Authors: Kerry Reichs
At 4:58
PM
he broke down. There was no answer at her home number, not even the usual machine. At 5:11
PM
he let it ring thirty times.
“Something wrong with your car, Wyatt?” Paul Kelly was not going green.
“Waiting on a ride.”
“I won’t invite you for a beer then.” He winked. “But I want the details on poker night.” With a wave, the small-framed detention master headed to his car.
Minutes turned to quarter hours. All pretenses at diverting himself abandoned, Wyatt stared at every car driving close to the school entrance, most continuing on by. There was a wave of activity around 5:30
PM
as athletes and coaches left the fields and headed home. Still Wyatt sat.
Wyatt rarely got drunk, but he periodically had moments that felt like being drunk. This was one of them. It
was
today that he’d spoken to Ilana? He checked the calendar on his phone. Yes, there it was. She
had
said between three and four thirty? Yes, he was certain she had. They
had
agreed to meet at the school? It went on and on, Wyatt dissecting every nuance of their conversation to see if he’d forgotten or misunderstood any element.
By five forty-five most doctors’ offices were closed. It was unmistakable that Ilana wasn’t coming. Wyatt was crushed, and irritated at the burning behind his eyes. Some days he swore he was pregnant too, emotions uncharacteristically at the surface. He focused on the positive. His absence didn’t change the outcome. Ilana would have the full evaluation, not just sex, but also heart, brain, kidneys, stomach, and bones. There would be sonogram images. She’d tell him all about it and it would be like being there.
At 5:59
PM
he accepted defeat and dialed his cousin Eva.
E
va smiled fondly at her cousin as he slid into the car. It was always amusing to watch Wyatt fold his proper frame into the MINI Cooper convertible.
“Top down okay?”
“Definitely. You look pretty.” He complimented her, even though she could tell something was on his mind.
Eva was the epitome of “pretty,” a china doll with wide blue eyes, natural platinum hair, and delicate features. To Eva, being pretty wasn’t anything to be cocky about. It was more of a relief. Life seemed harder for people who weren’t pretty. Pretty wasted less time fussing and got out the door quicker. That’s what mattered to Eva.
One of the things Eva liked about Wyatt was that while he never failed to give her compliments, her looks had nothing to do with his approval. To Eva, Wyatt was the kind of family that was both born and created—they were first cousins, stepping up for each other in the void of siblings. Wyatt was her emergency contact, her support system.
“Nice elbow patches. Rooting in the seventies portion of the closet today?”
“Nice skirt. Where’s the rest of it?”
“You are your mother’s son.” Eva had thought that gingham dresses only happened in pioneer stories for girls until she’d visited her aunt in Minnesota. Her own mother, the vivid, wild-haired Cynthia, had run away from the farm to dance in L.A. when she was seventeen.
“Nice air freshener,” Wyatt said. A pine-scented Chuck Norris was dangling from Eva’s rearview mirror. Chuck Norris was Eva’s hero. “It’s like a five-dollar security system.”
“If Chuck Norris has five dollars and you have five dollars, Chuck Norris has more money than you,” Eva said.
“If I had a million bucks and Chuck Norris had a wooden nickel, he’d have more money than me,” Wyatt said.
“What happened?”
“Ilana was supposed to pick me up for the twenty-week sonogram appointment but never showed.” Worry threaded his voice.
“That woman needs to join the twenty-first century and get a cell phone.” Eva hadn’t taken to Ilana.
Wyatt stared distractedly out the window.
“Let’s go by the doctor’s office,” Eva offered. “I’ve got time before dinner.” She didn’t, but Bryan would understand.
“I don’t know where it is.” Wyatt sighed. “You’d better take me home.”
“Why don’t you come to dinner with us?” Eva didn’t want to leave Wyatt alone to brood. He was a brooder. “Bryan won’t mind.” Bryan would totally mind.
“I appreciate the offer, but you know I’m going to brood, so you might as well take me home to get on with it.” Wyatt smiled at her, fatigue in his face.
“Promise you’ll at least pretend to watch
Top Chef
?”
“Promise.”
Eva pulled up in front of Wyatt’s. “Call me tomorrow and let me know what happened,” she demanded.
“There’ll be some nail-biting tension about plating on time and a chef will be eliminated.” Wyatt clambered inelegantly from the coupe. “Prying myself from that tin can is going to give me a heart attack someday.”
“Chuck Norris will never have a heart attack. His heart isn’t foolish enough to attack him.” Eva waved as she pulled away.
Fifteen minutes later, Eva joined her date on the patio at Gaucho Grill.
“Sorry I’m late. Wyatt needed a ride.” She grabbed a piece of calamari and ignored Bryan’s disapproving look. “Mmmmm.”
“How does Wyatt manage when you’re not fussing over him?”
Eva ignored Bryan’s tone. “He drives his car, silly. His baby mama was supposed to pick him up today, but she no-showed.”
“Baby mama?”
“He’s adopting.”
“I didn’t think Wyatt was married. What would you like to drink?” The waiter stood by.
“White Rioja, please. He isn’t.”
Bryan frowned. “Is he gay?”
“No. Why would you ask that?”
“I never heard of a straight guy wanting a kid on his own.”
“Why should a straight guy be any different from a gay guy or a woman?”
Bryan looked uncomfortable. “I don’t know. Why doesn’t he get married?”
“He hasn’t met the right woman.”
“Isn’t he fifty?”
“Almost.”
“And he never found a woman?”
Eva thought Bryan was being a little holy for a single guy pushing forty. “He dated someone for ten years, but she waffled on the kid thing. Eventually she decided no kids. He wants one.” Wyatt’s words at the time had stayed with Eva:
I was shocked to find myself alone, then I was shocked to find how easy it was
.
