4. Carson
Carson
I don't make a speech. I pick up the basket, hold the truck door, and take Lori and the baby home — to the subsidized firefighter’s house on a couple of acres outside town.
It's empty. Yellow lining, weave rough enough to snag a sleeve. Whoever picked it picked it for sweetness, not the long haul. I'll think about that later. Tonight I just need to put it in my truck.
"Cadie."
"Yeah, Daddy?"
"Get the truck door for Miss Lori."
She doesn't ask why. My daughter is six, still small enough to fit on my hip but old enough to know what it means when the grown-ups stop joking. She comes down off the step in her rainbow boots and heads for the truck like she's been deputized.
"Where are we going?" Lori asks, her eyes distant.
"My place," I say.
She doesn't argue, which is the first thing she hasn't done since I drove up. The Lori I've met twice now would have risen to the occasion with a comeback, and that's how I know she's further in her head than she's letting on.
I put my free hand at the small of Lori's back. Light. She locks the front door then starts walking.
I get her into the cab. Cadie clambers into the back seat like a kid on a mission and buckles herself in. Lori takes the seat next to her. Both hands on the baby — one under her, the other keeping her head steady. I help Lori buckle the seat belt.
When I’m done, I close the door and walk around the front of the truck in the cold gravel dust and get in. Key. Lights. Reverse. Like nothing extraordinary just landed on a front porch in Hill Country.
In the cab, she sits with the baby in her arms. I drive one-handed, my other hand resting on the seat between us — not reaching for her, not retreating either. Cadie talks the whole drive. Lori doesn’t hear a word of it.
We pull in. The porch light's on, just as I left it. The neighbor's dog barks once at the truck and gets bored with us. I park and cut the engine. Sit a second before I move.
Inside, I want to make the joke I had prepared for tonight, some version of sorry about the decor, the maid quit in nineteen ninety-something, back when tonight was a first house tour and not whatever this is.
I shut it down. I set the basket on the kitchen table and watch Cadie kick off her beloved rainbow boots and start dragging a chair across the floor.
"Cadie. Leave the chair. Go brush your teeth."
"But —"
"Teeth."
She goes. She knows my serious voice. I save it for the things she needs to hear once.
I look at Lori. She's standing in the middle of my kitchen with the baby asleep on her, and she's so small in it.
"Guest room's at the end of the hall," I say. "Clean shirt and sweats in the top drawer. They'll be big. Bathroom's the door before it."
"Okay."
"You hungry?"
She has to think about it. The question takes a second to make sense to her, which tells me how long it's been since she's eaten.
"No."
"Water?"
"I — okay."
I get her a glass.
"It's safe, I promise," I say, and the line is out before I see she doesn't have anything left to laugh with. Then I realize she has no hands free, so I set the glass on the counter for now.
She's still in the navy dress she picked for tonight. I don't let myself think about that yet. I put my palm at the small of her back and walk her down the hall, toward the guest room. Her back is warm through the dress.
Eight steps to the guest-room door. I feel every one of them.
"This one."
She goes in. I bring the basket and set it on the floor beside the bed. She lays the baby down inside it like the baby is made of glass and stays bent over the rim a second longer than she needs to. Hair falling forward. The line of her neck shows pale in the lamplight.
"Carson."
God, I love my name on her tongue. But I don't let myself relish it tonight.
"Yeah?"
"I don't have a bottle. Or formula. Or diapers." She paused. “I don’t have enough money to buy —”
"I'll figure it out. Don't worry."
She nods. She doesn't say thank you. Good. I don't want it.
I close the door behind me and head to Cadie's room. She's in bed already, teeth brushed, lights out, staring at the ceiling like the ceiling has answers.
"Daddy?"
"Yeah, Pumpkin?"
"Is the baby gonna live here?"
I sit on the edge of her bed. My weight tilts the mattress and she rolls a half-inch into the dip and stays there.
