Page 35 of Don't Leave Me
Wasn’t that what new fathers did? Weren’t they really just there to listen and offer sympathy over sore nipples, exhaustion, and really gross poop diapers? All of that she’d done herself.
I took to one corner of the room and watched her work. I held my breath while the diaper, in all its revolting glory, was revealed, but it was like it didn’t bother her at all. She just cooed and talked with him, as he laid there on his back on the changing table. Happy to let his mother clean him up.
In a minute, it was done, and she was handing him to me. “Want to hold him?”
“I don’t know if…”
“You can do it,” she insisted. “But he’ll be squirmy, so you have to have a good grip on him.”
I moved to take him and planted him on my hip. I had an arm under his butt and one around his back. I could tell he wasn’t exactly thrilled with this new position, but he wasn’t fighting me too hard.
“Not bad,” she said, as if I’d done something admirable. Then she dumped the diaper into a trash bin by the changing table and left me alone with him.
I looked at him, he looked at me, and, immediately, he started to cry.
“Yeah, I get it, kid. We’re better off when she’s with us.”
* * *
Marc
I spent the rest of the morning basically playing with the kid, when he didn’t want to scream his head off. Then we had lunch. Ash had put together sandwiches and a macaroni salad. She’d also made cupcakes, so I was able to taste all that she’d learned in the nearly two years we’d been apart.
“These are freaking awesome,” I said, around a mouthful of chocolate icing and chocolate cake.
“Thank you. I had to work. For the first time. There were days Helga looked at me exactly like that, too. Like,have you seriously never seen a cash register in your life?But she was patient, too. Which I needed. I was so motivated to succeed. I think she sensed that, too.”
At that point, Daniel decided he was done sitting in his highchair and simply screamed loudly to communicate that. Ash got him out, got him washed up, then set him down to roam.
“He’ll crash in a half hour. He always does after eating.”
I nodded. “Do you need me to go?”
“No,” she said, quickly. “Once he’s asleep, we can probably talk about what happens next.”
She’d nailed it. Thirty minutes later, he was rubbing his eyes with his fists, and Ash scooped up him and his favorite train, then walked him to his room. It was barely five minutes before she was back with a monitor in hand.
“We should sit on the porch so you can appreciate Florida in the Fall. The monitor will let me know if he stirs for some reason.”
We made our way outside to the porch where two comfortable rocking chairs were situated, a small wicker table between them. Ash put the monitor on the table, and, for a time, we just listened to the faint sounds of the baby snoring.
“So, what are you thinking?” she finally asked me.
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. Because there were so many things running through my mind. Plans, endless plans, that had taken hold and wouldn’t let me think clearly about anything.
“But that’s what this day was for, wasn’t it?”
I gave her a raised eyebrow. “I only get a day to figure this out?”
That made her squirm. “No, of course not. I know none of this is easy.”
“You had months of being pregnant, then you had a whole year as a parent,” I pointed out. “I should get some time to figure out what I’m doing.”
“No, you’re right. That’s fair. Are you thinking about custody?”
That made her nervous. I could tell by the way she fumbled over the wordcustody. Like it left a bad taste in her mouth.
No, I wasn’t really thinking about custody. The kid started wailing two seconds after she left the room the first time. That felt significant. Like he was trying to tell me something, but I had already figured it out.