“I never heard of a straight man adopting before,” Bryan repeated. “It’s weird.”
Eva controlled her irritation. “Don’t you think men have paternal urges?”
“No,” Bryan said. “That’s why women make the babies.”
“There are lots of single dads.”
“Those are their own kids. They aren’t adopting strangers’ kids.”
“Why is adopting normal for single women or gay men, but not straight guys? You don’t give men much credit.”
“I don’t know.” Bryan looked uncomfortable. “It seems odd. Pervy.”
Eva snorted. “Society sends some pretty mixed messages. We want men involved with our children, but if they’re too into it, they must be perverts.”
“Look at that guy in San Diego with the kid in his basement.”
“You think any straight man left alone with a child not of his loins will lock them in the basement and do something terrible?”
“I—”
“Do you think all priests are pedophiles?” Eva pressed.
“Of course not. Priests who molest children are criminals.”
“Did your sixth-grade math teacher want to give you special lessons? Your swim coach? Your Boy Scout troop leader?”
“No.”
“But you think adult men left unattended around children want to commit lewd acts?”
“This argument is ridiculous.”
“Your reaction is ridiculous. You’re saying a man can only be alone with his children if he can go home after hiking or Indian Guides and fuck his wife.”
“I’m not saying that at all.” Bryan gave her a leer. “But after I take our kids to Indian Guides,
I’m
going to want to come home and fuck my wife.”
“It’ll have to be after golf with your buddies. You know I don’t want kids.”
“You
didn’t
want kids,” he corrected. “But we’re in a relationship now.”
“I don’t
ever
want kids,” Eva assured him. “Snot and mashed peas and bed-wetting. Ugh.”
Bryan wasn’t laughing. “You don’t mean that.”
“My name is Eva but I’m no Eve.”
“You don’t like apples?”
“I don’t want to be the mother of humanity.”
A furrow creased Bryan’s forehead.
Eva tried to explain. “Kids change you. I was raised by a single mom and I had a wonderful childhood. She was dazzling and creative and vivid. Having kids ruined that.”
“You were her kid,” Bryan pointed out.
Recalling Cyn Lytton, she tried to explain. “My mother was flamboyant and crazy, like Auntie Mame. Her nickname was ‘the Original Cyn,’ and she named me Eva because I came from playing with the snake in the garden while naked. She didn’t change for me, she popped me in her purse and took me along like a toy poodle. I don’t think you could get away with her style of guardianship today.”
“It must’ve agreed with her. She went back for another bite at that apple.”
It
hadn’t
agreed with her. “When she married, her husband talked her into more kids. He wasn’t a bad guy, and didn’t want to make her a different person, but it changed her.” She didn’t mention the smothering depression. “I don’t want that. I like the way I am now. I love my job. I love being able to travel and eat out without permission. I like owning nice things.”
“You don’t decide not to have kids because you don’t want to break a vase,” Brian voiced disbelief.
“Being a mother means giving up some of yourself because you want something else more. If you don’t, the sacrifices would be misery. I don’t have an urge for children strong enough to justify the sacrifices. I’d resent it.”
“That’ll change when you get married,” Bryan persisted.
Eva opened her mouth, but he held up a finger in an annoying way. “
All
women want kids eventually, even if they say they don’t. They only pretend they don’t want them in case it doesn’t happen.” His smile was infuriating.
Eva realized her fingers were clenching the edge of the table. She forced her grip to relax. “Bryan, I told you when we met that I didn’t want kids.”
“I didn’t think you meant it.”
Eva’s blood pressure thrummed. “Why would I say something I didn’t mean?”
“So you wouldn’t scare me off? I thought you were waiting until the right time.”
“There will be no right time.”
Bryan considered her. He reached across the table to take her hand. “I could be happy with one.” He smiled. “If she looked like you.”
For a moment, Eva was uncertain. Then she thought of her mother.
“It’s not a negotiation.” She wondered what exactly she was turning down.
Bryan’s face hardened. “I want kids and you want none and so it’s none? That doesn’t sound like much of a negotiation to me.”
“You can’t bargain the kid thing. It’s not a summer vacation.”
“All I see is someone too selfish to think of anything but herself. Travel? Nice things? Instead of having children?”
“Maybe I’m selfish, but I like myself just as I am. I have a successful career. I stay in shape. I don’t want to lose that.”
“You’re not a natural woman.”
His words shocked the breath out of her.
The waiter approached. “Are you ready to order some dinner?”
“No.” Bryan stood abruptly. “I think we’re done here.” He looked at Eva as if he wanted to say something. Then he shook his head and walked away, leaving her gaping in her chair.
The waiter looked uncomfortable. “I’ll bring the check,” he finally said as Bryan disappeared.
“Wait.” Eva was stunned. She had to get control of this situation. “I’ll have the Lomo steak. Medium.” The waiter looked surprised but nodded.
She would eat. There was nothing in her pantry and she was starving. There was nothing she could do about Bryan. What would be the point? It would only postpone the inevitable.
The waiter delivered her steak.
“Thanks,” Eva said. “You know, when Bruce Banner gets mad, he turns into the Hulk. When the Hulk gets mad, he turns into Chuck Norris.”
“What happens when gorgeous blondes get mad?” he asked.
“Steak for one,” she answered, digging in.
Eva drove home with the top down to enjoy the warm air. It smelled like wisteria. She heard a siren and saw flashing red lights and pulled over to let an extension-ladder fire truck barrel past. It was hard to believe someone’s house was on fire on such a beautiful evening. It reminded her of that morbid ladybug poem:
Ladybug! Ladybug! Fly away home. Your house is on fire. And your children all gone.
Just another reason not to have kids.