“Hold on a sec,” I interrupted. “I need to drive. Do you want to talk to her?”
“Perfect.”
I handed the phone to Emily and then backed out of the parking space.
“Hello?” she said. “Oh, hi. Uh-huh… Oh. No, it’s okay. Yeah, we told him. No, we went shopping this afternoon. A bunch of places. I wanted to get her the new Harry Potter book, but it doesn’t come out till tomorrow.” She paused and listened. “Yeah. A bunch of little things at Bath & Body Works.” Another pause, and she brightened.
“Oh, you did? Oh my gosh, that sounds yummy.” She glanced at me. “No, I can do it. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. Thanks, Mom. I love you too. Yeah, okay. Hold on.” She turned and extended the phone to Susie. “She wants to talk to you.”
Susie chattered happily for ten minutes about shopping and dinner. Christy was probably getting hungrier by the minute, but she never stopped her.
Emily eventually turned in her seat. “I forgot to tell her something,” she fibbed to Susie. “Can I talk to her?”
“What? Oh, okay. Hey, Mom? Em wants to talk to you. Okay, I love you too. Bye!” She handed the phone to Emily, who raised it to her ear.
“Hi, sorry about that,” she said. “Yeah. No, she doesn’t understand.”
“Understand what?” Susie squawked from the back.
Emily ignored her and continued, “It’s okay. I do.” She listened and then glanced at me. “Okay, I’ll tell him. I love you too. Bye.” She closed the phone and handed it to me. I deposited it in the center console. “She said she’ll call you later, after they’ve had a chance to eat.”
I nodded.
“She also said she’s sorry she didn’t tell you about the party.”
“It’s my fault,” I said. “I was teasing her this morning about being late.”
“It’s kinda my fault too,” Emily admitted. “Mom asked me last week, but I didn’t know what I wanted to get her. Madison, I mean.”
“I think she’ll like the lotions and body wash.”
“Mom also bought the stuff to make the dip I like.”
“That’s what she said.”
Susie interrupted mulishly, “What don’t I understand?”
“What? Oh, nothing,” Emily said. “I was talking about Madison. Do you wanna help make the dip when we get home?’
“Can I?”
“Sure. Then we can wrap the presents. Will you draw a card for her?”
“Seriously? You really mean it?”
“Of course,” Emily said. “You’re way better than I am.”
She was my guardian princess, protective and kind. I gave her a nod of approval, and her smile melted my heart.
* * *
Christy called the home phone a couple of hours later. They’d eaten dinner and returned to the hotel for the night. Wren was in the shower, and Christy was relaxing before bed.
“So,” I teased, “the girls are in one room and you’re in the other?”
“Yes, Mr. Nosy Parker.”
“Do you think they know their moms are planning to sleep together?”
“No, and we won’t tell them. Besides, I think Laurie might know already.”
“Oh?”
“Mmm. I was her age when I started fooling around.”
“Hold on,” I said. “You don’t think she—? I mean—”
“With Missy? No, of course not. She’s way too young.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Missy was too young. We shared a birthday, and she’d only just turned eleven.
“But Laurie and Jessica…?” Christy said.
“Hold on… Jessica?” I blinked in disbelief. “The one who spent the night back in May? That Jessica? Her parents are diehard Bushies, super-conservative!”
“So were mine.”
“They were actually pretty liberal.”
“My father wasn’t.”
“He’s mellowed in his old age,” I conceded, “but you know what I mean. Your mother knew what you were up to.”
“She did. Only, she wanted me to have a life, so… she looked the other way. Besides, it wasn’t like I was going to get pregnant.”
“No.”
“Speaking of which—”
Some part of me envied her ability to mold the conversation like the clay she used for her models. I would’ve thought it was unconscious if I hadn’t known her for twenty-odd years. Then again, maybe it was. She had a vision of what she wanted, whether it was a sculpture or more children, and she kept scraping away and applying pressure until reality bent to her will.
“—have you thought about what we talked about?” she finished.
“Do you really wanna talk about this now?” I said, a touch irritably. “I mean, Wren’ll be out of the shower in a minute, won’t she?”
“She knows already. She thinks we should do it.”
My anger flared, volcanic and sudden. “Oh, she does, does she? And damn the consequences?”
“Paul, I want this,” Christy replied calmly, “more than anything.”
“And I want a happy wife!”
“This will make me happy.”
“You aren’t happy now?” I shot back.
“Of course I am. You know that. But I’d be happier with more children, especially now that I’m sober. It’s been two years, Paul.”
“No, and that’s final.” I regretted the words as soon as I’d said them. I normally wasn’t the overbearing type, and my normally submissive wife could be the exact opposite, especially when she wanted something.
“My doctor thinks—”
“I don’t care what she thinks.” Silence greeted my outburst, which made me feel even worse.
“Okay,” Christy said at last.
“Okay, what?” I snarled. “Okay, we won’t have any more kids? Or okay, you’ll stop asking?” I didn’t need to add “for now.” She knew.
“Paul, I can’t explain it. I wish I could, but I can’t. I just know that I want more children.”
“Well, I don’t! I’m happy with the ones we have.”
“But… I want a son.”
Part of me did too—an old-fashioned, sexist, irrational part. My daughters already carried my genes. Who cared about a name?
“I don’t want to argue,” Christy said into the silence.
Then why’d you bring it up?
“But we need to decide. Soon. I talked to my doctor. She knows about my depression, too. I’ll take meds. I’ll go to counseling. I’ll do whatever you want. Only… please, I need this. Besides, you know how I am.”
“You mean, you’ll keep asking until you get what you want?”
To her credit, she actually managed to sound apologetic. “Yes.”
I huffed in disgust. Since when was she the rational one?
“We’ll talk about it,” I grumbled. “But not now.”
“Okay.” She let my temper cool from spewing lava to a smoking caldera. Then she calmly changed the subject. “Did Emily make the dip?”
“Yes.”
“I knew she would. I’d’ve waited till tomorrow. I think it tastes better fresh, but…”
“She doesn’t like waiting till the last minute.”
“No,” Christy agreed. “She’s too much like you, Mr. Planner.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No, no! I’m glad she is, even if she drives me crazy sometimes. She reminds me why I love you.”
I wanted to stay angry at her, but I just couldn’t.
“Because you drive me crazy,” she said in a low voice. “Maybe we can—”
“God,” Wren said in the background, “that was exactly what I needed.”
“To be continued,” Christy whispered into the phone. In a louder voice, “The network wouldn’t connect or something, so they had to do everyone’s registration the old-fashioned way.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, which did wonders for my mood.
“That’s why it took so long,” she continued as if I hadn’t said anything.
“You’re a terrible liar,” I told her. “Wren will know exactly what we were talking about.”
“I don’t think so,” Christy said, which was innocuous enough.