Morning Glory(77)

“Dance with me,” he says.

He always feels amorous when he’s been drinking, but it’s different now, more intense, somehow. It could be the first day of the rest of our lives, or the last day of our life together.

I don’t protest as he pulls me toward him. “It’s been too long,” he says, breathing into my neck. My mind wants to argue, but my body welcomes his embrace.

When the song ends, he pulls back and looks out to the deck.

“What is it?” I ask, a little startled.

He shakes his head. “I thought I saw something. Probably nothing.” He resumes his hold on my waist.

For a moment, I think I see a shadow—a sailboat?—but it’s just the ripple of the lake.

I know it then. I feel it. Collin isn’t coming.



Dex kisses my hand and pours two glasses of wine, handing one to me.

“No thanks,” I say, shaking my head.

“Why not?”

Suddenly I have a vision, of Dex holding a baby, gazing at him lovingly, then back at me. Could a child fix us? Is that all we need? I ache for Collin, but if he isn’t coming, I’ll have to go on. I look at Dex smiling at me now. My Dex. He hasn’t always been a perfect husband, but he loves me in his own way. I could tell him about the baby. I could tell him right now. He’d be ecstatic. He’d swell with pride.

Dex watches me as I stare out to the lake. “What are you looking for out there?”

I turn back to him quickly. “The stars are out tonight,” I say, thinking of Collin. He’s probably through the locks now, casting off into the Puget Sound and out onto the ocean, heading south. Without me.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” I say.

“What is it?” Dex kisses my cheek as I feel a cramp in my belly.

“Dex, we’re going to have a baby.” The words tumble out of my mouth without my permission, but I feel better once they do. The secret is out in the open now for him to see, and hopefully accept.

He coughs, spraying wine onto the rug, then sets his wineglass on the kitchen counter. “What in the world do you mean?” He shakes his head, and the look on his face frightens me.

I force a smile. Every man gets a little jittery when he learns he’s becoming a father, I tell myself. “I mean, I’m pregnant. You’re going to be a father, Dex. Well, a father again.” I smile nervously and take a step toward him.

He looks as if he’s just gotten the wind knocked out of him. He sits down and stares at a spot on the rug.

I remember a time the month after we were married when a woman at a department store walked up to us and plopped her nine-month-old boy into Dexter’s arms. “Hold him for just a moment?” she asked. “I left my handbag at the counter at Fredrick and Nelson and carrying Bobby all the way to the end of the shopping center is like lugging a ton of bricks.” I noticed a bead of sweat on her brow. “Please, hold him just for a moment. I’ll be back in ten minutes or less.”

I looked around the lobby where we stood, and we were the only people nearby besides a teenage boy and a woman with toddler twins and a five-year-old boy who was in the midst of a raucous tantrum. I could see why she’d asked us.

Dex nodded nervously, extending his arms mechanically.

“Here,” she said, plopping the large baby into his arms. Dex looked stiff and uncomfortable as we watched the woman bustle off out the door and down the street.

I tried not to laugh. He looked so cute standing there with this rosy-cheeked baby in his arms. “Look at you,” I said. “You’re a natural.”

The comment made him stiffen even more, and the baby began to whimper, which soon turned to a blood-curdling scream. “Take him,” Dex pleaded, handing the child to me.

“There now,” I said, propping the baby on his stomach and leaning him against my shoulder. I rocked him in my arms the way I’d done with children I’d babysat after school, and within a minute, his eyes became heavy and he nodded off.

“See?” I said. “Babies aren’t that scary. You just have to know how to handle them.”

Dex stared at me with a horrified expression. “No,” he said. “No babies.”

I shook my head. “What do you mean ‘no babies’?” I didn’t understand how he could be so hard-and-fast. We’d hardly discussed parenthood. I mean, he knew, vaguely, that I wanted to have children—someday—but we’d never broached the subject head-on.

“I mean I don’t want to have children,” he said bluntly.

“But Dexter,” I said, as little Bobby reached a sleepy fist in the direction of my nose. “You can’t mean that. Give it time. One day we’ll want to—”