"For a little while," I say. "Miss Lori's going to take care of her. We're going to help. Okay?"
"Okay." She thinks for a second. "Daddy."
"Yeah, Pumpkin?"
"Lori is pretty."
Tell me about it, Kid.
"Yeah," I say. "Now go to sleep."
She nods, satisfied. Closes her eyes. I kiss her hair, get up, leave her door open two inches, the way she likes it.
I tell Lori through the guest-room door I'll be back in forty minutes. Then I take my keys and go.
The all-night store on the highway is empty except for a girl behind the counter watching her phone.
I clear the formula aisle on muscle memory.
Slow-flow nipples. Newborn diapers, two packs.
Burp cloth. The colic drops my mother swore by when Cadie screamed her first six weeks straight.
A handful of receiving blankets because the basket lining is rougher than it should be against a baby's body.
I'm in trouble. I know it when I am walking up her steps two hours ago. I'm in deeper now, at midnight buying formula for a baby that isn't mine because the woman she belongs to is resting in my guest room. Not one piece of this gets easier from here.
I pay for everything, then drive back home.
The living room light is on when I come in through the front. Lori is on the couch with her phone propped on her knee. The screen reads How to Mix Infant Formula, Step by Step. The baby is next to her in the basket beside the couch.
She looks up. Looks at the bags. Doesn't say anything.
"Come on," I say. "I'll show you."
She follows me to the kitchen.
We stand together at the kitchen sink and I run the tap into a kettle. As we wait for the water to boil on the stove, I clean and disinfect the new bottle. She stands close, watching everything, her eyes on my hands.
Once the water is boiling, I turn it off. We wait for it to cool down, then I pour some into the bottle. I check the temperature on my wrist. I show her the proper scoop — leveled, never packed.
I tell her about the drops because Cadie screamed her first six weeks straight.
"Your daughter screamed for six weeks?"
"Loud and proud."
The first not-quite-smile out of her tonight. I try not to look at it for too long.
Now I let her try scooping the formula. She fumbles the first scoop, powder spilling a little.
I catch her wrist with two fingers and correct the position of her hand.
Bare skin meets the inside of her wrist. I hold the touch a half-second longer than I need to and then I let go, because a touch like that gets a man in trouble.
She's never made a formula in her life, but she’s trying now. She isn't pretending it's easy and she isn't asking me to do it for her. That balance is something most people never find.
Then I show her the diaper. Front, back, tabs, how to change it. I show her how to support a head that doesn't hold itself up yet. As she’s holding the baby, I show her how to hold the bottle. She listens and doesn't say much.
Once the position is settled, she says it without looking up at me. "She's my niece.”
"Your sister's."
"Ella's. I haven't seen her in three years."
She doesn't say more. I don't push. She gave me what she could.
I lift the baby into my arms and continue feeding her so Lori can wash her hands. The baby drinks the milk, half asleep already. Lori watches us from the sink.
"I guess this is as good as it gets for a first date," I say.
A breath of a laugh. Dry. Her mouth lifts.
By 2 a.m., the baby is settled in the basket beside the guest-room bed.
"If you need me, knock on the door," I say as I walk out the room.
"Okay."
I close the door behind me and walk back to the kitchen.
I open a beer I don't want. I don't drink it, either. I set the cap on the counter, hook a thumb through the bottle neck, stand at my own sink looking out at the dark back yard. The bottle sweats a ring onto the wood.
I go through the day in my head. The girl I couldn't forget — the one whose picture is on my phone — on her porch, with a baby that wasn't hers. I saw the panic on her face. So I picked up the woman and the baby. I picked up the basket, too, and I put them all in my truck.
I didn't think so. I just did it.
The guest room down the hall used to be a nursery. Different woman. Different baby.
My ex-wife Megan in the driveway two years back.
Hands on her hips. I'm not built for this, Carson.
I'm just not. The bag in the back of the Subaru.
