The Grown Ups (31 page)

Bella replaced the plastic wrap on the chicken and put it back in the walk-in. Sam cleared the counter of the goat cheese wrappers and crumbs and met her by the light switch. He slipped an arm around her waist and turned off the lights before they started up the stairs. Bella felt a pressure in her chest when she looked at Sam, her heart slamming against her rib cage in anticipation of what would come next. A feeling she knew would never go away.

Suzie stayed on bed rest for ten weeks before she delivered a healthy baby boy, Leo Samuel Turner, three weeks early, on her
birthday. Bella and Sam went to visit them in the hospital when Leo was just a few hours old. Leo had a head of dark curly hair and, according to Sam, the features of Sam and Michael's grandfather, their father's father, who had lived to be one hundred and one years old. Bella insisted to Sam that he keep that bit to himself. She told him all babies, no matter the gender, looked like little old men to everyone but their parents.

“Except ours,” Sam said, surprising Bella. She remembered Ted's refusal to even entertain the thought of children. She hadn't even gone there yet—thinking about children that potentially belonged to Sam. But now that he put it out there it made the most perfect sense. Of course they would have children one day.

The elevator doors opened and Marguerite and Hunt joined them at the nursery window. “The doctor is in with Suzie, so I went and did some shopping downstairs,” Marguerite announced, waving a baby blue teddy bear. “It's so silly, I know.” Her eyes were watery. She tugged on Hunt's sleeve. “Hunt, look at that precious boy.”

“He is handsome,” Hunt agreed.

Bella saw Sam glance over at his father. She wasn't sure if Hunt was looking at the right baby, although she supposed it didn't really matter at this stage.

Suddenly Hunt reached over and touched Bella on the top of the head. “The first time I met you, you were in your mother's arms.” He screwed up his face as if he was thinking hard, and then he dropped his hand and relaxed into a soft smile. “Sam had been hit by a swing here.” He touched the spot above his left eyebrow and Bella saw Sam mirror him, searching for the microscopic remains of a scar with his fingertips. “And you were crying because he was bloody and hysterical.” He laughed. “Your mother handed me a towel. I think Sam's howling ended the picnic.”

Sam shook his head and smirked. “I still have that ability.”

“Elizabeth was so angry with me because I had taken Michael to look at the ducks when I was supposed to be keeping an eye on Sam at the swings.” He turned to Sam. “I had no idea you saw me leave, and that you wanted to come with us and started to follow.” He blinked hard several times before he turned back to Bella. “And Elizabeth said that was my problem. That I never paid enough attention to Sam.”

Bella shuffled her feet and inched closer to Sam. Marguerite glanced quickly between the two of them, and then back at Leo. No one said anything for a long moment, and then Bella looked up and saw Michael walking down the hall. She nudged Sam with her hip. Michael had a couple of days' growth of beard, and his eyes were shiny with fatigue, but he was grinning as if it were Christmas morning. As he came toward them he tossed a tangerine back and forth in his hands.

“Here.” He handed Sam the tangerine. “I'm going in to get Leo and bring him to Suzie. Everything's good. Everything's great.” He bounced up and down on his feet.

“Sam?” Hunt said loudly, still waiting for an answer.

Michael's head jerked up as if it had been pulled by a string. He gave Sam a quick look that Bella couldn't interpret.

“Everything is good, Dad,” Sam said reassuringly.

Marguerite said, “Michael is going to get Leo and bring him to Suzie now, Hunt.”

“Leo?”

Michael cupped his father's elbow and turned him toward the window. He guided his father's hand so that it was pressed flat against the glass, hovering over the baby. “Here, Dad. Here's your grandson.”

In that moment Bella knew that something was really wrong
with Hunt. That Michael had maybe known the details and that he was keeping it from Sam.

“Come here, Sammy,” Michael said over his shoulder. He put Sam's hand over their father's on the glass. “Stay,” he commanded as he pushed open the swinging doors to the nursery. None of them moved. Bella could feel nervous energy coming from Sam and Marguerite. When Michael reappeared he was wearing a smock and his hands were gloved and he was lifting his son from the plastic bassinet. Leo's head was covered by a blue cap and his body was mummified in blankets. Only his squishy pink grandpa face was visible. Michael held Leo aloft on the other side of the glass.

“Dad,” Sam whispered, “there he is, there's Michael's son.”

Michael looked at Sam and then to their father. When Bella saw the expression on Michael's face she wanted to run. Hunt was crying silently, the tears flowing freely down his cheeks. He didn't move to wipe them.

“Dad?” Sam prompted. “Dad?”

“You believe me, right?”

