19. Dulcie
DULCIE
At one fifty-eight, Mom looks through the front window.
“He’s here.”
I adjust the blanket around Kit. He is ten days old and already frowns at me.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I know you just got comfortable.”
Mom goes to the door. I hear it open, hear Magnus say hello, then the pause while she decides what she is prepared to give him in return.
“Dulcie’s in the living room.”
Before she lets him through, I move the water glass to the side of the table where I can reach it with my right hand.
I have chosen this chair because its seat is firm.
I know how to rise from it now. Recovery has come in small changes I notice while doing something ordinary, and today this is the one I need.
He comes in alone. No flowers, no bag, no person behind him carrying something too large for the room.
The sight of him still does what it does. His coat is open over a dark sweater. His hair has been pushed back with his hand, leaving one part less orderly than the rest. I remember waking beside him and touching that same place before he was fully awake.
Then he sees Kit, and I don’t have to wonder where to look.
He stops just inside the room.
“Hello.”
I don’t know which of us he means.
“You can sit there.” I nod toward the sofa. “Take your coat off first.”
He obeys, folding it over the arm instead of handing it to Mom. She sits near the doorway with the cup of tea she hasn’t had time to finish.
Magnus looks at our son. His hands rest on his knees, completely still.
“Would you like to hold him?” I ask.
His eyes come to mine. “Yes.”
I have practiced getting up from this chair with Kit in my arms. I shift forward, put my feet where I need them, and stand. There is a small pull low in my body. I wait for it to ease before I cross the room.
“Your arm here,” I say. “He needs his head supported.”
Magnus moves carefully. I lower Kit into the crook of his arm and keep a hand beneath him until the weight is secure.
“Like that.”
I take my hands away.
For a few seconds, Magnus doesn’t seem to breathe. Kit opens his mouth, closes it, and settles his cheek against the sweater.
“He’s so small.”
“He doesn’t always feel small at three in the morning.”
Magnus looks up as though he might ask something, then returns his attention to Kit.
“Hello,” he says again, softly this time. “Hello, Kit.”
Hearing the name in his voice hurts in a place I haven’t prepared. I wanted this picture once: him holding our son while I sat close enough to lean against his shoulder. The room around it would have been different. So would the person I thought I had married.
I sit in my chair.
There is room beside him on the sofa. His arm would fit around me, Kit between us, the picture so easy to complete that I have to look at the window instead. I want someone to tell me this is the part that proves the rest can be repaired.
No one does. Mom sits quietly by the door. Magnus studies our son. I stay in the chair I chose, with my own feet on the floor. Wanting to move closer does not make me move.
Magnus traces the edge of Kit’s blanket with one finger. He doesn’t touch the baby’s face until Kit turns toward the movement, and then he lets the tiny fist close around his fingertip.
His mouth tightens.
I look away before I start taking care of him.
Mom asks if I want more water. I say yes, and she goes to the kitchen. We can hear the faucet. She is close enough to come back if I need her, far enough to let this belong to us without making it comfortable.
“Does he sleep?” Magnus asks.
“In several installments.”
Something like a smile crosses his face.
“He likes being walked,” I tell him. “Dad does most of it. He talks to him the whole way round the house.”
“What about?”
“Whatever he’s looking at.”
For a moment the conversation moves easily. I can hear how it would sound if nothing had happened, and I almost resent that ease more than an argument.
Kit shifts. His forehead wrinkles. He makes a small, indignant sound and begins to turn his head against Magnus’s arm.
I stand.
“I’ll take him now.”
Magnus looks up immediately. I have taken only one step toward the sofa when he brings Kit forward into my waiting hands, keeping his head supported until my arm is beneath it.
There is no request for another minute. No joke about how mothers worry. I don’t have to reach across his body or repeat myself.
“Have you got him?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He releases him.
I settle Kit against me before I turn back to the chair. My son gives one outraged cry, then burrows into the place he wanted.
My heart is beating too fast for what just happened. Nothing went wrong. I asked for my baby, and his father gave him back.
It should be a very small thing.
Mom returns with the water. She puts it within reach and catches my eye. I nod, once.
Magnus stays on the sofa. He doesn’t lean over me to keep touching Kit, or stand so that I have to look up at him while I settle the baby.
I can give my attention to the small mouth rooting against my shirt.
For those few seconds, I don’t have to divide myself between what my son needs and what his father might do.
“I ended it with Cressida,” Magnus says.
I look at him over Kit’s head.
“When?”
“The day he was born. I told her there would be no marriage and no personal relationship, whether you returned or not. She no longer has access to the house through me.”
I wait.
“I told my mother she cannot arrange your life or Kit’s.”
“You were the one who brought her here.”
“Yes. I used her to get what I wanted. Now I’m telling her to stop, and I won’t bring her back.”
His answer is so much plainer than I expect that I have nothing ready for it.
“I need more than a report of one conversation.”
“I know.”
“You can see Kit again. That doesn’t mean you’re coming back into my life in every other way.”
He looks at the baby’s head beneath my chin. “I understand what you’re allowing.”
I am not sure he does. I am willing to let him show me at another visit.
We agree on one later in the week. Mom takes the empty cup to the kitchen, leaving us the last few minutes.
“There are things I still need you to answer,” I say. “About what you promised. About what you thought would happen to me.”
His shoulders become still.
“All right.”
“I don’t want to have that conversation while you’re meeting him.”
“Tell me when.”
“Next week. Mom can be nearby. And if you made those promises in messages, I want to see them, Magnus. The actual words. Not your explanation of them.”
He looks at me for a long moment.
“I’ll bring them.”
At two twenty-eight, he glances at the clock. I see him calculate the two minutes left. Kit has fallen quiet against me, his eyelids lowered.
Magnus gets his coat.
At the door, he turns back. He wants something; it is there in his face before he closes it away.
“Thank you for letting me meet him.”
“He’s your son.”
“Yes.”
I wait, but he doesn’t add anything about what that should entitle him to. He says goodbye to Mom and leaves.
After the door closes, she comes to stand beside my chair.
“Tea?”
“Please.”
She touches my shoulder on her way past. I look down at Kit’s hand, open now against my shirt, and let myself breathe normally again.
The phone rings while the kettle is on. Arthur.
“Is it a good time?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t keep you. I wanted to hear it from you. What did you call him?”
“Kit.”
The line goes quiet. “Your mother’s father?”
“Yes.”
“Then it’ll suit him. I’ll meet him when you say, Dulcie, and nobody else.”
I thank him and put the phone down beside my son, and Mom brings the tea.