The long drive to her sister's in California.
A four-year-old who, for a year after, asked when Mommy was coming home from California like it was a town twenty minutes off.
I didn't see it coming.
I haven't let myself want a single thing for me since.
I turn the leather ring on my right hand with my thumb. My father's graduation gift. He has been dead for five years, and I haven't taken it off since.
I remember the early days when Megan left. My mother showed up with food she called extra. Marisol took Cadie when my shift ran long. The guys at the station traded me shifts on the hard weeks and never tallied it.
Marisol next door takes Cadie when my shift runs over. Mine gets bored without somebody littler around, she’d say.
The guys at the station trade me shifts on the hard weeks. Shut up about the book, West.
I got by because of them. Still do.
For the first time in a long time, I want something.
I want her.
I want Lori with heat. With hunger. With the slow burn that's been sitting in me for two years and hasn't had anywhere to go.
I can't pin when it started. The bell over the diner door. Three sugars and a splash of cream in her coffee. The laugh at my terrible joke before she caught it. The cereal aisle. Cadie tugging my coat on her porch.
Somewhere in there. I fell for the girl in my guestroom.
I push off the counter and go down the hall for a sweater in the laundry room. My fleece-lined one. I have to pass the guest-room door to get there. On the way back, sweater in hand, I stop.
I don't mean to. I just do. One stride from her door. The strip of light under it is gone.
I want to open the door. Not for any half-decent reason. I want to open it because she's on the other side, and I'm one stride away, and my body has been on a low burn since I put my hand at the small of her back on her own porch.
I want her tonight. I also want every morning after it. I'm not built for one-night wanting. I'm built for the long version, and the long version is the part that's going to get me in so much trouble.
I put my hand flat on the wall instead.
Hold it there long enough my palm prints heat into the drywall. Jaw tight enough I feel it in my temple. My pulse is doing a thing it has not done in two years. One breath. Two. Three.
I make myself walk away.
Before that, I leave the sweater folded on the bench outside her door because I'm not knocking. I walk back to the kitchen and pick up the beer because my hand needs something to do.
Finally, it settles in me. At the expense of what I want.
I'm going to help her get on her feet. I'm not going to make the roof feel like it has a price. I'm not going to make the rent feel like romance. I'm going to let her decide whether to stay.
"I'm not going to push," I tell the dark kitchen.
I hear it out loud. It sounds like a decent man's decision.
I hear footsteps behind me. I don't turn around right away. When I do, she's in the kitchen doorway in the sweater I left on the bench. Sleeves past her hands, not pushed up. Hem at her thighs. Bare feet on my floorboards. Hair down.
"Suits you," I say. The short version. The long one would have a grin on it, on a different night, and it stays in my mouth where it belongs. I look at her face and don't let myself look anywhere else.
"She's finally asleep," she says.
"Good."
She doesn't come in. Stays in the doorway, watching me.
"Carson."
"Yeah?"
"Why are you doing this?"
I set the bottle down, then turn around and face her. Her arms are crossed around herself. I want to be the one doing that for her. But I can't.
"You need help. I'm helping."
She doesn't answer.
"You don't owe me anything for it. Not the date you canceled. Not dinner. Not anything else." I look at my beer bottle. "If you need something, just ask. That's it."
She is still at the doorway. Her arms are crossed. I half expect her to argue. She doesn't.
"Okay," she says. Very quiet.
"Okay."
I pass her without touching her, eyes ahead. I leave her in the kitchen.
"Sleep well, Lori."
"You too."
I go upstairs to my own room. I listen for the baby through the wall. After a while, I hear the kettle come on in the kitchen.
She has nothing. She owes me nothing. If I want her, I want her with her feet under her, with her own roof, with a balance that isn't twenty-six dollars. I don't get to be the man who saved her and then expected something for it. Or Ryan in a better hat.
I lie awake another hour, after the kettle goes quiet.