“From the very first time we met,” she said, “you were my hero.”
*****
Sunday dinner.
Baby Katie was almost two months old, but we finally made it to one of Michael’s family dinners. It had gone well—much better than I had expected. Though I wouldn’t say we were all on the friendliest of terms, I was reconnecting with Mom and at least being civil to Dad.
Still, sitting down with everyone around the table at dinner was bizarre. Not that anything horrible happened, but it was awkward and uncomfortable. Amanda said almost nothing though she and Tria were getting along for the most part. Amanda seemed to have accepted that I was back in the family, and Tria was around to stay.
She loved Baby Katie, of course. Everyone did. She even tried to get up and tend to her when Baby Katie started crying right about the time dessert was being served.
“I got her,” I said quickly. I needed the excuse to take a break from the group.
I gathered her up, grabbed her purple blanket off the back of the pumpkin seat in the hallway, and went to the den to see if I could get her to nap. There were thick, dark red curtains in there, and they did a nice job of blocking out the afternoon light. Once I pulled them closed, I settled down in an overstuffed chair with Baby Katie on top of me.
She settled down almost immediately.
I nuzzled the top of her head and sniffed the soft, downy hair around her crown as I pulled the blanket up around her shoulders. I touched the top of her head, being careful over the soft spot there, and down across her cheek as I sniffed again. She smelled fantastic.
I didn’t know what it was about her, but she always smelled great. Well, except when her diaper needed to be changed, but even that wasn’t nearly as bad as I had always been led to believe. Supposedly it was going to get worse when she started eating other foods, but changing diapers wasn’t the big deal everyone made it out to be.
I said that to my mom, and she just smiled and shook her head.
As much as Baby Katie liked the boob, I didn’t see the real food happening for a while. Tria went through so much cracked and achy nipple pain in the beginning, but now it was completely effortless for both of them. Baby Katie would latch on and go to town, and Tria would hardly notice except that she had to flip her shirt up to do it.
Baby Katie yawned a big, toothless yawn, and then rested her head against the center of my chest. Next to Tria’s tits, it was her favorite place to be. She blinked her big, brown eyes a few times before closing completely.
With one arm wrapped underneath her butt, and the other one around her back, I settled against the back of the chair and closed my eyes as well. It was good to get some rest, even though I knew it wasn’t going to last very long. Baby Katie was comfortable, warm, and content on my chest, and I was thrilled to have her there.
She was going to grow out of being a baby long before I was going to grow tired of her being one.
I dozed for a while, waking only when Baby Katie began to squirm a little. I sat up, wrapped the blanket around her a little tighter, and rocked her a little in my arms until she settled back down. It never took very long.
During my previous session with Erin, she said I had come a long way from the first time I walked into her office. I had only shrugged at her, but I knew she was right. No one was going to refer to me as perfect, but I had made some progress in certain areas.
I hadn’t hit the mullet-dude at work who kept commenting on my heritage—not even once.
I wanted to, no doubt, but I hadn’t done it. That was the main thing. Erin said it was okay for me to think about it as long as I never took those kinds of thoughts and turned them into actions. I was okay with that.
She was actually starting to hint that maybe I didn’t need to see her every week anymore, which made me wonder how long it was going to be until I didn’t need to see her at all. I didn’t mind going. I had even gotten to the point where I sometimes liked talking to her, but as soon as Tria went back to sc
hool, someone else was going to have to watch Baby Katie. Mom and Chelsea had volunteered, of course, but they had their own jobs and lives and shit. They wouldn’t always be able to drop everything.
I thought more and more about what I needed to do with my life…my career.
Was I going to just keep making rings? Did I want to be in a pissant shop with mullet-boy on second shift, or did I want to be more than that?
I wasn’t sure.
There was no doubt that I thought a lot about what Baby Katie needed and what she might want in the future. I knew I didn’t want her to have to struggle to go to school like Tria had. I knew I didn’t want her living in a piece of shit apartment with a shit landlord and guns going off in the night. I remembered how scared Tria had been in the apartment alone, and the thought pissed me off.
There was no way—no way would I ever allow my daughter to be in that position.
My grip on Baby Katie tightened at the thought, and I sniffed her head again. I tried not to think about how Tria’s father had died long before his daughter was thinking about school, and wondered what he might have done differently if he had known.
“All of a sudden, everything that you thought was important takes a back seat, huh?”
My father walked into the den and tilted his head to get a better look at Baby Katie.