterfly in the pool where we briefly lost then found Lola very early on the morning of your birth.
That he won’t quite be able to perform these athletic feats himself will not impede his helping you master them.
In fact, it will feel that much more special to you that you’re able to do so.
Eventually, I will give up my license—my decision this time—and instead do paperwork and instead do intake calls and instead do ride-alongs.
Eventually, it will no longer be necessary for anyone to make this drive.
In the meantime, though, Alice will run for—and win—the seat representing District 47 in the Texas House of Representatives.
There, she will enjoy a great many victories, though most gratifying, she will report, is listening respectfully to her detractors then socratically kicking their asses up and down the aisles.
From there, she says, “Sky’s the fucking limit. ”
In the meantime, Dr. Kim will become associate dean of academic affairs at the medical school of the university. There, she will revamp the coursework on reproductive issues and implications, diversified women’s health innovations, and aging minds and bodies.
In the meantime, Max will quit his incomprehensible corporate gig and get a job on the communications team at She’s Worldwide where he will patiently steer their campaigns toward choice over pathos, breadth over beauty, equal and honest representation over the exploited and manipulative kind.
In the meantime, Darcy will map out and manage a twelve-point, eight-adult childcare plan, which, among other things, gives your father and me two nights off a week, dispatches cheerleaders to Oliver and Pierre’s Author Celebration Days and other school events during the legislative session, supervises Lola when she’s not participating in a growing list of extracurriculars and Sari when she and her first boyfriend are taking advantage of said extracurriculars to have the house to themselves.
Moth and I pick the twins up from school three days a week.
Roger and Maisie alternate taking you and the girls out for brunch every Sunday morning.
You and your big brother have a standing Friday night movie/slumber party you will both observe with the unwavering devotion of religious rite for many years to come.
He will begin your arm-wrestling training regimen before your second birthday. It will be nirvanic.
In the meantime, I looked at April, and she looked at me. We both had tears in our eyes and on our faces, but we didn’t say anything. You woke because the car stopped but seemed unperturbed, yawned, looked around. Lightly started singing a song in a Bob-babble only you understood.
April glanced back at you. “She’s really sweet,” she said.
“She knows,” I laughed.
“My mom says … Well, she says Bob’s a miracle. She says Bob’s a weird name for a girl, and like she needed the burden of that her whole life in addition to everything else, but she says she’s a miracle for sure. That since you’re, you know …”
“Old,” I supplied.
“Bob can only be a miracle.”
I smiled. Waited.
“But she’s not one of those people who think all kids are miracles,” April continued.
“No?” I said neutrally.
“Like she’s never thought I was one. That’s why I couldn’t tell her about …” She waved around the top of her jeans. “Not because she thinks all babies are miracles. Because she doesn’t. Sometimes she doesn’t even like me?”
“I’m sure she loves you.” I wasn’t. But it was a good guess for a mom.
“She does,” April said softly. “I know she does. But it’s not the same as liking.”
“To be honest”—I considered how to put it kindly—“I think it fluctuates. Children are hard. Sometimes really, really hard.”
“I just—” She started and broke off, and I thought she wouldn’t continue, and she didn’t need to. I understood. And also, I didn’t need to understand. But then she said, “I want another chance. To be a good kid. Someone she likes.”
“You are a good kid.” I could tell.
“And to be a kid,” she added.
I reached over and squeezed her hand.
Suddenly she twisted in her seat and threw her arms around me. “Thank you,” she whispered, hot and urgent in my ear. “For everything. You’re saving my life.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. It is good, a mitzvah, to save a life. “I’m glad I could help.”
Though we were going in with her, spending the night with her, driving her home tomorrow, she turned around anyway and said, “Thanks for coming, Bob.”
You gazed back at her and crumpled up your nose and said, “Da,” meaning “No problem,” meaning “My pleasure,” meaning “I’ve got you.
” Meaning yes. Yes to April, yes to the clinic, yes to leaving when leaving is necessary.
Yes to fighting when fighting is necessary.
Yes to helping those who need help and those you can help.
Yes to being brave. Yes to telling your own damn story.
Yes, you said, to your own unlikely, much-heralded, astonishing, ineffable, miraculous life.
“Da,” you said, and it was just the beginning.
That’s where it all started.