He pulls me close to him and kisses my cheek. “That’s why I love you so much.”
Dex left before noon, opting for the café downtown over a homemade Reuben sandwich on fresh-baked bread. I try not to take it personally and wrap the extra sandwich I made in waxed paper before putting it in the fridge, which is when I hear a quiet knock at the back door.
I look up and see Jimmy standing on the deck outside, with his nose pressed up against the glass.
“Morning, honey,” I say.
“Can I come in?” he asks, wide-eyed.
“Does your mother know where you are?”
He shrugs. “She’s working today. Besides, she doesn’t care where I am as long as I’m not bothering her.”
“I’m sure that’s not the case, Jimmy,” I say.
He walks into the living room and plops onto the couch. “It always smells nice in your house,” he says. “Like a bakery.”
“Thanks,” I reply. “Are you hungry?”
He nods.
I hand him Dex’s sandwich and he unwraps it hastily. “I got an A on my book report,” he says between bites.
“Good job, honey,” I say. “I bet your mother was proud.”
He shakes his head. “She doesn’t like bugs.”
“Bugs?”
“The book was about bugs.”
“Oh.”
“She wanted me to do a report on a book about a guy named Fried.”
“Do you mean Freud?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
I smile. “I’ll be honest,” I say, “I like bugs better.”
Jimmy looks vindicated. “Will you take me out in the canoe?”
“I don’t know,” I say, remembering Naomi’s warnings about Jimmy. “Your parents will be looking for you soon.”
He shakes his head, and something about his eyes, pleading, lonely, makes me say OK. “But we can’t be out long.”
He stands up and wraps his arms around my waist. “Thank you, Penny.”
The lake is glorious today, sparkling and smooth as glass. The canoe glides through the water effortlessly, like a knife through butter.
After we paddle out to the center of the lake, we stop and bob on the water for a while. It’s peaceful here. Jimmy sets his oar down in the well of the canoe and turns around in his seat up front to face me.
“I wish I was good at something,” he says suddenly.
“Oh, Jimmy, you’re good at lots of things.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not smart in school.”
“That’s not true,” I say. “You just haven’t found your thing yet—you know, your special skill. Everyone has one. It just takes a while to figure out what it is.”
He’s wide-eyed. “What’s yours?”
“Well, I do like to bake.”
“You make good cookies,” he says.
“Someday I’d like to open a bakery.”
He looks thoughtful for a moment, then smiles to himself. “I’d like to be a comic strip writer.”
“Jimmy!” I exclaim. “That’s a wonderful goal!”
He pulls a piece of paper from his pocket and hands it to me. It’s folded several times into a small square, and I unfold it carefully.
“It’s not very good,” he says quickly.
I shake my head, astonished by the way he drew the people and dog in the little comic strip, then smile at the punch line. “It’s excellent,” I say. “You should show this to your parents.”
Jimmy shakes his head and quickly retrieves his creation, folding it again before tucking it in his pocket. “No. They don’t understand comics.”
“Well, they understand talent, and they’ll be very proud of you.”
He shrugs and turns back to the water, and I look to the shore, where our dock looks like a tiny speck in the distance.
“Penny?” he asks, turning to me again. “Will you ever have a baby?”
I smile nervously, a bit startled by his question. I think of the last time I spoke to Dex about the subject. He patted my knee and said, “Become a father at my age?” And yet, I long for a child. I can’t help but think that if I had a baby, I wouldn’t feel so alone. That it might complete the missing piece of me, fill the hairline crack in my heart that I knew Dex can never fully occupy. But after almost three years of marriage, it has become clear that something is wrong. And maybe that something is me.
“Jimmy,” I say, choosing my words carefully, “I’d love to have a baby, more than anything in the world. But sometimes things don’t work out the way you want them to.”
“It’s not fair,” he says, frowning. “You want a child and don’t have one, and Mother has me, but she never wanted one.”