My Babies and Me

“Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out.” Michael removed plastic wrap from the second mattress and dropped it in the crib.

“You know,” Seth said conversationally as he laid out the pieces for the changing table. “You might give marriage some thought yourself.”

“Lay off.”

“I see you’re as open-minded as usual.”

Studying the directions in his hand, Michael concentrated on leaving Seth with his head intact. “You have no room to talk, little brother,” he reminded the other man.

Seth got the hint. Setting to work on the changing table, neither of them spoke for quite some time.

“Tell me why you work every hour of every day,” Seth finally said.

“Because I love what I do.”

“More than you love being with Susan?”

“Of course not,” Michael snapped. And then wished he hadn’t. Seth’s eyes took on an I-told-you-so-light, even if he didn’t say the words. But he had it all wrong.

“Look, man, I know how you grew up.” Seth had started in again, and Michael wondered what it would take to shut him up. “Susan says you were working odd jobs by the time you were ten just to help out. That you were buying all your own clothes by the time you were in junior high. And all through high school you held down a full-time job at the local grocery.”

Michael tried to tune Seth out. Everything he was saying was old news. Irrelevant news.

“You put yourself through college on loans and two part-time jobs, and then had to pay off the debt as soon as you graduated.”

“You can stop anytime,” Michael said. Silence was less boring. “This bar goes across there.” He

handed Seth the piece he’d been looking for.

“I understand why the career choices you made seven years ago were necessary. Why supporting yourself while getting far enough ahead to send money to your family was utterly important.”

Though he still wished Seth would simply be quiet, Michael was a tiny bit gratified to know that he had his friend’s endorsement on what had—until today—been the most difficult decision of his life.

“But why now?” Seth went on. “You’ve got to be loaded.”

“I do okay,” Michael acknowledged. It was one of the few things he had to feel proud about.

Seth studied the diagram for assembling the drawers that were supposedly going to line up on one side of the table. “It seems to me—” he dropped the page and took the pieces Michael had assembled and was already handing to him “—that your life has changed drastically in the past three or four years, but you’ve never reassessed your goals accordingly.”

“I am what I am,” Michael said. He wouldn’t kid himself, or try to pretend that things were better than they were. If he was going to commit himself to a life of regret, he was at least going to do so with his eyes wide-open.

He could just hear Coppel’s voice when he handed in his resignation. They’d probably be able to hear him from Atlanta to Ohio. And Michael could hardly blame him. Only an immature idiot took a job like Michael’s and quit a few months later.

Seth stopped what he was doing and stood, hands on his hips, while he looked straight at Michael. “All I’m saying is that maybe you should give some honest, open-minded thought to your life,” he said, his eyes unusually serious. “You’ve been pushing yourself at a frantic pace your entire life—since childhood, for God’s sake. Isn’t it just possible that this need to give everything you are to your career comes more from a lifetime of pushing, of habit?”

“You don’t understand,” Michael said automatically. No one ever had.

“Maybe not.” Seth went back to putting the gliders on one drawer while Michael worked on another.

“My career isn’t work to me.” Michael needed to explain it for himself, if not for Seth. “It’s who I am. I’m very good at what I do.” Michael felt bound to make Seth understand.

“I know you are,” Seth said, sliding his drawer successfully home. “But with nothing else in your life, what’s the point?”

WITH LAURA’S HELP, Susan turned out eight-dozen chocolate chip cookies. Seven dozen of them were packed and ready to go by the time Michael and Seth finished the nursery. They were allowed to consume the remaining twelve, along with a couple of glasses of milk.

And then Laura and Seth had to head out. It was getting dark, and Laura’s kids would need to be picked up soon.

“Don’t they look great together?” Susan asked Michael as they stood together in the doorway watching Seth walk Laura to her car. He was carrying the boxes of cookies, which he was going to deliver for Susan before meeting Laura at her house.