It took a second for Bella to realize that Hunt was still trapped in the earlier conversation. She had no idea whether Hunt even noticed Leo. Slowly she watched Sam release his father's hand from the glass as Michael put Leo back in the bassinet. They watched Michael adjust the tiny blue cap and tuck in the tails of the blankets. Bella thought of the thousands of nights Michael would spend tucking in his son before the boy wouldn't need him anymore. She remembered how Sam had told her that was one of his fondest memories from when he was still small enough to share a room with Michael: their father coming into their room carrying with him the exotic scents of the city, crouching down
between their beds and asking them each to recall one good thing and one bad thing from their day.

“I believe you, Dad,” Sam whispered.

Bella watched as Hunt's tears darkened his shirt collar. She saw Marguerite turn away quickly and fumble in her handbag.

“I believe you,” Sam said again.

Bella held her breath, waiting for Hunt to acknowledge what Sam had said. Marguerite produced a tissue from her bag and stuffed it into Hunt's hand. “Hunt,” Marguerite said. Her voice was loud and a little sharp. “Hunt.”

Hunt turned to her and smiled. “Oh, what a day,” he said. “What a day to remember.”

Bella could see the relief in Sam's posture; his shoulders and spine relaxed.

“I'm hungry,” Hunt announced.

Sam pulled Michael's tangerine from his pocket. He looked as if he was about to hand it to his father but then he began to peel the thick skin himself. The sharp tang of citrus filled the air. Bella watched Sam break apart the tangerine. He offered half the sections to his father. Hunt popped the entire thing in his mouth and began to chew. After he had swallowed Sam pulled apart the remaining sections one by one and fed them to his father. They all stood there for as long as it took, silent and waiting. There was nothing else to do.

W
hen Suzie got out of the shower Leo had on his thinking
face. He was staring wide-eyed, curled up on Michael's chest, his cotton-covered bottom perched up in the air. When he saw her he pursed his lips but he didn't protest, so she crossed the room and pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. She left off the bra. There was no need to be constantly fumbling with the hooks.

Michael's arms were wrapped firmly around the baby, keeping him in place, but his head was back against the wall, his eyes closed and his mouth slightly open. Residency and a fellowship, the life of a doctor, had trained him to sleep anywhere and at any time. Suzie had joked that a medical residency was the only thing that could possibly prepare you for the sleep deprivation an infant brought into your life.

Three months into this and Suzie finally was beginning to feel like a mother. She went over and lifted Leo off Michael's chest, holding him high against her shoulder. “Hey, little man, hey there,” she murmured against his silky cap of hair. She felt him
rooting around, his mouth open against her shoulder. He settled for gumming the skin with his sticky jaws.

She glanced back at Michael. He was awake now but he looked out of it, and no wonder, considering he had just worked a twelve-hour shift. An hour earlier, when he had walked in the door, she had been sitting in bed with Leo resting on the tent of her knees. You would never have known it by their son's sweet demeanor and spastic movements of joy, but he had been up for most of the night. Suzie calculated she had gotten roughly three hours of sleep in fifteen-minute increments. Her nipples were sore from nursing and she was pretty sure she smelled, since she couldn't remember the last time she'd showered. Michael had taken one look at her as he reached for Leo and urged her to take a shower. She knew he was exhausted but wanted to spend time with Leo.

Now Suzie said to Michael, “Go to bed.”

Michael held out a hand. “I want you to come with me.”

Suzie smiled. She would love to crawl back into the warm bed with Michael and sleep. Even if the sheets smelled musky and the bed was never made anymore. Last week she had found a dirty diaper under her pillow. Thankfully it was only pee and had been rewrapped securely with the sticky tabs. But still. A diaper in bed? Ugh.

She shook her head. “Little man is happy and I'm going to put him in that bouncy thing and try to make sense of our lives. Or at least take out the garbage.”

Michael shook his head in protest and yawned.

“Go,” Suzie said again, feeling energized by the shower and the smell of shampoo in her clean hair. “Go.”

She watched as Michael hoisted himself from the couch. He undid the buttons of his shirt as he walked to the bedroom, tugging it from the waistband of his pants. At the corner of the bed
he kicked off his shoes, unzipped his fly, let his pants drop to the floor, and then fell facedown onto the mattress. Suzie turned off the lights and shut the bedroom door.

Suzie looked at Leo. He was watching her, one corner of his mouth turned up in a half grin, his slick little baby-seal head wobbling only slightly on his strong neck. “Come on, buddy boy, let Daddy sleep. I'm going to teach you things in the kitchen that will make all the girls love you one day.” She hoisted him on her hip, picked up the bouncy seat with her free hand, and set Leo up on the floor by her feet near the sink.

