“Carrie Ann has the number,” I cut in. “Three numbers. She’s very prepared.”
He looks at the door, and then at me. “Alright.”
“You can remove the Bjorn now.”
There’s a brief look of pain in his eyes as he does so and passes it to Carrie Ann. His throat rasps. “Take care of them with your life.”
“Always.”
We go. I’m honestly shocked he managed to get in the car, and even more so when we walk into the restaurant. It’s everything a restaurant should be in the summer—warm and unhurried, full of the ambient sound of people having the ordinary extraordinary experience of a good meal, the clink of glasses, and the smell of something with butter and herbs that reaches us before we’re even seated.
Pavel is, as he always is in public, contained and attentive, and dressed in a way that makes the room take a small collective breath when he walks through it. He’s a very large man in an exquisite tuxedo. He’s gonna get looks.
He pulls out my chair, and I sit, glad to be in an equally nice dress instead of sweatpants and a tank top. When he sits, he notes, “You look beautiful.”
“You always say that.”
“You always are,” he says, without any performance, the way he says things that are simply true.
It’s strange to think of how far we’ve come. From the office on the eighth floor and the quarterly projections to the evening that I walked in on him without knocking, and the world I’ve been living in since. I think that, if I had known everything that would follow, I would have run in, not walked.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
“That I would do it all again.”
He looks at me across the table, and the look is the one I have no clean word for. “So would I.”
We eat, and we talk about the babies, the garden, books, the thing Igor said at breakfast that was almost certainly about Carrie Ann. Pavel has noted with quiet satisfaction that his sovetnik is finding his way back toward something, and so am I. They both deserve happiness.
We both avoid a possible topic—the girls’ names. It was demanded that we name the girls. Apparently, it’s a legal issue otherwise, so we put on their birth certificates Jane and Jen. But we agreed those names are not permanent. We had lists back then, but we couldn’t settle on them.
The lists have grown.
We have not agreed yet, which I have stopped being anxious about and started finding entertaining, because the disagreement is good-natured and has taught me a great deal about what Pavel considers a worthy name, which is apparently classical, strong, with historical precedent, and not anything that can be made into a diminutive he considers undignified.
He likes Eleanor and Elizabeth. I vetoed them.
I like Clover and Marigold. He vetoed them.
It’s been a long summer, and thus, we avoid the topic tonight.
The dancing is in the hotel across the street, which hosts a small orchestra and a dance floor that gradually fills with couples who have decided that the ordinary evening is worth transforming into something slightly more. Pavel dances the way he does everything—well, and with complete attention.
A slow piece plays, so we slow down. It gives me the first chance in a very long time to feel my husband close to me without two babies between us. I have missed this man.
He smells so good.
With his arms around me, I close my eyes and sway to the music. “This is nice.”
His throat works. “Is it strange to say I have forgotten how this feels?”
“I know what you mean.”
“I believe I’ve fallen into a trap.”
I stiffen and glance over his shoulder. “Who is it? Are you armed?”
“Not that kind of trap, wife.” He turns me in his arms, then presses against my back, his arm around my waist as we continue to sway. “Parenthood is its own kind of trap, I think. It made me forget something fundamental.”
