32. Beau
BEAU
Ipack the apartment badly.
There is no other honest way to describe it. I put books in a box meant for shoes, forget the charger plugged in behind the chair, and stand for an unreasonable amount of time holding a saucepan I bought because the place came with nothing I could use to cook.
For months this room has been where I came after leaving my wife. Now I am taking things out of it, and the relief is so large I keep losing track of objects.
Dash arrives to help with the last boxes. He looks at the saucepan in my hand.
“Difficult goodbye?”
“We've been through a lot.”
“Mostly boiling, I'd imagine.”
I smile and put it in the box.
He carries the books downstairs, then comes back for another load. We work without much conversation. There are things he could say to me that would be justified and things I could promise him that would sound good. Neither of us starts there.
When the room is nearly empty, he leans against the doorway.
“She told me.”
“I thought she would.”
“She sounded happy.”
The words make me put down the box carefully.
“I want her to be.”
Dash looks at me for a long moment.
“I know you do. The problem was never that you couldn't want nice things.”
“No.”
He nods and lets the answer stand.
“I love my sister,” he says. “So do something useful with the fact that she loves you.”
“I will.”
He picks up the last box. “Good. Because this one is unnecessarily heavy and I refuse to have moved it for a temporary arrangement.”
I look at him.
“Thank you. For the boxes. And for being there when I wasn't.”
His face closes for a second at the second part.
“I'd always be there for her.”
“I know.”
He waits, then adds, “She wanted you.”
My throat tightens. “She told me.”
Dash studies me, sees something he needs to see, and shifts the box against his hip.
“Then carry the saucepan. Let's go.”
Heidi opens the front door before I reach the step.
She is barefoot in soft pants and the red sweater, Ivy against her shoulder. Her hair has escaped the clip at the back of her head. There is a cloth over one shoulder and a look on her face that makes the box in my arms suddenly impossible to manage.
“Hello,” she says.
“Hello.”
Dash comes up behind me. “Excellent. You've retained language. Can somebody move?”
Heidi laughs and steps aside.
I carry the box into the house.
The place has changed since I lived here. Not in the large ways. The same lamp, the same table, the same mark on the baseboard I keep meaning to fix. But Ivy is everywhere now: the basket of clean clothes, the little toys, the chairs moved aside to make room for her play mat.
“Books there,” she says, pointing. “Clothes upstairs. The saucepan can make its own case.”
Dash looks at me. “She knows.”
“She always does.”
We carry the last things in. Then Dash kisses his sister, makes a face at Ivy and leaves us with the quiet he has deliberately created.
For a moment we stand in the hall looking at each other.
“Are you nervous?” Heidi asks.
“Very.”
“Good. Me too.”
I put down the empty box I am still holding. She shifts Ivy and takes my hand with her free one.
“Come upstairs.”
My side of the closet is open.
One shirt of Heidi's hangs across the dividing line. I touch the sleeve.
“Am I allowed to dispute the border?”
She looks over. “You may file a request.”
“What's the processing time?”
“Three to five business years.”
I laugh, and the sound catches halfway out.
This closet used to irritate me. Shoes migrated. Empty hangers collected on my side. Once, we argued for twenty minutes about whether a chair counted as a legitimate place to keep clean laundry.
I would give anything to have that argument again.
Then I understand that I may. Not the same one, perhaps. Some equally foolish dispute in a month or a year, after enough ordinary days have made room for it.
I move her shirt gently to her side and hang mine beside it.
There is room. Not one shelf cleared as a warning, not a drawer I must interpret. Room for the things I wear, the shoes I forget to put away, the evidence of a man living with his wife.
Heidi puts Ivy in the bassinet beside our bed and sits while I hang up shirts. She watches me struggle with two hangers tangled together.
“You build actual houses.”
“These are a different discipline.”
“Advanced wire.”
I free one hanger and bow slightly. She applauds with two fingers against her palm to avoid waking the baby.
I laugh. It comes out too close to a sob, and her expression softens.
“Beau.”
I look at her.
“You're home.”
I sit beside her before my legs decide for me.
“Yes.”
She leans against my shoulder. I put an arm around her and look at the room we have shared for years, trying to take in the impossible ordinary fact of being allowed to sleep here tonight.
“I don't want you to spend all evening looking haunted,” she says.
“I'll make an effort.”
“You could kiss me. That might improve your face.”
I turn toward her. “A professional opinion?”
“Extensive personal experience.”
