Gabe would usually follow her into our room and clamber on top of us three, spread-eagle. This was classic Gabe: pin your loved ones in place. Protest was useless, Gabe’s capacity for bliss was irresistible. We’d sleep like this, in Gabe’s lumpy puppy pile, for hours.
One night, when the kids failed to crash our room, Brian got up to check on them near dawn. He woke me with a whisper and waved me into their doorway, “Come see this.” She was curved around a pillow; he was tangled in a sheet. She was in feety pajamas; he was in his diaper and his bee boots. And, they were holding hands. An outlandish, family movie gesture; her fingers curled around his thumb. They didn’t hear us, didn’t stir. They were busy doing the covert work children do at night: the multiplication of cells, the silent, unstoppable growth, the hatching of private plans.
44
At the end of our first week “home,” Gracie sat at the dining room table playing with shells Suzi and David had sent her from a beach in Thailand. It was an improvised, high-stakes opera.
A pink shell sang, with gravitas, “We give you our babies.”
A dark shell gasped, incredulous, “You give us your babies?!”
The pink replied, “Yes sir, yes sir.”
A third shell—a dull, humble clam—cried out, “Oh no, my babies. Please not my babies!”
I was in deep ideological alignment with the clam, anyone but my babies.
Time for some air; I suggested we picnic for lunch. Brian said, “Why don’t we eat indoors and then go for a walk after.” I shot him a murderous look.
“What?” he said. “I’m a spoilsport? Outdoors-averse New Yorker?”
“We three will go,” I said. “You can stay here.” We would picnic or know the reason why. Gabe went to the front door and opened it. “Let’s take a walk,” he said. Then, “Let’s take a walk in the world.”
I packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, probably forgot to bring water or bug spray, and led both kids outside. We found a spot near the man-made pond to sit and eat. At the water’s edge a disgruntled group of geese waddled in circles, disoriented clowns in search of a homeland.
Gracie studied them. “Would a goose eat a Dorito that fell on the ground?”
“I’m not sure, love.”
They did seem interested in Gabe’s sandwich.
One or two of the geese flapped into our path. I waved my arms and made some grunting noises. A few of their friends hopped over. Was I inadvertently attracting them? I flapped again and made higher-pitched sounds. Another five or six joined the group. Suddenly we were at the epicenter of an angry, honking goose mob focused on Gabe’s peanut buttery fingers. Dozens of goose heads bobbed aggressively; dozens of goose necks craned our way. The crowd honked and hissed and advanced.
I began kicking the air in their general goose direction. They didn’t budge.
Geese, in Europe, guard sensitive military installations. Still, these were not trained ninja geese. These geese were Canadian for God’s sake; how dangerous could they be? But they were alarmingly organized. They closed in, forming an unbroken circle around the three of us. Finally, a threat I can see, touch, kick, strangle.
I would grab their palm-sized heads and swing them through the air, hurl them hundreds of miles. I’d take them out, goose by goose.
The kids didn’t quite see this as the opportunity I did.
Gracie pulled on my hand. “Let’s GO!” She kept pulling. “Mommy!”
I ripped the crust off Gabe’s sandwich and threw it outside the goose flank. Their many gray heads turned in unison. We broke for home.
I was hoping the kids wouldn’t mention the geese to Brian; I didn’t want to affirm his picnic paranoia. But Gabe was nothing if not a sharer of news, and this was an enthralling headline.
“Daddy!” he said. “The gooses eat me.” His outrage, his indignation, made his face shine with excitement.
Gracie added, “Mommy tried to kick the geese. She wanted to fight them. But she missed.” She seemed amused by this: Mommy tried, Mommy missed. The story of Mommy.
“Mommy tried to kick the geese?” Brian said. The kids nodded.
Brian looked at me, half appalled, half admiring, “That’s the thing about Mommy; she never backs away from a good fight.”
That night in bed I said, “Sorry about the goose debacle.” I braced myself for an “I told you so,” an investigation of my motives. I expected Brian to ask why I complicated things; took the kids past their comfort zone to satisfy my own needs. Plus, geese were water fowl rife with germs, something that had not occurred to me until that moment.
Instead he took my hand under the covers. “No apology necessary. Picnicking always involves a certain level of risk. And those geese never stood a chance; you’re a fierce defender.”
I was grateful for the generosity of this description. It might not be accurate, but it was sincere. I nuzzled into him, an unusual gesture for Durham, outside our everyday lexicon. He looked at me, “You’re not against me?”
“When was I against you?”
“Ever since we got here.”
“I haven’t been against you, per se. I’ve just been holding the rope.”
“Oh the rope,” Brian said. “That explains everything.”
And we left it, exhausted as we were, at that.
45
Nearly every evening we’d walk to the deserted playground that was part of the complex. At first Gracie seemed cowed and disoriented by the swings, the slide, the climbing apparatus. Gabe, in deference, hung back. Waited for her to figure things out. Over time, she grew more confident and imaginative on the equipment.
One day she pulled herself the entire length of the tunnel slide. Only a week before her feet couldn’t find purchase on the slick metal; she’d been a cartoon character running in place, going nowhere at a frantic pace. And now, having achieved the top, she stood chest out, flush with pride. “Look, Mama, I’m up!”
Gabriel, forever the caboose, pulled and slid and scuffled to the top. Together they surveyed the scene: the wood chips, the empty swings, a darkening sky. They sat side by side on the plastic platform singing Barney songs until the slimmest sliver of moon appeared, a translucent slice. “Gracie,” Gabe said, “it’s an onion moon.”
I had a rush of gratitude. Of all the many possible people who might have sprung into existence, we got these two, friendly with the moon.
Except, riding beside my joy was the thought that this moment might not have taken place. She might not have struggled up the slide; he might not have followed. She might not have seen this particular moon, nor any other. The future, the long line of days and nights stretching out before us, might have turned and dipped and disappeared.
*
When we’d been back in the apartment about a month, Gracie paused on her way to bed one night and said, casually, a thought tossed over the shoulder, “I have to go back where I belong.”
“Where do you belong?” I peered across the dark room, trying to read her expression. She didn’t answer. I asked again, “Where do you belong?”
“In the dreamy land you can’t get to when you are awake,” she said.