Full of Grace (21 page)

I write a note to the baby in Sher’s stomach.

Dear Baby, 

I don’t know you, but I think of you all the time.  Let me tell you what I know about your mother.  She has a giggle that will make you laugh and will drive you insane.  She’s got an amazing sense of humor.  Ask her about the monkey tattoo on her thigh someday.  Ask her how she got a dance lesson from a scary Warrior Princess.

I have fallen in love with her and…

My pen gets stuck. I don’t know if I should write that.  Maybe I’m jumping the gun.  I’m totally attracted and I might even go so far as to say I’m completely intrigued, but love is a big order.  It’s only been a few weeks.

I revise the note, leaving out the mushy part, and print it.  I stick it in my briefcase with a sigh. 

I call O.C., but it goes directly to voice mail.  I leave him a message, “Hey buddy, it’s Land.  Just wanted to talk with you real quick.  Give me a call back when you get this.”

He doesn’t.

I go back to the stack of work on my desk.  I make ridiculous errors, spill my fifth cup of coffee all over my desk, and finally give up and call Sher.

“Yello,” she answers on the first ring.  The entire office drains away and I smile into the phone.

“How are you doing, Mama?”

There’s a pause on her end, but then she picks right up.

“After that weekend?  What do you think?  I’m glad you had to go to work.  The hobbit needs some time to hibernate.”

I cross the room and close my office door.  “Sore?”

“Ya think?” she giggles.  I smile.  I did that.  I sit back down, swinging my chair from side to side with my foot on the edge of an open desk drawer.  I have to ease into this next question carefully.

“So what are your plans today?”

“Looks like a judge show on TV right now.  But who knows?  Maybe later I’ll catch a rerun of the circus…that talk show where they always end up beating each other.”

“No soap operas?”

“Detest,” she answers simply.  The conversation idles and I’m desperate to keep her talking, partly so I know where she is and mostly so I don’t have to hang up and concentrate on anything else.

“Where do you want to go out for dinner tonight?”  I ask.

“Out?”  she says.

“Where else would we get dinner?”

She giggles.  “In the stove.  Seriously, Landon.  I don’t understand why you even own a kitchen table.”

“Me either.”

“Well, now you’ve got a…” she pauses, searching for a word.  She finally finds one.  “A
woman
to support.  You can’t go spending all your money on dinner out when I can make it at home for a quarter of the price.”

“You really are cheap, aren’t you?”  I laugh.

“I’m not a fool with money, that’s for sure,” she says with her own giggle.  “Get back to work.  Make bacon.  I have things to do.”

I pause my chair in mid-swing.  I try not to sound like an accusing bastard when I ask, “Like what?”

But Sher just bubbles a beautiful string of giggles into the phone.

“I already told you!  I have a whole day of TV ahead of me and you’re putting me behind.  Go do important things!”

***

Sher’s a liar.  She was not watching TV all day.  It’s even obvious as I walk up the steps to my place.  The smell wafting from my apartment is like a red carpet to a starving man.  A neighbor I never talk to comments on it as she passes me on the stairs.

“Somebody’s cooking something really good,” she says.

“Sure are,” I nod.  I can’t help but smile.  The smell of something incredibly delicious gets stronger as I slide my key in the lock.  I open the door and the amazing scent of dinner pounds me in the taste buds.  I swallow down the drool as I drop my keys on the coffee table.

It’s not just dinner that’s kept Sher busy.  My entire place is sparkling.  I follow the vacuum lines that branch off into the bedroom.  My dust has been replaced with clean shelves.  The bed is made.  I leave my briefcase beside my closet and tuck away the new baby note in the closet file.  I emerge from the bedroom and notice a bucket and mop leaning against the wall outside the bathroom.

Sher’s no where to be found.  There’s something bubbling in a familiar pot on the stove and there is browned garlic bread on top of the stove.  There are cookies heaped on a plate. 

She’s hijacked my apartment and redecorated it with paradise.

Sher walks in the front door with an empty plate in her hands.

“Hi!” she says.

“Where have you been?”  I ask.  “You were lying when you said you were hanging out and watching TV.”

“What’d you think I was going to do?  Sit around and eat ice cream without you?  That’d be a waste.  I told you I wasn’t going to live like this.  I made cookies and gave them to your neighbor with all the kids.”