I kiss her. She puts her hand at the back of my neck and pulls me closer, and the kiss becomes less careful than either of us expected. I feel her smile against my mouth before she draws back.
“There,” she says. “Better.”
“Substantially.”
Ivy wakes with a protesting grunt. Heidi looks toward the bassinet and laughs.
“Our roommate has concerns.”
“I'll speak to her.”
I pick up our daughter and tell her quietly that I have moved in and would appreciate a fair hearing. She mashes her face into my shirt.
“She's considering it,” Heidi says.
We order dinner because neither of us wants to pretend moving day requires domestic excellence. Heidi eats with both hands while I hold Ivy. Then we exchange, and I eat while my wife tells me where she has put the things I will otherwise spend a week claiming are lost.
Halfway through, she stops.
“What?” I ask.
“I don't want to give you a tour of your own house as though you're a guest.”
“I do need to know where the clean towels are.”
“Same place.”
“Excellent tour. Concise.”
She laughs and steals a bite from my plate.
After dinner, we stand together at the sink. She washes; I dry. It is an inefficient arrangement we used to prefer because it gave us a reason to be close. Tonight I bump her hip with mine, and she bumps back.
“I missed this,” I say.
“The dishes?”
“Your unreasonable standards about how they should be dried.”
“They should be dry. It's a modest ambition.”
I kiss the side of her head. She leans into it before returning to the plate in her hands.
Before bed, I carry the two framed nursery prints into the nursery. They have leaned against the wall since before Ivy was born.
Heidi stands in the doorway while I hold the first one over the rocking chair.
“Lower,” she says.
I move it down two inches.
“One back up.”
“A demanding installation.”
“You promised we would decide after the chair found its place.”
I look from the frame to her. “This height?”
She comes beside me, tips her head, and nudges my wrist a fraction lower.
“There.”
I mark the wall. We hang both prints, step back, and disagree quietly about whether the second is level until Heidi takes the small spirit level from my hand and proves that it is not.
“Professional consultation,” she says.
I correct it. The prints finally belong to the room.
Later, we get ready for bed with the awkwardness of people who know each other intimately and have forgotten which small movements will hurt.
In the bathroom, our toothbrushes share the cup again.
I put mine down and stare at them.
Heidi appears in the doorway.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You have been looking at dental equipment for a suspicious amount of time.”
“Mine is back.”
Her face softens.
“Yes.”
I want to turn the toothbrush into a symbol large enough to hold everything I feel. Heidi reaches past me for the face cream and bumps my hip with hers.
“Do not become emotional about plaque,” she says.
I laugh and follow her into the bedroom.
I stop at my side of the mattress.
Heidi looks up from the pillow.
“You can get in.”
“I know.”
“Then do.”
I lie down. The mattress shifts beneath our combined weight, and she exhales as though her body has recognized something before her mind catches up.
We turn toward each other in the dark.
I put my hand between us. She takes it, then moves closer until her forehead rests beneath my chin.
“I might wake up frightened,” she says quietly.
“I'll be here.”
“I know you intend to be.”
I want her to believe me. I hold her hand.
When Ivy wakes, I get up first. I bring her to Heidi, then sit beside them while our daughter feeds in the low light.
My wife leans her head against my shoulder, half asleep.
I stay awake long enough to feel the weight of both of them against me. After the feed, I settle Ivy back in the bassinet. When I return, Heidi reaches across the bed and finds me without opening her eyes.
I wake with Heidi's hair in my mouth and her knee occupying a position my ribs have not approved.
For a few seconds I do not move.
She is asleep against me, one hand curled near my chest. The room is pale with early light. Beside us, Ivy is making small awake noises that have not yet developed into a formal complaint.
I should get up. I know I should. Instead I lie still long enough to feel the ordinary weight of my wife in our bed.
Heidi opens one eye.
“Why are you staring?”
“Admiration.”
“Suspicious at this hour.”
I move the strand of hair from my mouth. “Also survival.”
She laughs and shifts her knee.
“Better?”
“Structurally.”
She closes her eye again, but her hand moves over my chest, slow and familiar. I catch it and kiss her fingers.
“Good morning.”
“Very,” she murmurs.
The word makes me smile so hard she opens her eye to inspect the damage.
“Don't become unbearable.”
“Too late?”
“Potentially.”
Ivy chooses that moment to make her complaint unmistakable. Heidi sighs, smiling now, and rolls onto her back.
“I'll get her,” I say.
“I know.”
