“If I don’t have to baby you,” I said, “I can’t think why else I’d have been put on earth.”
The minute the words were out of my mouth, I wished them back, but Karen said, “Why would you have to baby Hope?”
I looked at Hope, but all she said was, “You didn’t tell her? I would have, but I thought you should know first.”
“Tell me what?” Karen asked. “I wish somebody would tell me something. Hello? I’m sixteen, not ten?”
“I’m pregnant,” Hope said, and I saw her take a deep breath as if the word had scared her.
Karen was saying, “Get out. So that’s why you’ve been so weird,” but I barely heard her. I took Hope’s hand instead.
She stopped, right there in the chill of the meat aisle, looking all her questions at me, and the tenderness was squeezing my heart so hard, it nearly hurt. I said, “I’ve never told you how I’d feel about that. I should have done. I’m over the moon. I’m . . .”
I was the one who had to stop then. Harden up, boy, I told myself, but I couldn’t. I was choking up instead, and somehow, the tears had risen again, were waiting just behind my eyes.
Koro in hospital, and Hope growing our baby. The worst thing, and the best. All I could do was reach for her, and all she could do was come to me. I was still holding the plastic basket in one hand, but the other arm was around her, and I was kissing her hair, holding her to me, and thinking . . . I couldn’t have said what. Thinking nothing. Feeling everything.
Karen said from behind me, “Whenever you’re done, could I hug my sister? Because I’m going to be an aunt. How great is that?’
I let go of Hope and stepped away, and Hope hugged Karen, and Karen said, “I’d ask how come being pregnant meant you left, because that seems totally stupid to me. Not to mention why you didn’t tell me. I would, except it would end up with me having to go away again so you guys could have a Big Important Angsty Talk. I’m probably too old to go on the horsey ride in front of the store, and there’s nothing else to do here except read magazines about celebrities I never heard of. Plus, I’m hungry.”
Hope laughed, though I could tell her own tears weren’t far away, and said, “I’ve missed you too, sweetie. Let’s go home and cook dinner.”
We didn’t go for a walk after all that night, and we didn’t have a chat, either. We cooked a quick dinner and ate it, and Karen told Hope about her upcoming driving lessons, and Hope smiled and asked questions, and I considered mentioning Noah the Buddhist but decided it could wait until tomorrow, along with everything else. And I thought about how good it felt to eat dinner with them, and how little I’d done it back in New York.
Hope and I did the washing up, because Koro’d never taken to the idea of a dishwasher, and when we were done, Hope said, “I’m sorry, guys, but I think I’m going to have to take a shower and go to bed. Jet lag, I guess.”
“Too bad you didn’t come in Hemi’s jet,” Karen said. “Those seats fold down into beds, did you know that? It’s like being a rich person. Oh, wait. It is being a rich person.”
“Mm,” Hope said. She looked at me, hesitated, then said, “I don’t know if there are sheets on Karen’s bed. And I wonder . . . I hope . . .”
“Karen can take care of her own sheets,” I said, and my heart had started to hammer. “She’s sixteen, not ten, eh, Karen.”
“Yeah,” Karen said. “And I guess I’m going to go watch TV and read a book. Not that there’s anything to watch. New Zealand seriously needs to get some better channels.”
“You could just read instead,” Hope said.
“Too boring,” Karen said. “Multitasking is my life.”
When she was gone, I looked at Hope and said, “You wonder what?”
Easy, boy, I told myself. Don’t rush her. Don’t push her. Even though self-control had never come harder.
“I know I left,” she said slowly. She’d been looking at the tea towel in her hands, folding and refolding it, but now, she looked straight at me. “I was right to leave. I know that, too. But I still want to sleep with you. It would feel so much better, even though I should be too tired to care. I’m too tired for sex, and I know you probably want it, and that you’re so angry at me for leaving. But from now on, I’m going to try much harder to tell you what I feel and what I need, and it seems . . .” She stopped and laughed a little, trying to make it lighter, to make herself less vulnerable, and hung the towel carefully over its rack. “It seems what I need most is to fall asleep with you holding me. So I’m asking for it.”
I had one chance here. I was going to get it right. “From now on,” I said, “I’m going to try much harder to listen. Go take your shower, baby. I’ll come hold you.”
While she was in the bathroom, I unpacked my things into the bedroom that had been the site of my most lurid teenage fantasies, not to mention some sex with Hope that had exceeded anything I could have imagined. Tonight, I was going to get none of that, and I didn’t care.
She came into the bedroom again wearing a pair of pink pajamas and looking about sixteen herself, and I didn’t kiss her, hard as it was not to do it. I was pretty sure we weren’t there yet. Instead, I said, “I need a shower myself. Now, you see, if I’d been a billionaire, I’d have one on my jet. With gold taps, eh.” Which made her laugh and lose some of the tension, and I smiled at her and said, “Five minutes.”
I normally didn’t wear anything to bed. Tonight, I did. I took the world’s fastest shower, then pulled on a pair of black sleep pants. I could hear the TV in the lounge when I came out of the bathroom, and I hesitated, then headed in there and told Karen, “Don’t stay up too late. We’ll be off to see Koro first thing in the morning.”
She looked up from her program and her book, both of which she was somehow taking in, and said, “Thanks for bringing me. I kind of needed to come, you know?”
For once, she didn’t sound stroppy. I bent and kissed her forehead. “I kind of needed you to come myself. It’s better for us all to be together.”
“Do you think you can make it up with Hope?” she asked.
“I’ll die trying.” Once again, the words were out before I could recall them. “Starting now. Good night, sweetheart. Sleep well.”
When I got back to the bedroom, the dim light on my side of the bed was the only one on, and Hope was curled up under the covers. I thought she was asleep already, but she turned when I came in and said, “I should have kissed Karen goodnight. I should have told her how glad I was to see her.”
“Never mind.” I came over to sit on the bed beside her and brushed the hair back from her cheek. “Tomorrow’s soon enough. Besides, I did it. Told her I was glad she came, and kissed her goodnight as well.”
“Oh.” She sighed under my hand. “Good.”
“Bit hard,” I guessed, “to juggle everybody. To pay enough attention to everyone you love. Koro. Karen. Me. Even the baby, eh. Could be you lose yourself a bit in all of that.”
“Now,” she said, “if you get that, why do you have to be so unreasonable?”