The Culmination (47 page)

His eyes glisten.

I touch his cheek. “
That’s
fucksellence, my sweet Jonas—the highest peak. The culmination of human possibility.”

Chapter 45

Jonas

The song that’s blaring through our backyard speakers right now is Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day.” Sarah created the playlist for the twins’ birthday party, and, of course, every song has been perfect. But, out of all the songs that have played during the past hour since we’ve been out here, soaking up an unusually warm and glorious Seattle afternoon, this song is my absolute favorite.

“No, no, no. Not like dat, Uncle Jo Jo,” Gracie says, furrowing her brow. “You have to wear da
crown
when you pour da tea
.
Like a
princess
.”

“You heard the girl,” Josh says, smirking. “Put on the tiara, Uncle Jo Jo. Pour the tea like a
princess
. Come on.”

“I’ve got an idea, Little G—” I begin, glaring at Josh, but Gracie interrupts me.

“I’m not little. I’m
big
.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, honey. I’ve been calling you Little G for so long, I just forget sometimes. My bad. So,
Big
G, here’s my idea. Why don’t we let the birthday girls pour the tea this time, since they’re already wearing princess tiaras today?” I glance over my shoulder at the other side of the lawn, where Lu and Sunny are toddling around in Elsa and Anna dresses, birthday tiaras, and pink sparkle boots, chasing bubbles blown by Henn and shadowed every move they make by our Boston terrier, Buster.

“But da twins always
spill
da tea,” Gracie says, scrunching up her little face and rolling her eyes. “I don’t like it when dey
spill,
Uncle Jo Jo. Da tea party has to be clean and
pretty
.”

“Yeah, Uncle Jo Jo, da tea party has to be
pretty
and da twins always
spill
da tea,” Josh says, rolling his eyes in mock horror. “Come up with an effing
good
idea next time, bro. Jeez.”

I laugh. “I know, Big G. The twins are train wrecks. We all know that. How you put up with them is beyond me. But here’s the thing. I
always
get to pour the tea. Like, every single time—because you’re so sweet and good to me.” I wink. “But I was thinking since the twins are turning two and all, we could maybe just this once make them feel extra special and let them pour the tea, instead of me? You know,
pretend
they’re doing a good job. Like, we could clap and cheer and tell them ‘good job’ but then secretly giggle behind their backs because they’re really just spilling the tea.” I take a swig of my beer and shoot an amused look at Josh. Three, two, one...

“Okay,” Gracie says, right on cue, her lovely face lighting up. “Dat sounds fun.”

I smirk at Josh and swig my beer again. If there’s one thing I know, it’s what makes a woman tick, whether she’s four or forty. And what I know about Gracie Louise Faraday is that she loves a good inside joke, just like her mommy and auntie. Well, just like any woman, I suppose.

“Good idea, Uncle Jo Jo,” Gracie says. She giggles. “We’ll tell dem ‘good job’ and then we’ll make dis face, me and you.” She rolls her eyes with the subtlety of Bugs Bunny.

“Perfect.” I take another long swig of my beer and smile at Josh. “Problem solved.”

Josh laughs. “Master manipulator.”

“Just smarter than everyone else.”

“Yo, Uncle Henny!” Josh calls over to Henn on the other side of the lawn. “Could you bring the birthday girls over here? Big G has decided out of the kindness of her heart to let the twins pour the tea this time.”

Henn’s in the middle of blowing a huge bubble for Lu, but he shoots us a thumbs up. He bends down to say something to Sunny and she immediately sprints across the lawn over to me. She barrels into me like a train hurtling off its tracks and throws her little arms around my neck. “Daddy!” she squeals, leaping onto my lap.

“Hi, baby,” I say, kissing her cheek. Her tiara comes flying off her head and I pop it back on. “You wanna pour the tea, Sunny?”

“Oh, yessssssss! Sunneeeeeeee pour teeeeeeeeeee! Wooooh!”

Henn comes over with Luna in his arms. “Lu doesn’t seem all that excited about pouring the tea,” Henn says. “She wants to play with bugs, instead.”

Josh laughs. “Well, by all means. Come on, Lu. I’ll play with bugs with you. I’ll show you which ones are the tastiest. Take my seat, Uncle Henny. You’d better get used to doing this—I see a lot of princess tea parties in your future.”

Henn beams at him, the proud father-to-be. “For sure. Tea parties, spear-phishing, drive-by-downloading, bikeshedding, doxxing—all the usual daddy-daughter stuff.”

