“Well, if you’re sure.” Jake gets up gingerly from his air mattress and pads down the hallway on socked feet, his steps no louder than a whisper.
I look up at the constellations and remember the times that Lynda and I used to lie in the grass and look up at the stars. “I miss you,” I say to her in my head.
Then I roll over and prepare for sleep, sandwiched between my two girls. I’m pretty sure I’ll wake up with Kerry-Anne’s foot in my face and a toe up my nose, but it’ll be worth it.
12
Bess
I’m startled awake when I hear knocking on the front door. “What’s wrong?” I ask from where I was sleeping on the couch as Eli walks by me and looks through the window.
“It’s Mr. Jacobson,” he says quietly.
He opens the door and Mr. Jacobson whispers vehemently, “It woke up!”
“What woke up?”
“The little one,” he says.
Eli scratches his head. “Which little one?”
“The little…baby Aaron one,” Mr. Jacobson says, obviously too flustered to remember.
“Miles?” Eli supplies as he tries to rub the sleep from his eyes.
“Yeah, that one,” Mr. Jacobson clarifies. “I volunteered to watch it while it slept, but it didn’t follow the rules. It woke up.”
Eli chuckles. “Babies have a tendency to do that.”
“Well, come and get it.” He motions for Eli to follow him.
“Where’s Aaron?” Eli asks.
“He’s up at the house sleeping in the fort.”
“And he left you to babysit?”
“Shut your trap and come on.” He motions again for Eli to follow him, and Eli slips his feet into the shoes he’d left by the door and he follows him into the yard.
I get my shoes and follow too. “How did you end up babysitting?” I ask.
“Stop asking stupid questions,” Mr. Jacobson says. So I shut my trap too and stay quiet. We all traipse across to Aaron’s cabin.
I can hear babbling from the bedroom, so I follow Eli in that direction. Eli walks across the room and stares into the portable crib. Miles is lying there talking to himself. “He’s not even crying,” Eli says.
“Yeah, well, how was I supposed to know what he’d do next, huh?” Mr. Jacobson asks caustically. “One minute I was asleep in that very comfortable rocker over there and the next it was talking to me from the crib.”
“Did you call Aaron?” I ask.
“Why would I do that?” Mr. Jacobson rubs the top of his head. “You two were right next door.”
Eli chuckles as I stand there. I’m sure I look dumbfounded, because I really am. Neither Eli nor I know anything about babies. But Eli reaches into the crib and lifts Miles out. He makes a snorting sound when Miles grabs his nose. Eli carries him to the dresser that Aaron has set up like a changing table. He lays him gently on the fabric pad and starts to change him.
“Where’d you learn to do that?” I ask in awe.
“Gabby taught me this morning,” he says. “It’s not that hard.”
“I like them when they’re big enough to wipe their own asses,” Mr. Jacobson says. He motions toward the baby. “When they’re this size, I don’t know what to do with them.” He grumbles low under his breath. “I like them more when they’re asleep.”
“He’s just hungry. Aaron said he fell asleep before he had his bottle.” Eli carries him to the kitchen where he pulls a clean bottle from the drying rack on the counter, fills it with water from a jug on the counter that has a picture of a baby on it, and he adds a couple of scoops of formula to the water.”
“Who are you?” I whisper to him.
He laughs. “Tonight, I’m a baby whisperer. Tomorrow, a shack cleaner-outer. I am a man of many talents.”
“Well, if you two have this under control, I’m going to bed.” Mr. Jacobson spins toward the door.
“What?” I turn around to ask what he means, but he’s already out the front door, closing it loudly behind him. I hear his golf cart start up.
“What time is it?” Eli asks, as he sits down in a kitchen chair with Miles in his arms. His voice isn’t much more than a whisper. He tilts Miles back and sticks the nipple of the bottle in his tiny mouth, and Miles settles peacefully into his arms.
I glance at my watch. “It’s almost two thirty. Should we go and get Aaron?”
“No need,” Eli says. “He’ll go back to sleep after he’s fed.”
“But who’s going to sit with him?”
Eli shrugs, jostling Miles a little in his arms. “I will.” He looks up at me. “You can go back to bed.”
“Well, I’m awake now.” I pace from one side of the kitchen to the other. “Are you sure we don’t need to go get Aaron?”
“Aaron needs his rest.” He rocks slowly back and forth as Miles finishes his bottle. “He had a tough day, from what I heard.”
I sit down in a chair next to Eli. “He was pretty sick when we got home.”
“He never did eat anything.”
“I know, but he drank a few juice pouches. I kept giving them to him because he seemed to tolerate them well.”
“How was he during the treatment?”
Eli and I haven’t said this many words to one another in months. It feels strange. But not unpleasant. And that, in itself, is strange.
I shrug. “He was Aaron.”
“That good, huh?” Eli chuckles.
“He wanted to reminisce,” I admit. Then I want to bite it back as soon as I say it.
“About what?” I can see his face in the light from the window, and I know he’s wearing a soft smile. I used to love that smile. I never see it anymore.
“Old times,” I say. I shrug again. “Nothing important.”
“Like what?” he insists.
I’m not going to get out of this, so I say, “The skee ball game. The leader board, and that day that you knocked my top score off the board.”
“The day we met,” he says softly.
“Yeah.”
“Best day of my life,” he says. That smile doesn’t fade.
My heart starts to ache. Those days are gone. They’ve been gone. I jump to my feet. “If you’re okay here, I’m going to go back to bed.” I don’t wait.
I hear him say, “Okay, Bess,” very softly from behind me as I close the door.
I stand outside the door of Aaron’s cabin and try to catch my breath. I don’t want to reminisce about good times with Eli. Because the bad times far outshine the good. I go back to our cabin and go to the bed, getting in on my side. I might as well use the bed since Eli’s not here.
The bed smells like Eli does after a shower, and I stick my nose into the edge of his pillow and inhale deeply. Eli’s soap smells like a mix of citrus and mint, with something woodsy added to it. I used to love that smell. Now, it just hurts.
It’s a long time before I fall back asleep.
13