25. Dulcie
DULCIE
Magnus is showing Kit the ceiling.
He stands beneath the living-room light with our son against his shoulder, both of them looking up. Kit’s mouth is open.
“Dad does this,” I say. “The lamp, the ceiling, the window.”
“He told me. He said it’s the only thing that works between four and five.”
“He’s right.”
Kit makes a sound.
Magnus looks down at him. The expression that crosses his face is still new enough to catch me unprepared. Amusement first, then that absorbed tenderness which has nothing to do with whether anyone is watching.
In the week since the gallery, Magnus and I have met for lunch once and walked while Mom watched Kit. The walks and meals end. The parenting visits continue. I am beginning to know the difference in my body, instead of having to remind myself each time he puts on his coat.
Tonight, I asked him to stay for dinner.
The invitation looked very ordinary on my phone. I read it four times before sending it.
“Would you take him upstairs while I finish?” I ask. “He’s ready for his crib.”
Magnus shifts Kit against his shoulder and picks up the cloth from the arm of the chair. I hear him talking on the stairs, his voice becoming softer as they go. There is nothing particularly remarkable about a father putting his son down. I find myself listening anyway.
When he comes back, I am trying to separate two plates that have stuck together in the cupboard.
“Don’t,” I say as he reaches past me.
His hand stops.
“I’ll get them. You can carry that.”
I nod toward the dish on the counter. He takes it to the table. The plates come apart.
We eat with the baby monitor beside the water jug. Magnus has to move his chair slightly so I can get past. He does it without looking around the kitchen as though the dimensions constitute an argument.
I made too much food. He takes a second helping and asks about my first session back next week. I tell him about the folder waiting by the door, the names I promised to help write, the bindings I have tested at home.
“Which did you choose?”
“Soft ties. Metal rings catch, and somebody would spend the whole morning opening them.”
“You said that at the gallery.”
“I did.”
I smile into my glass.
Afterward, he washes while I dry. I have to show him which towel actually dries anything; the other one only looks as though it should. He holds the wrong one up and looks at me, and I laugh hard enough to wake a small answering noise from the monitor.
We stop together.
Kit settles.
Magnus puts the towel down very slowly, and I press my hand over my mouth.
When the kitchen is finished, I go upstairs to check on Kit. He is asleep, one arm lifted beside his head. I stand by the crib for a minute, then go back down.
Magnus is beside the sofa, putting his watch on after washing. There is something about the movement that catches low in my chest. I know those wrists. I know the concentration with which he does small things and the sudden, complete attention he can turn on me.
He looks up.
“Should I go?”
“Not yet.”
I cross the room before I can make wanting him into a problem I need to solve alone.
This time I don’t tell him to stay still. I put my hands on his chest and kiss him, and when he answers I move closer instead of drawing away.
His arms come around me. Not carefully distant, not the tentative embrace of someone waiting to be thanked for restraint. He wants me. I can feel it in the way he breathes my name, in the brief pause before he kisses me again.
For a little while, I want nothing except the next kiss.
I have missed the height of him, the warmth through his shirt, the particular way his attention makes the rest of a room unimportant. My hands slide to his shoulders. He draws me nearer, and I let him.
Then his hand closes around the back of my neck. His thumb moves along my jaw, tipping my face up.
I am in the sitting room after the jeweler.
The cup is in the hall. My mouth is warm. He is pleased because I have stopped asking him a question.
“Stop.”
His hand leaves me immediately.
I step back. The distance is small, but cold reaches the place where his palm was.
“Dulcie?”
I look at his hand hanging at his side. I had wanted it on me a moment ago. I still want part of what happened a moment ago, which makes the sudden grief harder to bear.
“That. What you just did.”
He stays where he is.
“After the jeweler.”
He looks at me, then at his own hand.
“I remember.”
“I wasn’t there until you did it. I was here. I was having a good evening.”
My voice breaks. I hate the way I hear an apology in it, even though I haven’t offered one.
“I used it to stop listening to you,” he says. “That night. You were right to pull away.”
“And now?”
“I want you. I wanted to keep kissing you.” His voice is low, steady. “You told me to stop.”
He doesn’t add a smaller request. His hands remain at his sides.
For a few seconds I listen to the refrigerator in the next room and the faint sound of Kit breathing through the monitor. There is no door I have to reach before Magnus starts telling me what my reaction means.
“What do you want now?” he asks.
“I want the rest of the evening by myself.”
“All right.”
He gets his coat. I follow him into the hall because I want to, because seeing him leave is part of learning whether he means it.
At the door, he looks at me.
“Tomorrow at two?”
“For Kit. Yes.”
“I’ll see you then.”
I close the door after him. The key catches, and I lift the handle. My hand knows the movement now.
Upstairs, Kit is still asleep.
I sit on the edge of my bed, touch my mouth, and let myself be sorry that the evening ended. I don’t have to be sorry that I ended it.
At two the next afternoon, Magnus arrives with the cloth he accidentally took home over his shoulder at the last visit, washed and folded.
“This came home with me.”
“He does that. Half his things are at my parents’.”
He takes off his coat and asks whether Kit has eaten. He doesn’t look at my mouth, then pointedly look away. He doesn’t make the room cold enough that I have to warm it for him.
When Kit begins to complain during a diaper change, Magnus tells him he is making a persuasive case for trousers without feet. I am in the kitchen, pouring water, and I smile before I realize I can.
The visit is ordinary.
I had not known how much I needed that.