When I come out of the exam room, Kat and Gus are gone. In his chair, where he sat only moments ago, remains a single green army man. I pick it up and slide it into the pocket of my jeans. Whether he left it on purpose, or if it was unintentional, I don’t know. Maybe it was an accident, or maybe it was a gift.
The results, I’m told, will be posted online in just a couple of days.
In a couple of days I’ll know if Gus is my son.
I have two more stops before I go home. The first is the jewelry store, from which I purchased a necklace months ago for Clara. She eyed it herself just weeks after she became pregnant with Felix—a month max—a silver necklace with a duo of heart-shaped tags. “Would you look at that,” Clara had said, pointing to it through the store’s glass display. We didn’t go to the jewelry store looking for necklaces, but rather to have her wedding band resized. She stood there, ogling the necklace, then smiled at me and said, “Two hearts. One for Maisie, and one for baby,” while rubbing a hand wishfully over the tiny peppercorn in her womb.
The next day, without Clara around, I returned to the store and bought the pendant necklace on the sly. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t give Clara if I could. I hid it away in a dresser drawer for the next eight months, knowing that as soon as the baby had a name, I’d get the heart tags engraved. The time has come. I swing by the jewelry store and leave the necklace for engraving: one heart for Maisie, and one for Felix. And then I show him a picture of my kids because I just can’t stop myself from gloating. It’ll be a week or two before they’re ready, and then I can surprise Clara with the gift. The store owner winks at me and says, “You know we sell the charms individually. You can always add more hearts if need be,” and already I’m thinking that might be something we’ll one day do. One day there may be more kids for Clara and me. Maisie, Felix and baby.
And then I stop at a convenience store to pick up the milk and go home.
I spend the couple of days following Felix’s birth at home, a paternity leave of sorts. It’s not easy to do. Without anyone to fill in my shoes while I’m gone, Stacy and Nancy are left to reschedule dozens of patients. “If anyone calls with an emergency,” I tell them over the phone early in the morning, while sipping my very first mug of caffeinated coffee and staring at the day as it stretches out before me, long and wide, full of opportunity, “call me. I’ll come in. Only for an emergency,” because sometimes there are things that can’t be put off for a week. Melinda Grey is proof enough of this.
I’ve been served with an Emergency Order of Protection from Melinda Grey, a sheet of paper that’s stashed between the pages of an old dictionary we never use, and I’m waiting on a hearing date, just as I’m waiting on a date for mediation in the malpractice suit. I can’t let this bother me. I feel grateful that the emergency order—arestrainingorder—arrived the day after Felix was born, as I left Clara and Felix at the hospital for a quick breather, just enough time to drive home, shower and change my clothes. He was waiting for me in the driveway when I arrived, a different messenger this time who also pressed the order into my hand and told me I’d been served. I was just so grateful Clara wasn’t around to see, and that Maisie wasn’t here to ask questions.What’s that, Daddy?and,Why was that man here?I found a safe spot for the order, a place where it will never be seen.
We spend the days together, morning, noon and night devoted to holding my baby boy in my arms and watching my daughter spin across the room in delight. “Look at me, Daddy,” she begs. “I can fly, I can fly.” And then she asks if I want to fly, too, and I tell her yes, that there’s nothing in the world I’d rather do. And so, handing Felix to Clara, I stretch my arms out beside Maisie, and together we fly, spinning wildly around the room. The days are warm, stretching out before us like an open country road, full of nothing to do. There’s no better feeling in the world. I spend time catering to my wife’s needs, changing my son’s diaper, holding him while he sleeps, coloring innumerable pictures with my daughter, watching TV. In the afternoons, Maisie and I slip outside and play games of tag and chase until we are both sweating and exhausted. We bike to the playground; we turn on the sprinkler and take turns leaping through the water’s icy spray. I prepare hamburgers on the grill for dinner, and we all four eat on the patio table with the umbrella pressed all the way up to keep the sunlight out of Felix’s dozing eyes. And as I become rapt in this—in my family—the extraneous worries start to slip away, and I’m only even vaguely aware that the Golden State Warriors have won the NBA finals, and that all that money I bet on their team was not for naught, that sitting in a bank account is enough money to cover my debt, to replace Maisie’s college education savings and start contributing to a new life insurance fund.
My gambling days are through.
I go through the ways I will tell Clara about Gus. I practice in the bathroom mirror, confessing to her first about my runins with Kat, and then the declaration that Gus is my son. I don’t know whether or not this is true—I still have yet to hear the results of the paternity test—and yet somewhere deep inside, I know it’s true. Clara will be angry. It will take a while to process the fact. But then she’ll come to realize that what happened between Kat and me was many years ago, long before I first laid eyes on Clara and knew at once that she was the one for me. She’ll grasp that I haven’t kept this knowledge from her for twelve years, but that Kat has kept it from me.
That evening, Clara falls asleep with baby Felix in her arms. They’re on the sofa, Clara’s head lying peacefully on a throw pillow with Felix pressed against her chest, her arms locked tightly around him even in sleep. The peace and tranquility are palpable, and it takes everything I have in me not to force myself onto the sofa beside them and join them in dreamland. The exhaustion of having a newborn around weighs heavily on me, those long, interrupted nights, sleep always just out of reach.
And yet I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Outside it is evening, just after eight o’clock on a muggy summer night. Even from inside through the cracks of an open window, I can hear the sound of crickets and cicadas. Harriet lies on the floor, pressed against the sofa; she will not leave Clara or the baby’s side. Our guard dog. I pat her head, and whisper to her, “Good girl.”
