“I don’t know, Ally…” Nick’s gaze flickered towards the television, which he’d muted when I first spoke.
“All I’m asking is that you think about it, Nick. We have so much, and there are kids out there who are in desperate situations.” My throat closed a little at the memory of some of the harrowing stories I’d seen on that clip. Kids who had nothing but Twinkies for breakfast or wore clothes three sizes too small, never mind the truly horrific cases of abuse that I couldn’t bear to think about.
“Yes, but…” He paused, his wine glass halfway to his lips. “They’re all really difficult, aren’t they?”
I drew back a little at that; I didn’t think he meant to sound so selfish. “You’d be difficult too if you’d grown up the way those kids did.” Admittedly, it might have seemed as if I’d positioned myself as an expert after watching something on Facebook for five minutes, but actually I’d done some more research than that. The ad had led me to the website for Connecticut’s Department of Children and Families, and I’d read numerous articles on fostering, the training you did, the references you needed, how rewarding it all was. I didn’t know much, not yet, but I knew something.
“I know, I know,” Nick assured me. “That’s what I’m saying. They all have issues. And I don’t really think we’re equipped to deal with that sort of thing.”
“Equipped? How are we not equipped?” I looked pointedly around our spacious kitchen, the French windows we’d had put in a couple of years ago leading out to a cedarwood deck with a huge, gleaming grill. Our house wasn’t enormous, but it worked, and I loved it for all it represented, all the memories it had promised and then contained.
A couple of years ago, Nick had floated the idea of moving to one of those big brick monstrosities on Mountain Road, but I couldn’t stomach the idea. We’d bought our 1920s four-bedroom house off Farmington Avenue fifteen years ago, and then done it up slowly until we’d got it exactly the way we liked. We’d fallen in love with the street, which looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting or an episode of Leave it to Beaver—porches with window boxes and rocking chairs, kids riding bikes down the sidewalk or playing kick-the-can on summer nights as the fireflies come out like low-lying stars. It was exactly the sort of childhood I’d wanted for my kids, and we gave it to them. Why not offer it to someone else, even if just for a short time, if we could?
“We’re plenty equipped,” I said when Nick seemed as if he wasn’t going to answer me. “We’ve raised two children successfully”—Emma’s Harvard admission seemed to hover purposefully in the air—“and I work from home part-time. So do you, some of the time.” Last year, he’d redone the bonus room over the garage as a home office, complete with skylight and Nespresso machine. “We could do this.” But not if Nick wasn’t as committed as I was, although I was sure he could be, given time and a little carefully applied pressure.
“Where did this even come from?” he asked. “Because this is the first I’ve ever heard about it. You’re talking as if this is the tenth time we’ve had this discussion. What’s going on, Ally?”
I ducked my head, a bit abashed, because it was out of the blue. Last week, I’d been talking about renting a house in Provence for the summer, after seeing a magazine spread of fields of lavender and sunflowers, the sea an azure sparkle in the distance.
I’m a bit like that—I get seized by an idea and then I can’t help but run away with it, at least in my mind. Nick tethers me to earth, grounds me in reality. Sometimes it feels like a wet blanket, and other times it’s a relief.
Yet right then, watching him sip his wine and glance at the baseball game on TV, just as he did every other night, thinking how easy our lives had become, it didn’t feel like either. It felt like a disappointment. I wanted him to want it. I wanted his eyes to light up as he leaned forward, the Red Sox forgotten for a second, and say, You know what, Al? That sounds like a wonderful idea. In fact, I’ve been thinking along the same lines…
“I know we haven’t discussed this before,” I said. “But can’t we think