“I have a neighbor with kids?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sher rolls her eyes, depositing the dish in the sink.  “And I’ve been de-pigging your pig hole all day. I haven’t even gotten to your closet yet.  That’s going to take weeks to sort out.”

“You did an incredible job.  I hardly recognize the place.”

“Well, I have a question for you.” She smirks, leaning on the counter.  “When you pee—do you aim?  Like,
at all
?  Ever?”

“I do my absolute best to hit the sink.”

“That’s exactly what I thought,” she giggles. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving, after I smelled what you were making all the way down the stairs.  And so are all the neighbors. One of them actually commented on it.”

“Was it the guy from upstairs?”

“It was a woman.  I have no idea who she was.  No one’s ever talked to me around here before.  You’re cooking is like the pied piper’s flute to the neighbors.”

“It’s only spaghetti and meat balls.”  She rolls her eyes.  She opens a cupboard and gets out dishes.  I suck up the incredible smells again as she lifts the lid on the bubbling pot and stirs the sauce inside.

“Where’d you get the mop?”

“I used Trent’s money.  I figured it should be used to clean up some mess.”

“Good thinking,” I say as she hands me a plate of Heaven.  “Very good.”

All the signs indicate she’s not thinkin of doing anything crazy, being as she was still here when I got home, seems to be settling in, and seems to have spent Hook-and-Lure’s entire guilt fund on food and cleaning supplies.

“I’ll leave you some cash for groceries,” I tell her.  “If you can do this with fifty bucks?  I’ll leave you a couple hundred.”

“You just want to throw your money away every chance you get, don’t you?  Fifty is plenty.  I got enough for the rest of this week.”

We sit down to eat.  The spaghetti tastes better than any restaurant I’ve ever been to, and it doesn’t stop there.  Sher’s got a salad to go along with it and the garlic bread.  She giggles every time I take a bite and close my eyes to moan my approval.  I haven’t had a homemade dinner since I lived at my mom’s.

I stuff myself.  And then, she gives me cookies.  Another thing I haven’t had since I lived at home.  I close my eyes as I chew and suddenly, Sher’s lips are on the tip of my nose.  I open my eyes and pull her into my lap.

“Thank you,” she says.

“For what?”

“For closing your eyes and going,
mmm mmm,
” she says.

I kiss her.  And the whole time, I hum,
mmm mmm mmm.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

THE NEXT DAY IS THE SAME THING.  And for the next three days, I come home to a clean house and the smell of food that saturates the stairs and has neighbors I’ve never met, joking with me about joining us for dinner.  I’ve learned that there is a single mother, below us, named Starla. Sher makes cookies for her kids every other day and found out that the family has a problem with their bathroom pipes.  The man next door is named John, a divorced dad who has his kids on weekends.  Sher brought him some left over lasagna from the huge dish she made and suggested that he might be able to lend Starla a hand with her pipes, since the Super has his hands full already.

While I’m at work, Sher cleans and cooks and plays matchmaker with our neighbors. 
Our. 
The plural occurs to me fifty times a day, it seems, but I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.  I keep worrying over what Sher planned to do once we got home from the cottage and if she’s done it yet or plans to do it soon.  I especially panic when she doesn’t answer her phone, but she always assures me she’s sleeping or she just went out to get something she needed for dinner.

I call Oscar a few more times and leave increasingly urgent messages, worrying about why he isn’t calling back, but then on Friday afternoon, he finally turns up.  I answer his call on the first ring.

“Holy shit, I was about to call in the FBI,” I say.  “Where’ve you been?”

“I know it, I’ve been meaning to call you back.”  O.C. says.  He’s got that wince in his voice, the one he has when he doesn’t want to say whatever he needs to say.

“Everything’s fine,” he says instead.  “Just insanely busy.  Anything new with you?”

“New?  Not really.  Thanks for letting us crash at your cottage.  I think it helped us sort some stuff out.”

“Glad to hear it,” he says with a tightness in his tone.

“Yeah, I think she’s having the baby no matter what…”

“Hey, I hate to cut you short,” he says suddenly, “but I’ve got to jump on something here.”