Our daughter greets me with a face of profound dissatisfaction. I change her, endure an accusation about the cold wipe and bring her back to Heidi.
My wife sits against the pillows, hair loose around her face, looking warm and sleepy and so beautiful that I have to stop pretending I am subtle about it.
She catches me.
“Again?”
“It's a persistent condition.”
“You should see someone.”
“I am.”
She laughs as I settle Ivy into her arms. I bring water, then get back into bed beside them because there is room and I belong there.
Ivy feeds with the absorbed seriousness of somebody doing important work. Heidi rests her head against my shoulder. I hold her while Ivy’s little hand opens and closes against Heidi’s top.
The morning is not quiet. There is swallowing, a creak of mattress, a distant car, Heidi's stomach announcing that she has remembered breakfast. I love every undignified sound of it.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“Toast. Strawberry jam. Something I can eat while it's still hot.”
“An ambitious household.”
“You encouraged us.”
I kiss her temple and go downstairs.
The kitchen holds the remnants of yesterday: a mug and a folded cloth. I clear enough space to make breakfast without turning the morning into a campaign against disorder.
When Heidi comes down, Ivy is asleep against her shoulder again. She sits at the table while I put down the plates.
“The jam,” she says, reaching.
I pass it before she stands, and she opens the jar.
A little sweetness catches at the corner of her mouth. I tell her, and she wipes the wrong side deliberately until I lean over and kiss it away.
“Much more efficient,” she says.
“I've had training.”
Ivy wakes when we laugh. Heidi shifts her upright, and our daughter produces a burp that seems disproportionate to her size.
“That's your contribution,” Heidi tells me.
“I've been blamed for the forehead already.”
“There may be several inherited traits.”
I take Ivy so Heidi can finish her toast with both hands. Our daughter stares at the red shine of the jam as though she has been excluded from something significant.
“You have,” I tell her. “It's a scandal.”
Heidi smiles at us over her plate.
After breakfast, we take Ivy for a short walk through the neighborhood.
The air is cold but clear. Heidi wears her warm coat and a scarf she keeps adjusting because her hair catches beneath it. I push the stroller while she walks beside me, close enough that our sleeves brush.
We pass a house with an extravagant arrangement of garden ornaments left over from Christmas. A plastic reindeer leans at an angle suggesting regret.
“That one's you after family dinner,” Heidi says.
“I was more upright.”
“Emotionally?”
“Less so.”
She laughs and takes my arm. I look down at her hand, then back at the path before she can accuse me of making a face.
At the corner, an older neighbor stops to admire Ivy. She asks how we are, looking at Heidi when she says it. I feel the old instinct to answer for the family, make the scene smooth, offer a cheerful version that requires nothing from anybody.
Heidi says, “Tired. Happy to be out.”
The neighbor nods as if both are ordinary answers. She tells us the reindeer belongs to her husband, who refuses to admit it has lost the will to stand. Heidi laughs, and the conversation moves on.
Afterward, my wife squeezes my arm.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing. That was nice.”
“Yes.”
Back at home, Heidi lies on the sofa while I sit on the rug with Ivy on a blanket beside me. We have been discussing whether to go anywhere later. The discussion has gradually become an agreement to remain exactly where we are.
Our daughter studies a soft toy, then her own hand, then the toy again. I narrate the investigation until Heidi tells me the suspect deserves legal representation.
“You could take the case,” I say.
“Conflict of interest. I've kissed the investigator.”
“Recently.”
“Don't boast in front of the client.”
I grin at her. She grins back, and the heat of last night's kiss returns so clearly that I can see it in her face too.
Ivy makes a triumphant sound at absolutely nothing we can identify. We both turn toward her.
“Excellent point,” Heidi tells her.
I lean over and kiss my daughter's forehead. Then I reach back for my wife's hand where it hangs over the edge of the sofa.
She gives it to me without looking away from Ivy.
Later, when the baby sleeps, Heidi falls asleep too. I cover her with the blanket and sit at the other end of the sofa with the book I started while she rested just over a week ago. Her feet find my lap. I put one hand around an ankle and read until a funny line makes me laugh.
She opens her eyes.
“Which part?”
I show her.
“Oh, you need the next page.”
“I suspected there were conditions.”
“Literary ones. Very serious.”
She shifts until she can lean against me, and I read the next page aloud. Halfway through she starts laughing before I reach the line, which ruins my delivery and improves the afternoon.
I turn the page because she wants to know whether I will like the next bit.