“Oh, Sammy and I are doing great. She’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I don’t know—maybe she’s tied with Allison for the greatest thing. Allison’s my wife.”
Levi supposed having a wife would make weathering a child’s first few years a hell of a lot easier.
“I didn’t know the first thing about babies,” Jamie remarked, his gaze wandering back and forth between Levi and D.J. “Thank God for Allison. She teaches classes in fathering.”
“She does?” Levi sat straighter. What was it his lawyer had said yesterday? Something about classes…
“The Daddy School,” Jamie told him. “She and her best friend founded it. She’s a neonatal nurse, her friend runs a preschool, and they put together a dynamite program. It’s free, too, although they accept donations.”
“The Daddy School,” Levi repeated, nodding. “That was what Murphy was talking about.”
“Murphy? Dennis Murphy? That’s right—I seem to remember he was on retainer with your architecture firm. He’s my lawyer, too, on the rare occasions I need one. His sister-in-law is my wife’s best friend—the preschool teacher who runs Daddy School with Allison.”
“Small world.”
“Hey, welcome to Arlington.” Jamie glanced at D.J. one last time, then straightened up. “Allison teaches Daddy School classes Monday evenings at the YMCA. Seven-thirty. Give it a try. She’s good.”
“You’re completely unbiased,” Levi joked.
“Absolutely.”
“Daddy!” His daughter’s voice pierced the afternoon air.
Jamie sighed, although he clearly wasn’t upset when he muttered, “The princess requires her knight in shining armor. Listen, I’m serious about tacking on another room. I’ll be in touch, okay?”
“Sure.” Levi didn’t let his eagerness show, but he felt it inside. Another commission—even if it was only a one-room addition—would make him feel he was contributing to the firm. Despite being saddled with D.J., so saddled he’d had to leave work to calm the child down, Levi could pull his own weight. He could get the job done. “Give me a call and I’ll put something together for you.”
“Great. Take it easy—and good luck with the kid. Trust me, Levi, it’s a cinch once you get the hang of it. Okay, well, not a cinch. But kids are kids. They’re exactly like us, only smaller.”
Levi laughed.
“Seven-thirty Monday at the Y,” Jamie called over his shoulder. “You’ll thank me for recommending it.”
Maybe Levi would thank him. He probably did need some lessons in how to be a daddy. He’d been winging it, grabbing scraps of advice from colleagues and neighbors and figuring out the rest on his own. A few classes might accelerate his learning curve.
It wouldn’t hurt. And what else did he have to do on a Monday night? Sit on his back porch, staring out at the woods behind his house and thinking about the woman who’d once shared that back porch with him, and that view?
She was gone, and he had his own life to live—a life dominated by a needy little boy. Definitely, a few classes would help.
Chapter Seven
GLANCING UP, Corinne saw Gerald looming in her office doorway, his bespectacled blue eyes zeroing in on her and his grin cutting a toothy crescent into his face.
As usual, he was dressed in a sloppy T-shirt, baggy khakis and battered skateboarding shoes; as usual, his hair was a melee of reddish-brown waves that appeared not to have been subjected to the civilizing influence of a comb in the past several days.
As usual, the sight of him made Corinne smile.
“That guy from Bell Tech is a jerk,” Gerald announced, failing to look as peeved as he sounded. “How much is he paying us?”
“Enough that you’d better not call him a jerk to his face.”
“We don’t need the money,” Gerald pointed out.
Maybe he didn’t need it. He was much richer than Corinne. When he’d sold his company a few years ago, the profit she’d earned from her shares left her wealthier than she’d ever dreamed, but she wasn’t in Gerald’s league financially. If she retired on what she had, she could get by with careful stinting and constant monitoring—but she didn’t want to stint and monitor every penny. She liked living comfortably, worry-free.
Besides, she enjoyed working. She was too young to retire. So was Gerald. Consulting kept them busy and challenged.
It also gave them something to complain about. “He’s an asshole,” Gerald grumbled. “He interrupts me all the time and doesn’t listen to anything I say.”