Maisie comes stampeding down the stairs like a herd of elephants being chased by a lion. She’s loud, laughing hysterically. As always Maisie is dressed in her ballet leotard and tutu, and she askspretty, pretty pleaseif we can go to ballet. She pliés before me; she attempts a clumsy pirouette and falls.
I laugh, pressing a finger to my lips to quiet her down. “Today is Monday, silly,” I say, taking her by the hand and drawing her away from Clara and Felix, who are sleeping. I heft her into my arms and carry her from the room. “Tomorrow is ballet,” I say, but I have another idea, a way to freeze frame this moment in time. Seven thirty is usually Maisie’s bedtime; somehow or other, in the excitement and delirium that follows childbirth, we forgot to put her to bed. I haul her into the kitchen and set her on a kitchen counter where she sits, little piggies kicking the cabinet while I rummage around for the things I need. A glass jar and a pair of sharp scissors. As I use the pointed end of the scissors to poke holes in the stamped steel lid, Maisie asks, “What are you doing, Daddy?” and, “Why are you doing that?” but I tell her simply that she’ll see. I want it to be a surprise.
We find her pink sandals and step outside. Oftentimes Harriet would follow, but today she has a far greater task to do: protect Clara and the baby, and so her ears don’t budge; nor do her eyes look to Maisie and me as we go. Outside, Maisie and I become enfolded in the heat of the day. Though the humidity has relented somewhat, the evening remains hot. A couple of American goldfinches perch on the birdbath, taking the last few sips of green algae-tinged water. I make a mental note to clean the birdbath soon, to refill the birdseed, and then I hoist Maisie onto my shoulders with the jar in hand, and she asks of me, “Where are we going?” and I say again that she’ll see.
I lead Maisie into the thicket of trees that surround our yard, where the fireflies like to frolic at this time of night, playing with their friends. “What are they doing?” asks Maisie as she points her fingers intermittently at the light as it appears and then disappears, appears and then disappears, and I say to her, “They’re talking. This is how they talk with their friends,” and I see Maisie contemplating that, thinking what fun it would be if some part of her lit up to say hello. Her head or her hands or her toes. I lift her up into the trees and tell her to grab a handful of leaves, and she does—asking, of course, “Why, Daddy, why?”—and together we drop down onto the earth to fill the glass jar with sticks and leaves. The grass doesn’t grow here, where we sit, and is always austere, just a few blades poking out of the parched dirt. The tall trees prevent the sunlight from reaching the grass, preempting it from growing tall and strong. “There are things,” I tell Maisie as she helps me stuff handfuls of leaves into the jar, “that every creature needs to live. Food, shelter and oxygen are a few. We put holes in the jar so that the firefly can breathe, and these leaves are for food.”
“Can we catch one?” she asks, and I ruffle her hair and tell her, “Of course we can,” and then we rise from the earth, and I show her how. Darkness closes in quickly, though the moon is bright, a crescent in the nighttime sky. The black-blue sky abounds with stars, helping us see, as somewhere off on the horizon, the sun fades away, leaving only faint traces of light, which will soon disappear, too.
“Cup your hands together,” I tell her, “like this. But not too tightly,” I caution. “We don’t want to hurt the firefly. We only want to catch him for a little while, and then we’ll set him free.” I spy a light radiating through the air, and I catch it, this beautiful beetle that climbs easily across my hand. I show Maisie, and she giggles as the firefly spreads its forewings and flies, and she chases it through the yard, the skirt of her tutu fluttering in the nighttime air.
“My turn! My turn,” she says, skipping back to me, and again I show her how to cup her hands. She tries, but her movements are too slow, too timid, the firefly always one step ahead of her unwieldy hands. And so I catch it for her, and let it climb onto Maisie’s tiny hand. She laughs. “That tickles,” she says, as six jointed legs creep across her skin. I’m not sure whether or not she likes it, not until she says, “Hi there, Otis,” pressing her face close to the bug’s tiny face to greet him in the eye.
“Who’s Otis?” I ask, and she raises her hand so that I can see.
“This is Otis,” she says. “This is Otis, Daddy. Can we keep him?” she asks, and I nod my head as I help Maisie set Otis in the jar and screw on the lid.
“Just for a little while,” I explain, as Otis clambers on a stick and drops down into our glass house, making himself comfortable in this temporary home. “But then we’ll have to set him free. It’s fun for a little while, but Otis doesn’t want to live in a jar forever.”
“Why not?” Maisie asks, staring curiously at me. This one is an easy one.
“Would you want to live in a jar forever?” I ask, and she shakes her head a firm, decisive no. “Why not?” I ask, and she happily explains, “Because I want to fly!” as she twirls around and around through the yard, arms extended, until she becomes dizzy and falls.
“Daddy, fly with me?” Maisie begs, and I can’t help myself. There’s nothing I’d rather do than fly around the backyard with my girl. I help her rise to her feet and set her on my shoulders, spinning around and around through the lawn. Around us fireflies dot the sky as Maisie calls out, “We’re flying! We’re flying, Daddy,” and I laugh and tell her that we are. We’re flying. For just one minute I imagine our feet leaving the earth, Maisie and me soaring together through space.
“Look at the stars,” I tell Maisie as if she and I are one with them, the stars and us, and Maisie exclaims, “There’s the moon!” and we make believe we’re in a space shuttle of some sort, circumnavigating the moon. We laugh, giddy, silly, happy.
I can’t remember the last time I’ve ever felt so happy.
How long we fly, I don’t know. Until I’m wobbly on my feet and Maisie has had her fill. “That’s the best thing,” Maisie says, and I ask, “What is?”
