“Max?” said Lorna.
“Knute’s old boyfriend,” said Hosea. “Summer Feelin’s dad.”
“Oh yeah,” said Lorna. “You told me about Knute and Summer Feelin’. What a great name, Summer Feelin’.”
Hosea smiled.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“It’s a great name,” said Lorna again.
“Okay,” said Hosea. “She’s a sweet kid, too.”
“Yeah?” said Lorna. “It’s nice for her to have her dad back, I guess.”
Hosea nodded. “They get along,” he said. “He takes care of her while Knute works in the office.”
Lorna nodded and sipped her tea. “Hmmm,” said Lorna, looking at her watch. “It’s June sixth today, D-Day.”
“Is that right?” said Hosea. Oh my God, he thought.
Lorna shrugged.
“Yeah,” he said, “I guess it is.”
He stared at Lorna while she fiddled with her watch. He was trying to work up the nerve to tell her his plan. Isthmus rhymes with Christmas, he told himself. Her eyes, two oceans of blue, and a skinny isthmus of a nose running in-between. Her mouth, the Bermuda Triangle, no, that’s wrong. Dehumanize your audience. Hosea could hear the voice of Mr. Flett, his old speech arts teacher. Pretend your audience is a brick fence, a body of water, an ancient land mass. And then say what you have to say. A field of wheat won’t think you’re ridiculous. A small continent won’t get up and leave. Tell her right now, Hosea told himself, tell her. You love her, you need her, you deserve her, tell her right now or kill yourself.
“Lorna!” he said loudly, scaring himself and making her jump.
“What?” said Lorna. “Are you nuts? I’m not deaf.”
“We should do that talking now, the talking we talked about before,” said Hosea, “on the phone.”
“Okay,” said Lorna, taking a big breath. “You’re right.” She smiled. “It’s very weird.”
Hosea was confused. What was weird? What did she think was weird? He hadn’t told her yet. He hadn’t said anything about the plan.
“What is weird?” he said.
“Weird,” she said slowly, smiling, “weird is that …” She stopped and moved her chair closer to Hosea, leaned across the corner of the table, cupped his face in her hands, put her lips against his forehead, and whispered “… is that I’m pregnant.”
Mr. Flett had never mentioned the possibility of a land mass getting pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. Lorna’s lips were still fastened to his forehead. He could stick out his tongue and lick her neck if he wanted to. He put his arms around her and said, “That’s amazing, Lorna. That’s amazing.”
She sat back down in her chair, folded her arms, and said, “I know it is.” She looked at Hosea. “Please smile,” she said, “oh, please smile.”
“I am,” said Hosea, frowning, “I am.”
Lorna laughed. “Are you happy?” she asked. He was happy, he was thrilled. It had never occurred to him that he could make a woman pregnant, especially not a beautiful woman he really loved and wanted to live with for the rest of his life. He was happy, all right.
“Yes, Lorna, I’m happy,” he said, smiling. Trying to smile. “I’m happy.” And then he added, “Are you?”
Lorna nodded. “I think so,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I am.”
“Amazing,” he said.
“The doctor told me it’s the size of my thumbnail,” said Lorna.
“Really, wow,” said Hosea. “Let me see your thumb.” She held it up and he looked at it closely. He pulled her thumb to his lips and kissed it.
“But the thing is,” she said, holding out her thumb, “the thing is, Hosea, it’s got to be different.”
“How do you mean?” Hosea stopped kissing her thumb and held her hand in his lap.
“I’m just not gonna fool around anymore, Hosea. I’m too old for that and so are you. I’m not gonna date you like a teenager or have some kind of long-distance love affair with you when I’m pregnant with your kid. Forget it.”
“Okay,” said Hosea, “I know. I know what you mean, and things will change. You’re going to move in with me and we’ll be happy, we’ll be a family, we’ll all live together right here in Algren. We have a school, there’s a park, okay? Okay, Lorna?” Hosea smiled and opened his eyes wide.
“Today, Hosea,” said Lorna. “As of today I’m living here. If you can’t make that commitment, knowing we’re having a baby, and everything else — you know we’re not kids, you know we’re not getting any younger — then I don’t know. Then I just don’t know. Basically, I think, it would just be over. I’m not gonna raise a kid with you if you can’t make one commitment. Then I might not even have it.”
Hosea let go of Lorna’s hand and reached for the front of his shirt.
“Don’t,” said Lorna. “Don’t do that. Just deal with this, okay? I don’t mean for this to be an ultimatum, Hosea, I hate ultimatums, but it’s just at that point where we have to, where you have to, make a decision. Maybe I’m just an idiot, but I thought that when you said you had stuff to talk to me about, on the phone before, that you were gonna pop the big question, ask me to marry you or whatever, at least move in with you. That’s what I thought you were going to say. So what? Were you? What did you want to talk about?”
“I just need you to trust me,” said Hosea.
“You need me to trust you?” said Lorna.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“No,” said Lorna. “You need to trust me, you need to trust yourself. I do trust you. Why the hell do you think I’m here right now? Why the hell do you think I keep coming back to you time after time? Why are you so afraid of living with me? Because it might not work out? Because I’ll become more real to you? Because you’ll not have a reason to feel sorry for yourself, all alone? Why? I don’t understand, Hosea. Is there somebody else? Are you seeing somebody else?”
“God, no,” said Hosea. “I have a plan, and it’s very important to me, and if you just wait for three weeks, it’ll be over, and my life, my whole life, will be yours, and the baby’s. Please understand, Lorna, please don’t leave me …”
“Tell me what your plan is,” said Lorna. “Tell me what it is, and we’ll see.” She moved behind Hosea and stroked his hair and rubbed his back. “Tell me,” she said. “C’mon, Hosea.”
Hosea turned around to face her and he put his hands on her waist. “I want to see my father,” he said. “I want to see what he looks like. I want to talk to him. I want to see if I’m like him at all. I want him to see my town.”
“Hosea,” said Lorna, “who is your father?”
Hosea cleared his throat. “John Baert, I think. My mother told me that, anyway.”
“You don’t mean the Prime Minister, do you?” Lorna smiled.
Hosea nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s the one.”
Max and Knute said good-bye on the street with a high-five in slow motion, their hands clasped together for a couple of seconds reaching for the sky and everything else unattainable, and then they smiled at each other and went their separate ways.
When Knute got home, Dory was still up. She had her SoHo T-shirt on and Tom’s sweats and she was steaming the wallpaper in the dining room with a kettle and tearing at it with a plastic scraper.
“Mom,” Knute whispered. “What are you doing? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Yes, Knutie,” she said, “I made that observation myself. What does it look like I’m doing?” She hadn’t taken her eyes off the wallpaper.
“You’re gonna take out the whole wall, not just the paper, if you keep banging at it like that,” said Knute.