“And… maybe the day after that.”
“I guess.”
“What if… I watch him all the time?”
I stuck a finger in my book and looked up. “What do you mean?”
“Please don’t say no until you hear me out,” she said quickly.
“Why would I say no?”
“Because… um…”
The penny finally dropped. “Hold on,” I said, “are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?”
“I don’t know. What do you think I’m talking about?”
“Watching Davis every day. Being his nanny. His babysitter. His… whatever.”
She pursed her lips and struggled not to cry. Her hormones had been a little crazy lately, but she wasn’t normally that emotional.
I set my book on the nightstand, drew my hand back, and realized too late that I hadn’t saved my place with the bookmark. It didn’t matter.
“You really want to do this?” I asked. “Be Davis’s nanny?”
“More than anything in the world. I don’t have a job. What else’m I gonna do? I’m going crazy at home every day. I hate watching TV. I hate drawing and never sculpting. Never anything big, I mean. And stop trying to change the subject.”
I held up my hands in a show of innocence.
“I want to take care of Davis, to be his nanny,” she continued without a pause. “Please, please, can I? I promise it won’t change anything with us. You and me, I mean.”
“The hell it won’t,” I muttered.
“It won’t. I promise.”
I took a deep breath and thought about it, really thought about it. Wren could go back to work if she had full-time childcare. And who could she trust more than Christy? Besides, our condo was practically next door to theirs. She wouldn’t even have to drive to drop him off in the morning. Or Christy could spend the day at their place instead.
“I really, really want a baby,” Christy said into the silence.
“Why?”
“I… don’t know. I can’t explain it. I just do.”
“Have you talked to Wren about it?”
“No,” she said quickly. “I wanted to talk to you first.”
I nodded. “What happens when our baby’s born?”
“I’ll take care of them both. Davis will be, like, practice. Don’t look at me like that! I know he isn’t a toy or something. He’s a baby, a person. But you know what I mean. I can learn with him. And when Laurie comes—”
We hadn’t really discussed it, but our baby was going to be named Laurie no matter what—Laurence if he was a boy, Lauren if she was a girl. My life wasn’t worth the argument that would ensue if I had a problem with it. Fortunately, I didn’t.
“—I’ll already know what to do.” She paused and drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I want this, Paul. More than anything.”
“Well, then… let’s talk to Wren and Trip.”
* * *
Lauren Elizabeth Hughes arrived on a Sunday at the end of August. The nurses gave her to Christy first. Then they cleaned her, weighed her, and measured her. Finally, they swaddled her and handed her to me.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, even red-faced and grumpy. I couldn’t really blame her, though. She’d been warm and comfortable a few hours earlier. But she’d been evicted from her home, and she wasn’t sure about the new one. She was cold and tired, and the light hurt her eyes.
Anne took care of Christy as the nurses cleaned her up. I stood off to the side and held our new daughter. Part of me couldn’t believe it, that Christy and I had brought a new life into the world, that I was someone’s dad. But another part of me couldn’t stop smiling. Christy and I had brought a new life into the world. I was someone’s dad.
I eventually let other people hold her, starting with Christy. Then her mother had a turn, followed by my mother. I hovered protectively in the background until I realized they had years of experience with babies, compared to my fifteen or twenty minutes. They weren’t going to drop her.
I had another good laugh when I realized I felt like a kid on Christmas who had to watch everyone else hold my gift. She was my gift. Mine! Didn’t they understand?
“Oh, don’t worry,” my mother said, “you’ll have plenty of time to hold her.” She smiled up at me. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Thanks, but… why? I mean, I didn’t do any of the work.”
“No, but you’re here. Back when you were born, your father had to stay in the waiting room. I don’t think he wanted to be in the delivery room anyway, but still…” She sighed. “It’s a special experience. It changes you.”
“No kidding.”
She smiled at me again before she turned businesslike.
“I’ll go make the announcement,” she said to Anne. “I’ll send in Harold first. Then David and Erin. Christy, do you have any preference after that?”
* * *
Christy and I left the hospital with Laurie two days later, and I reluctantly went back to work a day after that. Anne stayed to help us for a couple of weeks, and my mother seemed to find a reason to stop by at least once a day. Still, Christy struggled. We both did, but she felt it more than I did.
“It’s just the baby blues,” her mother assured her. “We all go through it.”
My own mother nodded. “My hormones were out of whack for a couple of weeks after I gave birth to Erin.”
“You’ll be fine,” Anne said.
Christy nodded. She looked like hell—bags under her eyes, no makeup, and hair unbrushed—but I smiled encouragement.
Our lives eventually settled into a routine of sorts, and Christy’s mother returned home to San Diego. My mother still stopped by almost every day, and Susan came to visit her. They cooed over Laurie and offered advice.
Christy tried to follow it all. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t. She still wasn’t sleeping very well, and she’d lost an alarming amount of weight. The doctor put her on a special diet and made sure I understood how important it was for her to follow it.
She tried her best, but it was a constant struggle. She was irritable most of the time, and it was more than just lack of sleep. She never had time to relax, and certainly not during the day, when she had to care for newborn Laurie and ten-month-old Davis. He was a sweet baby and even-tempered, but he was still a baby. He went home in the evening when Wren returned from work, but Laurie still needed to be fed and have her diaper changed on a regular basis.
I helped as much as I could, but Christy snapped if I didn’t move quick enough. She snapped if I jumped too soon. It didn’t matter what I did, it was never right. Worse, she cried at night when she thought I was asleep. She began drinking more, and she even stopped going to Mass. I didn’t know how to help, and I worried about it constantly.
To make matters worse, her libido had disappeared along with her appetite. The doctor had warned us that she’d need time to heal after she gave birth, so I didn’t even think about sex for the first few weeks. But she didn’t want to do anything, even as the weeks added up—no blowjobs, no handjobs, no nothing, and I felt selfish for even asking.
So I jerked off in the shower, a lot. And I started wondering if I should find a temporary source of release. Wren was the obvious choice, or Leah, but I didn’t want to hurt Christy’s feelings. She knew her sex drive had dried up, and it bothered her too.
I definitely didn’t want to have an affair, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the women at work. It was a big company, after all, and I worked with more than a dozen women who were attractive and single. Several had expressed a casual interest in getting to know me better. Two had gone further.
The first was a thirty-something divorcée who’d made it clear that she’d be open to anything, from a one-night stand to something regular. The second was younger and prettier, but she was a trophy hunter. She wanted to sleep with me because I’d made it clear I wasn’t available.