Dream & Dare

by Susan Fanetti

  The day he was discharged back to the San Gabriel Center, they removed the bandaging from his head, and Bibi couldn’t hold back her tears. His hair was gone again, and the long scar had been reopened for the new surgery, so there was a definite Frankenstein look about him. But his head was back the way it belonged. There was hope simply in the rightness of that smooth curve.

  She reached for her husband’s hand, and when she caught it, he squeezed hard.

  Connor was with her, and when his arm went around her shoulders and squeezed, she knew a moment of peace for the first time in months.

  Their boy. Their beautiful, strong boy.

  ~oOo~

  “You’re not gonna break him, Hooj. Here, just set him with his head in the crook of your elbow.”

  Hoosier stared, his hands in his pockets. The man had been completely useless all day long, yelling at nurses, at doctors, fussing over her so much she’d fantasized several times about punching him in his stupid man face. Then, he’d gone and gotten woozy when she started pushing, and they’d sent him out of the room with an ice pack on his neck. Pussy.

  Bibi had labored for almost sixteen hours. She was sore and exhausted. Half the population of the state of California had had their hands up her twat. She had stitches where no woman should ever have stitches, and the epidural had worn off long before. She felt like her bottom half was the size of the damn Queen Mary. And to top all that off, she had to pee.

  And she couldn’t get her old man to hold his kid.

  “Listen up, Biker Boy. You leaned on me for years to have a baby. You left me in here to push him into the world on my own. If you think you’re gonna puss out on me now that he’s here, you got another think comin’.”

  At least he had the good sense to look guilty about it. “He’s so little. Beebs, fuck. Look at him.”

  “I am. He’s perfect.” She pulled his little striped beanie off to show his head, covered with silky, dark hair. Then she turned back the receiving blanket, freeing his hands. The sleeping boy scrunched up his face and then put one tiny hand over his nose.

  Hoosier leaned over and peered hard into that little face. With watchful care, he put a callused finger on the back of his new son’s hand and brushed a tiny circle over it. “He’s so soft. God. I don’t want to hurt him.”

  “Best way to hurt him is never to touch him, Hooj. He’s your boy. You gotta hold him to love him. And, baby, I really havta pee. You take him, or I’m lettin’ loose right here.”

  Hoosier lifted his eyebrow at that, challenging the notion that there were any conditions in the universe under which she’d knowingly wet herself, but she stared right back until he relented. “Okay. Just…don’t go far.”

  “Across the room. To the toilet. You can manage for the three minutes this’ll take.”

  She helped him hold his son, who didn’t wake during the exchange. Then Hoosier sat down in the convertible chair next to the bed.

  “It’s like holding a sack of nothing.”

  “Trust me. Eight pounds, fourteen ounces ain’t nothin’.” She eased herself off the bed and tottered to the bathroom.

  “Careful, Cheeks. You need help?”

  “Sit, Hooj. I’m fine. I’ll be three minutes.”

  It took quite a lot longer than three minutes. Her bladder was ready, oh was it ready, but the tubing wasn’t so sure. Hoosier called out to her several times, asking what he could do, until she yelled that he could shut the fuck up, was what he could do.

  But everything finally worked. It hurt, but it worked. Having a baby was one long series of pains and humiliations. Damn. Good thing the prize at the end was so damn cute.

  She’d known when she told Hoosier she was ready to get pregnant, but holding her own baby in her arms had set it in stone. What she was born to be was a mother. Maybe some folks would say that was a modest ambition, but it was enough for her. She liked taking care of people. She felt good and strong when she was taking care of other people. She felt confident. She hadn’t been a girl who’d ever had big dreams, but she had one now. She knew what she wanted her life to be.

  Even sitting on this hospital toilet trying to convince her ravaged body to let her pee, she knew she wanted to have lots more babies. They would fill their home with children. She was a wife and a mother, and she would be the best damn wife and mother anybody’d seen.

  When she was freed from the bathroom, she found Hoosier standing at the side of her bed. He had their baby boy—Connor, they’d decided, Connor Jerome—laid out on the bed, unswaddled, with his diaper open. Looked like Daddy was getting comfortable after all.

  Connor was still sleeping, his little pink mouth making sucking motions.

  “That’s a dangerous game you’re playin’, Hooj, with a baby boy. They say you never know when that thing’ll go off.”

  He turned and looked at her, still dazed. “His dick is so little! I’m glad we’re not letting ‘em cut on him, ‘cuz he doesn’t have it to lose.”

  “He’s four hours old. You expected a fire hose? Why don’t we hold off on givin’ him ragin’ insecurity for at least a week or two.”

  He laughed, still examining his son’s parts. “His balls are huge, though. Look at those melons. He’s gonna need a sling.”

  She rolled her eyes and took a tiny disposable diaper from the plastic bassinette a nurse had brought in. “Lord. Can we cover him up before he pees all over my bed?”

  “You were just gonna, why can’t he?”

