Instead of the Apology

1. Zelda

ZELDA

“Don’t tell me where he is.”

The boy puts both hands on the field guide before I can open it. He has returned a book about birds and asked for another with a badger in it, which has taken rather more searching than his father expected.

“Not even a page number?” I ask.

“That would be telling.”

His father mouths sorry over his head. I shake mine. The boy is already turning pages, one careful corner at a time. He stops at an owl and frowns.

“This one looks like you,” he tells his father.

I have to turn toward the returns cart. By the time I can look back without laughing, the father has accepted the resemblance and the boy is reading the next page. Twelve pages of things that fly before he gets to the animal he came for. I want to be here when he finds it.

My supervisor pauses beside me after they settle at a table. “Could you do something with that on Saturdays? Families finding their next book together?”

“Me?”

“You. Six books, a table. See who comes.”

I say yes before she has finished explaining the hours. Then I have to ask her to repeat them, and she smiles as she does.

All afternoon I keep thinking of things for the table. A child ought to be able to arrive wanting one animal and leave interested in three. A parent who hasn’t been here before shouldn’t have to ask whether they’re allowed to join in. I change the sign twice, then make myself leave it alone.

At fourteen weeks pregnant, I am holding my skirt shut with a hair elastic and keeping a packet of crackers in the drawer under my desk. Only my supervisor knows why. Before I go home, I look back at the boy bent over his book and rest my hand against the place the button no longer reaches.

Would ours be that serious? Would he insist on finding everything himself? I can already hear Jeremiah pretending to be offended if a child tells him he looks like an owl.

His car is outside when I get home. I hurry the last few steps, pulling at my gloves with my teeth because my bag has slipped and I don’t want to stop. I’ll tell him the owl part first. He’ll want to know what the father said.

Once, after I complained about a book jammed in the library’s returns chute, Jeremiah spent half an hour drawing me a machine to prevent it happening again.

His second design would have fired the books directly at my desk.

I laughed until I couldn’t explain why it was worse than the first. The drawing is still in my drawer.

I open the front door with the beginning of the story ready.

Candace’s coat hangs beside his.

“Zelda?” she calls. “Perfect timing.”

I stand with one glove caught between my teeth. Then I take it out and smile as she comes from the dining room with two folders.

“I’ve just persuaded your husband not to make the anniversary dinner look like a board meeting.”

“It was my dinner before it was his board meeting.”

“And I reminded him.” She kisses my cheek.

Her sleeve brushes my face. Orange soap.

For eleven years that smell has belonged to shared bathrooms and borrowed clothes and Candace arriving with something I hadn’t known I needed.

She still buys me a bar every Christmas, although I made her shut the first one in a drawer because it scented the whole apartment.

I kiss her back, ashamed of the little drop in my stomach when I saw her coat. She has given up her afternoon to help us. I can share him for another twenty minutes.

Jeremiah is at the table with his sleeves pushed up. He smiles and reaches out as I pass. I let my fingers drag through his.

“Candace has saved us from the white roses.”

“I told you I didn’t want white roses.”

“I remembered when she said it.” He pulls out the chair beside him. “Come and look. We haven’t settled anything.”

I wait for him to glance up. For a laugh, perhaps, when he hears himself. He is looking at the menus.

Candace moves her folder to make room for me.

I could say it again. I imagine the sudden quiet, then Candace’s kind voice telling him I did mention the roses. I can’t bear having her help me with that too.

“What have you chosen?” I ask.

December twenty-third will be our third anniversary.

We like celebrating close to Christmas, with people coming in out of the cold and the table too full.

This year there will be a child under my dress when we stand together for the toast. I’ve imagined Jeremiah putting his hand there. I haven’t told him that part.

Candace turns a menu toward me. She has marked three dishes with stars. She uses the same folders for the parties people pay her to arrange, and usually I love being the friend who gets all that care for free.

“We could use the blue plates,” I say. “From our first trip.”

“They chip,” Jeremiah says.

“One chipped. We have eleven.”

“The rental set would be easier,” Candace says. “But the blue ones are sweet, if you’re set on them.”

I am. I remember Jeremiah carrying the box back to our hotel in both arms, refusing to let me take a turn because I’d already dropped one. We ate bread from two of them on the bed that night. Crumbs everywhere. He kept finding more when he kissed me.

