“I could be talking about both.” He winked at me. Then, to reiterate, he pointed at the stove and said gently, “Hot. Ouch.”
“This is why I’m glad we didn’t have kids of our own. They would all be dead because I wouldn’t think of stuff like, ‘hey, don’t touch the stove.’” I lifted the baggie of breast milk from the boiling water. Case in point, I’d tried to microwave the donor milk once. Neil caught me just in time and explained patiently about microwaves and hot spots.
At six months old, Emma had introduced some solids into Olivia’s diet, but since her parents’ deaths, Olivia had been less and less interested in real food. She still took a bottle—and would, Neil assured me, for a while—but other things about her were regressing, too. She was almost nine months old, and aging in reverse. She’d started to crawl before, but now, she just rolled over. She barely even sat up, anymore. The pediatrician had warned us to expect that after such a big emotional trauma, but it still freaked me out. Was it something we were doing? Could we prevent it if we worked harder?
“I think I’m going to mash up some avocado,” I said, surprising myself with a loud yawn. “And I still have to go over that massive PDF of the March issue. I’m way behind.”
Neil made a face at my dietary suggestion. “Babies are truly the most ill-treated creatures. You’re really going to spoon that disgusting green slime into her poor little mouth?”
“She loves it,” I told him with a warning glare that was only half in je
st. I was pretty sensitive about the whole raising-a-baby-thing. “Besides, no matter what you put into her poor little mouth, it all turns into green slime, anyway.”
Olivia leaned away from Neil, toward me, whimpering in what I recognized as her pre-cry warning system. He shifted her in his arms and said, “Take her, I’ll finish this and mash up that abhorrent fruit.”
I took her in my arms and smelled exactly why she’d been fussy, and why he’d handed her off. “Damn it, Neil!”
“Cursing,” he reminded me in a pleasant sing-song. “Green slime in, green slime out. It’s the circle of life, really.”
“Oh…fudge you!” I laughed and headed for the nursery. When we were out of earshot, I kissed her fat little cheek. “Your afi is a real pain in the ass, sometimes.”
The nursery was, in Neil’s opinion, too far from the master bedroom, despite being the only other bedroom on the main floor. He planned to remodel the bonus room and full bath beside it into a small suite for the nanny we still hadn’t gotten around to hiring. For the time being, there was a lovely sleigh-style daybed already in place for when Olivia got old enough to use it, and Neil occasionally spent the night in the nursery with her.
The room still smelled faintly of fresh paint and new carpet, both a baby pink chosen by Neil. I hadn’t objected to them, but I was a little disappointed. I would have liked to pair the color with a lovely chocolate brown trim, or some striped wainscoting. But, when Olivia got old enough to show a preference for decorating, the point would be moot; I would back her on every battle.
The fierce protective instinct I’d developed in spite of my lack of parental instinct surprised me. I was getting all mentally riled up over hypothetical future paint color fights with my husband on this baby’s behalf.
My phone pinged from my back pocket. I laid Olivia on the changing table and pulled the phone from my pocket one-handed, the other on her tummy so she couldn’t flip or squirm away. She squawked as I unlocked my screen.
“Oh, hold it. It takes me like a second to check a text,” I told her. I’m not good at baby talk.
I didn’t recognize the number attached to the message, but my stomach fluttered when I read it:
Hi, Sophie, this is Gena. I just heard the news. I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know. Would you want to get together for lunch? To catch up?
Would I like to see Gena, again? Gena, the first woman I’d had sex with? The woman I still fantasized about occasionally? A single text from her, and I was already tingly in my downstairs, a condition that was swiftly remedied when I remembered that a poopy diaper change awaited me. But, yes, I absolutely wanted to see her.
Whether or not I should was the question. Going to lunch with her wasn’t a guarantee that I was going to sleep with her or anything. I couldn’t even infer that it was a suggestion. But I had slept with her in the past, and bringing it up to Neil, now…
I grimaced, but not from the diaper change. Neil and I hadn’t had sex since the night before… I hated even thinking of it in that context. I fully understood why; unspeakable tragedy, grief, and a major life change didn’t leave a lot of room for intimacy, either emotionally or physically. I didn’t want Neil to think I was going to cheat on him, or that I was going to ask him for permission to have sex with someone else. If I brought up Gena, would he think that was what I had in mind? I didn’t want to hurt him.
If I went to lunch with Gena, no matter how innocent my intentions—and they would be innocent—and I didn’t tell him, our past experience would make me feel like I was running around on him, no matter what. There wasn’t a great way to bring any of this up with him, either.
But I missed being around people. I video conferenced with Deja and our staff a few times a week, but that was all about work. And, yeah, Holli tried to make time for me, but her schedule and mine had reduced us to the occasional phone call. I needed to just get out and see someone. Someone who hadn’t seen me broken by all of this, so I could pretend I was myself for two minutes.
In the kitchen, we went through our evening ritual of feeding Olivia, putting her to sleep, trying to get something to eat for ourselves, and finally falling into bed, exhausted. All the while, I tried think of a way to broach the subject of the text with Neil.
“My back hurts a little more every day,” he complained as he kicked off his boxers and climbed under the covers. I pulled a soft cotton tank top over my head and put a folded-up pair of yoga pants on the nightstand. I didn’t sleep naked, anymore. It was too much of a hassle to get up and get dressed to go check on Olivia, and I liked to take turns so Neil got enough rest, too. That, and it was just a special kind of torture to snuggle up naked with your husband when your sex drive was fine and his wasn’t. I understood exactly why that was and could accept it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t take precautions to guard my own feelings.
“Hey,” I began tentatively, slipping in beside him. “I got a text tonight.”
“Oh? Anything interesting?” he asked through a yawn.
“It was Gena, actually.” I felt like her name hung in the air a long time, but I may have just been projecting awkwardness onto the moment.
“We haven’t heard from her since the divorce,” he said with a frown. “I thought perhaps she lost us in the custody agreement.”
I snorted. “Yeah, no, I don’t think that was it. Maybe she felt uncomfortable because you and Ian are friends. She actually got in touch to express her condolences and say if there’s—”