Clara put her arms around him and breathed him in. He’d be heading back to the city tomorrow night with Adam. Althea had been enlisted to fill the parenting gap, to ensure that Clara’s week at the cottage was something like the holiday Jess had promised. Clara’s chief concern in all of this was mostly sentimental; she and Nick had never spent a week apart. Even when she’d been in the hospital after the twins, he’d spent the nights trying to sleep on a chair beside her. She didn’t want to be without him and didn’t even know how to be.
She said, “Maybe we could go back with you tomorrow.”
“And miss your holiday?”
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
“You should stay,” he said.
“Won’t you miss me?”
“Of course,” he said. “But you’ll have a good time, and then you’ll be home again. It will be good for you.”
“You’ll be all alone.” She said, “Promise you’ll tell me what that’s like. Take notes and answer my questions. What is quiet?”
“If you wanted the answer to that,” he said, “you wouldn’t want another baby.”
“I want another baby,” she said, trying out the sound of the words. “But what if I end up wanting babies forever? What if I do turn into that woman who lives in a shoe?”
“We couldn’t afford a shoe,” said Nick.
“Maybe we could all just move up here,” said Clara. “We could take over a wing of this place, and they might not even notice.”
“Live between the floors,” said Nick. “Subsisting on table scraps and making furniture out of empty spools of thread. Dollhouse furniture.”
“I’m going to miss you so much,” she said, holding him close, trying to remember.
—
Finally, Clara confessed she was nervous about the kids being out on the lawn. Lu had been down there playing with Bella, and Althea had been watching them, but the problem wasn’t supervision.
“All it takes is for someone to slip, or go after a ball. I can’t, Jess,” said Clara. “It really scares me.”
And so Althea brought the kids back up to the deck, where they could block off the steps and everyone could play in relative safety. Bella was annoyed that her freedom was being curtailed, and Miles kept kicking his ball over the railing. Clara was in the kitchen giving the twins breakfast, and they were itching to go out into the sunshine.
“Well, hurry up and finish,” Clara told them, picking up their spoons from the floor, where they had hurled them over and over. Clara had tied them to the kitchen chairs with hemp rope harnesses, a clever substitute for highchairs, but now apple sauce was smeared across the upholstered chair backs. And it was flavoured and coloured with raspberry, and so were their faces.
“Don’t worry,” called Jess, tossing Clara a wet cloth. “It will wipe clean.” She was almost pathologically unwilling to be rattled. Clara found it kind of annoying. Maybe having a kitchen out of a television commercial turned you into a person from a television commercial, she reflected. Any minute Jess might start confessing her enthusiasm for yoghurt.
“Listen, I got you something,” Jess said. “Don’t get mad.”
“You got me something?” Jess handed her a package wrapped in brown paper stamped with her shop’s elegant C&O logo in fancy script. “It was just your birthday, and I didn’t get you anything at all,” said Clara.
“You did,” said Jess. “You came here. And this something is almost nothing. It’s just fun. A beach read.”
“A beach read,” said Clara. “There’s a pipe dream. I haven’t read anything in a hundred years.”
“Well, you might be able to pull it off,” said Jess. “Or you can come up again next summer, and you’ll definitely be able to.” She said, “ ‘This time next year—’ It’s the only thought that got me through the baby days. And it was easier with Miles, because I knew we’d never have to go through it ever again.”
The twins were almost finished eating. Clara wiped her hands on her dress and unwrapped the package:Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.“I remember this,” said Clara. There’d been a movie too. It was one of the books she’d read when they first met. “Idgie Threadgoode,” she recalled, unearthing the character’s name. “This is a first edition?” she asked. Clara liked the idea behind Jess’s shop, but it was not a place for bargain hunters.
Jess said, “Well, it’s a first edition mass-market paperback. Feel free to break the spine or drop it off the side of the dock. No pressure. It’s meant to be read.”
“I’ll try,” said Clara. It was a thoughtful gift. “I’m just going to get these guys cleaned up,” she said. It made no sense the way people went on about how demanding breastfeeding was when solid foods just led to one chore after another: preparing, defrosting, serving, cleaning.
“Take your time,” Jess called over her shoulder as she loaded the dishwasher. “And then we’ll head down to the beach.” Those stairs again.
—
