Chapter 17
ISABELLE
Xavier did two things in the same week that undid her completely.
The first was the lunch.
He'd suggested it casually, at Amal's, over the tagine that had become their ritual.
She was seven months pregnant now. Douglas kept telling her she looked like a goddess, Margaret kept telling her she looked healthy and Xavier kept looking at her with an expression that made her want to throw something at him and also never stop being looked at.
"I want to take you and Douglas to lunch," Xavier said.
She set down her fork. "You want to take me and Douglas to lunch."
"Is that strange?"
“I don’t know. You did accuse me of?—”
"I know. That's why I want to take you both to lunch. I want him to see that I'm not that person anymore. I want you to see it. And honestly..." He paused. "I want to know him. He's your closest friend. He's going to be in our child's life. I should know him."
She studied his face. She'd gotten better at reading this new Xavier, the one who went to therapy, admitted to being nervous and ate pho in khakis, but moments like this still surprised her.
The old Xavier would never have voluntarily sat down to lunch with a man he'd considered a rival.
The old Xavier would have tolerated Douglas at best, been cordial, been charming, been every inch the confident husband who didn't need to worry.
This Xavier was asking to sit across from Douglas and be seen as a man who'd been wrong and was trying to do better.
"I'll ask him," she said.
Douglas said yes immediately, which surprised her.
She'd expected resistance, or at least a few minutes of theatrical reluctance.
Instead, he'd said, "Where?" When she told him Xavier had suggested the dim sum place in the Sunset, Douglas had laughed and said, "He's been paying attention. Tell him I'm ordering everything."
Douglas was already at the table when they arrived. He looked up when they walked in. Isabelle watched his eyes move from her to Xavier and back to her, assessing, calculating, deciding.
Xavier put out his hand. "Douglas."
Douglas looked at the hand. He looked at Xavier. A beat passed, long enough to be uncomfortable, and then Douglas shook it.
"You look less terrible than the last time I saw you," Douglas said.
"That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."
"Don't get used to it."
They sat. They ordered. Xavier deferred to Douglas on every dish. The table filled with bamboo steamers: siu mai, har gow, char siu bao, turnip cake, egg tarts.
Isabelle watched Xavier ask Douglas about his work, about the apartment on Fillmore and whether he'd fixed the terrible bathroom tile. Douglas answered carefully at first, giving Xavier the minimum, testing each question for subtext.
But Xavier didn't have subtext anymore, or if he did, it was a kind Isabelle hadn't seen before: genuine curiosity.
When Douglas mentioned that Isabelle had helped him pick new hardware for the kitchen, Xavier said, "She has an incredible sense for hardware.
She spent two months on the cabinet pulls for our kitchen.
I thought she was being obsessive but she was right. "
Douglas glanced at Isabelle. She could see him adjusting the mental file he kept on Xavier, making room for something he hadn't expected.
"She's always right about hardware," Douglas said. "She's always right about most things. It's extremely annoying."
"I'm sitting right here," Isabelle said with a playful pout.
"We know, Iz. We're bonding over your superiority. Let us have this."
Xavier laughed. Douglas smiled, which for Douglas was the equivalent of a standing ovation. They ate soup dumplings, talked about the Soto project and Douglas's bathroom renovation and a new man, Leo, who Douglas was dating.
Walking to the car afterward, Isabelle linked her arm through Xavier's.
"You survived," she said.
"I more than survived. I liked him."
"Everyone likes Douglas."
"I didn't. Before. I was too busy being afraid of him to see him."
She squeezed his arm. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to.
The second thing happened the following week. Xavier picked her up for their pho lunch and when she got in the car there was an envelope on the passenger seat. Cream paper, heavy stock, her name written on the front.
"What is this?" she said.
"Open it."
Inside was a letter on the stationery of the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art, the West Coast chapter.
It was addressed to her. It was an invitation to join as a professional member, nominated by the chapter board, with full access to their library, their lecture series, their annual conference and their network of architects, preservationists and designers working in traditional and vernacular design.
"How—how did you do this?" Isabelle whispered.
"I called them. I told them about your work. I sent them photos of the Soto house and the Pacific Heights house. They looked at your website." He paused. "I didn't ask them to offer you a membership. I asked them to look at your work and decide for themselves. They decided."
"Xavier..."
"You should be connected to other people who do what you do. You should have a professional network that isn't me, Margaret and Douglas and clients. You're building something real, Isabelle. You should have the infrastructure around it."
She held the letter in her lap, looked at it and her vision blurred.
The old Xavier would never have done this.
The old Xavier would have seen a professional network as competition for her attention, another room she could walk into without him, another place where she existed outside the orbit of his life.
The old Xavier would have loved her talent in the abstract and feared it in practice, the way he'd always feared anything that made her more herself and less his.
This Xavier had called the Institute of Classical Architecture and said: look at what my wife can do.
"Thank you," she said. Her voice was unsteady.
"You don't have to thank me. I should have done something like this years ago. I should have been building you up instead of keeping you close."
They had pho. They talked about the baby, who was the size of a cauliflower and had developed hiccups, which were strange, rhythmic and kept Isabelle awake at two in the morning.
Xavier asked questions about the hiccups with an earnestness that bordered on comical, and she told him about the nursery plans, the celadon room, what she was thinking for the crib, the light fixtures and the mobile.
He listened and didn't offer to hire a decorator or buy everything in the store. He just listened.
