“Umm hmm?”
"I was not under the impression we were going to be falling back into bed. I was under the impression I was going to spend the time until the grand jury being the man you needed me to be. That is the only impression I have been operating under since I walked into your apartment."
"All right- glad we’re on the same page then.”
There is a small noise from upstairs. Nora’s waking up in a bed she doesn’t recognize, processing the new geography. We both stop. We both look at the ceiling.
Then we hear her voice. Small. Calm. Curious. The voice of a girl who is not yet three but who is, by every report I have ever filed at her daycare, an unusually composed person.
"Mama?"
I get up to go to her.
"Wait," Lex says.
I stop.
"What does she like for breakfast?”
It takes me a moment to register the question. Then I register the man asking it.
"Cereal," I say. "There is a cereal she likes. The one with the small wheat squares. No milk. Dry, in a bowl, with a spoon she doesn’t use, because she eats the squares with her hands and the spoon is in the bowl for the principle of the thing."
"All right," he says.
He turns toward the cabinet. The cabinet has the cereal she likes in it. Petrov has three nieces, but damn, he is good.
I go upstairs to bring my daughter down to meet her father.
Chapter 7
Lex
The First Days
She’s on her mother's hip when they come down the stairs.
The hip is the standard transport for a child of her size. I know because I have watched my brother's wife carry their child the same way for nine months and have observed that this is how a Greek-American mother holds a Greek-American child, and I now understand that this is not regional but maternal, and that the woman coming down the stairs of my brownstone in the morning has been doing this for thirty-six months and is about to put my daughter down on a stool at my kitchen island.
I’m at the stove.
The cereal bowl is on the island. Dry, in a bowl, with a spoon, Maeve told me to put in, even though she doesn’t use it, because the spoon is in the bowl as a principle, I guess. The cereal is the cereal Petrov bought because his nieces eat it. The bowl is one of three I found in the cabinet last night, and I rejected two of them because the third had a small painted yellow flower on the lip. I’d decided, at 5:00 in the morning, that this was the bowl a small girl would prefer.
I don’t turn around when they come into the kitchen. I can’t yet.
I keep my back to the stairs. I make myself small in the room. I am six-three, and I have not been small in a room in a long time, but I try my best to make myself small now. Because the woman whose terms I agreed to last night told me Nora would decide what she thinks of me, and I am going to give my daughter the maximum amount of space to decide.
"Good morning, Bug."
Maeve's voice. Behind me. She uses a soothing tone I have not heard her use before, the kind a mother uses with a child who is still half-asleep. The tone is several degrees softer than her real voice and is doing the work of bridging the small body from upstairs to downstairs.
"Mama."
The first word my daughter has ever aimed at me.
My right hand on the kettle handle has stopped being steady. The hand is mine, but somehow feels foreign at the moment. I close it into a fist around the handle, lift the kettle, pour hot water for the second cup of tea I am making this morning, and still I don’t turn around.
"Bug," Maeve says, gently. "There is a friend in the kitchen who is staying with us for a little while. Do you remember I told you a friend was coming?"
