À la Carte

by Nia Forrester

  It’s my turn to look at her incredulously. “You helped her plan that shit?”

  Dani lifts her hands up, palms forward. “All I did was listen. She planned the whole thing herself.”

  “C’mere for a minute,” I say.

  I want to speak freely but am still hyper-aware of Eva nearby. I pull her with me toward the den where we’ll be out of earshot, while Eva and Rocket look fully occupied.

  “SJ isn’t the only one coming home to a domestic surprise. How’d all that happen?” I incline my head in the direction of the kitchen.

  “You should have seen the apartment she was staying in with Josette, Rand. It was smaller than my old place. And she was sleeping on a pull-out sofa. How was I supposed to just walk out and leave her there meanwhile we’re over here in ten million square feet, just the two of us and Little Rocket?”

  “Okay, maybe you didn’t have to leave her there. But could you have called me first? You got on me about not warning you about dinner, Dani. This is way more of a commitment than dinner.”

  She hunches her shoulders and wrinkles her nose in that way she has, that always makes me give her exactly what she wants.

  “I know. But I … It just didn’t seem right. And would it be the worst thing in the world for Rocket to spend more time with her?”

  “No, I guess not. But we’re a team, you and me, right? If you call a play, I gotta hear it, or I won’t know what it is.”

  She rolls her eyes at the football analogy.

  “Of course. Yes. I couldn’t just call you while she was standing right there. It was a snap decision and what if you yelled or something and she heard you?”

  “Why would I yell? When do I ever yell at you?”

  “Because last night when we were talking about … you know, when we were talking about Faith …” She whispers the name like someone who knows they shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain. “You got all agitated about me saying that you sometimes act like she never existed. What were the chances you’d want her mother staying in our house?”

  “For the hundredth time, I don’t try to act like she never existed,” I say slowly, trying to sound patient. “I just don’t think it’s a problem if Rocket calls you his mother. Because right now, you are. You’re the only one he’s really ever known if you think about it. He doesn’t remember her. That’s all I was sayin’.”

  “Okay, let’s not have that argument. I was just making the point that I wasn’t sure how you’d receive it if I called you in front of Eva.” She turns to head back into the kitchen and I hold her arm, leaning in to kiss her properly, and with much more feeling than I felt comfortable expressing in front of Eva.

  When I raise my head, Dani is smiling.

  “And later, you need to tell me how Jennifer pulled off the ghosting of the century.”

  Since Rocket and Eva ate earlier, Dani and I get some alone time while I eat my dinner of leftovers from the catered food. As I chow down, she moves around the kitchen, putting stuff in cabinets, and wiping counters. From the rear, she looks almost exactly as she did before she got pregnant. That perfect behind is still intact, as is my urge to grab it whenever she walks by.

  She hops out of my reach, and smacks my hand when I do, but I know she loves it. Especially now, when her body self-image issues are peaking. I don’t get it honestly, because to me she’s just as beautiful, sometimes even more so.

  “C’mon sit down a minute,” I tell her when she begins loading the dishwasher. “I’ll do the rest of that when I’m done eating.”

  Dani comes over and lowers herself into the chair opposite mine. She exhales a puff of breath that causes her long bangs to blow upward for a moment. Her hair is longer now, resting on her shoulders, but most often in a ponytail these days.

  “Why you keep doin’ this?” I ask.

  “Doing what?” she asks.

  “Pushing yourself. You’re always tired at the end of the day and you don’t even work anymore.”

  “I can’t just sit around, Rand. Dropping off and picking up Rocket from school is not exactly a full-time occupation.”

  “Does your occupation have to be full-time?”

  She leans back in her seat and grimaces, looking up at the ceiling, sensing that I’m about to restart an old argument about me wanting her to stay home after the baby. She claims she would “legit lose her mind” if she didn’t have a job, and I told her she probably underestimated how much of a job it is to raise two kids. As if I would know. But I’ve heard.

