A Holland and a Fighter

by Lori L. Otto

  I sigh, knowing that Luca isn’t genetically related to Trey in any way. “I hope it’s the same with Luca.”

  “There’s no reason to think it won’t be. We’re gonna fatten him up,” Jack says. “We’ll get him on a good feeding schedule. He’s already proving to be a really good eater. And then you’ve got a gourmet chef for a sister-in-law and another one living with you.”

  “Well, Joel’s just here temporarily. I don’t imagine he’ll be here by the time Luca’s ready to eat solid foods,” I tell them.

  “You never know. Maybe he’ll get into the custom baby food business. It was Shea’s way into the New York culinary scene.”

  “True,” I say, remembering the months when she lived with us to get her business off the ground while Will was still on tour. It gave us a chance to get to know her. It was when Livvy found her true best friend in life. I’m so glad my brother met her. “But Joel’s made a name for himself with quite a few people in Boston. And he knows people here, too,” I remind them as I look beneath the canopy and see Luca fighting to keep his eyes open. I lower my voice when I speak again. “He’s got the chops; he just needs someone to go out on a limb for him. I really wish Shea had a slot for him.”

  “I do, too,” Emi says. “But on the off chance it didn’t work out, you know… I hope he finds something elsewhere. I wouldn’t want things to be weird between Shea and Coley. They need each other right now.”

  “That’s… true,” I say, wanting to ask why it wouldn’t work, but also not wanting anything to split up Shea and Coley. They’ve lost Livvy, an important link in their relationship. It’s not that they need her to be there to be friends, but Liv was the one that brought them together.

  From what I hear, though, they’ve been hanging out a lot, just trying to get through the loss of their sister together in whatever ways they can.

  When we get to my building, Leon helps to corral us into the lobby, away from the photographers. I don’t go immediately to the elevator, though, knowing he wants to see the baby.

  “Well, would you get a look at that head of hair?” the doorman says. I cradle Luca, sleeping, between us. “He’s a handsome one, Jon… and I think he’s gonna look like his mother.”

  “I know,” I respond. “I hope he does.”

  “Those lashes.”

  “Yeah. I have a feeling he’s going to get her brown eyes. Mark my words.”

  “He’s so little. Are you afraid to hold him?” he asks.

  “Not now. I was a little a first… but I’m getting the hang of it.”

  “He’s wonderful with him,” Emi says.

  “I’m sure he is,” Leon answers, and I notice tears in his eyes. “I better get back to work. You bring him down every once in a while, to let him see Uncle Leon.”

  “Of course, I will.”

  As he turns around, he swipes at his eyes. I sigh, wondering if everyone who knew Livvy will respond this way when they meet our son. It hurts, but I realize it should. She’s gone and she’s left a hole in everyone’s hearts.

  “Jack’s holding the elevator.”

  I follow Emi to meet him and the girls, and we go straight up to our floor. Joel is standing at our entrance, wiping his hands, waiting to greet us.

  “How’d you know we were here?” Emi signs to him.

  “I was tracking Jon. My watch buzzes when he’s close. He’s okay with it,” he communicates back to us, both verbally and with his hands.

  “I am,” I say aloud when I know Joel’s watching me, since I can’t sign with Luca in my hands. “We’ve got a system.”

  Joel nods.

  “Joel?” both of the girls are pleading with him.

  “Girls, sign, okay?” Jack says. Emi makes herself comfortable on the couch, then motions for me to hand her Luca. I smile and place him gently in her arms.

  “Can you make us that… that…” Edie and Willow look between each other, confused, then look at me. “Daddy, how do you sign strawberry salad?”

  “Edie, he can read lips if you go slow. Ask Joel.” He’s already laughing and asking them to watch him as he shows them the signs for strawberry and salad. When he’s done, I get his attention. “And by the way, Joel, if you had other meals on the menu, you do not have to cater to their every whim.”

  “I have the stuff to make it… plenty for everyone. It’s not a problem. And it’s healthy, so it’s all good,” he responds.

