31. Heidi
HEIDI
Nothing dramatic happens from Wednesday through Saturday.
I go to work. Ivy spits up on a clean top before I have finished fastening it. Mom buys the garden bench a cushion and refuses to hear any criticism of the expense. Beau comes, looks after our daughter, talks to me, leaves.
Those days give me room to discover that the conversation has not disappeared because we stopped having it.
I can still feel his hand around mine. I can still hear him asking for the rest of the birth, the part that was wonderful.
I can still hear him say he felt the phone and did not look.
When the corridor picture comes into my head, it no longer arrives alone.
There is another image beside it now: the two of us on the sofa, Ivy warm between us, Beau listening while I tell him what he missed.
On Sunday morning, I take the hospital photograph out of the separate album and put it with the other pictures of Ivy.
It is a small movement of my thumb. I sit looking at the screen afterward as though I have moved something heavy.
Mom finds me in the kitchen with the phone beside a bowl of cereal that has given up all ambition.
“You've forgotten breakfast.”
“I've been thinking.”
“A dangerous accompaniment.”
She puts Ivy's clean blanket on the chair and sits opposite me. She has come to have the baby while I get a few things done. I have done none of them.
“I want him home,” I say.
Saying it does not produce relief. It produces terror.
Home means access to the bedroom, the kitchen, the hour before dawn when I am too tired to guard what I feel. It means I will stop being able to measure his presence in scheduled visits and watch him leave at the agreed time.
It also means waking with him there.
“I am afraid I'll become the woman who forgave the unforgivable because she missed having someone make tea,” I say.
Mom looks at the cold cup beside me.
“Do you think tea is why you want him?”
“No.”
“Then stop insulting your own reasons.”
“That was stern.”
“You sounded as though you needed stern.”
I laugh, but the fear remains. This time, it feels like fear attached to a choice instead of a warning that I have none.
Mom is quiet.
I look up. “You can say something.”
“I was giving you a chance to hear yourself.”
“I've heard myself all week.”
“And?”
“And I want him home.”
She nods once.
“I know what he did.”
“Yes.”
“I haven't forgotten.”
“I didn't think you had.”
“I know another woman might leave him.”
“Another woman isn't sitting at my daughter's kitchen table.”
I look down at the cereal. There is a little crescent of milk on the rim where I spilled it earlier.
“What if I'm wrong?”
Mom folds her hands around her mug.
“I can't promise you won't get hurt.”
“I know.”
“I also can't promise you won't be lonely if you make the safest-looking choice.”
I let that sit between us.
“I don't want him because Ivy needs two parents in the same house,” I say. “She already has two parents. I want him in my bed. I want to hear him downstairs when I wake up. I want to argue with him about lamps for the next twenty years.”
Mom's mouth curves.
“The lamps have suffered.”
“So have I.”
“Yes, honey.”
Her voice softens enough that my eyes fill.
“I still love him,” I say. “That's the least surprising thing about any of this. But I like him again. I look forward to seeing him. I want to tell him things.”
“Then those are things you know.”
Mom reaches across the table and takes my hand.
“You don't owe me a marriage that ends the way I would choose,” she says. “You don't owe Dash one either.”
“I wasn't worried about Dash.”
“Liar.”
I laugh through the tears.
“He'll be unbearable.”
“He was unbearable before Beau. We have ample evidence.”
I ask Beau to come after lunch.
He arrives with no idea what I mean to say. I can see that in the way he smiles at Ivy first, then at me, his body already turning toward the work of the afternoon.
Mom takes our daughter upstairs. I lead Beau into the kitchen.
“I want you to come home.”
He stops beside the table.
The expression on his face is almost frightening in its openness. Hope, disbelief, something so raw that I have to hold my ground instead of rushing to make it easier for him.
“As my husband,” I say. “Not to help with the nights until I decide what to do with you. I want our marriage.”
He sits down as though his knees have lost their confidence.
“Heidi.”
“I need you to let me finish.”
He nods. His hands are flat on the table.
“I'm still going to have days when I remember and get angry. I don't know how often. I don't want to live with you while pretending that's finished.”
“You won't have to.”
“And I don't want to spend the rest of my life checking whether you're telling me the truth. I can't be your wife and your detective. I need you to do the difficult thing before I find out you've avoided it.”
“Even when the truth makes you look worse,” I say.
“Especially then.”
“Even when I might leave because of it.”
His fingers spread against the table.
“I cannot ask you to choose a marriage I keep editing for my benefit.”
“And if Celeste contacts you?”
“I tell you before I answer anything. If there is a genuine issue involving a child, I route it through April or the appropriate person. I do not become her private support.”
“If your aunt tells you I am being cruel?”
“I tell her she is speaking about my wife and end the conversation if she does not stop.”
“If you resent me?”
He looks startled.
“You are allowed,” I say. “You are not allowed to take the resentment somewhere secret and turn me into a story.”
“Then I tell you badly.”
My mouth trembles. “Yes.”
“Yes.”
He is crying now. Quietly, with no attempt to turn his face away. I have seen him cry over Ivy. Seeing him cry because I want him catches me somewhere I did not expect.
“I want to sleep beside you,” I say. “I want to be able to touch you without weighing it every single time. I want ordinary days.”
“I want them too.”
“You don't get to make them ordinary by never talking about the bad ones.”
“No.”
I pull out the chair opposite him and sit.
“For years I thought being easy to love meant needing as little as possible. I'm tired of that. Sometimes I'm going to need things I can't explain neatly.”
“You can tell me badly,” he says. “You can be angry. I won't make you turn it into a presentation.”
I laugh, wet and surprised. “Your favorite format.”
“I've revised my position.”
We look at each other across the table where we chose baby names, ate hurried breakfasts and let too many conversations be interrupted.
“I don't want you afraid to speak either,” I say. “I don't want a husband who only agrees with me.”
His mouth trembles into a smile. “The lamps remain contested.”
“Good.”
He reaches across the table. I put my hand in his.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you too.”
He bows his head over our hands for a moment. I let him. Then I get up and go around the table because I am tired of furniture between us.
He stands when I reach him. I put my arms around his neck, and he holds me so carefully at first that I pull him closer.
“I'm not made of glass.”
“I know.”
“Then hug me properly.”
He does.
We decide on Wednesday because there are things at the apartment to pack and a few practical calls to make.
It takes minutes, not an afternoon of terms. His clothes will come back to the bedroom.
His books can return to the shelf. We will work out the nights together, as parents who both need sleep.
When Mom brings Ivy down, Beau is still holding my hand.
She sees it and smiles without asking for a statement.
“We've decided he's coming home,” I tell her.
“Then he'll need to help with the laundry,” she says, passing Ivy to him.
Beau laughs through the last of his tears.
“I'd be glad to.”
Our daughter looks from one face to another, unimpressed by an adult development that has delayed her feed.
I touch her cheek. Then I touch Beau's.
“Wednesday,” I say.
He turns his face into my palm and kisses it.
“Wednesday.”