17. Heidi
HEIDI
Beau forgets his gloves on the coldest afternoon we have chosen to leave the house.
He remembers Ivy's spare blanket, the cover for the stroller and the small bag I left beside Mom's door. His own hands are red before we reach the river.
“An impressive survival strategy,” I tell him.
“I've built houses in worse weather.”
“Did the houses appreciate your bravery?”
“Some of them were very moved.”
I stop the stroller and search the basket. Mom has put her spare mittens in with the blanket. They are enormous, thick wool with pink flowers worked across the backs.
I hand them over.
Beau looks at the flowers. Then at me.
“Your mother loves me.”
“Her feelings are complicated. Her commitment to warm fingers is absolute.”
He puts them on. The mittens make his hands look like the paws of an unusually decorative bear. I start laughing and cannot stop quickly enough to be dignified.
He raises both hands. “I could still frighten a subcontractor.”
“With the prospect of matching hats.”
Ivy sleeps through our conversation, unimpressed by the entertainment budget. I tuck the edge of her blanket more securely, then start walking again.
It is the second Saturday in November. The river has gone brown beneath the bare trees, and wet leaves stick to the path. My body is healing, but it still tells me when I have been standing too long. After a short stretch, I steer toward a bench without apologizing for it.
Beau moves the stroller where I can see Ivy's face and sits beside me. Close enough to talk. Far enough that our knees do not touch.
I hate noticing the distance. I hate noticing that I could change it.
Before the photograph at the hospital, I never measured the space between our bodies. Beau reached for my hand and I gave it. I leaned against him when I was tired. His knee touched mine beneath tables because he takes up more room than furniture expects.
Now six inches feels like a decision.
I move my hand along the bench until my little finger touches the wool of his mitten.
He looks down but does not cover it.
“You can hold my hand,” I say.
“Do you want me to?”
“I would not have offered it as a trap.”
“You are capable of sophisticated operations.”
I smile. He turns his flowered palm upward, and I put my hand inside it.
The mitten ruins the intimacy just enough that I can bear it.
“I'm going home next week,” I tell him.
His head turns.
“With Ivy. Mom will stay a couple of nights while I get settled.”
He starts to speak, then stops.
“I'm not ready for you to come home,” I say.
“I know.”
“I needed to say it.”
“I'm glad you did.”
He looks toward the water, then back at me. “Do you want me to bring the things from Suzanne's?”
“Yes. The heavy things.”
“I can do that.”
“You don't need to make the house perfect before we get there.”
His mouth moves. “Too late to cancel the brass band?”
“I'll allow one trumpet if it carries a basket.”
He laughs. I look at the line beside his mouth and remember kissing it to stop him telling a story he had told three times already. Wanting that mouth is immediate and inconvenient.
I pull my scarf closer.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing I'm ready to say.”
A dog passes us carrying a branch considerably wider than the path. Its owner tries to negotiate. The dog refuses all compromise and collides gently with the bench.
Beau lifts his flowered hands in surrender. The owner apologizes. I tell her the branch clearly has somewhere to be.
After they go, I find myself smiling at the empty path.
“This is nice,” I say, then resent the vulnerability of it.
“Yes.”
“You don't have to look as if I've given you a kidney.”
“I was aiming for casual.”
“You missed.”
He looks down at his mittens. “The outfit undermines me.”
The laugh fades slowly this time. I let it.
Then a couple passes with a new baby strapped to the man's chest. The woman is talking with both hands, and he bends his head to hear her. They look tired and untidy and completely certain that they are going home together.
My throat closes.
Beau follows my glance. His face changes, but he does not ask me to explain what we are both seeing.
“I thought this would be us,” I say.
The woman reaches up to straighten the baby's hat. Her partner kisses her fingers before she pulls them away.
I see a hundred small futures at once. Beau carrying the car seat. Beau standing beside me while strangers admire Ivy. Both of us tired enough to argue about whose turn it is to find the clean cloth.
“I practiced installing the base twice,” he says.
I look at him.
“The car seat. I put it in, took it out, and did it again.”
“I know. You made me inspect it.”
“I thought I was getting ready.”
His voice breaks on the last word.
I tighten my hand around his ridiculous mitten.
“So did I.”
“You had a strange way of protecting it.”
“I didn't protect it.”
I look out over the river. The water moves around a fallen branch, fast enough to make a pale curl at the edge.
“I don't want to spend every walk talking about what happened.”
“We don't have to.”
“But sometimes I see something and there it is.”
He nods. “Tell me when it is.”
“You won't enjoy that.”
“No,” he says. “But I want to know where you are.”
Ivy wakes and makes a face beneath her hat. Beau leans toward the stroller.
“Careful,” I tell him. “She doesn't know about the flowers.”
“She'll respect them.”
“She has standards.”
He wiggles one mitten in her field of vision. Ivy studies it with the solemn horror of a critic encountering experimental theater.
I laugh again, and this time it does not feel stolen from the hurt. It feels like a thing happening beside it.
When we stand, Beau starts toward the parking lot. I look at the little footbridge farther along the path.
“Not yet,” I say.
He turns.
“I'd like to see the other side.”
“Are you tired?”
“A bit. We'll stop if I need to.”
“All right.”
I push the stroller toward the bridge. Beau falls into step beside me, and at the narrow part I give him the handle while I walk ahead.
From the other side, I turn back. He is coming toward me in Mom's ridiculous mittens, our daughter tucked beneath her blanket, his hair lifting in the wind.
For a moment I can look at him without looking away.