“Are you actually worried about getting me pregnant?” sheasked, mildly shocked. “Youneverworried about that. And it was probably a lot more likely before I was almost thirty-five.”
He gave her a begrudging nod to acknowledge the truth of that, then held his arm out for her to curl under. She rubbed her lips against his neck and hands over his chest, encouraging him to unwind and give in to the afterglow.
“I know, I know, I’m sorry,” he said, though she wasn’t sure why he was sorry. They’d been pretty careful. Not one hundred percent careful. But still careful enough that they’d made it through four and a half years of banging like rabbits accidentally stowed in the same Petco hutch without incident.
“I just—I didn’t feel like I had to worry before.” And he cringed, probably knowing how that sounded. Rose would have been terrified if they’d gotten pregnant in college, or even the year they were married. “It’s different now, you know?”
“No?” Rose said. He couldn’t think she’d be angry at him if he accidentally knocked her up. She would never have blamed him for something that was equally her fault, and it wasn’t like she was in a situation where she couldn’t take care of a kid. “How’s it worse?”
She told herself these things very carefully to avoid imagining it happening. She’d done enough magical thinking today.
Tom sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Before, the worst thing that could have happened—well, I mean, aside from any of the worst things that can happen to anyone—was that we’d have to figure out how to be parents earlier than we planned. How to finish school. How to get a job that would actually cover baby food and stuff like that. But I thought we’d figure it out.”
Rose dropped her head onto his shoulder and pulled his arm off her so that she could wrap both of her own around it. She’d thought that too. So she still didn’t understand what he was worried about now, when she had health insurance and parental leave.
“But now—I guess the worst thing that could happen is you’d decideyouwanted to be a parent, and you’d figure things out without me. Tell me I was welcome at birthday parties and Christmas, like Boyd.”
“Oh my God,” Rose gasped. “I would never do that to you.”
Tom exhaled, somewhat reassured but not yet in the happy postcoital state of bliss Rose’s hormones urged her to dissolve into. She clutched his arm tighter.
“You wouldn’t do that to me because you’d think it was wrong, or you wouldn’t do that to me because that’s not what you’d want to do?” he asked, eyes still shadowed.
It hurt to think about it. It hurt to imagine how she’d feel, a preemptive sort of pain based upon the experience of wanting things, planning for them, and not having them. She wanted Tom even if they never had kids. She couldn’t even let herself imagine she got more than this, because this was more than she’d thought she’d have.
“Why do you think I wouldn’t want you there?” she asked. “Of course I’d want you.”
Tom gave a pained laugh. “Babe, I don’t even know youraddress. I’d have to ask Snow Wolf for it.”
Rose’s mouth formed a little O of surprise as she realized he was right. They’d talked very little about what would happen once they were back in New York, both because she knew hisrehearsal schedule would be intense and because she didn’t want to jinx it. But this worry, she could put to rest. She tapped on his pocket and got him to take out his phone.
“It’s not going to happen because Iamon the pill,” she told him as she entered her address into his phone. And even though her lower lip trembled, she decided not to be a coward. “If it did, though, I’d be happy, I think? No, I know I’d be happy. And we’d figure it out, just like we always would have.”
Some of the tension ran out of him at that.
“Yeah?” he said, encouraged.
She always forgot that Tom had probably thought his life was going to go a certain way too. They’d imagined a lot of things together that had never happened. Hewantedher to imagine futures in which they were together.
She pushed him to his back and climbed on top of him to straddle his stomach.
“Iloveyou,” she pointed out. “It wouldn’t be too tough. We’d stick the crib in my kitchen, I’d tell my boss I need my second extended leave in a year, and then you and Ximena would both babywear during performances.”
Tom left his hands on her thighs and aimed a little smile up at her. “My love, the play’s going to be terrible. It’ll wrap as soon as all of Boyd’s fans have seen it a couple times. I’m going to be unemployed again long before this imaginary baby is cooked.”
“Okay, even better,” she said, reaching down to gently sweep Tom’s hair out of his face. “You’ll stay home and save me a million dollars on Manhattan daycare. I’ll be able to hold on to my retirement savings until we send the kid to preschool.”
“You say that as though having no responsibilities except carrying a ten-pound person to anarchist vegan drag queen story hour at the Yorkville library branch every day isn’t a literal dream for me,” Tom said, putting his hand over hers and gazing up at her with such an expression of fragile tenderness on his face that her heart ached. It sounded awfully close to her dream too. Both the old one and the new one she was afraid to articulate.
Instead of responding, she swallowed hard and leaned down to kiss him. They ended up spending the rest of the day in bed, leaving all the other adults in the house to fend for themselves for once. Rose blew off packing, blew off cleaning, and thought about what she’d wear to Tom’s premiere. She thought about Tom standing on the beach this summer with the wind ruffling his hair. A few times, before she could stop herself, she thought about whether a crib really might fit in her living room.
Every single vision she had of him felt like enough. She hoped he decided to be one of them.
It would have been the perfect evening, except for the call that came in at eight thirty that night. It was Rose’s uncle Ken at last, and she would have been annoyed to discover that he did have the ability to get in touch with her when he wanted to, except that he was calling to confirm she had medical power of attorney over Max, who’d just been admitted to the hospital after a bad fall in her condo. Just one of those things that happened as you get older, he supposed. Did Rose want to go over and manage things? Oh good. She could keep everyone else updated, thank you.
27
Tom hadn’t been able to coax Rosie into getting a little sleep until after midnight. And she was up again before six, making huge quantities of breakfast about her feelings. Nobody found out that anything was amiss until Boyd got up to feed the turkeys and do his morning exercise routine and Puff and Snowy, who were the only two of his fans still there, got up to watch him for the last time.