  Her answer is that me not wanting her to work is really about the kind of work she does, which is mostly with the same knuckleheads I cover—professional athletes. If anyone knows just how knuckleheaded they are, it’s me. And yeah, there’s definitely part of me that wants to firewall my life—and my wife—from all that. Even if she isn’t my wife just yet.

  My conversation with Garrett flashes through my mind. And his words resonate. ‘Make it happen,’ he said. Even though I pretended not to be listening too hard, I was. He had a good point. What the hell difference did a big wedding make? I had one of those, and the marriage itself was basically a sham.

  “It doesn’t have to be full-time. But that’s when I’m happiest,” Dani says.

  “I think you’ll change your mind once we have the baby,” I say, with confidence I don’t feel. Maybe I’m trying to speak it into existence.

  “Maybe I will,” she says, surprising me. Her eyes have taken on a dreamy cast to them, and she’s smiling.

  I decide to quit while I’m ahead and change the subject. To have Danielle say she might even be considering being home is nothing short of a relationship coup. As a strategic matter, I figure I can back off for a couple weeks and then bring it up again, as we get closer to her delivery date, which is only five weeks away.

  “So, what happened with SJ and Jennifer?” I ask. “Is that why she was drunk when she was over here this weekend?”

  “She wasn’t drunk,” Dani says defensively.

  “Okay, is that why she was … ‘nice’ when she was over here this weekend?”

  “Probably,” Dani says. “I mean, think about it. That was a really difficult decision. She’s only been with him her entire adult life. And now she’s going to have to figure out who she is without him.”

  Her tone of voice is like she’s about to cuss me out for something. Like I’m going to have to pay for SJ’s sins. I glance up at her and when she stares back at me evenly, her eyes are a little animated.

  “You know we would never be in that kind of situation, right?” I say, speaking slowly. “That I would never do to you what he’s been doing to Jennifer.”

  Dani’s eyes soften and after a moment she nods.

  “And you would never do to me what Jennifer did, right? Just disappear like that even if I did something that got you really, really pissed off?”

  “No,” she says. “I never would.”

  “Good,” I say.

  “Because you have too many … special talents,” she adds, her eyes go sultry now, but with an undercurrent of amusement.

  I love it when she flirts with me. I love it that we still want to flirt with each other, even when she is a hundred weeks pregnant. It’s the little stuff like this that make me sure I want this woman as my wife.

  “Oh yeah? Like what special talents we talkin’ ‘bout?” I lower my voice a little, and grin at her as I lean in. She does the same, so we are close enough to kiss across the table.

  “You know that thing you do?” she says, her voice a slow, sexy drawl. “That thing where you … you … grill a steak and then just by touching it with your forefinger, you know that it’s medium-well? That’s an invaluable skill, so no, I would never leave you.”

  I splutter into laughter and sit back again. I pick up a stalk of asparagus and instead of biting into it, use it to tap Dani on the tip of her nose. She laughs as well, and we are still both cracking up when Eva comes hobbling into the kitchen on her crutches.

&nbs
p; Dani and I freeze, and then spring apart almost as though we’re kids caught playing doctor behind the school.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Eva says. “I just thought I’d come see about a cup of tea before I turn in.”

  “Of course.” Dani hops up, quickly wiping the smudge of garlic oil off her nose. “Let me help you.”

  “Oh no, you sit,” Eva says. “If you just tell me where everything is …”

  “I’ll get it this time, so you’ll know where everything is next time,” Dani says easily.

  She shoves herself up and I resist the urge to help her, or to do in her place what she is about to do for Eva. She hates it when I imply that her being pregnant means she has “diminished capacity.” She actually used that phrase. She’s a trip sometimes.

  I finish up my meal as Dani and Eva see about her tea. When I’m done, I leave them there in the kitchen and head upstairs, muttering a goodnight as I go.

