Katie and I have had a very odd sort of courtship. Meaning we didn’t have one at all. She came home with me the day she was released from the hospital and we fell into a routine like an old married couple. She was nursing a newborn and tired, and not to mention three other kids to take care of. So I just started doing what I could here and there. I feed kids and herd kids to bed, read books and tend boo-boos, and I do what I imagine a husband might do. But I know deep down inside that I am not a husband, so that has created a tiny little barrier in my heart. And I don’t know what to do about it.
“What about Hank?” she asks with a nod toward the baby. She’d let Trixie pick his name. After Katie vetoed Pearl and Enid, Trixie settled on Henry, or Hank for short.
“We can take him with us. He’ll sleep until he wants to eat. Then he’ll eat and sleep some more, and you won’t have to worry about him if he’s with us.” I sit down at the kitchen table and lay him down so he can rest on my knees and look up at me. “So, what do you say?”
“Are we going to a wear-a-nice-dress kind of place?” she asks.
“Unless you want to go to a simple place. Completely up to you.” Hank had my attention. His eyes are still blue, and I have a feeling they will be startling like Katie’s.
“Let’s go to a wear-a-nice-dress kind of place,” she says. “I’ll go get ready.”
I hear her turn to go down the hall, where she runs into Pop. “Katie, girl,” he sings out. “How’s your vagina? All ship-shape?”
I roll my eyes and talk to Hank. “Pop is so inappropriate.” Hank kicks his feet and bats those long dark lashes at me. “You’ll like him, though, when you get a little older. He’ll buy you condoms and talk about things that should never be mentioned in polite company.”
“I heard that,” Pop says as he comes around the corner.
“You’re not supposed to talk to Katie about her vagina,” I tell him.
He quirks his brows at me. “There are things a man needs to know, Jake, and when there’s a working vagina in the house, the dynamics change. So, I just need to know when to start buying you more condoms.” He chuckles.
I pick up one of Hank’s spongy little toys and throw it at Pop. It bounces off his shoulder.
“You got a phone call today,” Pop suddenly says.
“Who was it?” I ask. Hank is holding both my forefingers and he’s making gurgling noises.
“Your wife.”
I can almost hear the squeal of brakes in my head. “What did she want?”
“She said she needs to see you.”
I snort. “About what?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Good.” I baby-talk at Hank. “Pop is sometimes too nosy-wosy for his own good.”
Hank coos.
“She’ll be here this weekend.”
What? I scoop Hank up in my arms and stand. “Tell me you didn’t invite her here.”
“Do I look stupid?” He glares at me as he sits down at the kitchen table. “Don’t answer that,” he grumbles.
“So you didn’t invite her to come here.”
“No,” he belts out. “But she’s coming anyway. This weekend.”
I run my free hand through my hair. “Pop…”
“Time to man up, Jake. You haven’t seen her since it happened.”
“And I plan to keep it that way.”
Pop sits quietly for a moment. “You served her with divorce papers.”
How the hell does Pop know all this? Nosy bastard.
“She told me,” he goes on to say. “Now she wants to see you so you can talk.”
“I don’t want to talk to her.”
“Well,” Pop says dryly, “I want a million dollars and to come home and find Halle Berry’s sex-crazed twin who has a penchant for whips and chains in my bed. But we don’t always get what we want, do we?”
Apparently not.
Pop opens his arms. “Give me that thing while it’s being cute,” he says. “You need to get dressed for your date.”
I lay Hank in Pop’s arms and stare down at them. Hank isn’t grinning yet, but sometimes I think there’s a smile in there just bursting to come out. I kind of wish he saves that first toothless grin for me. But I’m not his dad. I’m just his mom’s friend. His mom’s married friend.
“You got yourself in a nice little pickle. The married woman you’re shacking up with is going to meet your wife.”
“Katie’s not a married woman,” I remind him.
“Katie will always be a married woman,” he retorts. “Now she’s just married to a dead man.”
Truer words have never been spoken.
35
Katie
Butterflies. I have butterflies. I turn around in front of my mirror. I only have two summer dresses with me. They’re both from the stock of clothes that Adam and my dad bought when they went shopping right before the baby was born. I never took the tags off them, preferring to walk around in my oversized t-shirts and jean shorts. The t-shirt makes nursing Hank easier and the shorts are just comfortable.
I spin around and the flowing material settles around my knees.
A knock sounds on my door, and then it opens seconds later. That means it’s one of my kids. Gabby skulks into the room. She’s wearing a bathing suit with an oversized towel wrapped around her.
“Mom, can you talk to Uncle Adam and your father?” she grouses, right before she flops rather ungracefully onto my bed.
“What about?” I stare at her in the mirror as I apply some light lip gloss and mascara.