Phoebe shook her head. She tucked the issue ofArchitectural Digestshe’d pilfered from the dentist’s office under her arm. There was no point asking Dave about the claw-foot tub. Though she could really use one now. Not to take a relaxing soak in, no. To climb in and sink beneath the surface.
Perry
“This is classic Jake. Jump first, don’t worry about the rocks in the water until you hit them.” He was sitting in bed, propped up against the pillows, a small laundry basket of socks beside him. The housekeeper had folded the socks the wrong way again. He rifled through the basket, looking for pairs that needed refolding. “This whole marriage idea is ridiculous.”
Amelia stepped out of the steamy master bathroom, her hair swept up neatly in a towel. She glanced over as he tipped the basket of socks across the bedspread without blinking. “I think it’s romantic.”
“You can’t be serious.”
He watched as she sat down at her vanity and unwrapped the towel. Her long dark hair spilled across the back of her bathrobe. Amelia had always been attractive, if in a slightly staid way. From the first time she joined his study group in graduate school with a sheaf of color-coded notes tucked under her arm and her hair pulled tightly in a no-nonsense bun, Perry had taken notice. Her nose had the tiniest bump in the center, a feature she later confided her brothers had nicknamed the “mogul” when they were children, but Perry thought it added strength to her profile, like an ancient Greek statue’s. Amelia radiated order, from her spartansensibilities to her conservative attire. But every once in a while, a flicker of romantic whimsy exposed itself. Like now. “Why not?” she asked.
“Because they just met.” Perry began unrolling the pairs of socks. All were solid black; it was the only color Perry would wear. But some had gold threads across the toe and some had white. Perry could not stand for them to comingle. The housekeeper, Estelle, however, seemed to embrace such chaos. He had to remind her every time not to mix the two. “What does Jake really know about her? And her child?”
Amelia raised an eyebrow in the mirror. “You mean Luci?”
“And that dog.” Perry shook his head. “They’re rushing. Jake is too rash.”
“He’s in love.” Amelia sighed. There was the flicker.
“And what does he know about parenting?”
Amelia set her hairbrush down. “Well, that I’ll give you. Getting married is one thing. Having a stepchild is another entirely. And Luci has special needs.”
“Exactly.” To his dismay there were two strays at the bottom of the basket, one with a gold toe and one with a white. Perry flinched. Estelle had done it again. He’d have to unfold the entire pile and find their mates. “Why doesn’t she speak?”
“She does, just not to us. It’s kind of like an anxiety disorder.” Amelia turned to him. “Imagine the strain that places on Olivia.”
“Well, she certainly made the rounds at the party explaining Luci’s condition. Shouldn’t that stuff be kept private?”
Amelia considered this. “I thought that was brave. She doesn’t make apologies. I don’t know that I could handle having a child with mutism with such grace.”
“Luckily we don’t have to.”
Amelia and Perry were blessed that way. Emma had alwaysbeen a healthy, well-adjusted child. Granted, Perry likened much of that to their parenting. Not that that had happened overnight.
If he were being honest, Perry would have said that he’d been paralyzed with fear the moment he learned they were expecting. He’d always wanted a child. But as the months passed and Amelia’s belly swelled, Perry began to develop a significant twitch in his left eye. It happened every time they talked about the baby.
“Honey, are you sure you shouldn’t go to the optometrist?” Amelia had asked. It was becoming rather noticeable. But Perry knew better. There was nothing wrong with his eye. Perry did not like change. The baby hadn’t even arrived, and already everything around him seemed to be changing at warp speed.
It wasn’t just the obvious transformation in Amelia’s body and demeanor. Gone was the woman who worked until eight p.m. in her office and met him at a restaurant for a late dinner. Instead, Amelia started coming home by five o’clock, bedraggled and exhausted. And starving. They began eating dinner in, earlier and earlier each night. And gone were nice meals, like poached salmon and wine sauce, his favorite. Once Perry arrived home to find his wife bent over a saucepan shoveling boxed macaroni and cheese into her mouth. She’d looked up, her lips tinged orange with powdered cheese, and smiled. “Sorry. I didn’t save you any.” Who was this woman?
In an effort to restore the slipping sense of balance, Perry responded the only way he knew how. He prepared as if for disaster. During his daily commute to the city, he pored over baby books. Sleep books. Feeding books. Behavior books. At night he and Amelia lay in bed, shoulder to shoulder, paging through them. If the arrival of their child was a black hole of the unknown, Perry would make it his job to fill as much of it as possible with information. His favorite book focused on structure. “Babies thrive on predictable routine. Schedule naps and feedings, and don’t deviate. Adherence to routine makes for a happy baby!”
Amelia, reading over his shoulder, had snorted.
“What’s so funny?” Perry asked.
“It’s like they’re talking about you, honey.”
Perry was used to this. He felt no shame in his philosophy. Life was all about preparation. Something his brother, Jake, had always balked at.
Now when Perry thought about the time and planning that he and Amelia had put into raising Emma, he shuddered. And that was for theirownchild. A child he’d held since the day of her birth. Who’d known him every day and night since. What about a stepchild?
Perry wondered what Luci thought of all this. What it meant to her to have a strange new man in her life, soon to be in her home. She’d lived the whole of her five years with just her mother. It was all she knew.
How could Jake expect to just stumble into fatherhood? It was the worst kind of foolishness. It wasn’t a job you could charm your way into. “I need to talk to Jake,” he said, as Amelia climbed into bed beside him. “No one else in the family is going to.”
“Just don’t expect to change his mind.”