  “Thank you,” both Jack and I sign.

  Joel finally has a moment to come and meet the baby. He doesn’t try to communicate anything, but I can see everything he has to say in his expressions. On the couch next to Emi, he holds on to my son’s tiny foot while he watches him sleep. His smile is bittersweet, his brows asking the question, “why?”

  He sighs, then finally signs, “He’s definitely your son.”

  “You think he looks like me?” I communicate back. “No.”

  He shakes his head. “But he looks tough. He looks like a fighter, who can make it through anything. He looks like your son.”

  A smile spreads across my face. “He is a fighter.” In those words, though, I’m taken back to Livvy’s final ones. Why didn’t she fight that night?

  “I think Auggie’s going to grow up and be strong like his daddy,” Emi says.

  “Auggie?” Joel spells out. “Are you calling him that?”

  “I’m not,” I respond. I sign it first, but then say it aloud. “His name is Luca…” I only briefly glance at Emi when I say it.

  “Auggie’s just a nickname,” she adds. “Something his Memi can call him.”

  I turn around and go into the kitchen to fix myself a drink. “Does anyone want anything?”

  “Soda, please.”

  “Me, too.”

  “No,” I tell the girls. “No more sodas. I have some sparkling water for you.”

  “What?” they both protest.

  “It’s… too much sugar. We’re all cutting back on it.” Joel and I had been talking about dietary changes, and this was one I’d wanted to implement. The girls were addicted to sugar already, but I didn’t want Luca to be brought up that way.

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so.”

  “Forever?” Willow asked.

  “All of it?” Edie followed up.

  “No and no. We’ll have it for special occasions, and there’s sugar in fruit… Joel’s making you the strawberry salad you wanted, right? So, there’s that. Some types of sugar are okay. He’s going to help us figure it all out. And you like his food, right?”

  They both nod their heads as I hand them glasses of carbonated water. They cringe at the flavor. “What? It’s good. Your mom loved it.”

  “Daddy, it sucks.”

  “It’s that or regular water,” I tell them. Edie opts for regular water, but Willow likes her “fizzy water,” so she drinks both hers and her sister’s.

  Joel taps me on the shoulder. “Trey and Coley are on their way over. Is that okay?”

  “Of course. I expected a lot of company today. Should I see if Leon should arrange for some more groceries? We use a service,” I tell him.

  “She said they had a big breakfast.”

  I nod and help him get out everything he needs for his salad, trying to remember the ingredients he used last week.

  “I’ve got this. It’s what I’m here for.” He signals for me to join my in-laws and kids.

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Jack starts to stand up to offer me the seat next to Emi, but I tell him to stay put. “Girls, put your tablets away, okay? Let’s have some family time. It’s Luca’s first day home.”

  Willow turns hers off immediately. After Edie rolls her eyes, it takes about twenty seconds for her to wrap up whatever she was doing and set hers to the side. I collect them both and put them on the top shelf, above the TV, where neither of them can reach.

  “Did you two go with your dad to work yesterday?” Jack asks them.

  My youngest responds. “We did!”
She bounces on the edge of the couch. Both girls were showered with attention on my first trip back to the office since Livvy’s death.

  “What did you do?”

  “We got to draw on the walls,” she says.

  “They did,” I confirm. “We have dry-erase walls in my office. Edie, want to tell them what you drew?”

  She shrugs her shoulders, but eventually speaks. “A lady.”

  I stare at her, wanting her to say more. “It wasn’t just a lady. Who was it?”

  She shakes her head.

  “It was Mama,” Willow says.

  “Yeah, it was,” I confirm. I pull out my phone and bring up a picture, handing it to Jack. The drawing has its limitations, mainly in the fact that the only media she could use were fluorescent dry erase markers, but anyone close to Liv would know it was her.

  “It’s beautiful, bunny,” he says to her, showing Emi.