“Not like dat,” Gracie is saying to poor, hapless Sunny. “Like
dis.
”

I shoot Gracie a look, reminding her of our complicit agreement.

A light bulb goes off on Gracie’s adorable face. “Oh, so gooood, Sunny,” she says, nodding her head with exaggerated encouragement. “
Good job
,” she coos. And then she shoots me a look that clearly says, “Sunny sucks balls.”

I can’t help but laugh. Gracie never ceases to entertain me.

The sliding glass door opens and Sarah ambles out of the house with Kat.

“Hey, guys,” Kat says when the duo reaches our tea party. She’s got Jack on her hip and a glass of wine in her hand.

“It’s a princess tea party,” Gracie says matter-of-factly.

“Looks fun,” Sarah says.

“What’s Josh doing over there in the dirt?” Kat asks.

“Eating bugs with Lu,” I answer.

“Awesome,” Kat says. “You wanna play with bugs with Daddy and Lu, Jack?”

Jack squirms in Kat’s arms, clearly communicating his excitement, and she lets him down onto the grass to toddle over to his father and cousin.

“When Jack Faraday plays with bugs, he teaches them to ride unicycles and solve complex calculus problems,” I say, and Kat laughs.

“When Jack Faraday plays with bugs, he decodes
heisenbugs
,” Henn says, and no one laughs.

“That one flew way above my head,” Sarah says.

“Or maybe it just wasn’t funny,” I add.

Henn looks unfazed. “Trust me, guys. With a hacker crowd, that line would have gotten gargantuan laughs.”

“Wow, this looks like a really fun tea party,” Sarah says.

“I’m letting Sunny pour da tea dis one time,” Gracie explains. “And she’s doing
such
a good job.” Gracie shoots me another secret look of utter mortification and I burst out laughing.

“Sunnee pour tee, Mommee!” Sunny explains proudly, spilling water all over the plastic table and herself.

“I can see that,” Sarah says. “Looks like we’re gonna need to get you a change of clothes in a minute. Hey, Gracie, how come you’re not wearing the pink sparkly boots I got you to match Sunny and Lu?”

“I don’t like matching,” Gracie says simply. “I like to be da only one.”

“Oh,” Sarah says. “I didn’t know that. Darn.”

“Gracie absolutely refuses to wear her new pink sparkle boots,” Kat says, sticking out her lower lip. “I begged and pleaded, but she wouldn’t do it. I’m sorry, Sarah.”

“That’s okay. To everything turn, turn, turn, I guess,” Sarah says, pouting.

Kat flashes Sarah a commiserating face.

“I hungy, Mommeeee!” Sunny says.

“Well, you’re in luck,” Sarah says. “Because we’re gonna have
arroz con pollo
y frijoles
and then birthday cake
con
helado
.”

“
Mmmm. Quiero helado, mami,
” Sunny says. “Yummaleesh.”

“Yup. You can have ice cream
despues de comer tu comida
,
mamacita
.”

“Okay,
mami
.”

“And guess what? We’re all gonna sing you and Lu ‘
Feliz Cumpleaños.’
”

“Wooh!”

“Jonas, will you help me start wrangling everyone into the house so we can get ready to eat in a bit?”

“Sure thing, baby.”

A muffled cry sounds through the baby monitor in Sarah’s hand. “Oh. Guess who’s awake?” She turns on her heel, obviously intending to answer the call of motherhood.

“I’ll go,” I say, hopping up.

“How did I know you were gonna say that?”

I grin. My baby knows me so well. There’s nothing I like better than getting my own personal just-woke-up-from-a-nap smile from one of my babies. “Henn, will you assume wrangling duties for me?”

“You bet, boss.”

When I enter the nursery, my son the Mack truck is quietly lying in his crib, staring at the frog-mobile dangling above him. The minute he sees me, his face lights up and he begins gurgling and kicking his legs frantically with excitement.

“Hey, Jeremiah,” I say softly, picking him up out of the crib. I give him a kiss on his forehead. “Hey, little dude. Did you sleep well?”

I love these quiet, stolen moments with my son, our little miracle baby, Jeremiah Joshua Faraday, conceived, we’re pretty sure, on our weekend away in San Diego—the first in a long line of mommy-and-daddy-need-to-fuck-each-other’s-brains-out getaways. Was Jeremiah conceived on the airplane to San Diego? Or on that first memorable night in the villa? Or maybe it was that second day and night, when Sarah and I test-drove every single one of the toys in that duffel bag of tricks (some of them to startling success and others to laughter-inducing failure)? We’ll never know for sure. All we know for certain is that our son wasn’t conceived while Mommy’s limbs were cuffed to a fucking bondage sheet.

