I sit with him long enough to count ten breaths, and then I walk out and close the door.
Kerry-Anne is on the couch watching TV, so I sit down in the rocking chair that used to belong to Aaron’s mom. I set Miles on my lap and hold him tightly under the arms so he can sit up. He smiles at me. “You’re all giggles now, huh?” I say, and he tries to eat his fist. “Are you still hungry?”
I go and make another bottle, and I take him back out into the living room. I sit down in the rocker again, and I hold him in the crook of my arm. He greedily takes the bottle and drinks it until his eyes fall closed and the bottle falls from his slack lips.
“When he cries really hard like that, it makes him tired,” Kerry-Anne informs me.
“It made me tired too.” I let out a laugh, but Kerry-Anne ignores my attempt at humor.
I don’t want to wake Aaron to put Miles in his portable crib, so I just hold him, and we rock together as he sleeps.
“When my daddy feels better, we’re going to ride bikes,” Kerry-Anne says. I don’t think she expects a response from me. She doesn’t look away from the TV, but her words still make me wonder.
What would Aaron have done if Kerry-Anne hadn’t come to get me?
26
Eli
When Sam and I get back from the store, we unload all the things we just bought. I very quietly open the bedroom door and peek inside, surprised to find our bed empty and the covers jumbled. Bess doesn’t like a messy bed; she always makes it up. So I go and straighten the covers and rearrange the pillows the way she likes them.
When we first moved in together, we actually fought about making the bed. I refused to do it, because I couldn’t figure out why anyone would feel the need to make up a bed that you’re just going to get right back into a few hours later. But Bess argued that there was something very soothing about getting into a bed with fresh, crisp linens. I didn’t agree, but over the years I learned that I could avoid the argument with her if I just made the damn bed.
For me, one of my sticking points was the kitchen. Bess didn’t like to cook and then have to clean the kitchen. She preferred to do it the next morning. After a meal, Bess wanted to lie on the couch and cuddle, stretch her feet across my lap, or have a conversation. Cleaning was the last thing on her mind. But for me, I couldn’t rest if the kitchen wasn’t clean after a meal. I couldn’t mentally leave it until the next morning, so Bess slowly learned that cleaning up after a meal was important to me so that there was no left-over mess the next day.
We learned to compromise, as happily married couples do. But at some point, we stopped listening to one another, stopped compromising, stopped caring entirely. Bess wasn’t the only one at fault. I had to accept my share of the blame.
So when I make the bed, I recognize that I’m still trying to fulfill her needs, even without realizing it. I put the few groceries I picked up away in the kitchen, and I notice that there are no dishes in the sink. Not a single one.
“I guess we should go see where everybody is,” I say absently to Sam.
She’s out the front door before I can blink, and I just walk in her wake over to the cabin next door. But I stop short when I see Bess still in her jammies, rocking a sleepin
g baby in her arms. She looks so calm and so peaceful as she rubs the top of his little head, and I stop in the doorway to stare at her, taken aback by how natural motherhood looks on her.
“You’re back,” she says. She doesn’t get up. She just rocks slowly, and then she does something that is almost surreal.
She smiles at me.
My guts do that roiling motion down toward my toes, the feeling that I used to confuse with seasickness when I was a teenager. Bess is happy and I am happy about it.
“What are you doing?” I ask quietly, trying not to wake the sleeping baby.
“Rocking,” she says. Then her lips tip up in a grin again, and this time it’s more than my guts that pay attention. Bess’s hair is a rat’s nest around her face, and she looks like she just rolled out of bed—which seems at odds with the fact that she’s at Aaron’s cabin.
“You’re still in your jammies.”
She laughs out loud. “I know. Crazy, right?” She doesn’t make a move to get up. She just sits there and rocks. “Aaron was really sick, so Kerry-Anne came to get me.” She shoots me a pointed glance.
“My dad’s sick?” Sam says. She walks toward the bedroom door, but Bess calls her name before she can turn the door knob.
“Let’s let him sleep, Sam,” she says.
Sam hesitantly lowers her hand from the knob. “Was he throwing up?”
“He was puking his guts out when I got here. And he had been for a while.”
One thing I’ve always appreciated about Bess is her forthrightness. But in this situation, I’m not sure how much she should tell Sam.