stairs for their own baby, paint it pale periwinkle, a shade so pale it almost looks white, perfect for a boy or a girl.
The dining room just off the front hall is bright, bloodred, with titanium white high-gloss trim on the windowsills and molding, a perfect contrast to the dark wood table and scuffed hardwood floor. It is Chloe’s favorite room in the house, and she stops here now, admiring a $200 oversize silver mirror she splurged on, dropping her files, purse, and keys on the table. She takes the sunflowers she bought at Strohecker’s, the upscale, overpriced grocery store just around the corner, puts them in a tall blue glass vase, and sits at the table, drinking in the colors.
This is what you have to do in Portland in the winter, she tells her friends who have never been there. You have to fill your inside with color so that the gray, the record-breaking forty-two days of low cloud cover and drizzle, don’t make you want to drive off the edge of the steep, winding road that leads to your perfect little house in Portland Heights. This is what you have to do when you have a sort-of fiancé who huddles in front of ESPN in the dark, who takes his cell phone into the other room when his friends, extreme sports bums who dream of Maui, of Telluride, call. This is what you do when you have a house you have fallen in love with, and a job that you can’t leave, when you have birth mothers, clients, who want you to hold their hands when they scream and push out a baby they will give away, no, correction: will make an adoption plan for.
“Hey, babe.” Dan startles her, coming from the dark living room to lean against the arched doorway. He has been asleep, prints of the corduroy couch on his rosy cheek, so lovely with his dark hair standing spiky above his dear face. He smiles sleepily. Okay, she thinks, we’re in a good mood. Okay!
“Hi!” She wraps her arms around his waist, checking her watch behind his back. It’s only just five thirty, and he has been home long enough to take a nap? “I thought you were going to call for a ride. I tried to call your cell a few times…. How was your day?”
“Shitty.” But his tone is light. “But we closed the shop early, so I have that going for me, a smaller paycheck this Friday.”
“Well, but it looks like you got a nice nap in.”
Dan shrugs, difficult again, and wanders through the dining room to the kitchen, stretching. A few years ago, before they moved to Portland, Chloe would never have used the word optimist to describe herself. Now, because she must balance the scales, it is the front-runner of her personality traits; Little Miss Sunshine.
“I’ve got at least two births coming up; I’ll get overtime for sure,” she offers, following him.
“It’s okay, babe,” he says, his mood swinging as wildly as their empty birdfeeder in the gusty rain outside the kitchen window. “It’s no big deal. Can I pour you some wine?” he offers, and suddenly there is nowhere she would rather be on this stormy night than sitting in their perfect red dining room, the trio of bright white pillar candles flickering between them as they make short work of a bottle of bargain merlot. He has one of her hands casually in his, tickling the underside of her wrist absentmindedly, though he knows it drives her mad, the best kind of mad. She can see them reflected in the silver mirror and, in that, the reflection of their images on the paned window, and on and on, endless rectangles of diminishing size, their silhouettes, the wineglasses, the glow of candlelight. Conversation is easy and light, bantering that will lead them quickly to the bedroom at the top of the stairs.
Until the cell phones ring, first his, and he takes it into the dark living room from where she can make out phrases: “next month,” “talk to Chlo about a plane ticket,” and “take some time off.”
She is bracing herself for his reaction to her questions when her own cell rings and she switches places with him, taking it into the other room as he sits back at the table, pouring the last of the wine into his glass.
“Hey.” The deep voice startles her, the pause that follows.