After lunch he drove her home. He parked outside the house, reached into the back seat and brought out a second envelope. This one was different. A plain white envelope, unsealed, with nothing written on the front.
"This one's for you," he said. "But it's not for now. It's for later. When you're alone."
She took it. It was light. A few pages, maybe.
"What is it?"
"A letter. For the baby. I wrote it last week." He looked at his hands on the steering wheel. "I wanted to put down in words who their mother is. So that someday, when they're old enough to read it, they'll know. They'll know who you are."
Isabelle held the envelope. Her hands were shaking.
"Read it tonight," he said. "Or don't. Whenever you're ready."
He kissed her forehead. He didn't push. He didn't linger. He drove away and she stood on the sidewalk holding two envelopes, one from an institution and one from her husband, and she went inside.
Isabelle waited until evening. She sat on the sofa in the living room with the lights off.
The baby was moving inside her, slow rolling kicks that pushed against her ribs.
She opened the envelope and unfolded two pages of Xavier's handwriting, which she hadn't seen in years because Xavier typed everything.
The handwriting was careful, deliberate, slightly uneven, as though he'd written slowly.
Dear baby,
I'm writing this while you're still inside your mother. You have hiccups sometimes, which she says keep her awake, and she says it like she's complaining but I can hear in her voice that she loves it. She loves every sign that you're real, present and alive because she waited so long for you.
I want to tell you about her.
Your mother is an artist. She restores old houses and designs the interiors to match what the house was always meant to be. She can look at a wall and read the history behind the paint. She can stand in a room and know what it wanted to be before someone covered it up.
Nobody knew she did these things. I didn't know.
I didn't see the work. I didn't see the hours or the skill or the love that went into every surface.
I saw a beautiful home, I saw a beautiful wife and I thought those were the same thing and they're not.
She's not beautiful because she makes beautiful things.
She's a woman who works harder than anyone I've ever known and happens to also be the most beautiful person I've ever seen, and those are two separate facts and she deserves credit for both.
I love you already. I love you so much it frightens me, and I'm learning that being frightened doesn't mean I get to hold on tighter. It means I hold on gently.
Your mother sees everything. She sees the original bones beneath decades of renovation. She sees the trim work under the drywall. She sees the beauty in things that other people have given up on.
She saw me. She sees me.
I love her. I love you. I can’t wait to meet you.
Dad
Isabelle couldn't see the words through the tears, so she held the pages against her chest, pressed her back into the sofa and cried.
This was the crying that comes at the end of something, when the last door opens, you walk through it and you realize you've already forgiven the person on the other side, that you forgave them weeks ago, maybe months ago, and you've just been waiting to say so.
She picked up her phone.
Her husband answered instantly.
"Come home," she whispered. "Come home, Xavier."
Silence.
"Isabelle," he said. "Are you sure?"
"I've never been more sure of anything. Come home."
He was there in twenty minutes. Isabelle opened the front door before he knocked. His eyes were red and for a moment neither of them moved.
"I love you," she said. "I never stopped. I never will stop. I want you to be my husband again."
She took his hand and brought him inside. He brought her lips to his and lifted her. Carefully, gently, his arms around her and her belly between them. He carried her up the stairs and she laughed against his mouth.
"You're going to hurt yourself," she said.
"I don't care."
"You're going to drop me."
"I would never drop you."
He set her down in the bedroom. Their bedroom. He stood in front of her; she pulled his sweater over his head, put her hands on his chest. He was warm, so warm. She'd missed this. She'd missed the physical fact of him, the weight and the heat and the smell of his skin.
He undressed her slowly. He took his time with each button, each clasp, and when her body was bare he looked at her with something that went beyond desire.
He looked at her belly, round and full and carrying their child.
His eyes filled and he pressed his mouth against the curve of it and whispered, "Hi, baby. It's your dad. I'm home."
Isabelle laughed. She cried. She pulled him up, kissed him and they fell onto the bed together. The pregnancy had remade her and he learned her again, carefully, his hands following the changes, his mouth gentle on her skin.
She kept her eyes open. She'd always kept her eyes open with him, and tonight the looking was different because he was different. He was looking back at her with an openness that had no possession, no fear. He was just there. With her. Seeing her.
When he moved inside her she gasped. Her fingers dug into his shoulders and he stilled.
"Okay?" he whispered.
"Don't stop."
"Tell me if..."
"Xavier. Don't stop."
He didn't stop. They moved together, slowly, finding each other again.
She could feel the baby between them, that impossible fullness.
Xavier's hand was on her belly, his eyes were on her face.
She said his name and he said hers. It was nothing like the last time they'd been together in this bed, months ago, when he'd reached for her and every touch had been a proving, a claiming, a recitation of ownership.
This was different. This was a man and a woman who'd broken apart and chosen to come back together. The choosing was in every movement, every breath, every place where his skin pressed against hers.
She came with his name on her lips and his forehead against hers. He followed her, his face pressed against her neck, and the sound he made was her name, broken and whole at the same time.
After, they lay tangled together, her head on his chest, her belly against his hip, his arm around her.
Isabelle traced a line down his chest with her finger. She could hear his heartbeat under her ear, steady and strong.
Xavier pulled her closer. Not too tight. Just close enough. She closed her eyes, listened to his heartbeat and the baby kicked once, hard, against his palm. He laughed, quiet and amazed, and she laughed too.
They were home.