  “Har har.” She handed him the diaper. “Here, smartie. You do it.”

  Hoosier stared at the little white square like he thought it might be loaded with C4. “I don’t know how.”

  She shoved him aside. “Watch and learn, Biker Boy. Because I’m not changin’ three years of diapers on my own.” She’d been the baby in her family and hadn’t been around many infants. She’d never changed an actual baby before. But she’d gone to the childbirth and parenting classes the hospital offered. Hoosier had gone to the first one. When the instructor put in a whale sounds cassette and dimmed the lights to teach relaxation and breathing, Hoosier had walked out. Bibi had refused to leave with him, and she’d finished the rest of the six-week course on her own.

  As she diapered her child for the first time, Hoosier stood behind her, his hands on her hips. He bent down and kissed her shoulder. “You’re amazing, Cheeks. I’m in awe of you.”

  “I feel pretty amazing. I’m gonna want a lot of these little niblets.”

  “As many as you want. You make perfect babies. I love my family.”

  “We love you better.”

  ~oOo~

  Bibi came in from the back yard with yet another load of baby clothes she’d taken down from the line. The kitchen was a disaster. How had he made such a hash of things in the twenty minutes, tops, she’d been in the yard?

  The faucet was running. A new can of formula concentrate was standing open on the counter. The makings of a sandwich were strewn next to it, the sandwich itself in the middle of it all, half made.

  It was like he’d been beamed up to the mothership. She’d have been worried, except it wasn’t the first time Hoosier had dropped everything—literally—at Connor’s first cry and then forgotten to come back and pick up what he’d dropped.

  “Hooj? Hooj!” she called, setting the basket on the little breakfast table and putting the most critical problems—like the faucet—to rights. “Dammit, do I have to do everythin’?” she muttered, keeping it under her breath. She knew it wasn’t fair; Hoosier pulled his weight around the house. But he deferred to her in all things parental, and he did dumb things like this, and sometimes she felt like she had two kids to take care of.

  When the kitchen was bearable, she went searching for her boys.

  She found them in the master bedroom, conked out together in bed. They were both of them shirtless, eight-week-old Connor in a diaper and Hoosier in the pair of decaying sweatpants he refused to throw away, the nearly-full bottle lying between them. They
lay together in almost identical positions: on their backs, their left arms thrown up over their heads.

  Both of her boys were expert sleepers. When they were out, they were out. Connor had started sleeping through the night before he was six weeks old, and he’d only ever woken once a night before that.

  The little snit she had brewing in the back of her head cooled off completely, because the view before her was the most adorable thing she’d ever seen. Tiptoeing out of the room, she went to the living room and grabbed the 36mm camera Hoosier had bought her just before Connor was born.

  When she’d snapped a few shots, she set the camera down, picked up the leaking bottle—formula stains were a bitch, so the sheets would never be the same, but she didn’t care about that right now—and kicked off her flip-flops.

  As she slid into bed, Hoosier woke. He blinked sleepily at her. “Hey, Mama. I thought he was hungry, but I guess not. Did I screw up? Everything okay?”

  “Everythin’s perfect. I’m just joinin’ my boys for a nap.”

  He grinned and rolled toward her, with Connor between them. He stretched his arm over and pulled her close, and they napped away the rest of the afternoon.

  ~oOo~

  Connor chuckled. “I know that picture.”

  “Sure, you do. I’d forgotten that your dad put black-and-white film in, but it turned out good. Better that way, I think. I had it enlarged and professionally matted and framed. That picture hung over our bed from then on.” She sighed. “It’s gone, now. Just like everythin’ else.”

  They were sitting in the little café in the atrium of the San Gabriel Center. Hoosier was back in light therapy, and while he was off learning to walk again, Connor and Pilar had shown up and asked Bibi to have a coffee with them.

  It was late morning, and the tables around them had filled up with doctors, nurses, visitors, and those patients who could amble down for a meal from the café, which offered slightly less bland food than the patient meals.

  There was a fountain in the middle of the atrium, and the sounds bouncing from the soaring glass ceiling—of the water, of the people, and of the food preparation, sale, and consumption—made a steady, heavy pulse of background noise, rendering private every conversation in this wide-open space.

  Pilar reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry about everything.”

  “Oh, honey, no. Please! You saved our lives. Losin’ the rest of it hurts, sure, and sometimes I get bogged down in that. There was a lot of years of memories in all our shit. But we might have a chance to make a few more memories, and that’s due to you.”

  Connor and his fiancée exchanged a look, and Bibi focused and tried to read it. But it was gone before she could.

  She waited until her son met her eyes. “There somethin’ I need to know?”

  After more than four decades in this life, she knew the question to ask: not if there was something she didn’t know—there was always something she didn’t know—but if there was something she needed to know. She knew the question, and she had learned to accept that there were things it was simply better not to know. She trusted the people she loved to have good reasons to keep their secrets.

