27. Zelda
ZELDA
Jeremiah has the crib’s instructions upside down. He claims the pictures were printed that way. I could remind him he owns a packaging company, but I have already done it twice.
“If I put the short side here, the mattress won’t fit.”
“That is generally a disadvantage in a crib.”
“You said you’d be a supportive supervisor.”
“I said I’d stay in the room.”
He turns the page around. I press my lips together. He looks up and catches me.
“Go on.”
“Nothing.”
“You’re visibly enjoying this.”
“I’ve had a difficult day.”
He laughs and hands me a bolt to hold.
At thirty-four weeks I don’t pick things up from the floor unless I am certain I will need them before the baby comes. There are six bolts in my lap. Jeremiah sits cross-legged between the two sides of the crib, trying to identify a seventh.
His phone buzzes on the windowsill. He checks the name, taps an answer, and puts it back.
“Problem?”
“Nothing my manager can’t decide.” He reaches for the next piece. “Although she may use the money I would have spent on a meeting to buy everyone lunch.”
“A gifted woman.”
“You haven’t met her.”
“I’ve seen you in a meeting.”
He puts a hand to his chest. I drop a bolt laughing, and he catches it against his leg.
“Supervision,” he says. “A demanding profession.”
When the crib is standing, I get up to look. Hedy and I chose it because it leaves enough room for a chair beside the window. There is a shallow curve in the rail where my hand fits. I run my palm along it.
“Here,” I say.
Jeremiah looks at me.
“He’ll be here.”
“Yes.”
I can picture the small bundle in the hospital more easily than a baby sleeping in this room while I make tea next door. I bend to check the mattress and feel Otto push back against the waistband of my leggings.
“He’s criticizing it already.”
“He’s welcome to assemble the next one.”
I laugh. Jeremiah looks pleased, and I want him to keep looking that way.
“Will you stay for supper?”
He has a handful of empty hardware bags and forgets to put them down.
“I’d like that.”
“Soup.”
“Even better.”
“You haven’t tasted it.”
In the kitchen he washes his hands while I warm the pan. The table fits two plates if we move the tomatoes to the windowsill. He takes the chair with the uneven leg and rocks it deliberately until I tell him he’ll regret that when he has hot soup.
“Now you’re worried about safety.”
“Only the floor. I mopped yesterday.”
For a while we talk about nothing that needs to be decided. An advertisement on the bus. The man at work who asked whether a book could be returned before it was due, then looked suspicious when I said yes. Jeremiah wants to know what I charge for having more time to lend it to somebody else.
I nearly tell him I should start charging him for soup. I stop, because I can hear all the ways that could become awkward.
“What?” he asks.
“I was considering an invoice.”
“For dinner?”
“Assembly supervision.”
He looks toward the baby’s room. “You dropped a vital component.”
“I identified a serious mattress problem.”
He laughs into his bread. I am glad I said it.
The laundromat sign colors the window pink. When we have finished, he carries both bowls to the sink. I stay seated for another moment because I know what I have to tell him, and I don’t want the evening to change.
“Hedy’s going to be with me during labor.”
He stops with his hand on the tap.
I wait for him to turn. I have the next sentence ready: she knows how I am when I’m frightened. Then the one after that: I’m the person having the baby.
He sets down the bowl.
“For the birth too?”
“Yes.”
His mouth tightens. He looks at the crib through the open doorway, and I almost say he could come later in labor, perhaps, if things are going well.
I keep my hands in my lap.
“I wanted to be there,” he says.
“I know.”
He nods once, looking down. “Tell me when you want me at the hospital. I’ll keep my phone on.”
“Hedy will have it if I can’t call.”
“All right.”
The tap is still running. He turns it off.
I had been holding my breath. When I let it out, he looks at me, and I know he heard.
“Would you dry?” he asks.
I get up and take the towel. We stand side by side, passing the bowls between us. He is quiet for a while. I let him be quiet without trying to make the answer easier.
When he hands me the second bowl, he says, “I hope he’s less critical of the hospital furniture.”
“Unlikely.”
The corner of his mouth lifts.
At the sink I notice his sleeves are rolled unevenly. I reach to fix the lower one. My fingers brush the inside of his wrist, and I leave them there.
His hand turns beneath mine.
“Bring the arcade photograph next time,” I say. “The one in our bedroom.”
“You want it here?”
“I do.”
He looks toward the small table, then back at me.
“I’ll bring it.”
I smooth the sleeve again. It is already straight. I like touching him, and I don’t want to pretend I have found something else to fix.
At the door he takes his coat from the hook, then stops.
“I’d like to kiss you.”
My stomach drops. I have been thinking about his mouth for half an hour. Hearing him say it makes me want to laugh and hide my face.
“I’m the size of a van.”
“I’ve noticed.” His ears go red. “That came out wrong.”
“Did it?”
“I’ve been noticing you all afternoon, Zelda. I’m trying to say that.”
I look at his mouth. He loses the rest of whatever he was going to say.
“If it’s no, say no,” he tells me. “I’ll take the recycling down.”
“It isn’t no.”
I get a fistful of his shirt and pull. He comes, and the first thing that meets is my stomach against his belt. We both look down. He has to lean over our son to reach me.
I am laughing when his mouth touches mine. Then I am not.
He kisses me slowly. He is shaking; I can feel it through his shirt, all the way down his arms. His palm comes up to my cheek, and that is shaking too. I turn my face into it.
I had forgotten the taste of him. A small, greedy noise comes out of me, and I don’t take it back.
I want more. His hands, his weight, the little sound he makes when I open my mouth beneath his. I am thirty-four weeks pregnant and cannot see my feet, and I want to drag him down the hall to my bed.
The door frame is against my back. I hold his shirt tighter.
He lifts his head first. His eyes are dark and startled, as if he hadn’t expected to be allowed this much. We are both out of breath.
“I want to come back in,” he says.
I do too. I can’t remember the recycling, or the soup, or how to make my hand let go.
“Not tonight.”
He nods. “Then I’m going to go.”
“Go, then.”
He takes the recycling. I hear him miss the last stair, catch the rail, and swear.
I stand against the door with my fingers on my mouth and my whole face hot.
At the sink I rinse the spoon we missed and set it beside his bowl. I look down the hall toward the crib, then toward my bedroom.
When I go to bed, I press the cheek he touched into my pillow and remember his hand.