At dinner that evening, as the parents gathered with their children, Dr. Grind watched Ellen, who was standing with Jeremy as the two of them played with Eli, Jeremy’s son. There was nothing out of the ordinary in Ellen’s actions, and her happiness was evident, the way she and Jeremy kept the boy entertained with little more than facial expressions and hand gestures. He waited for the right moment to walk over to Ellen, but he kept avoiding the moment; he had the slightest fear that addressing this small problem would uncover massive errors in planning, that the whole thing would fall apart around him. If Ellen left, so would Harris and Marnie. If one family learned that they could leave, who else would follow? He had made something wonderful, he believed, but he also knew how precarious it was, especially in these early stages. Callie walked over to Ellen and Jeremy and the three of them began to talk, the baby now starting to walk away from them, taking the shakiest steps imaginable but possessing a motor that would take him as far as he wanted to go. Dr. Grind started to get up in order to tend to Eli, but Asean quickly perched beside the baby and encouraged him to keep walking, as if cheering on a runner in the Olympics, and Dr. Grind returned to his seat.
Izzy walked over to Dr. Grind, holding Cap in her arms, and Dr. Grind felt slightly odd as the woman and her child both regarded him with emotions that he could not quite decipher.
“Hello, Izzy,” he said.
“I heard that Cap said his first word today,” she told him.
“He did. We’re very proud of him.”
“Daddy,” Izzy said.
“That’s it,” Dr. Grind agreed.
“I wish I had been there to hear it,” she admitted. She stood over him, her emotions seemingly tamped down, her demeanor always a source of some mystery to him. She was talented at holding her feelings just below the surface, where they dissipated and became easier to manage. It reminded him of his own makeup.
“Izzy,” Dr. Grind finally said. “I hope that word, Daddy, isn’t too strange for you.”
“It’s weird,” Izzy replied, her face darkening; she seemed to be choosing her words carefully, as if being interviewed by the police, and wanting to be anywhere else. “But I think about how, if I’d been raising him by myself, trying to take care of him, how that word would never have entered into his vocabulary, at least not for a long time. I guess it’s good in the end that the project made it possible for him to use that word and to understand it and to mean it.” By the time she finished speaking, her face was calm and there was the slightest hint of a smile, though Dr. Grind did not entirely believe it was genuine.
“That’s a good point,” Dr. Grind said.
“I’m handling it much better than if he said Mommy to someone else, you know?
“Daddy,” Izzy whispered to Cap, and the baby looked at her with great fascination. “Daddy,” she said again, and the baby, emboldened, replied, “Daddy,” his eyes fixed on her face.
She turned to Dr. Grind and smiled. “These are going to be the most perfect, weirdest kids ever,” she said, and this, finally, made Dr. Grind laugh.
When the meal had ended and it was time to prepare the babies for bedtime, he stayed behind to help clear the table, while Ellen and Asean loaded the dishwasher and listened to some unidentifiable, slowed-down southern rap, everything rounded off and rolling easy through the kitchen. When they had finished, Asean rushed off to help put his daughter to bed, leaving Ellen and Dr. Grind to finish the last few tasks in the kitchen before turning off the lights.
“How are things, Ellen?” he asked her.
“Fine,” she said.
“I want to talk to you about something, if you have a second,” he said and she seemed to freeze, her eyes widening.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he continued. “I just want to check in and see how things are going. We’ve reached almost a year together, so I’m wondering how you feel about your role as a parent.”
“It’s complicated,” Ellen admitted. “I know this is the best place for Marnie, for all of us, but I can’t pretend that it’s not strange. It seems like a lot of the other parents don’t have issues with any of it. Maybe it’s because I’m older than most of them, but I sometimes need a little more time to get used to all the new changes that pop up. I want to be a good mother.”
“You are a good mother,” Dr. Grind said.
“I think so,” she said, “but who knows? This is my first time. I don’t have enough evidence to know for certain. I’m just trying to do my best.”