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“Not really.”
“Well, let’s find her,” Mrs. O’Malley says, with the air of efficient authority that has steered a classroom for two decades. She leads Lincoln through the slalom of beds and cribs until they come upon Amy, standing, with her hands on her hips in front of a bunk bed done up with a celestial theme. She’s staring in exasperation at Lincoln.
“I came to warn you about the crib,” he explains.
Amy winces. “What are you talking about?” But as if his response, whatever it is, will be nonsense, she doesn’t stop for an answer and says to her mother, “Why don’t you give us a minute.”
Amy used to grumble that her mother hovered, but here Mrs. O’Malley shows admirable discretion. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Lincoln,” she says, amusing herself by drawing out the formal address for the father of her grandchild.
“Me, too,” he says.
She ignores his non sequitur and leaves quietly for another area of the store.
When she’s out of hearing, Amy says angrily, “John, why are you here?”
“I came to warn you about the crib,” he repeats and sputters on for a minute about some of the alarming facts he gleaned.
When at last he runs out of horror stories, Amy says quietly, “Don’t you think I know all that? Don’t you think I’ve spent hours reading up about cribs—and about baby furniture and baby clothes and baby food and everything there is to know about babies!”
“Yes,” he says weakly.
Amy drops heavily onto the bottom tier of the celestial bunk bed. “John, why are you doing this to me?” she asks pleadingly.
The question—direct, pained, bristling with blame, yet somehow acknowledging the helplessness they both suffer when fate and character intertwine—hits Lincoln like a hard wind. He plops down beside her. As she stares blankly across the narrow room, where a framed poster announces, GO ASK YOUR MOTHER—BY ORDER OF THE MANAGEMENT, Lincoln absently starts combing her hair with his fingers. The velvety softness, the heat of her mysteriously changed body, the polar swings of emotion he’s undergone in the last few days—he feels light-headed, his eyes loose in their sockets, his spine soft. Is this the start of a swoon? He fights his way back to lucidity, and it’s as if he’s breaking the surface of a lake, bursting into the fierce light of the sun. “I want to be with you,” he insists, and Lincoln knows from the unanticipated urgency in his voice that he means not just the pregnancy, but beyond—the disrupted nights, the afternoons at the playground, the messy dinners, the pleasures, the woes, life before the three of them, in all its unarrangeable sprawl.
Amy says softly, “You don’t, John. That’s sweet of you, but you really don’t.”
“But I do,” Lincoln sputters like a desperate child. “I really do.” For all his frantic plotting, he senses that everything that came before has led to this accidental moment—as if nature has finally intervened and is giving him one last chance. “I do!” he cries again.
Amy laughs at his artlessness and places her hand on his cheek. He covers her small hand with his. “Listen,” he says, recovering enough to lay the groundwork to make his case. “Let’s have dinner tonight. We’ll talk.”
“I can’t, John,” Amy tells him gently. “I’m working.”
“Fuck that. Call in sick. We’ve got to talk.” Lincoln presses her hand against his cheek. He’s not going to let her go until she agrees.
She pats her stomach with her free hand. “I can’t drink,” she points out.
“So what? I won’t either.”
Amy studies him intensely. Lincoln can’t imagine what his face is telling her, but he keeps pressing her hand. He’ll never outlive the pain if she removes her hand now.
“But what about New York?” she asks finally. “I won’t leave Chicago.”
“Fuck New York.”
Amy pulls away. “I can’t believe you said that.”
Lincoln can’t either. But he said it, and now the words and the logic pour out, as if the flood tide had been building for two days. “I mean, I love New York, but ever since they offered me the job, I’ve been thinking—is that really what I want to do? It’s as if I got visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future. A lot of boring lunches with agents, all that maneuvering to get ahead of rivals. Pretending I’m a big deal just because of my job. I’ll probably just go home and drink, turn into an alcoholic. Talk about growing old alone in a smelly apartment! I need to be editing manuscripts, trying to improve things. That’s what I’m good at.” He reaches for her hand again. “I could go, I would do it—if it weren’t for you, but I’m embedded in Chicago now. I’m a part of it, and it’s a part of me. You’re here.”
“You’re like Gatsby,” Amy teases. “You lived too long with a single dream.”
For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Lincoln gushes tears, using Amy’s hand to mop his sloppy face while she laughs at his childish display. She pulls his head close with her free hand and whispers, “I didn’t really mean what I said yesterday—that I didn’t want to spend my life with you. I’m just confused. It’s all happened so fast. I don’t know what I think.”
Lincoln’s body goes soft. Every muscle, every cell, has been tensed. “We’ll talk,” he says. “And talk and talk and talk.”
Amy takes a deep breath and pulls her hand away. “But now you have to go. My mom’s waiting.”
“Do you want me to help?”