  Rocket is in his room sitting on his rug. In the center of it is an impressively intricate structure made of Legos. I stand at the doorway for a moment, watching him add pieces to it. He is very precise in his movements, and remarkably steady for a little kid. It surprises me, because he is such a live wire most of the time that it seems more likely that he would be roaring and knocking something like this over into a colorful pile, uncaring about how long it took to construct it.

  “Wow,” I say from the door, coming closer. “This is cool, man. Who built this for you? Matt and Lance?”

  “Nah.” Rocket doesn’t look up from his task. “Me.”

  “For real?”

  He nods. “Uh huh. It’s easy.”

  My eyes fall to a sheet of paper nearby that depicts various options for things that could be built with Legos. I pick the paper up and study it.

  “You used this?”

  “Nah. That gives ideas for stuff. But you don’t have to do those.” His tone is like someone explaining a complex concept to the slowest student in the class.

  I notice for the first time that Rocket sounds less like a baby now. He’s only five, but he has more command of his words and tone. He even whines and whimpers a lot less, and when he’s frustrated, thanks to his behavioral therapist, he’s more likely to express that in words, not tantrums.

  “So, I was thinking,” I say, as he continues his work on the Lego structure. “About maybe getting you into football. What you think about that?”

  “That’d be fine,” he says.

  Fine. That wasn’t exactly the rousing and enthusiastic response I was expecting. And hoping for.

  “Remember you said you wanted to be like Matty,” I prompt. “And like I used to …”

  “Okay. I’ll do it,” he says. But it sounds like he’s dismissing me, giving me what I seem to want, so he can go back to building.

  I sigh and look at the back of his curly head. We still let it get long, like he’s a toddler. But right now, as I’m watching him, and listening to him, it occurs to me that the time might be right to cut it. Not to let Dani trim it like she occasionally does, but to take him with me to a proper barber and get it faded like mine.

  My little man is growing up. Damn.

  When Dani finally comes up to bed, it is a couple hours later, and I’m already settled in. She undresses while I watch her. I like seeing her belly when it is unclothed. It’s incredible to think that my daughter is in there. The human body and what it can do is amazing.

  “Y’know, I kind of like her,” she is saying now. “Eva, I mean. I really like her.”

  “Hmm,” I say.

  “And I don’t think she’s leaving anytime soon by the way. Her plan is to go to the doctor and get the hard cast, and then leave that same day. I don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?”

  “Probably not,” I say. My tone is short because I don’t feel like talking about Eva.

  “Anyway, I told her I would run her back over to the hospital tomorrow and we’d go from there. If she winds up staying, Weston will probably come. I don’t know how you feel about him staying here as well.”

  “What?” I sit upright in the bed. I’d been reclining against the pillows, watching television with the volume turned low, one eye on the screen, the other on Dani who is half-naked now.

  “It would just be for a night. He’s in the middle of the season after all. So …”

  “No, Dani. He can stay at a hotel. Especially if it’s just for a night.”

  “How weird would that be? His wife can stay here but he can’t?”

  I run a hand over my head. “Look, this is becoming more … involved than I … I’m not comfortable having …”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s not … It’s just a thought right now. Nothing’s set in stone.” Dani has paused to look at me, and I think she hears the panic in my tone.

  Faith’s parents, both of them under the same roof as me and her and Rocket? Nah. That would be beyond jacked up. Just … nah.

  “Anyway, I was thinking about something else I want to talk to you about,” she says, thankfully moving on to other matters.

  “What’s that?”

  “I want to adopt Little Rocket.”

  I practically hear a ‘kerchunk’ sound as the heaviness of her words slam to the ground like an anvil.

  I look up and my lips part in surprise. Dani is standing at the foot of our bed, looking at me, trying to read my face. Her chest rises and falls as she takes a breath. Though hugely pregnant, she looks tiny and vulnerable standing there. Her pregnancy bra as big as a sports bra, her white cotton underwear just as small as they always have been, incongruous beneath the mound of her massive belly.

