“No bath!” Moira screamed. “I already took a bath.”
“No, you didn’t,” Elm said.
“But I don’t want to.”
“Yeah, well, we have to do a lot of things we don’t want to do in this life, don’t we?”
“Come on.” Colin picked Moira up. “We can sing the bath time songs.”
Immediately, Elm regretted speaking so harshly to her daughter. Sometimes the little girl’s spoiled nature irked her, but if it was anyone’s fault it was Elm’s. Nannies, lessons, only-child-hood—no wonder Moira felt put out by any request that went contrary to her wishes.
That night in bed, with the rain falling heavily again and the tires sloughing off water twelve floors below on the wet streets, Colin snuggled up against Elm, breathing into the hair on the back of her neck. “Y’all gonna give us some somethin’ somethin’?” he asked.
“Who’s that voice?” Elm asked. “You sound like a deaf frog.”
“Thanks.”
There was a silence. Colin ran his hand over her stomach slowly, polishing it.
“What are we going to do this year?” Elm asked the ceiling.
“About what?”
“Ronan’s birthday.”
Colin’s hand abruptly stopped. He pulled it back to himself as though she’d bitten it. “I don’t know.”
Elm said, “Maybe we should go away.”
Colin turned, giving her his back. He was angry, hurt, Elm didn’t know which. Why could she still not read his silences after ten-plus years of marriage? Was she not allowed to talk about Ronan? “Maybe.”
After a silence Elm spoke. “I was going to say that I think I want to have another baby,” she said. Until that moment, she didn’t realize that she’d been thinking about getting pregnant, wondering if having another child might somehow ameliorate her grief.
“Really?” Colin said. “Is this the right time, do you think?”
“I’m over forty now. I don’t know how long it’ll take,” Elm said. “And I don’t want to regret not having started sooner. Or having waited too long.”
“I don’t know, Elm. Things are just so up in the air right now.”
Elm looked at the headboard. The veneer was beginning to chip away, revealing the particleboard underneath. “I just feel like I’m ready.” She shrugged. “We’re ready.”
“Let’s see how things shake down at Moore first.”
“Meaning …?”
“Meaning you can let that worry you to sleep tonight.”
His tone may have been harsh, Elm wasn’t sure. Was he angry at her for wanting another child? Because she could explain to him that she wasn’t trying to replace Ronan. Rather, she wanted the distraction of a new baby, the joy of creating a life. She would let the idea sink in and they could revisit it another time when Colin wasn’t so worried about his job. She stared at the molding where the ceiling met the wall, slippery white painted wood like waves. She willed her mind still and concentrated, concentrated, until her gaze clouded over and she slipped among them.
That Thursday night Elm and Colin were supposed to go to a party. Elm didn’t know the people and didn’t want to go. All afternoon she grew more and more angry at Colin until she erupted while they were getting ready to go out.
“I don’t know these people. You don’t even really know these people. Budokon class at the gym does not count as a place to know people from.”
“Come on,” he’d returned. “You drag me to work events all the time.”
“Yes, but you’ve met those people.” Elm stopped straightening her hair and went out to the bedroom where he was picking a tie. “And, I don’t have a choice. It’s for work.”
Colin said nothing. He tried on a jacket, then took it off and threw it on the bed. He surveyed his closet again.
“And are we tallying now?” Elm refused to let it drop. “Because I think Christmases in Galway count for a lot more than weekends at Pine Lake.”
“Drop it, Elm. If you don’t want to come, don’t. I’ll go alone.”
Now Elm looked out the window of the taxi sulkily, imagining her face illuminated in the taxi’s window as it reflected the buildings of Midtown. Why was she being so petulant? Because she was tired, she told herself. And she was too old to meet new people. The point of getting married, she argued with herself, is that you don’t have to go to parties anymore if you don’t want to. And here she was being dragged downtown to someone’s TriBeCa loft. Any normal people would live on the Upper West or Upper East Side, unless they were artists or showoffs or fake bohemians. Elm went downtown only