We smiled; it felt tantamount to moonwalking.
When we got to the studio I showed him inside and went next door to my mom’s to get the baby. I had dressed her up for the occasion. Most babies are naked when they meet their father. Amelia-Grace was in her white cotton sack with rosebuds embroidered on the collar, the same dress she’d worn home from the hospital. It had swum around her as a newborn but fit her now. Somehow it seemed right that he should meet her in the first real clothes she’d ever worn. I carried her to the studio. “Believe it or not, behind that door is your dad.”
Brian was standing in the galley kitchen, hovering by the door. He looked at her, looked at me, looked at her again. I can’t remember what he said. Or if he said anything at all. I do know he cried. A discreet cry, so as not to alarm the baby, who remained cheerful and curious. She reached up and pulled off his glasses, batted at his face. He had brought her a plush rainbow hippo; she gurgled at the colors and reached for the ribboned edges of the hippo’s ears. Brian watched her and watched her and watched her.
The visit was short, three days, maybe four. He spent most of that time staring at her, taking her in. When she cooed instead of her regular flute squeaks, he noticed. When she hiccuped or burped or sneezed, he noted it. When she smiled, his universe expanded. Surely no one had ever been looked at with more interest. Not Neil Armstrong bouncing on the moon, nor Muhammad Ali dancing around the ring, not even the little dude in his manger adored by his wise men. None of them had enjoyed a steadier, more absorbed gaze than the one Gracie received now, from her father.
His pleasure in her was matched by an equal or greater fear of inadvertently doing her harm. He wasn’t really comfortable holding her, even sitting down, unless she was strapped against his chest in the Snugli. He held her like a man mistakenly entrusted with a rare, precious object.
The last day of Brian’s visit we drove up to Lake Lagunitas, a reservoir in the foothills of Mt. Tam. We parked about a mile below the water and walked up, Brian carrying Gracie in the frontpack. I carried all the gear required to go anywhere with an infant. As we labored up the hill, Gracie pulled off Brian’s glasses, flung them to the ground, and laughed. Brian stooped down, holding her with both hands. “Can you get those for me?” He couldn’t let go of her, even with one hand. I put the glasses back on his face. Gracie laughed and threw them down again. And again. She seemed to enjoy watching this dance. Finally, Brian tucked the glasses into his pocket, after which Gracie laughed some more for no discernible reason. When she laughed, she bobbed up and down with the pleasure of it, a mischievous Harpo Marx. Through all this, Brian clutched her to his chest. She didn’t seem to mind the extra security; it put no damper on her antics, her head bobbing, her nascent sense of humor.
By the time we reached the summit, it was late afternoon. The water’s surface was an oblong gray oval, reflecting high silvery clouds and an occasional pocket of blue. There was no wind. We spread out a blanket and lay the baby down to gaze at the scythe-shaped shadows of eucalyptus leaves playing across her face and arms.
Until this moment we’d been in near perpetual motion, feeding the baby, walking the baby, changing the baby. Side by side but not face to face. Now we sat on opposite sides of a picnic table and looked at each other. For what felt like a long time, we said nothing. The birds chirped. The light pooled on Gracie’s blanket in amber patches. Gracie produced an ongoing babble reminiscent of a fish tank, a comforting, steady stream of watery sounds.
“I am sorry I hurt you,” Brian said, very simple and very direct, because that was his way.
“Thank you,” I said.
We sat there a while longer, looking at each other, glancing over at Gracie on her blanket. She was asleep now, with her head tossed back, her ear cocked upward as though listening for an answer to a question only she could hear.
“Have you seen this?” I lifted the silky hair at the base of her neck. There was her strawberry birthmark.
“I hadn’t,” Brian said. “Thank you for showing me.”
It began to get dark. The picnic table was wooden and old, splintering. I pulled at slivers of the wood, prying them free. Brian said again, “I am sorry.” I stared down at Gracie, watching her chest move rhythmically with the deep breath of sleep. He was sorry? What did sorry even mean in this context?
What I wanted most from him was curiosity. I wanted him to ask me how it had been to be alone and pregnant. Ask about the day of her birth. Every blood transfusion. I wanted him to say, “Tell me everything.” But he didn’t ask, and I didn’t say. Nor did I ask him what his time alone, as his daughter had been born across the country, had been like.
Still, some measure of forgiveness arose between us. Not much. Not a tidal wave of forgiveness, more like a capful, a thimbleful. We loved someone in common; that was a start.
The product of our mutual astonishment was lifting her head on the blanket by our feet, turning her face for our approval, our smiles. Her own smile was utterly undefended, a smile of abandon, a crinkle-eyed smile. She smiled like that every time, throwing herself into it. Now, for the first time, she added to the smile the slightest lift of her left eyebrow.
Brian laughed. “That’s a very lofty gesture for an infant.”
“It’s your patented left brow lift!”
“Is it?” he said. But I could tell he agreed.
We packed up our things and headed down the trail. It was fully dark now, and the walk back seemed more treacherous than our jolly walk up. Brian held Gracie snug against his chest. The fact that he lived in fear of dropping her ensured, I hoped, that he never would.
There was no moon yet and few other hikers on the path. We crunched along in silence, branches tossing around over our heads, the reservoir a sleek black expanse at our backs. In a few hours Brian would be on a plane headed home to New York; the baby and I would go back to our studio, our sleep loft, our devoted Lulu, our beloved clan of friends and uncles and grandparents. None of them would feel as right as this: the three of us walking down the hill in the dark.