I have two more stops before I go home. The first is the jewelry store, from which I purchased a necklace months ago for Clara. She eyed it herself just weeks after she became pregnant with Felix—a month max—a silver necklace with a duo of heart-shaped tags. “Would you look at that,” Clara had said, pointing to it through the store’s glass display. We didn’t go to the jewelry store looking for necklaces, but rather to have her wedding band resized. She stood there, ogling the necklace, then smiled at me and said, “Two hearts. One for Maisie, and one for baby,” while rubbing a hand wishfully over the tiny peppercorn in her womb.
The next day, without Clara around, I returned to the store and bought the pendant necklace on the sly. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t give Clara if I could. I hid it away in a dresser drawer for the next eight months, knowing that as soon as the baby had a name, I’d get the heart tags engraved. The time has come. I swing by the jewelry store and leave the necklace for engraving: one heart for Maisie, and one for Felix. And then I show him a picture of my kids because I just can’t stop myself from gloating. It’ll be a week or two before they’re ready, and then I can surprise Clara with the gift. The store owner winks at me and says, “You know we sell the charms individually. You can always add more hearts if need be,” and already I’m thinking that might be something we’ll one day do. One day there may be more kids for Clara and me. Maisie, Felix and baby.
And then I stop at a convenience store to pick up the milk and go home.
I spend the couple of days following Felix’s birth at home, a paternity leave of sorts. It’s not easy to do. Without anyone to fill in my shoes while I’m gone, Stacy and Nancy are left to reschedule dozens of patients. “If anyone calls with an emergency,” I tell them over the phone early in the morning, while sipping my very first mug of caffeinated coffee and staring at the day as it stretches out before me, long and wide, full of opportunity, “call me. I’ll come in. Only for an emergency,” because sometimes there are things that can’t be put off for a week. Melinda Grey is proof enough of this.
I’ve been served with an Emergency Order of Protection from Melinda Grey, a sheet of paper that’s stashed between the pages of an old dictionary we never use, and I’m waiting on a hearing date, just as I’m waiting on a date for mediation in the malpractice suit. I can’t let this bother me. I feel grateful that the emergency order—a restraining order—arrived the day after Felix was born, as I left Clara and Felix at the hospital for a quick breather, just enough time to drive home, shower and change my clothes. He was waiting for me in the driveway when I arrived, a different messenger this time who also pressed the order into my hand and told me I’d been served. I was just so grateful Clara wasn’t around to see, and that Maisie wasn’t here to ask questions. What’s that, Daddy? and, Why was that man here? I found a safe spot for the order, a place where it will never be seen.
We spend the days together, morning, noon and night devoted to holding my baby boy in my arms and watching my daughter spin across the room in delight. “Look at me, Daddy,” she begs. “I can fly, I can fly.” And then she asks if I want to fly, too, and I tell her yes, that there’s nothing in the world I’d rather do. And so, handing Felix to Clara, I stretch my arms out beside Maisie, and together we fly, spinning wildly around the room. The days are warm, stretching out before us like an open country road, full of nothing to do. There’s no better feeling in the world. I spend time catering to my wife’s needs, changing my son’s diaper, holding him while he sleeps, coloring innumerable pictures with my daughter, watching TV. In the afternoons, Maisie and I slip outside and play games of tag and chase until we are both sweating and exhausted. We bike to the playground; we turn on the sprinkler and take turns leaping through the water’s icy spray. I prepare hamburgers on the grill for dinner, and we all four eat on the patio table with the umbrella pressed all the way up to keep the sunlight out of Felix’s dozing eyes. And as I become rapt in this—in my family—the extraneous worries start to slip away, and I’m only even vaguely aware that the Golden State Warriors have won the NBA finals, and that all that money I bet on their team was not for naught, that sitting in a bank account is enough money to cover my debt, to replace Maisie’s college education savings and start contributing to a new life insurance fund.
My gambling days are through.
I go through the ways I will tell Clara about Gus. I practice in the bathroom mirror, confessing to her first about my runins with Kat, and then the declaration that Gus is my son. I don’t know whether or not this is true—I still have yet to hear the results of the paternity test—and yet somewhere deep inside, I know it’s true. Clara will be angry. It will take a while to process the fact. But then she’ll come to realize that what happened between Kat and me was many years ago, long before I first laid eyes on Clara and knew at once that she was the one for me. She’ll grasp that I haven’t kept this knowledge from her for twelve years, but that Kat has kept it from me.
That evening, Clara falls asleep with baby Felix in her arms. They’re on the sofa, Clara’s head lying peacefully on a throw pillow with Felix pressed against her chest, her arms locked tightly around him even in sleep. The peace and tranquility are palpable, and it takes everything I have in me not to force myself onto the sofa beside them and join them in dreamland. The exhaustion of having a newborn around weighs heavily on me, those long, interrupted nights, sleep always just out of reach.
And yet I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Outside it is evening, just after eight o’clock on a muggy summer night. Even from inside through the cracks of an open window, I can hear the sound of crickets and cicadas. Harriet lies on the floor, pressed against the sofa; she will not leave Clara or the baby’s side. Our guard dog. I pat her head, and whisper to her, “Good girl.”
Maisie comes stampeding down the stairs like a herd of elephants being chased by a lion. She’s loud, laughing hysterically. As always Maisie is dressed in her ballet leotard and tutu, and she asks pretty, pretty please if we can go to ballet. She pliés before me; she attempts a clumsy pirouette and falls.