“I am not sleeping with a man who speaks sheep talk,” I whispered to her. “Are you nuts?”
“You need to get back in the game, sister. You’re going a little loopy. Constance says all you do is work and read.”
“He’s way cute in a sort of sheep way, but he’s not my type. I do more than that, by the way.”
“What exactly is your type? I’m looking around, and I’m not seeing him. You no longer have a type, Heather. You have an ice cream flavor that you like to eat late at night by yourself, but no boy type anymore.”
“You don’t have a type around here, either, Amy.”
“When has that ever mattered to me? Sleep with Xavier Box. You’re snakebit. You need to shake things up.”
We both had had too much to drink. It wasn’t a great line of conversation. Absurdly, I kept flashing my eyes at the door, half expecting Jack to show up. I had no idea what I would say to him if he did show up, or what I would do, but the idea of his potential arrival drove me slightly insane. It felt a little like anticipating a surprise party on your birthday, half hoping it doesn’t materialize, the other half wondering if this or that person wasn’t slipping off to buy a cake. After all, Jack could be impetuous. He liked to be dramatic.
I still hovered in the no-Jack-land of speculation when a woman holding a baby sat down beside me. I had seen the woman over the last few days, had even been introduced, but I couldn’t recall her name. She had auburn hair with a wide, broom-like bang cut straight across her forehead. She looked to be in her midthirties, a Mom-a-saurus in training, and she smelled of lemon and baby powder. She was from Raef’s side of the wedding, and when she spoke she had a thick, adorable Australian accent.
“Will you hold him?” she asked, extending the baby to me. “I need to run and pee. I won’t be a minute. It’s much easier without bringing him along.”
“Of course,” I said, taking the baby and lifting him into my lap. “What’s his name?”
“Johnny.”
“Hello, Johnny.”
Before I could ask any more, the woman slipped away. I had never been super comfortable with babies, but this one, I had to admit, was cuter than a box of puppies. He had a stout little body and beautiful eyelashes, and when I danced him on my legs, he smiled and gurgled and reached out for my hair. He couldn’t have been more than a few months old. He wore a sailor-type outfit, with a blue blouse and white shorts and cotton socks on his tiny feet.
“You notice she didn’t give him to me,” Amy said, leaning over to look at Johnny, putting her finger in his tiny fist. “What a cutie pie.”
“What a little man. What a perfect gentleman.”
“He looks serious. He looks quite self-possessed.”
Then Amy was called away, and I found myself, strangely, sitting alone with Johnny. Xavier had gone off to the bar, and most of the party had gotten up to stretch its legs, and I realized Johnny and I had the space to ourselves. I danced him on my lap, and he stared at me, apparently not for or against our association, and for an absurd ten count, I thought, Now is when I want Jack to walk in. I wanted him to see me with this gorgeous child, my maternal impulses on full display, though why I thought that would be attractive to Jack I couldn’t say. We had never even talked about children. I realized, thinking about it, that Jack was a virus that I couldn’t shake. I had officially gone crazy.
Then all of that passed away, and I was left with Johnny, with his beautiful eyes staring into mine, with the simple fact of his personhood arresting me. He was not a “baby,” not a “rug rat,” but was, instead, a perfect little human, a sweet, adorable child who gazed at me to discover what he could trust. I had never experienced a moment like that with a baby before. Our eyes rested on each other for a long time.
I lifted him carefully into my arms and held him against my chest. I felt close to crying.
“Hi, Johnny,” I whispered. “You’re a beautiful, beautiful boy. You’re a sweet little boy, aren’t you? How precious are you?”
I put my nose against his skin, the back of his neck. He smelled like the powder that his mother wore and also of that ineffable baby smell that was like no other smell on earth.
“Oh, he’s taking to you,” his mom said on her return. She popped into the chair beside us. “He doesn’t normally let himself be held by strangers. You must have a good, solid character for a child to trust you so easily.”
“I feel like I’ve known Johnny for a thousand years.”
“Careful on,” the woman said. “That’s the way it starts. Next thing you’ll be married to a bloke and have six kittens to care for.”
“Do you have six children?” I asked, shocked at the possibility. Maybe, I thought, I had misunderstood this woman.
“No, no, no, just Johnny here. But he’s enough. He keeps me busy, but he’s a lamb, as you can see.”
“He’s a beautiful boy.”
“You know, I had one like yours,” she said. “A love, I mean. One that went away.”
I looked at her over Johnny’s soft shoulder. Was my story that well known among the wedding party? It embarrassed me to think it might be. Did people say, “Gee, there goes Heather, who once had a man she loved leave her at the Paris airport?” Was that my legend at this wedding? I supposed it had to be for the woman to know my story. I imagined it was the capsule explanation: Oh, that woman next to Xavier Box, that’s Heather, her boyfriend was a friend of Raef’s, and he left her at the airport in Paris. It was a shorthand means of identification. There’s Raef’s uncle, and Constance’s cousin, and, oh, her, she’s the one who lost the boyfriend.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Oh, I know. It’s painful. Mine was a sailor. He took parties out to the Whitsunday Islands. Ran them over to the Great Barrier if they liked. Oh, he loved being at sea. I should have learned from that, of course, but I ignored it. Ever notice how women who see almost everything can ignore the biggest clues imaginable? It’s always baffled me.”
I held Johnny closer. I heard his breathing next to my ear.
“People say you get over it, but you don’t. Not those kinds of men. They leave scars. I only mention it because I can’t talk about it to anyone else. It’s a taboo subject, you see? And I’m married. Happily so, honestly. But not a day goes by that I don’t think of my lost sailor.”
“I’m not sure—”
“I know, I know. It’s still raw. It will be for a long time, believe me. I actually felt sometimes as if I had been burned. It felt like my skin had to regrow around these horrible burns. I don’t mean that as a metaphor, either. It’s more painful than any metaphor could be. Great love inevitably carries with it great loss. That’s something I read. I’ve held it close to me ever since. I remind myself of it now and then. In our beginning is our end.”