  “Looks just like her.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Edie argues. “It wasn’t any good.”

  “I disagree,” I tell her, just as I’d repeated to her multiple times yesterday. “And if you flip through them, you can see Willow’s drawings, too.”

  “Hers are dumb. She can’t draw.”

  “Eeds, come on. She has a different style,” I argue, not wanting to discourage Willow from trying, even if she hasn’t shown much interest in the arts yet. She’d been to quite a few one-day courses at Nate’s Art Room but would always spend more time daydreaming through the classes than actually participating.

  I say daydreaming, but a more accurate description of what she was doing would be… hypothesizing about the world around her. Something about being in the creative environment would inspire a whole other level of thinking for her. Will said he could relate; he’d get that way when he listened to music. The superconscious, he called it.

  I understood it. I could get that way sometimes, and Livvy would get in that zone every time she painted, but I couldn’t fathom my eight-year-old transcending her conscious mind at her young age. My brother told me not to doubt it; that he began when he was in elementary school, too.

  “I don’t care that I can’t draw well,” Willow says. “But they aren’t dumb.”

  “No, they’re not,” I agree with her.

  “She just can’t possibly understand what I’m trying to say in my drawings. They’re too complex.” I look at Jack and Emi, and we all smile and nod our heads.

  “I think she just called me dumb,” Edie says.

  “No, she didn’t,” Jack says. “You girls just have completely different talents. Someday you’ll learn to appreciate your differences. Today, I don’t think you understand them. Give it time.”

  “Jon, what did they say at work?” Emi asks, still speaking softly as Luca sleeps in her arms.

  “Just, you know… take my time coming back. Work from home as much as I want. They’ve got everything under control there with all the projects. Salvatore had a few questions, and we went over those, but other than that, it did seem like everything was running very smoothly. We brought home some plants,” I say, nodding to a few new additions in the window sills. “Plants were a popular gift. There are still a ton that Angel is caring for at the office.”

  “I’d love a few,” Emi says, “if you would like to re-home some of them.”

  “Oh, sure, yeah. We can go up together next week and grab them.”

  “Thank you.”

  The doorbell rings, and even though it’s not the traditional, abrupt bell sound, the chimes still wake up the baby. He starts to cry. Emi bounces him in her lap as I get up to answer the door.

  “Hey, there.” I hug both Coley and Trey, welcoming them into the apartment.

  “Oh, did we wake him?” Coley asks.

  “He’s just not used to doorbells… or much of anything, yet. It’s okay… want to see if he’ll stop crying for you?” I ask her.

  “Sure!” she says, happily taking on the challenge. I carefully pick up a fussing Luca and place him into my soon-to-be sister-in-law’s awaiting arms. “Oh, Luca… I’m sorry, sweetie. Don’t cry.” He begins to wail. “No, no, Luca.” She looks up at me, worried, and I can tell she already wants to hand him off.

  “Wanna give it a shot, Godfather?”

  “I mean… he doesn’t really know me,” Trey says.

  “Copout.” I give him a side-eye and take my son back, holding him against my chest. He immediately knows where he is; recognizes that he’s safe. He stops crying and clenches his fists, catching my shirt in them. I know he’s not purposely grabbing my clothing, but it’s still nice to think he’s clinging to me like he needs me. “He’ll need to get to know you eventually.”

  “I’ll hold him later. When he’s sleeping. Or just, like, settled. I don’t want him to associate me with negative things, like the mean doorbell or whatever.”

  “Or whatever,” I repeat. “He’ll get used to you quickly and love you both. I promise you that. Have a seat,” I offer.

  “You didn’t have work today, Trey?” his mother asks him.

  “I asked for the day off. Told them I wanted to be with my family today. Seemed like an important day, I don’t know,” he says modestly.

  “That’s so sweet,” she responds.

  “Thanks, Trey.” It is very thoughtful of him. With my brothers coming over later, it’ll be nice to have everyone here. I have no idea how Luca will handle the crowd, but I guess it’s good we have multiple floors; if he’s overstimulated, we can simply go upstairs, or even to his room.

