Sunday night stretching before them, no different from any other night of the week anymore. Having a baby is the great leveler of life, he decides, taking the distinction out of day and night, workweek and weekend. Parenthood is the ultimate lather-rinse-repeat.
“So, I’m feeling sort of…” She leaves the sentence open, waiting. He hates it when she starts conversations like this, pussyfooting.
“What?” He comes out of the closet; he didn’t mean to sound so sharp, but his balls are aching and he’s angry with himself for sleeping the afternoon away in front of televised football. It’s no way to grow a business.
“Never mind.” With her thumb she breaks the latch of the sleeping baby. She sighs, and her shoulders slump forward. She sits like this for a minute before closing the flap of her bra, tugging her shirt down. “I don’t know. I just don’t feel like…”
“Like what?” Paul says softly, and he sits on the edge of the bed, runs a hand over the baby’s head, down over her forearm that is holding him, lays his hand over hers. “Like what, hon?” It is so easy to be generous. Paul wonders why he doesn’t do it more, why he can’t set it as his default mode. He keeps his hand over hers.
“Nothing,” she says, and he exhales, relieved, lets it drop.
Later, he will remember this moment, and it may be what saves them in the end. She tried to tell him; he didn’t want to hear it.
Now, through a slick of tears, she is giving him that look, the girl from Anthro 101 and the Pygmies. She moves the baby meaningfully to his bassinet, winds up the mobile. She takes the bottle of apricot baby oil from the changing area by the windowsill and moves it to their bedside table. “Oh.” Paul smiles, feeling like Wyeth moments earlier, surprised and pleased. He thinks back a month, their first godawful postpartum attempt, and nothing but a sympathy handjob, one dry missionary quickie, and one hot shower blow job since then. She lies down in a C shape.
“So Maggie leaves tomorrow,” she whispers as he slides in bed next to her, curling behind her back. “It will be nice to have the house to ourselves again.”
Thank god she said it, because if he had, she would have jumped down his throat.
“You know, I’m working on a theory,” Paul says as he slips a hand up under her shirt and is met with layers, the industrial nursing bra, the absorbent milk pads. “I think once you’re over thirty, the only people you should be living with are those you’re having sex with, or those who are the product of said sex.”
Eva laughs and goes slack against his chest, shimmying her shoulders so the bra straps slide off them in his hands. Easier to just pull it down than try to tackle a triple clasp. Downstairs, the floorboards creak as Magnus walks into the kitchen, opens a cupboard, a glass on the counter, the clink of ice cubes. Eva reaches for the apricot baby oil on the nightstand. “We should be quick,” she whispers, wriggling out of her pants, rubbing her warm ass against him, and then the phone rings. “Let it be,” he hisses, but her brother answers it. “Just a moment…. Paul! It’s the answering service!” And then Wyeth and his ack-ack windup cry—“Forget it!” It comes out disgusted, like a slap. “Coming!” he yells back to Magnus.
Once, they might have rolled their eyes and shared a smile over the irony in his word choice, but Eva just yanks her pants back up and gives him a bitter, plaintive over-the-shoulder look as she picks up the baby.
31
Shake the Money Tree
JASON
“I’m sick to death of your hounding!” Jason had ripped her hands off him in the dark, shoved her. Not hard; he thinks back to her grunt as she hit the ground. She was the one grabbing at him, sweaty hands, ugly, pitted dark-mouth face. No wonder they didn’t get any money for their baby, her looking like that these days. No effort, picking at her face like Brandi, like a goddamn tweaker, mangled stomach, she’s lucky to have him. She’s got to leave him the fuck alone, let him work things out. It’s no use, her plans. Let it be!
He and Brandi get off the MAX line, stand under the shelter for the 51. It’s still dark, early morning, not raining but foggy, everywhere the air touches his bare skin, his