“No sweat.  I’ll catch you later.”

“Sounds good,” he says and he’s gone.  That’s a little weird.  He’s acting sketchy and I just hope things are going okay with him and Hale.

***

On Saturday, Sher and I sleep in.  I’m still up first and after I’ve showered and changed, I sit on the edge of the bed and give Gina a call.

“Don’t you know it’s Saturday?”  Her voice is hoarse.  She’s obviously still stuffed beneath the sheets.

“It’s ten, Sunshine.  Time to get up.”

“I was the one that told mom to drown you in the tub when you were born.  I wasn’t wrong to ask.”

“Look, do you want to meet Sher or not?  I was thinking we could meet at the Coney at noon.”

“One,” she grumbles.

“Alright, one.”

“Now leave me alone,” she says and hangs up.  Sher rubs her foot on my thigh.

“What are we doing?” 
We.

“I thought we’d go meet my sister, Gina, for lunch.”

Sher sits up, pushing the hair back from her face. “You know, I might not have a huge agenda, but you should really ask before you make plans for me.  You’re not my sugar daddy, you know.  Well, you are, kind of, but you still can’t go ordering me around.”

I put my hand on my thigh, trap her toes, and tickle them.  “You’re right.  Do you want to go have the best chili-cheese hot dogs in the world with my sister?”

“Yes.  Duh.” Sher says, giving my fingers a little kick.  “And you’re paying, since you didn’t ask me right the first time.”

“You and Gina are going to get along great.” I laugh.

“Shut up,” she giggles, pulling her foot away.  I lean over the bed and pin her in place by leaning over her hips.

“I can make you do what I want and it wouldn’t cost me a cent,” I say, pulling the sheets back and dipping my head between her legs.  She giggles, arcing a little off the bed, but I land a kiss on the small rise of her stomach.  Her grin grows into a smile.

“You really are happy about having a baby, aren’t you?” she says.  I flash a smile at her.

“Yeah.”

“Landon,” she props herself up on her elbows.  “What are you going to do if it’s not yours?”

We’ve never really faced that question head on.  At least, not together.  I shrug and leave another kiss on her stomach.

“Wait,” she says, grabbing my hand before I get away from her.  “Answer me.  What happens if it’s not yours?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her.  Her smile disappears and she untangles herself from me.  It’s obvious that I’ve given her the wrong answer.

“Hang on,” I tell her as she collects her clothes from the one drawer she uses in my dresser.  But she doesn’t stop moving and I don’t know what else to say.  What I said was the truth.  I don’t know what will happen to us.  I don’t know if she’ll want to stay, or if she’ll stay because she actually wants to or because she needs to, or if I’ll even want to take it all on.  I don’t know if I’d be able to let her go.

So much of what we are is up in the air.  I might be a father.  We might have a relationship.  We might stay together.  We might not.  I realize that she’s not the only one who needs to get her head straight on what she really wants to do next.  I’m going to have to get off the fence myself.

“Sher,” I say, and she stops before she goes out to the bathroom.  She tries to grin.

“No, Landon, that was a stupid thing to ask.  You don’t even know if this is your kid and you’re being really nice about that.  I shouldn’t have asked what you plan to do when I don’t even know what I’m going to do.  Forget that I asked, okay?”

“I think we…” I begin, but I see how crushed she is by my uncertainty as she goes into the bathroom and closes the door on
we.

***

We’re on our way to the Coney, trying to act like this morning’s bump in the road didn’t eject us from our relationship.  My gut feels like I’ve got a mango pit lodged in it, sideways.  Sher listens to the radio, motionless.  I say that it looks like it’s going to be a nice day.  She agrees.

By the time we reach the Coney, all the fun has gone out of the whole idea of meeting Gina.  I just want to time-travel back to the bedroom, grab Sher’s foot and make love to her again, instead of opening my big mouth at all.

“So this is the famous, Sher,” Gina says, standing up from the booth to shake Sher’s hand.

“Nice to meet you,” Sher says, but Gina frowns as she lets go of Sher’s hand.  Gina, being Gina, knows there’s something up.

“What’s going on here?” she asks, ping-ponging her finger between Sher and me.

“Nothing,” Sher says quickly.  “I’m sorry…I’m just…tired.”