“His V.P. of marketing listens to everything we say,” Corinne assured him.
He entered her office and slumped into a chair. His pants were too long, and she noticed that the hems were frayed from being dragged along the ground. Gerald was an inch shorter than Corinne, but his height didn’t seem to bother him. A good barber, a good tailor and a pair of contact lenses could transform him into the sort of man most women would stop to admire.
The thing was, he didn’t care—either about his appearance or about most women. On the rare occasions he dated, he always whined to Corinne afterward about the women he’d been with: “All they want to talk about is TV shows. I don’t watch TV. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say when they remark, ‘This is so Pawn Stars!’” Or: “We saw this movie about a meteor that was going to destroy the earth, but the science was bogus! It made no sense. I tried to explain why it couldn’t happen, but she didn’t want to hear it. She got all upset with me for suggesting the science wasn’t right.”
“You have the social skills of a turnip,” Corinne would chide him. “Maybe you should spend more time watching TV and less time picking apart the scientific fantasies in movies.”
“Maybe I should stick with you,” Gerald would respond. “You’re the only woman in the world who puts up with me. You’re smart, you’re funny, and…”
“I’m beautiful,” she would coach him.
“Yeah, that, too.” He’d reward her with his bright, toothy smile and she’d laugh and give him a hug.
She wasn’t interested in hugging him today. She wasn’t interested in shooting the breeze with him, either. She was anxious to finish reviewing the files on her desk. As soon as she was done, she intended to lock up her office and leave town.
As if sensing her impatience, Gerald surveyed the small room and spotted her overnight bag in the corner behind her desk. “What’s that? You’re running away from home?”
“Just getting out of the city for the weekend,” she said, wondering why she didn’t want to tell Gerald the truth. Not that her answer was a lie, but it wasn’t the complete truth, either. She didn’t know how to explain to him what she hadn’t yet been able to explain to herself.
She wasn’t “just getting out of the city for the weekend.” She was going to Arlington, Connecticut. She would catch one of the commuter-line trains—they left Grand Central Station every half-hour or so. She’d booked a room at the Arlington Inn for Friday and Saturday night, and reserved a car at the auto rental outlet adjacent to the train station.
Addressing the logistics of her two-day jaunt had been simple enough. Addressing the impulse behind it wasn’t so simple. Predicting what would happen once she reached her destination was impossible.
She hadn’t told Levi she was coming. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to see him. Thinking about him was like riding a roller coaster, her opinion soaring and plummeting and twisting around itself. But seeing D.J….
She felt a need to be with him, a compulsion, an implacable urge to wrap her arms around his sturdy little body, to inhale his baby-powder scent and nuzzle his wispy hair with her chin, to give him a bottle and feel him grow heavy in her embrace as he dozed. She wanted to hold him, stroke his velvety cheek, sing him a lullaby. She wanted to connect with him the way she had one strange evening a week ago.
She couldn’t begin to figure out why she felt such a strong need to see D.J. Her yearning to hold him was irrational. She wasn’t into babies. No biolo
gical clock ticked deafeningly in her soul.
Maybe she was turning into an eccentric, a weird spinster obsessing over someone else’s baby. Today she might be focused on D.J., and tomorrow she’d be adopting thirty cats. In another month she might stop showering and start talking to herself.
The image gave her a quiet chuckle. Just because she wanted to visit Levi’s nephew didn’t mean she was in any danger of cracking up. She didn’t even want to spend a lot of time in the baby’s company. Just an hour or two, long enough to peer into his chocolate-brown eyes—eyes that resembled his uncle’s in an uncanny way—and let his warmth embrace her—a warmth that was utterly unlike the warmth she felt in Levi’s presence.
She reminded herself over and over that Levi wasn’t the one she was traveling to Arlington to see. She wasn’t even sure she liked the man. He hadn’t played fair with her when she’d been in Arlington last week. He’d been tricky and slippery. He’d kissed her just enough to scramble her brain, and then he’d rammed his own version of Gerald’s dream house into the contract.
