APOLLO AND BRIAN returned home in the late afternoon but found the apartment as dark as nighttime. The curtains had been pulled shut in the living room. When he went to pull them open, he found a safety pin holding the two panels together. The same in their bedroom. The blinds in the kitchen were pulled down. Apollo found Emma in Brian’s bedroom, up on a short ladder, with a drill in one hand. The room’s curtains were in a small pile on the floor.
She remained so immersed in her task that she hadn’t even heard them come in. Apollo watched her quietly from the doorway. Brian didn’t even struggle in his carrier, as if he too were taking in the strange sight. Emma raised the drill to the top of the window frame and pulled the trigger, then sank the spinning drill bit into the wood until it disappeared. When she pulled it back out, dust fell across her and to the floor.
“What are you doing?” Apollo asked.
Emma turned so fast, she nearly fell off the ladder. She brought the drill out like a pistol, pointed straight at him.
“How was work?” he said.
“Blackout curtains,” Emma said, then turned back to the window frame and drilled a second hole. The noise finally made Brian stir. He hadn’t been sleeping, but at least he’d been calm.
“I thought we weren’t going to start sleep training yet,” Apollo said.
Emma came down the ladder and set the drill on the floor. She took something out of a box that had been hidden under the piled curtains. She climbed back up the ladder, pulled a screwdriver from her pocket, and installed the blackout curtain’s frame.
“We’re not starting that yet,” she said as she worked.
“Then why are you putting those up?” he asked. “And why are all the windows covered up?”
“I found a good message board for moms,” she said. “They told me these were best blackout curtains around.”
“How much did they cost?”
Emma didn’t answer him. She finished and came back down the ladder.
“Why did you lay Brian down in that driveway?”
Apollo practically clutched his pearls. “I was packing up the car. I tried to do it while I was wearing him, but I had to lean over too far. He cried. So I put him down. But it was just for a few minutes. Anyway, how did you know?”
“You sent me a damn picture,” Emma said.
Apollo stepped back. “I did?”
Emma held out one hand. “Let me see your phone.”
She scrolled through a few screens, then shut off Apollo’s phone with a grunt. Together they went into the kitchen. Apollo asked to see her phone now. She held hers up and said the picture was gone.
“Well, why did you erase it?” he asked as he handed Brian to her.
“Did I say I erased it?” she asked. “Why would I erase it?”
She sat at the kitchen table with Brian, pulled up her top, and snapped open her nursing bra. Brian attached without error.
Apollo opened the fridge and took out ingredients for a quick dinner. “Sometimes you think you’ve sent me a message, but it’s just sitting in drafts,” he said. “It’s possible you still have it. Let me look.”
Emma almost leaped up from the chair but caught herself. If she hadn’t been feeding the baby, she might’ve pounced right on Apollo’s back.
“I’m trying to tell you I got a disturbing photo, and all you can do is accuse me of making a mistake.”
Apollo brought a frying pan to the stove, poured a capful of olive oil, set the fire, and quickly chopped an onion and garlic clove. He paid inordinate attention to the process in an effort to keep his mouth closed. Behind him Emma cooed at Brian, whispering sweetly, in a way that suggested she too was trying her best to change the mood.
By the time they were eating dinner, they’d calmed enough to talk about the photo again. Emma explained what she’d seen and when it arrived, and now Apollo scrolled through his phone with the thoroughness of a detective. Brian had been set on the kitchen floor in a baby bouncer. As Apollo checked Emma’s phone, she used one foot to move Brian in a gentle up-and-down motion. The boy stared at the ceiling light, but his eyelids quivered. With the potential of his sleep so near, Apollo and Emma began to whisper. Then they were nearly drowned out by the steam pipe right behind Apollo’s chair. At night the radiators would rattle to life, but hopefully Brian would be deep asleep by then.
“I’m going to fix the door to his room,” Apollo said. From his chair he could look directly into the back. There actually wasn’t a door at all. It had been that way since they moved in. He’d needed some kind of motivation to go ahead and do the job. “I’ll go to the super and see if he has one. I’ll give him some money to install it.”
New Dads didn’t know how to do serious home repair. But they could pay for it.
Emma nodded and laughed quietly. Nice to see her smile.
They ate quietly, and Brian fell asleep. The offer to fix the door to Brian’s room didn’t have one damn thing to do with the text she’d received, but it provided a service much like when she’d hung the blackout curtains. Fortify the nest.
When they finished dinner, they rose and quietly set their plates in the sink. They moved around the baby as they would a bear trap. They tiptoed out of the kitchen. Apollo turned out the light. Was it wrong to let their infant sleep in a bouncy seat on the kitchen floor? What could be the harm? He’d been born on a stalled A train, after all. They went into their bedroom, leaving the door open so they’d hear Brian if he cried.
“This is the farthest he’s slept from us since he was born,” Apollo said.
They climbed onto the bed, and Emma turned on her side so she faced the baby. Apollo spooned behind her, brought his arm around her belly. He kissed her neck, and she turned and kissed him back. Within minutes both Emma and Apollo passed out. As the entire Kagwa clan slept, Emma’s phone lit up on the kitchen table, a new message sent. It was as if one bright eye opened in the dark apartment, then shut again.
LILLIAN ARRIVED EARLY. Meant to come to the apartment at seven but was there by six-thirty instead. She buzzed downstairs, and Apollo rang her in, then scrambled to figure out how he might do three months of cleaning in the three minutes it would take his mother to get upstairs. Messy kitchen, messy living room, messy bedroom, bathroom, too. Emma was in the shower, and Apollo had just been. He almost forgot where Brian might be until he remembered he was carrying the child. If nothing else, his left arm had become stronger. Then the doorbell rang, and Apollo opened the door, and there was Lillian.
While Emma dressed, Lillian showed Apollo her new cellphone. Brian sat in her lap, and he grabbed at it. Lillian let him hold it—try to hold it—but then Emma came out of the bedroom, practically sprinting, and slipped the cellphone from her son.
“He’s too young for that,” Apollo said.
Emma handed it back to Lillian. “We just don’t want him getting used to it already.”
Lillian set it down on the arm of the couch. “He’s too young for it, and I’m too old for it. So instead we’ll spend the whole night playing games and hugging.”
Emma leaned close and kissed Lillian on the cheek. “Thank you, Mom.”