“You still want to be a mother?”
“I don’t think I’ve got a choice.”
“What about a wife?”
Lily ran her fingers through his hair. She sighed, but the sigh was light, with hardly any anger left. Hawley lay down and pulled her down beside him. They pressed against each other on the couch. Lily tucked her head underneath his chin, and Hawley stroked the back of her neck, feeling the bones there, thinking of the rounded pieces of spine, linked and holding his wife together.
“You’re not mad,” Lily asked, “about the ice cream?”
Hawley took her face into his hands and kissed her forehead, her eyes and then her lips, slow and grateful and brimming with the hundreds of ways he wanted to touch her.
—
IN THE MORNING Hawley woke to the baby fussing. Not crying yet but getting fixed to start. One of his legs was off the couch, tangled in the mess of clothes on the floor. Lily was curled naked beside him, her skin on his skin, her breath warming his chest, her arms tight around his waist, a thin blanket over them both. Hawley closed his eyes and waited. Then the cries began again. He peeled away from his wife. He slipped into his jeans and leaned over the bassinet. The baby was wearing different pajamas. Lily must have already been up with her in the night. Changed her and fed her and put her down again while he’d been sleeping.
“Troublemaker.”
The baby looked at him and waved her arms.
“Yeah, you.”
He picked her up and brought her into the kitchen. He found the bottle from before and warmed it up again on the stove. This time Loo latched on as soon as he placed the nipple near her mouth. With one tiny hand she touched the side of the plastic, bending and releasing her fingers. When the milk was half gone she started to go heavy in his arms again, her eyes fluttering.
Lily came into the kitchen with only the blanket wrapped around her. If she was surprised at Hawley feeding Loo, she didn’t show it.
“What time is it?”
“Around six.”
“Let’s go to the beach.”
“Now?”
“Right now,” she said. “Memorial Day isn’t until next weekend, and most of the summer cabins should still be closed up. I like going when nobody else is around. It makes me feel like the whole lake belongs to us.”
They got some towels and their suits from where they were drying in the bathroom. Lily packed the diaper bag with everything they needed and Hawley put together a cooler of drinks and some sandwiches and chips and some apples and two slices from a peach pie Lily had made the day before. It was nice out, so they decided to walk. They strapped the baby into the stroller and Lily pushed her and Hawley carried the cooler down the road and through the woods to the shore of the lake.
It was still early and the beach was empty. The sand was warm and the air unusually muggy, more like August than the end of May. The dock that ran out into the water had an aluminum canoe tied up but no paddles. Someone had made a bonfire the night before near the woods. There were charred logs piled up, blackened in the middle of a ring of stones. A lawn chair had been left behind, with a webbed fabric seat. Lily sat down right away. She dug her feet into the sand and leaned back and closed her eyes.
“This chair is my chair,” she said.
Hawley unbuckled Loo from the stroller. He helped Lily put sunblock on the baby’s skin and then Lily put a sunhat on top of Loo’s tiny head and carried her out into the water. The baby was wearing a tiny polka-dot bathing suit. She liked to bend down and slap at the surface, at the places where the sun caught and flashed. Lily had on a green one-piece with straps that tied around her neck. She was shy about wearing the suit in public, shy about the way her body had changed since she had the baby, but Hawley thought she looked great.
“Is it cold?” he asked.
Lily shook her head but he could see goosebumps running across her back. She never admitted if the water was cold, even if it was freezing. She’d been taking the baby into the lake for over a month already. Loo had fussed at first but now she’d grown used to the chill. Hawley stretched out on their blanket and put his hands behind his head. He listened to the breeze coming through the leaves. He felt the early-morning sun warming his skin. He turned his head and watched Lily bending into the water, dipping the baby. They were making a game of it. Lily whistled low and then high as they dropped deeper. The baby squealed, then clung tighter to Lily’s neck.
Hawley got up from the blanket and walked over to the dock. He stood for a while looking out at the wooden planks leading into the lake, at the canoe drifting from the end of its rope and at the water, which stretched out smoothly before him like a piece of glass. Lily turned to watch him from the shallows, ripples going out in circles from her waist, the baby still in her arms. Hawley saluted her. Two fingers straight from his brow. Then he went to the end of the dock and sat on the edge and dipped his feet in.
The water was ice-cold. He looked down through the surface, past schools of fish and minnows toward the bottom of the lake, where shadows lurked among dark tendrils of old vegetation. Hawley held on to the edge of the dock and slid the rest of his body into the shallows, next to the metal canoe. He clung to the float at the bottom of the dock and kicked his legs out behind him, practicing the different leg movements Lily had started to show him.
“You’re getting better,” she said.
“You think so?”
“Yes,” she said. “Now watch this.” And she let go of the baby.
Loo sank under the water. Lily took a step back and the baby swam toward her. Then Lily picked their daughter back up again. Loo didn’t look bothered at all. She pumped her legs, her eyelashes dripping, and rolled her tongue around in her mouth.
“I can’t believe you just did that,” said Hawley.
“Everyone is born knowing how to swim,” she said. “You just forgot.”
She had been giving him lessons since they moved to the lake. The first few times he’d been so nervous all she could get him to do was dip his feet in. But eventually she got him to go chest-high, explaining that the more air he got into his lungs, the higher he’d float. Then she stood beside him in the shallow water and stretched her arms out and told him to lean back. He was twice her size but she held him like he was a child, just like she held the baby now. Hawley hadn’t made much progress, but he could hold his breath underwater and he was starting to float on his own.