  Her son looked her straight in the eye and said, “No, Mom. Nothing.”

  That was good enough for her. She smiled and turned to Pilar. “Okay, then. You wanted to talk about the weddin’, right? What can I do?”

  ~oOo~

  “I was thinkin’ about the picture we had hangin’ over our bed. You know the one I mean, baby?”

  Hoosier smiled at her and squeezed her hand. Since the latest surgery, she’d come to wonder if he weren’t trying to answer the questions she asked.

  “I loved that picture. My boys. You were such a good daddy, Hooj. A little hopeless about the details sometimes, but you were there for him. You always were, and you never did raise a hand to him or hardly even your voice. And Lord, that boy looked up to you. He still does. You know that? Even at his age, you’re still his hero.”

  Hoosier pulled on her hand a little, and she turned so she could sit beside him, sharing his pillows. “He’s gettin’ married. I can’t tell if you remember that from day to day. I know you don’t remember his girl. Pilar. She’s a firefighter. She saved us, you know. Our boy is marryin’ a bona fide hero.”

  Shifting to her side, she laid her head on her man’s shoulder, still broad and strong, despite the trauma. “I’m a little worried. I can tell you that. Wouldn’t say it to nobody else. She’s a good girl, and they love each other like crazy. But I don’t know how Connor’s gonna be okay with his woman goin’ off to danger every day. He’s like you: a protector. How’s he gonna deal with that? And he always did want kids. Is he gonna be good with their mama bein’ away half the week? I just don’t know how it’ll work.

  “I wish you could talk to me, help me work out if I should say anythin’. He thinks I meddle already, but he’s got no idea how much I bite my tongue.” She sighed and snuggled closer, holding Hoosier’s hand at her heart. “He got mother concentrate, I guess. Bein’ our only one. I so wanted a whole passel of babies. I was thinkin’ about that today, rememberin’ sittin’ on the john right after I’d popped Connor out, already wantin’ to do it again. I thought we’d be the Waltons one day.”

  Hoosier tensed and pulled his hand from hers. He moved, turning in the bed, toward her—and then he did something amazing. He cupped her face with his hand, his thumb over her cheekbone and his fingers on her neck, under her ear. The look he gave her required no words. It was an essay, a treatise, a novel’s worth of meaning.

  Bibi put her hand over his and pressed it to her face. “No, Hooj. I didn’t mean…I’m sorry I made us think about that. I only meant…I don’t know what I meant. But don’t think about that. It’s not important. The three of us, we were complete. We were enough.”

  His head moved then, a rickety, rusty, hesitant swivel from side to side. After he got the hang of it, he moved more quickly. Shaking his head, emphatically telling her ‘no.’

  And she knew exactly what he was saying.

  NINE

  Bibi eased back into bed and settled on her pillows with a sigh. Hoosier was sleeping with his back to her; when she’d gotten up, they’d been spooning, so he’d rolled over while she was in the bathroom.

  “You okay, Mama?”

  “I’m fine.” She sniffed and sighed again. “Just crampy.”

  He rolled back, his eyes open and shining in the faint light of the early morning. “Crampy?”

  “Yeah. I started.” Her voice broke on the last word.

  “Oh, Cheeks. I’m sorry.” Hoosier pulled her close, and she wrapped herself around him. She’d cried for just a second in the bathroom, but not now; she was getting used to this monthly disappointment. And she didn’t have time to fall apart, anyway. But, sheltered in her man’s strong arms, she let herself be sad for a while.

  Connor was four, and he was still an only child. They’d planned to have another when he was about two, but then the club had hit a rough spell, and Hoosier had gone a while without earning anything like he’d been. Bibi had started up her makeup business again and, for several months, had even taken a part-time retail job at the mall.

  They hadn’t been as careful about money before that as they should have been, and they’d had no safety net. For more than a year, they’d struggled to keep things going. They’d struggled with each other, too. Hoosier had not dealt well with being unable to keep his family comfortable on his own, and, though Bibi had worked hard not to put any pressure on him, she’d paid a little for the pressure he put on himself.

  And so they’d set aside plans to grow their family. They’d focused on their little boy.

  But now, the Blades were earning more than they ever had. A lot more. So much more that Hoosier was literally burying stacks of money under the floorboards of their house. Bibi knew that could only mean that the club was more outlaw than before—lawful people didn’t get paid in ten-thousand-d
ollar banded stacks of bills, and even if they might have, they generally put their earnings in the Bank of America, not the Back of the Closet.

  But she didn’t ask. She’d known Hoosier wasn’t just a mechanic when she’d married him, and she knew he’d tell her what she needed to know. She trusted him, she loved him, and they were happy. They had a good home and a good family, and it was secure now. That was all she needed.

  Except, now that they were secure again, she wanted more babies.

  They’d been trying for six months. Trying with even more than their usual healthy enthusiasm for sex. But Connor’s fourth birthday had come and gone, and she was still not pregnant.