our mother. Elise was picking up gestures and habits, maybe; she and my mother talked more often these days. Elise called her several times a week, asking what to do for a diaper rash, or a fever, or on a long, cold day with no distractions.
My father leaned forward, looking at Miles. “You need anything?” he asked. “Do you want me to get him a bottle?”
“He just had one. He’s just fussy this morning. He was up three times last night.” She looked at me. “Did you hear him?”
I shook my head. The guest room was on the first floor, and Miles’s room was on the second.
“Huh,” she said, shifting him to her other arm. “Neither you nor my husband. What heavy sleepers you both are.”
Miles quieted, looking up at her face, one small hand pressed over his mouth as if trying to hide his awe. He had my mother’s eyes, and he already smiled with just one side of his mouth, the exact way Charlie did. For a few minutes, we all stared at him, entranced, as if he were a fire in a fireplace.
“Susan should be here soon.” My father walked around the tree and settled himself onto the couch, tugging at the turtleneck. He looked over his shoulder and pulled back the curtain from the window. He seemed nervous. He hadn’t given Susan her present yet, but he’d shown it to us: a diamond engagement ring, beautifully cut. He had proposed to her before Thanksgiving; they planned to get married on a beach somewhere the first week they could both get off work.
My father had told me and Elise about their plans the day after Thanksgiving, when Susan wasn’t around. He’d sat both of us down in his dining room, his face stern, his hands pressed flat against the glass table as if he were holding it down. He’d been defensive, ready for a fight. Neither of us gave him one. We both liked Susan. When he had chest pains the last week of October, it was Susan who made him go to an emergency room, where it was decided that he was not yet having the heart attack that he would soon have if he did not make some changes. It was Susan who made him take his medication, and it was Susan who actually got him to go to a yoga class with her twice a week after work. Also, she laughed at his jokes. She listened attentively to the stories—the new ones as well as the old ones we had already heard too many times. Elise and I saw Susan as fresh troops, a whole new person who was not at all tired of him, who was ready to absorb his energy.
“I know it’s only been a year,” he said. “Or not quite a year,” he added, seeing that Elise was about to correct him. “But I’m not a kid. And I want to be happy. I deserve to be happy, don’t I?”
We were only quiet for a moment. “As much as anyone,” Elise said, with a lilt in her voice that made her sound happy as she went to hug him. I hugged him as well, my congratulations sincere. I did want him to be happy, whether he deserved it or not. I ignored the nagging sadness that Elise did not seem to feel, and focused on the pulse of his heartbeat against the side of my face.
As soon as he left the room, whistling down the hallway, Elise’s smile faded. She looked at her reflection in the glass table and tucked her hair behind her ears.
“There’s an expression,” she said, and I was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “Women mourn. Men replace.” She laughed a little, meeting my gaze only for a moment. “You know? He hasn’t even gotten a new dog yet.”
My father tugged again on the turtleneck, squinting at the Christmas tree. “I’m going to take this off,” he said. “I’m just going to tell Susan that I don’t like them. Okay? She’s going to have to deal with it.” He reached down and yanked off the sweater, revealing a T-shirt with a credit card logo written in neon across the front. It was the kind of thing you got for free for filling out an application. “Otherwise I’ll be getting turtlenecks for the rest of my life. I’m sorry if it’ll hurt her feelings. Okay? If we get married, she’ll have to know the truth.”