  Across the belly, I can see the crisscross of tiny blood vessels, prominent against the fair light-brownness of her skin. Dani reaches down to lightly scratch it. Her belly-button is distended, like the nose of a balloon that is just short of being overinflated.

  “You want to …?” I swallow the lump in my throat.

  “Legally adopt him,” she finishes.

  And when I say nothing she comes closer to the bed and props herself against the edge and continues speaking.

  “Remember when we got him enrolled in school?” she says. “And we were filling out all the paperwork and they needed you to list all the people authorized to pick him up, and their relationship to him?”

  I nod.

  “Next to my name, we put ‘father’s fiancée’.” She sighs. “And I didn’t say anything at the time because I mean, I don’t even know if I knew why that bothered me. But later, I mean lately I know why.”

  “Why?” I ask her.

  “Because it says nothing about what I am to him. It says what I am to you. I want to be something to him. Something official. Something that means something. And no, stepmother isn’t going to be enough. Because it’s almost like ‘father’s fiancée’. It means that I’m with you. It doesn’t say that I’m … you know what I mean?” Her eyes and voice are earnest.

  I nod.

  “So …” She gives that cute shrug, and her eyes are wide and her nostrils a little flared.

  I realize that she’s apprehensive. That it took something like bravery for her to tell me this, and that she didn’t know how I would react. And, because of how I do react, I think that maybe sometimes Dani knows me more deeply than I know myself.

  The thing is, Dani is, for all intents and purposes, Rocket’s mother now. I mean, I really do believe that. But the adoption would mean that I am putting an official, state-sanctioned end to the notion of Faith as the mother of my son. I mean, she’s dead so she can’t ‘mother’ him in the practical sense, but the label still attaches. This would mean that even that, I would be taking away from her.

  Dani has been telling me not to erase Faith from Rocket’s life, but now, it feels like she is asking me to do just that. The conflicting feelings this produces catch me off guard.

  “Can I think about it?” I say.

  And just like that, Dani deflates.

  ~5~
>
  “How’re you holding up?” I reach out and touch Jennifer’s hand. It feels cool, almost cold to the touch, and I pull back almost immediately. She doesn’t look well. Her normally warm brown complexion has a sickly pallor beneath it, like someone who hasn’t slept well, or maybe not at all.

  Jennifer sighs and reaches for her glass of iced tea. She shrugs.

  “I feel like crap,” she says matter-of-factly. She sips her tea. “My latest pastime is tallying up how many times Stephen calls per hour.”

  I nod, not knowing what to say, and recall that sometimes it’s best to say nothing.

  “When I was clearing out my stuff, taking those credit cards out of my wallet, writing that resignation letter, I felt … high,” she says. “I mean, like euphoric. I kept thinking about the look on his face when he realized I’d left him, and I felt … good.”

  I nod again, waiting for her to continue.

  “That lasted for about one hour after I’d FedEx’ed him the keys to the house and apartment. And then it hit me. He’s gone. We’re done. And now all I feel is numb and empty, and don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do with the rest of my life.”

  I say nothing.

  I have known for a while that SJ has problems with fidelity. That was how I got to know him in the first place, as a client in my life coaching practice. He stayed on the straight-and-narrow for a while, sometimes for stretches of months. And then he slipped.

  Sometimes the slips were as simple as a few kisses exchanged with a woman he’d met in a nightclub. Other times it was a full-on one-night stand. The best that can be said of him is that he never had lengthy affairs or emotional entanglements with other women. His infidelity was always very much about sex, and only that. I worked with him, but never got the sense he was committed to truly changing. Or maybe he just didn’t know how, even with my help.

  Part of it I think, was that there were never any real consequences to his slips, because Jennifer had no clue. Eventually, I told him that given my growing friendship with his fiancée, and my very real doubt that he was serious about altering his behavior we should stop working together.