That stupid wall of glass. It was Levi’s conceit, and he’d kissed her so she’d be too muddled to fight him on it.
She wasn’t sure why the glass bothered her so much, other than for the practical reasons that all the heat would seep out through the glass in the winter and in through the glass in the summer. But Gerald would probably adjust to it easily enough. He’d think it was awesome, and he’d be oblivious to the effect it had on the temperature of the house’s interior. Nor would he be concerned when he saw the heating bills, or the air-conditioning bills in the summer. Details like those usually blew right past him.
He’d told her he was satisfied with the job she’d done in altering the design as much as she did, and in holding Levi to a relatively small increase in the price. It was going to be his house, after all. Not hers.
Unless he asked her to marry him. That wasn’t a particularly far-fetched notion. They were best friends, after all. They spent more time with each other than with anyone else. If Gerald ever proposed to her, she would smile, but she wouldn’t laugh.
She’d also probably say no, given the way she felt now.
Damn. She didn’t know how she felt, other than out of sorts, restless, as if something was missing inside her, leaving behind an empty, echoing hollow. When she thought about it, she believed that space carried D.J.’s shape. He would fit into it so neatly, so perfectly.
Just for a while, a couple of hours, a day or two. Just until she stopped aching.
It occurred to her that Gerald was staring at her quizzically. Had he been talking to her? She’d missed every word.
“So, where will you be?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she fibbed. If she shared her feelings with him, he would probably recommend a few sessions with a shrink. “I’ll have my cell phone with me, if you need to contact me.”
“When are you leaving?”
“As soon as I finish reviewing these files.” She twisted her wrist to see her watch. “Three o’clock the latest.”
“You’re acting mysterious, Corey.”
“There’s no mystery. I just need a little time by myself.”
“Are you having a mid-life crisis?”
Although she laughed, she was touched by his concern. “I haven’t even turned thirty yet. I don’t think you can have a mid-life crisis until you’re at least forty.”
“Yeah, but you’re so organized and prompt. You always get things done ahead of time.”
She laughed again.
Gerald didn’t join her. “Seriously, Corey—I depend on you to be the stable one around here. Don’t flip out on me, okay?”
“I wouldn’t dream of flipping out on you,” she said in her most reassuring voice. She only wished she could reassure herself. Chasing up to Arlington to hold the six-month-old nephew of a man she didn’t trust, a man whose kiss had floored her, a man who viewed houses as philosophical statements rather than places to live in safety and comfort…
Maybe she was flipping out. But the only way she could imagine flipping back in again was to return to the site of her madness, confront it, figure it out and fix it. That was what Corinne did best: fix problems. Straighten out messes. Put things to rights.
One weekend in Arlington ought to fix everything. At least, she hoped it would.
*
LEVI HATED wearing a hardhat, especially in the summer. The heat made him feel as if his brain was baking inside the unventilated plastic. But rules were rules. Everyone wore hardhats at active construction sites.
And unlike the crew, he’d only had to don his hat a couple of minutes ago. They’d been working all day, finishing work on the footings so the foundation could be laid on Monday. He’d gotten to spend most of the day in the comfort of his office, his head blessedly free of plastic protection. He’d only decided to loop past the site a few minutes ago, to see how things were progressing.
He could take the time to visit building sites now. Martina Lopes, D.J.’s nanny, had liberated him. D.J. no longer set the agenda and decreed, in his raucous pre-verbal way, how Levi could allocate his time.
He wasn’t sure why he didn’t feel freer. He was freer. But even though D.J. no longer occupied Levi’s office during business hours, sleeping and eating and howling and otherwise interfering with Levi’s ability to function as a professional, the baby remained a constant presence, an incessant clamor in Levi’s mind.
