10. Josh
Chapter ten
Josh
The first sound is small enough to fold into a dream.
Liv is still on the rug beside me. Iris is resting against her. Liv's shoulder was practically touching mine. We both looked at the pen, before looking at each other.
I was already lifting my arm to pull her in when Iris tossed the giraffe, breaking the spell.
After that, we stood. We went to separate rooms. Two rational adults pretending a line had not moved.
A second later, the actual noise registers. Iris, in the other room, making the sounds that come before crying. The warning shot. I open my eyes. Gray light bleeds under the curtains.
I stay flat for a moment.
Iris shifts. The soft sound tips toward a complaint. I’m out of bed before she gets there. I pull the nursery door open and nearly knock Liv off her feet.
She’s in the hallway — sleep shirt, hair loose, already moving. We both pull up short, three inches of clearance between us, Iris’s cry building through the wall behind me.
“I’ve got her,” I say. “You want to do the bottle?”
“Sure.” She turns.
I catch her hand.
She stops.
“Liv.”
She turns back. I look at her. She looks at me.
“Good morning,” I say.
She holds still for a second. Then she laughs and the tension goes out of her shoulders in one breath. She squeezes my fingers once before she pulls her hand back.
“Good morning,” she says.
She goes to the kitchen. I go to Iris.
***
Three boxes sit in the middle of my living room.
By the time I get Iris settled in the bouncer with the replacement giraffe, Liv has already opened all of them.
The floor is covered in cardboard, packing foam, one instruction booklet, and a number of metal pieces no reasonable adult should be expected to identify before coffee. Liv sits cross-legged in the center of it with her legal pad on one knee, sorting the hardware into rows.
“What are the categories?” I ask.
“Known. Suspect. Deeply suspect.”
I point to the smallest pile. “And those?”
“Extra pieces thrown in by the manufacturer just to mess with us.”
I pick up the booklet.
Sixteen pages. Eight-point font. Diagrams drawn by someone who once saw a crib from across a parking lot.
“Good news,” I say. Liv looks up.
“The tabs are color-coded.”
“I saw.”
“Of course you did.”
She makes a mark on the legal pad. “The blue tabs go with the left rail.”
I turn the booklet toward her. “The diagram says right rail.”
“The diagram is lying.”
I look at the diagram. Then at the rail.
"The diagram does appear to be lying."
I set the booklet down beside her. “Proceed.”
She hands me the smaller Allen wrench without missing a beat.
I take it.
It works.
I look at her.
She is already reaching for the next bolt.
This is the part I am not prepared for.
The boxes, yes. The bouncer in the middle of my living room, yes. Iris kicking one bare foot while the giraffe slowly loses an argument with her mouth, also yes.
Liv on my rug in yesterday’s leggings and one of my old NYU sweatshirts, sorting hardware should probably be less dangerous than it is.
It is not.
“Are you watching me work or assisting?” she asks.
“Both seem valuable.”
“Only one is useful.”
I pick up the rail.
She holds the other end before I ask.
The piece lines up on the first try.
In an OR, this kind of rhythm takes years. Someone has to know my hand, my timing, the next tool before I say the word. In my living room, Liv gets there in under twenty minutes with a Pack ’n Play and a legal pad.
I have no defense for how much I like it.
“Bolt,” I say.
She drops one into my palm.
“Was there a process for selecting this bolt?”
“Yes.”
“Am I allowed to know it?”
“No.”
I fit the bolt through the rail.
Liv leans closer to check the angle, and her shoulder brushes mine.
Both of us pause.
Iris kicks the toy bar hard enough to make the plastic rings rattle.
Liv clears her throat first. “Our assistant has something to say.”
“Our assistant is eating the giraffe.”
I tighten the bolt.
Liv draws a check mark on the parts list.
We keep going.
She reads the next line before I turn the page. I hold out my hand before she reaches for the part. Twice, we move at the same time and have to stop before our fingers land on each other. The third time, neither of us stops fast enough.
My fingers brush the side of her thumb.
Small contact.
Barely anything.
Enough.
Liv keeps her eyes on the diagram.
I keep mine on the rail.
The stroller frame comes out of its box. It folds open in sections, and turns out to be substantially larger than it appeared online.
“That’s a vehicle,” I say.
“It has a rain cover,” Liv says, as though this explains the scale.
“Hm.”
I look at her. “Hm?”
Liv crouches over the hardware tray. “What are these for?”
I look at the four remaining pieces.
“Like you said, the manufacturer does that to mess with people.”
She pushes to her feet to wheel the stroller back and forth.
I stay on the floor and pull a onesie from the third box — snap-crotch, yellow duck embroidered on the chest. The whole thing fits across one hand. I turn it over once. Set it in the pile. Pick up the booklet.
Iris has fallen asleep in the bouncer with one sock missing.
Liv checks Iris asleep in the bouncer.
“I’m going to lie down before she remembers I exist.”
“Good plan.”
She points at the hardware tray. “Don’t improvise and find uses for those extra pieces.”
“I’m wounded.”
She smiles, and disappears down the hall.
To the guest room.
In my apartment.
***
Iris wakes forty minutes later and goes straight to furious. None of the preliminary sounds, straight to business.
I lift her. She arches once, both fists caught in my shirt.
“Okay,” I say, mostly because saying something gives my mouth a job.
She screams harder.
My first step is toward the hallway. Toward the guest room. Toward Liv. I stop before I say her name.
If I call, she’ll come. If she comes, I’ll let her take Iris and some part of me wants Liv in the room more than I want the crying to stop. So I turn back.
I shift Iris higher against my chest and walk the narrow strip of rug between the couch and the boxes. A path barely wide enough for a man, a baby, and all the things I am trying very hard not to want. She kicks, hot and furious against my ribs. I keep moving.
She cries. I walk.
Liv appears in the hallway on my third pass.
I look at her over Iris’s head. Her hair is loose from sleep. One side of her shirt has a crease from the pillow. She stops with her hand on the doorframe and looks at Iris first, then at me.
“You don’t have to take her,” I say. “I’ve got her.”
She holds there, her hand remains on the doorframe. Iris cries against my collarbone. I keep my hand spread across her back and start moving again.
Liv nods once, crosses to the couch, lifts the thin knit blanket from the arm, and drapes it over my shoulder. Her fingers smooth the edge once.
Iris turns her face into it. Her cry breaks once, then lowers.
Liv looks at me.
I want to ask her to stay. I keep walking.
She goes back down the hall.
Iris settles against my chest, one fist still locked in my shirt, the blanket tucked between us.
I understand the gesture on the next pass across the rug.
She didn’t come to take Iris.
She came to make it easier for me to keep her.
Iris settles against my chest, one fist still locked in my shirt, the blanket warm where Liv’s hand smoothed it down.