Neither of them needs that story. They were discussing plates.

“Whatever makes you happy,” he says.

“Those do.” I hear how earnest I sound and look down. “The blue ones.”

He crosses out the rental set. “You had something to tell me?”

For a second I have him. I turn in the chair, my knee against his.

“The library’s giving me a Saturday program.”

“Good.” His phone lights up. He turns it facedown. “Children’s books?”

“And their parents. There’s this little boy?—”

The phone rings. He looks at the screen.

I stop before he asks me to.

“Two minutes,” he says, and goes into the hall.

I smooth the corner of the menu. I had come through the door almost laughing. Candace must have seen it.

“He’s trying, you know.”

“I didn’t say he wasn’t.”

She blinks. The edge in my voice embarrasses me more than the interruption.

“Tell me about the boy,” she says.

“It’s silly.”

“Your silly stories are my favorite.”

I love her for that. I resent having to love her for it tonight.

I tell her. She laughs at the owl and asks to see the book, and soon we’re looking at a photograph from the catalog on my phone. She suggests a trail of paper animal footprints between the shelves. It is exactly the sort of thing the boy would follow with enormous seriousness.

“That’s good,” I say, reaching for a pencil. “That’s really good.”

By the time Jeremiah returns, I’ve written down three ways to use it. Twelve minutes have passed. I know because the clock is over Candace’s shoulder and I kept trying not to look.

“She’s got a new program,” Candace tells him. “We’ve solved the badger problem.”

“What badger problem?”

Candace begins to answer.

“Let me.”

My hand lands on her folder. Too hard. She sits back, and Jeremiah looks from my hand to my face.

Now they’re both waiting. I’ve made a small, hungry thing of myself over a story about a book.

“There wasn’t a problem,” I say. “He just wouldn’t let me tell him the page.”

I start again. I leave out how pleased my supervisor was. That would sound like asking him to be pleased too. But I tell him about the owl, and his laugh comes halfway through my imitation of the father’s face.

There. That laugh. I feel it in my own face before I finish.

“Did he find the badger?” he asks.

“He was still looking when I left.” I draw one on the corner of my notes. “This is what he was hunting.”

“That’s not what one looks like.”

“You haven’t seen one from this angle. He has a secret.”

Jeremiah takes the pencil from my hand and puts a waistcoat on the badger.

“Why is he rich?” I demand.

He adds a hole in one pocket. I laugh and lean into his shoulder. He tips the paper toward me, solemnly improving the animal’s finances, and for a minute I forget the clock.

When I look up, Candace is watching his hand against mine.

She smiles at me. “You’ll make something lovely for those children.”

I thank her. At the door I squeeze her fingers and mean it.

After she leaves, Jeremiah picks up his phone. I am still holding the drawing.

“Could we have tomorrow evening without anyone else?”

“Of course.” He kisses me. “We live here, don’t we?”

“I mean?—”

The phone vibrates in his palm. He glances down.

“Tomorrow,” I say. “Just us.”

“Yes. I’ll come up when I finish this.”

I put the plates away and leave the drawing on the dresser. A message from my coworker arrives while I’m getting ready for bed: the boy found his badger, and his father wanted me to know. I save it to tell Jeremiah.

In bed I listen for the end of his call. Once I hear a door close and sit up. Water runs in the bathroom downstairs. His voice begins again.

By the time he comes to bed, I’ve turned off the lamp. He slides a cold foot against mine, and I want to punish him by moving away. Instead I catch it between my ankles to warm it.

“The boy found the badger,” I whisper. “His father told the desk before they left.”

“Was he pleased?”

“Very.”

“So were you, I bet.”

I turn toward him. He knows that about me. He draws me close, forehead against mine, and I have to shut my eyes against the sudden wish to tell him everything, including how lonely the last hour was.

His hand is warm under my shirt. I put mine over it.

“You still mean tomorrow?”

“I mean it.”

I want to ask what time. I want him to want it enough to choose one. His breathing is already slowing.

I kiss him, softly so he’ll stay awake for another second. Then I lie with his hand on me and plan an evening with no reason to watch the clock.