He’d spent the week catching up on all the work he’d neglected from the time he’d brought D.J. home from California to that past Monday, when Martina had appeared on his front porch at eight a.m. and sent him off with assurances that she and D.J. were going to be fine and Levi had nothing to worry about. Besides catching up, he’d devoted a fair amount of time to collaborating with Phyllis on her proposal for the tower in Boston. He’d felt good getting back to his old workaholic routines, and even better escaping the oppressive presence of D.J. for eight or nine hours a day.
But while he could escape D.J., Levi couldn’t escape thoughts of the baby. Every time he glanced at his watch, a part of his mind calculated how much more time he’d be able to work before he would have to go home and relieve Martina—and another part calculated how long he’d been away from D.J. and how soon they’d be together again.
It was insane. He’d never expected to become a father; he sure hadn’t wished for it. He’d been so damned grateful when Martina finally started working for him. Ridding himself of the responsibility of twenty-four/seven parenting had been like shedding the residue of a construction site, the layer of dirt and plaster dust. He’d felt as if he’d scrubbed himself clean and his skin could breathe again.
But something was missing when he was at work, away from D.J. He knew it, he felt it, and it irked him.
The project foreman strode over to where Levi was lounging against the front bumper of his car. “Hey, Levi,” Rick Bailey shouted above the racket of construction equipment, the engines of the trucks and tractors rumbling as they crawled over the site. “What’s up?”
“Just thought I’d see how things were looking.” Together they gazed across the scruffy grass at the concrete footings drying in the hole excavated for the foundation. Levi had worked with Rick on projects before, and trusted him to do the job right. He hoped his appearance at the site didn’t make Rick think Levi was checking up on him.
“Things are looking good,” Rick assured him as he dug into the hip pocket of his jeans. He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped the sweat from his face.
“Great.”
Rick eyed him expectantly. Maybe Levi ought to say something more. But what? I’m dying to go home and make sure D.J. is okay, but I’m afraid of turning into some fanatical, doting daddy, so I thought I’d waste some time here. No, he didn’t think so.
What was it Jamie’s wife had said at the Daddy School class he’d attended Monday night? Allison Winslow was a neonatal nurse at Arlington Memorial Hospital, and she’d talked a
bout how babies sucked a piece of your soul into themselves and you never got it back. Most of her talk had focused on all the other things babies sucked into themselves: milk and formula, pureed bananas, rug lint and, if parents weren’t vigilant, all manner of small items that could lodge in a tiny throat and choke the child. Levi had listened, jotted some notes about age appropriateness for certain foods and promised himself he’d do another inspection of his house to make sure there were no buttons or thumb tacks or other tempting objects within D.J.’s reach.
But the one thing she’d said that had resonated most strongly with him was that comment about how babies also devoured a piece of their parent’s soul, and once they did, the parent could never get it back.
He’d never imagined taking care of a child would be like that. He certainly hadn’t sucked pieces of his parents’ souls from them. They’d raised their children to be dutiful little soldiers—do as you’re told, don’t question authority, don’t expose yourself to contradictory ideas, challenging opinions or anything that disagrees with the truth as we’ve taught it to you—but their parenting had been curiously soulless. The predominant theme had been blind obedience.
Levi had rebelled. So had Ruth. That was why he’d wound up an architect in Connecticut and she’d become a weaver in northern California.
Levi wondered if she’d felt the profound attachment to D.J. that he felt, the sense that D.J. owned a critical chunk of her and would always own it, that one small but significant sliver of her identity had been absorbed by him. If she were alive, Levi could ask her. But then, if she were alive, he wouldn’t have D.J. Right about now, he’d be packing for his annual trip to California, looking forward to meeting his nephew for the first time.
Instead, his sister was dead and he was feeling as if D.J. had been a part of his life forever. As if D.J. owned him. As if when D.J. wasn’t nearby, wailing or wreaking havoc, pooping or shrieking nonsense syllables, something was missing from Levi’s existence.
During this first week with Martina taking care of D.J., Levi had suffered phantom pains, as if one of his limbs had been amputated. Even when he arrived home every evening and sent Martina on her way, the pain never completely disappeared.
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