Ah, he was something else, moving against me, and I thought of that “something else” I’d felt while reading his chapter. I know that I’ll die with these memories in me, he wrote. I understood something, there with him in the dark, my toes curled against the tent wall. Not the sadness of death, but the silver clarity of these moments, casting a lifelong memory.
Afterward, we lay in a tangle on the pillows.
Satisfaction burned away my bashfulness. I stroked Matt’s ass and he panted softly against my hair.
“So,” he murmured, “you like my tent?”
I laughed breathlessly.
“Very much. Close quarters, but we made it work.”
“Well”—he scooted down so that we lay face-to-face—“I know a girl who’s into small living spaces. Won’t take anything too grand.”
I huffed. “Your realtor lady is obviously favoring the higher end of our price range.”
“Our realtor lady, Marion. And I noticed that.”
“Maybe I’ll have a talk with her.”
“You do that, little bird.” He tapped my nose and I scrunched it. “You can always e-mail her. Still, let’s at least see the larger places. Room to grow…”
I rolled onto my back. Room to grow.
“You want children,” I said. Matt stayed quiet and I continued calmly, the awareness forming as I spoke. “What you sent me today, Chapter four. You said you pictured me as a child, playing on the lawn of my parents’ house. You said it made you feel … sadness. You want to give me a home. And you want children, don’t you? I mean, you really want them.”
I glanced at him.
He sat up, avoiding my gaze.
“You don’t have to tell me, then. I know. I just don’t know how important it is to you.”
“Don’t say you haven’t thought about it,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what I want. If you’d talked to me a few years ago, I would have said I never wanted to get married. You made me want marriage, though, and you make me want…” He shrugged.
“I have thought about it.” I sat up and forced him to look at me. “Matt, I’ve gone so far as to picture it. A little boy with your beautiful eyes. A girl with sandy curls. But I’m confused, too. I’m scared. I never really wanted kids. There’s so much to consider.”
His eyes widened.
“We have to be careful.”
“What?”
He shook his head. “We could be happy. Too happy.”
“Too happy?” I frowned.
“Yes, God. Don’t talk about them. A boy … a girl. Stop that.”
Whoa, where was this coming from?
“I thought you—”
“You thought wrong,” he snapped, and I flinched. They were figments of my imagination—those small children, the boy and the girl—but when Matt said, Don’t talk about them, ferocity reared inside me. It was an instinct to protect … what didn’t even exist.
I stared at my hands, dazed. I didn’t want children. And now, mysteriously, part of me did. And I already loved the children that I wanted Matt to give me.
This new self-awareness stunned me into silence.
But suddenly Matt didn’t want children? He’d just said—
The power returned with a rising whirr. The AC chugged to life.
“Thank God,” Matt said. He grabbed his pants and kissed my shoulder. “I’ll fix the clocks.” He scrambled out of the tent.
Chapter 24
MATT
Hannah and I viewed homes with Marion twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
After Hannah got off work, we dined quickly and Marion picked us up in her Prius, the car and the woman always looking freshly polished. She was middle-aged and pleasant—not the pushy woman I expected, but a knowledgeable and confident realtor.
She avoided talk of my books, which I appreciated, but she had obviously done her research. To me, she often said, “This room would make an ideal office or library,” and to Hannah, “This area is great for newlyweds—private, but with so much to do nearby.”
We traipsed through three to five homes per day.
Ranch-style homes, two-family homes, suburban monstrosities, luxury townhouses.
The more we saw, the less we knew what we wanted, and the longer Marion’s listing e-mails grew. I pitied her—and us. That July was insufferably hot and we attacked house-shopping like a New Year’s resolution: at first with great energy and excitement, by the second week with diminishing zeal, and toward the end of the month with forbidding faces, dragging steps.
Marion pulled into a neighborhood just outside Denver.
“No,” I snarled. “Too suburban. Head to the next.”
She took us to a country home with a stunning view of the mountains.
“I don’t want to see it,” Hannah grumbled. “I’m not living in the sticks.”
We argued. We returned home late, disillusioned and depressed. We wanted out of the condo—once, our sweet little nest—and we picked on it and everything. If we had one extra room—one!—I wouldn’t have to put away my fucking weights every day. Well, how do you think I feel about my yoga stuff? All I can hear is the fucking street. Then go live in your tent!
Back and forth. More homes, nothing suitable. My Monday-morning sessions with Mike became one-hour rants about the state of housing in Colorado. Hannah left for work early and stayed late. I imagined her savoring the solitude of her office—a room of her own, which I couldn’t seem to give her.
Our story continued. Untitled, a novel by Hannah Catalano and Matt Sky. We threw ourselves into it, making progress with words where we couldn’t with homes. Four, sometimes five chapters a week, fired back and forth in frustrated volleys.
One evening over dinner, Hannah announced that Chrissy was twelve weeks pregnant.
“Wait…” She counted on her fingers. “Thirteen.”
“Mm.” I plowed my rice into a pile.
“She really wants to keep the baby. She quit smoking and everything.”
“Ah.” I rolled an olive around the rice.
“I guess pretty soon they’ll be able to find out the gender.”
“Yeah.” I speared the olive on my fork.
I’d also quit smoking, though no one seemed to notice, and I was acutely aware of Chrissy’s thirteen weeks to the day. I found myself Googleing strange things throughout the month. When does pregnancy start to show? How long does morning sickness last? When can ultrasound determine gender?