Several hours later the dishwasher was humming, the sink and surfaces were clear, the garbage was gone and with it all of the mysterious and moldy takeout containers from the refrigerator shelves. Suzie had stopped to feed Leo and put him back in the bouncy seat, and then she had dumped some pasta sauce into a saucepan and put water on to boil. It wasn't much, and she couldn't help but imagine what Sam would have to say about the choice of meal, but at least she and Michael would have a civilized lunch. She even went so far as to set two places at the table, reasoning that Leo, now dozing in the bouncy seat, would be good for at least another hour.

She was going through a pile of mail, paying bills, ripping up junk, when the bedroom door opened and Michael appeared in his boxers and a T-shirt. His face still had sleep creases and he stretched as he shuffled toward them. Suzie pointed to sleeping Leo and Michael's expression softened. He lifted his nose and sniffed the air. “Is this what heaven smells like?”

“Tomato sauce and disinfectant?”

Michael nodded and Suzie laughed. She got up to dump the pasta into the boiling water and poured Michael a cup of fresh coffee. He came up behind her, slipped his hands under the giant
T-shirt, and cupped her full breasts in his hands. “I love nursing,” he said as he kissed the side of her head.

Suzie laughed. Her first instinct was to bat his hands away but she missed him, she missed this kind of touching. They had gone back to having sex when her doctor had cleared her at six weeks, but with their schedules it wasn't remotely a regular occurrence.

“How fast can you make this happen?” Suzie joked. But as she leaned into him she could feel that Michael's erection pressing into her lower back was serious.

Michael drew out her nipples with his fingers. Suzie gasped and felt them tingle, not unlike when Leo's mouth latched on and her breasts flooded with milk. Abruptly Michael dropped his hands and tugged on the corner of her shirt. Suzie reached to lower the flame under the pasta and followed Michael to the couch. He slid her sweatpants over her hips and down around her ankles as Suzie guided Michael inside of her. The sense of urgency was overwhelming and exciting. She closed her eyes and lifted her hips, meeting his thrusts with her own. She felt warmth spread in her lower belly, a delightful pressure that built quickly as they moved.

Within minutes Michael came hard, moaning deeply into the crook of her neck. Suzie laughed, shushing him, making him laugh as well, his shoulders and chest trembling against her. It felt like they were teenagers, rushing through sex for fear they'd be caught. Only now the person catching them was all of three months old.

Suzie held on to Michael tightly, her hands clasped against his lower back, enjoying the weight of him pressed against the length of her. “I'm sorry,” he murmured into her hair. “I couldn't help myself.”

Suzie ran a hand through his hair. He was still half inside her.
The space between her thighs felt wet and warm and she didn't want to get up, would have liked him to reach down and touch her until she came, but she smelled the sauce bubbling away and was sure the pasta was turning into a starchy mess and she didn't want to wake Leo. “I love you,” she whispered into Michael's ear.

“I love you more, Suzie,” Michael echoed as he slid a hand down her body, over her still puffy belly, and down between her legs until it was her turn to moan. “I love you more.”

Later, Michael held
Leo on his lap while they ate the pasta in front of the TV. A baseball game was on and Michael was explaining the rules to Leo, who was heavy-lidded. Suzie took advantage of the quiet and cleared the plates, cleaned the kitchen, and turned off the lights even though Michael protested her getting up to clean. There was a secret part of her that liked the fact that she was able to tackle so much in a day, conquer the Mount Everest of domesticity.

Michael got up and carried Leo to the crib in the corner of their bedroom. He looked over at Suzie and she nodded. It was time Leo got used to falling asleep there instead of in his parents' arms. Suzie held her breath as she watched Michael lean over the lowered bar and place Leo on his back in the center of the mattress. He draped a light cotton blanket around Leo's lower body.

Suzie glanced at their bed. Michael had made it up with fresh sheets and she couldn't wait to put her head on the pillow. He must have done it after he took a shower, while she was finishing up their meal. Her heart squeezed and her eyes filled with tears. Her hormones were still out of whack, but she was also crazy in love with her husband and her son. If someone had told her years ago that one day all this would be possible, she would have laughed in his face. She hadn't come from this; she had never
known this as normal. She had imagined it was for other people, certainly not people like her.

The travesty of this all was that her mother, still sober and perfectly able, had seen Leo only once, while Hunt, who had been with Leo multiple times in his three months on earth, only sometimes knew who Leo was. It broke Suzie's heart to watch Hunt's slow degeneration. The moments she had seen the panic in Hunt's eyes haunted her.

