Page 6 of No Kind of Hero
It was Friday morning, and Evan had the luxury of a day off, because he wasn’t starting the next job until Monday morning. Although “day off,” he’d found, meant something different when you were a parent.
In the past, it would’ve meant sleeping in with April, maybe waking up to some slow, sweet, sleepy morning sex, then fixing coffee for him and herbal tea for her and bringing them back to bed. They’d pull up the pillows behind them and laze another half hour away before he’d start on some house project for the baby. Painting Gracie’s bedroom and putting up the butterfly wallpaper border, sanding down the dresser he’d found at a yard sale and repainting it, with April sitting in the rocking chair, pushing off with a bare foot, keeping him company and rocking their baby.
Those had been good days. Except that they hadn’t been real.
Then had come those last couple months, when all April had wanted to do was lie in bed and watch TV, or call her girlfriends or her mom and hold endless whispered conversations. When she’d burst into tears too often, and he hadn’t known what to do about it. When he’d told himself that it was because she was pregnant, and she was still working at Round Table, on her feet all evening long because they couldn’t afford for her to quit. That it would get better once she had the baby. That surely, once the baby was actually here . . .
Meanwhile, he’d kept doing those projects, like that would make things work out, or because he hadn’t known anything else to do. Replacing the carpet with wood flooring and clean area rugs, reinsulating the attic, taking out the sliding doors in the bathtub and replacing them with a shower curtain so April would be able to sit on the edge and give their baby a bath. Planning how, in the spring, he’d lay a brick patio in back. How he’d come home and find April out there, holding their baby in the place he’d made for them.
He’d told himself he was a happy man. He’d almost believed it.
When Gracie had been born, he’dreallybelieved it. For a little while.
Well, now he actuallywasa happy man, because his happiness was built on something real. It was built around a baby girl who loved him with all her heart instead of a woman who’d run home to her parents when life had gotten too real and scary.
“Sleeping in” might be a thing of the past, though. This morning, Gracie had decided that a father who’d gone to bed at eleven the night before after a twelve-hour workday of physical labor was a father who ought to wake up at five-thirty.
He’d actually been having a good dream, too. That was the killer. He’d been on a deserted beach with a beautiful blonde. As he recalled—and, man, did he ever recall—he’d been lying half over her, kissing her long and slow and deep. She’d had a hand around his head, pulling him closer, his hand had just slid inside her bikini top, and his palm was . . .
“Da da da da da.”
He blinked awake, disoriented, in the gray light of almost-dawn. Maybe if he waited, she’d go back to . . .
“DAAAA!”
So much for that. Even in his dreams, he couldn’t get any action. He threw the covers back, went into that cloud-painted nursery with the butterfly border and the white crib . . . and found his baby girl sitting up in her sheep-print blue sleeper, shaking her crib bars like a prisoner looking to break out.
When she saw him coming, her whole face bloomed into happiness. She laughed up at him and held out her arms, and what could a father do but pick her up, give her a kiss on her dandelion fluff hair, and start his morning?
“We get a day off,” he told her when he had her in her bouncy chair in the bathroom and was beginning to shave, after a cup of coffee he’d needed fairly desperately. “No Grandma today, just you and me. What should we do, huh? Have a party? Go dancing? Buy a pony?”
He spread the lather over his face, and she gave one of those baby belly laughs that killed you. She always thought the shaving cream was funny. He said, “Yeah, you’re right. Yard’s too small for a pony. The hay bill alone . . . Tell you what. We’ll take a run to town instead and stop at the park. Way cheaper.”
Which was why, after he’d sent in the invoice for the job and was feeling richer already, he was jogging off the stiffness from the day before, pushing Gracie in the stroller on a pretty damn good August morning, past silver maples and oaks and locusts whose leaves rustled faintly in the breeze. He nodded a hello to dog walkers and the occasional runner, then stopped at Elmer McClusky’s for a word, since the old man was out on the sidewalk and you couldn’t very well just run on past a guy.
“Thank you kindly,” Elmer said when Evan bent down for his newspaper and handed it to him. “Going to be a good summer day.”
“Sure is.”
“Headed into town?” The old man peered at him and hitched up his baggy brown trousers.
“Yep,” Evan said. “Taking my girl here out for a spin.”
“Huh.” Elmer took the rubber band off his paper and slipped it into his pocket. “Whole place has changed since the resort opened. Only a month, and there’s already so many cars on Main Street that you can’t find a parking place. Resort would bring in new businesses, they said, but I don’t know how much use they are. Who needs a store that sells just soap? Heard about that one the other day. Haven’t seen it yet. Can you imagine that, though? Just soap? How in the wide world could that pay the rent?”
“Got body lotion in there, too, I hear,” Evan said, carefully not smiling.
Elmer snorted. “Body lotion. Fwah. What’s wrong with going to the drugstore? Some people got too much money, and that’s the truth. Looks like they’re putting in another ice cream store, too, except they call it something else fancy so they can charge more for it. And then there’s that new place where all you can buy is some kind of weird-colored cookies. That’s what they ought to call resort towns. One-thing-store towns. Pretty soon, you’re going to have to drive out to the highway to True Value because the hardware store can’t pay the rent, and it’ll be nothing but knicknack stores and boutiques. Whole durn town of ’em.”
“That’s true,” Evan said, “but on the other hand, you’ve got more jobs coming in. No doubt about that.”
“Well, I got to admit you got a point there. Yes, you do. I guess it always depends, don’t it?”
“That it does.” Evan stayed patient. Not like he didn’t have time. “Of course, personally, I’m just glad of the extra work. Can’t help but look at that first.”
“Course you can’t,” Elmer said. “Family to support and all. Gracie’s getting all big. She sure is growing up fast. You ever hear from her mom?”
“No.” Maybe he didn’t havethatmuch time.
