CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Alex
Now
It started at dinner.
Not the movie version.
The version where my back became a separate animal and my breath had to ask permission.
I set my fork down.
Riley looked at the fork.
Then at my face.
Arthur looked at both and went very still, a boy who had learned that stillness is a kind of listening.
“Okay,” I said. “We’re going to do the thing we practiced.”
Riley stood so fast his chair barked on the tile.
Arthur stood so fast he knocked over the salt.
“Bag,” Riley said.
“Hall closet,” I said.
“It’s in the Jeep,” Arthur said, already moving.
“It’s in the hall closet,” I said.
They both left the room in different directions.
I sat there with a contraction that had opinions and counted the way they teach you to count when you want your brain to have a job besides panic.
Riley came back with my phone charger and one boot.
Arthur came back with the bag and one of Riley’s other boots.
“That’s not how boots work,” I said. “Find your father’s boots.”
Arthur actually flushed.
Riley looked at the boot in his hand as if it had betrayed a long professional relationship.
He slapped his pockets. “Keys.”
“On the hook,” I said.
“I checked the hook.”
“Check it like a person who wants to find the keys,” I said. “Now.”
He found the keys.
On the hook.
Arthur hovered.
“Should I get Martina?”
“Martina’s at Della’s,” I said. “You can get my water bottle. The one that doesn’t leak. Not the one that does.”
He brought both.
Riley kept checking his pockets.
Wallet.
Phone.
Pockets again.
It was graduation morning all over again, except this time I was the one who might throw up.
I gave him a look. “You look like you’re the one giving birth.”
Lips pursed, he gave me a look right back.
I would have kissed it off his mouth if standing hadn’t required a committee.
“I’ve got the bag,” Arthur said, holding it with both arms like it might try to escape.
“Good,” I said. “You’re in charge of the bag. Riley’s in charge of the car. I’m in charge of not having this baby on the tile floor.”
Another wave.
I breathed through it.
They watched me like I was a weather report they could negotiate with.
“Garage,” I said.
We made it to the SUV, which was the only vehicle that wasn’t a story.
Riley had the Jeep keys in his hand anyway.
He looked at them.
Looked at me.
Put them back in his pocket without commentary.
Some men announce their growth.
His just changed pockets.
The hospital did what hospitals do.
They put a belt on my belly and a look on their faces that was professionally kind and not at all convinced.
The waves spaced out.
Then they quit like a crew that had only come to see if anyone was paying attention.
The nurse, who had seen this movie, patted my wrist.
“Braxton Hicks,” she said. “Or a dress rehearsal. Either way, you’re not staying. Drink water. Rest. Come back when they get closer and don’t let up.”
Riley stared at the monitor as if he could shame it into a different plot.
Arthur sat in the chair with the bag on his lap the whole time.
He had not put it down.
“So she’s not coming,” he said.
“Not tonight,” I said.
He nodded, crushed and relieved in the same face, which is a lot to ask of eleven.
Riley rubbed a hand over his mouth.
“I left the good charger at home,” he said.
“I know,” I said.
“And one boot.”
“I know.”
Arthur held up the bag.
“I didn’t drop it.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why you’re in charge of it next time too.”
We drove home under a sky that had the nerve to be ordinary.
Arthur fell asleep against the window before the highway lights quit.
Riley drove with both hands on the wheel, ten and two, like the desert might still pull something.
In the driveway he sat there after he killed the engine.
“I hated that,” he said.
“Which part.”
“The part where I couldn’t do anything useful except lose a boot.”
I looked at him.
The porch light cut his profile the way Mount Lemmon used to.
“You showed up,” I said. “You moved a service call for a shove. You do the math packet. You lose a boot and still get us there. That’s useful. The rest is just adrenaline looking for a tool.”
He let out a breath.
“False alarm,” he said.
“Practice,” I said.
He looked at Arthur, mouth open, bag still hugged like a second seat belt.
“He’s going to be good at this,” Riley said.
“He already is,” I said. “He’s just loud about the engines.”
We went inside.
I put the bag back in the hall closet myself.
Some jobs you take back because you can.
I slept.
Not well.
Better than the thermostat deserved.
In the morning my back was just a back again.
The baby had made her point.
She would come when she came.
On her own schedule.
Without particular concern for the plans the rest of us had made.