In fact, Sarah and I never used that hideous implement of my torture again. I didn’t even bring it back home with us on the plane, which means our private butler got a happy surprise after we left. But although we’ll never know exactly when or how our little miracle occurred, we do know one thing for certain: according to doctors, Jeremiah Joshua Faraday’s not supposed to be here right now.

I bring Jeremiah over to the changing table and set about changing his diaper, and as I do, I glance around at the surrounding walls, my heart swelling at the sight of Sarah’s recent additions to our family mural. Now, in addition to the smiling sun and moon adorning opposite corners of the room, Jeremiah the smiling bullfrog leaps through the starry sky, too, spreading his unique brand of joy to the world. And there’s also Jeremiah the little prince, a feather in his cap, riding his brown pony alongside his princess-sisters, trailing behind King Jonas and Queen Sarah on their great white steed. And Jeremiah the one-eyed mini-monster, frolicking with his beastly family among the flowers on a grassy hill. And Jeremiah the bullfrog, once again, sitting atop my broad shoulder as I hold the book of love with my muscled arm and read it to my infant daughters and smitten wife. And, my favorite vignette of all, my entire little family, all five of us, standing atop the highest peak in the world, our arms linked and raised in victory.

“Does it look okay?” Sarah asked just last weekend, a paintbrush in her hand, leaning back from the wall to survey her brand new handiwork. She rubbed her face right then and unwittingly smudged green bullfrog paint right on the tip of her nose. “I wanted to do this earlier, but life kept getting in the way.” She flashed me an adorable grin, totally unaware of the paint on her nose—and my heart exploded into a trillion pieces at the sight of her.

I rubbed the paint off her nose with my thumb and kissed her. “It’s incredible,” I said. “Our pursuit of wholeness is now complete.”

She continued gazing at the scene of our triumphant family on the mountaintop for a long moment. “Do you think you and Josh will ever climb Mount Everest, love?” she asked.

I paused, surprised at the question. “Maybe, one day,” I finally said. “You never know. But I certainly won’t attempt it while the kids are so young. It takes a couple months to do it. Plus, it’s ridiculously dangerous.”

“But it’s your dream.”

“Well, yeah, it
was
my dream. And maybe it will be again. But it’s not my dream right now. My dream these days is right here on the walls of this room.”

Her cheeks flushed.

“There are plenty of peaks to climb that don’t involve an almost seven-percent fatality rate. I’ve got a lot to live for these days.”

Jeremiah makes a silly noise on the changing table and I grin down at him. “Are you ready to celebrate your sisters’ birthday?” I say.

Jeremiah makes a gurgling sound.

“All right, then. Let’s do it, my boy.”

I pick him up off the changing table and hold him against the right side of my chest, right up against my most recent tattoo: a scroll bearing the image of a leaping bullfrog, ensconced in a swirling linen sash, surrounded by a galaxy of glittering stars. It’s a reference to Jeremiah the Prophet from the book of Jeremiah, of course, mashed up with the Three Dog Night song that makes Jeremiah our precious little bullfrog, plus, of course, an allusion to the woman—the beloved wife and mother—the sky full of stars—who so brilliantly lights up even the darkest night.

I turn to leave with my son in my arms, but before I walk out of the nursery, I do the one thing I always do when exiting this room—well, the one thing I do whenever I’m holding one of my babies in my arms: I read the inscriptions scrolling across the tops of the walls. “Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods,” I say aloud. “You are the divine original form of you, Jeremiah.”

Jeremiah coos at me.

Back in the party, everyone’s gathered close to the kitchen, lured by the delectable smells wafting through the air. Another kick-ass song from Sarah’s playlist is blaring—“Hanging By a Moment” by Lifehouse. (Other than Sarah’s penchant for hip-hop and One Direction, I must say my wife has awesome taste in music.) With the Lifehouse song as my soundtrack, I stand for a moment, my son gurgling in my arms, surveying the happy swarm of activity and conversation all around me.

Gracie’s holding court at a kiddie table in the corner, lording over Jack, Lu, and Sunny, as usual. In the kitchen, Rosario and Gloria are pulling large trays of food out of the oven while our dear friend (and the kids’ godmother) Georgia chops vegetables at the counter and chats amiably with the other women. I can’t make out what Georgia’s saying, but I’d bet anything she’s proudly talking about Trey, who’s currently crushing it in his first year at Northwestern.