  Looking down at him, already asleep again, he seems to be fine with the growing crowd. I guess he’s probably used to people coming and going, with multiple doctors and nurses coming in and out of the NICU all of the time.

  I hear a familiar noise coming from his diaper. Even though he’s sleeping, I know he’ll be uncomfortable in a messy diaper soon, so I decide to go upstairs to change him.

  “I’ll help,” Coley offers.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I need a refresher course. I do intend to take on some babysitting duties, so… show me what to do,” she says.

  “You’re on.”

  She follows me upstairs and into his nursery.

  “It’s so cute,” she says. “Shea and I peeked in the other day to make sure everything was in order.”

  “Did I forget anything?” I ask.

  “I mean, I don’t know, but Shea thought everything was here. We love the sock monkeys.”

  “Yeah. It was Livvy’s idea. It’s perfect.”

  “Except then Froggie came along, so now we have a mishmash of animalia in here.”

  “Pretty sure that’s not a word.”

  “I’m a creative writer, Jon. I can make up words.” She is known for that, and I can’t argue with her. It’s never anything I don’t completely understand, either.

  I smile at her, letting her keep her word. “So first,” I say, “we wake up the sleeping baby.” I cringe when I say it sarcastically, because it’s the last thing I want to do right now. I start by unsnapping the onesie. He sleeps through that, but once my cold hands touch his tummy, he awakens with a jolt and starts crying again. “Take off the old diaper.”

  “Figured that out,” she responds. “I can just watch. You don’t have to talk me through it.”

  “All right,” I say with a laugh. She watches as I start to go through the motions.

  “I do want to learn this, but I wanted to get you alone for a minute to talk to you about something.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  “Not really.” She hands me a wipe, and I forget that we’d bought a warmer. I don’t remember where it is. Luca’s really unhappy when I clean him with the cold cloth. Coley waits for him to quiet down to continue. “Just, um… wedding stuff.”

  “Okay.” I make eye contact with her, encouraging her to continue.

  “You know Livvy was one of my bridesmaids,” she starts.

  “Yeah,” I say softly. I’d looked for
ward to making another trip down the aisle with her this winter, since I was one of Trey’s groomsmen.

  “I’ve come up with two options, and I want you to make the final decision.”

  “Sweetie, it’s your wedding, okay?” I shake my head. “I can’t pick her replacement.”

  “There’s no replacement for her, Jon. That’s not really an option.”

  “Okay… I’m not following, then.”

  “My initial thought was that I just wouldn’t ask anyone else to join the bridal party–for that reason. I’d never want Livvy to feel replaced, I mean… even though… you know?”

  I smile at her. “I know.”

  “And I don’t want people to see some, like, fringe friend standing up there with me. Everyone close to me will know she doesn’t belong. But then, like…”

  She hesitates for a few moments as I finish putting on the clean diaper. I take a seat on the recliner with the baby as she makes herself at home on the ottoman next to it.

  “Like, what?”

  “I don’t want you walking down the aisle by yourself.”

  I huff audibly. “Coles, I’ll be doing a lot of things by myself. It’ll be the new norm. Something we all have to get used to. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I think people will be… sad… melancholy… reminded of her absence in a, uh… very abandoned sort of way. And I don’t like that.”

  “Well, what’s the other option?” I ask her.

  “I was thinking that I might have a junior bridesmaid and promote Edie to that role. I know they were both going to be flower girls and Liv already bought their dresses, but–”

  “I love it.”

  A wide smile grows across her face; tears fill her eyes. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, Liv bought their dresses, but she was going to use them for their Christmas dresses, too. She had little sashes made to go around their waists for that purpose.”

  “I haven’t even seen them. Do we have them?”

  “No, my seamstress is holding onto them in case she needs to make any final alterations…”

  “Okay. Do I need to get Edie a new dress?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Let me take her shopping.”