Of all the kindnesses Hunt had shown her, the one Suzie would always remember was after the last miscarriage. They had been at Paradox Lake and he had asked her to go out in the canoe. Everyone had been tiptoeing around her, afraid to upset her even more, and while she understood why, she hated being pitied. The canoe ride was the last thing she had wanted to do, but she had gone because the alternative was being stuck in the cabin on one of the twin beds in the stifling attic, berating the state of her body and all that it rejected.

Hunt had offered to let her sit and not paddle; he said he would do all the work. But Suzie had refused to be idle. She took a paddle and fell in sync with Hunt as they traversed the length of the lake. When they reached a grove where papery river birch clustered in feathery clumps along the banks, Hunt guided them into the shallow water and presented Suzie with an old red plaid thermos that had been rolling around by his feet. Suzie took a large gulp and winced: the thermos was filled with Hunt's special summer mix of bourbon and sweet tea, and the liquor burned her throat.

They had sat in silence, watching the great blue heron on an island nest built for one. Suzie was aware of the ripples of fish beneath the surface of the water and the thick, velvety push of the waves as they rocked back and forth in the canoe, passing the
thermos to each other. Eventually Hunt screwed the lid back on the thermos and lifted his paddle and they left the sanctuary of trees and headed back to the camp. Suzie had let something go that afternoon, and Hunt had given her the space to do it.

Michael turned to her now, a triumphant look on his face. He pointed to the bed and Suzie crawled gratefully up the length of the mattress until her head hit the pillow. Those three broken hours of sleep she'd had the night before had finally caught up to her and she knew her eyelids would not remain open for much longer. Michael settled in behind her, his familiar weight fitting against her curves, his arm tossed possessively over her hip, for a late-afternoon nap. Suzie drifted off to sleep listening to the sounds of her husband and son snuffling every so often in their sleep, and realized that if she could freeze a moment in time this would be it.

Suzie finally agreed
to meet her father. Ignoring him was taking too much effort. The calls and the gifts that went unanswered and returned, the silence from her mother. She had told herself she was past caring, but then she looked at Leo. She wanted to be able to tell him one day that she allowed him to give her father a chance. That she didn't make that choice for him. She wasn't sure how far she would be able to take it, but, as she had told Michael, she was just going to commit to this one time. Michael had hugged her for a long time after she had told him that, and she knew without his saying anything that he was thinking of his own father.

She pushed Leo in his stroller, expertly navigating the lunch crowd perched on benches, swan necks bent over their cell phones, around to the boathouse in Central Park. At first she couldn't find him. It had been years; the last time in her
mother's hospital room, and that time, like most times, anger and exhaustion had colored her impression of him. When she saw him standing by the water in a dark jacket he looked shorter and older, his full head of bushy hair now almost entirely silver. From the hunch of his shoulders he gave off an air of defeat. At one time that would have given Suzie a great deal of satisfaction, but now she just felt sad and tired.

Her father smiled as he walked toward them. When Suzie stopped he knelt down in front of the stroller and stared for a long time. Suzie pulled back the hood and fumbled with the blankets around Leo's sleeping face.

Her father stood slowly. “What a man. What a fine little man, Suzie. Mazel tov.”

Suzie nodded, unable to say anything. Her father sounded like his father, a man who had died when Suzie was nine. Her grandfather's speech had been liberally sprinkled with Yiddish phrases, and to him she had always been his little bird, his
faigelah,
as he called her. From the few times she had visited his apartment in Brooklyn she recalled the peculiar odor of boiled eggs and fish—that and her father's disdain for her grandfather's refusal to give up his old world ways, which Suzie assumed now meant his religious traditions.

“Was there a bris?”

Suzie shook her head. “Circumcision in the hospital.”

“Of course,” her father said quickly as he shoved his hands in his pockets. Leo, waking up, made a little squawking noise, and Suzie's father said, “Would it be easier to walk?”

Grateful for something to do, Suzie pushed ahead without answering. Her father caught up to her left elbow. “How is Michael? His job must be challenging, especially with a new son at home.”

“He's a wonderful father,” Suzie snapped.

“I wouldn't expect any less, Suzie Q.”

Suzie flinched at his use of her nickname. Her heart was racing. She needed to take a breath and calm down. “It's, you know, hard right now. We always feel tired and never feel like there's enough time. But we both know this will pass soon enough. I return to work next week.”

“I see.”

“Did you think I was going to give up being a doctor?”

“Not at all. I know how hard you worked.”

“You do?”

“Your mother talks about you. And I know you, Suzie. You are my child. You have my work ethic.”