by Amy Frazier
With a chuckle, he stood and pulled her into an embrace. “Now I hear the hormones talking.”
“I’m allowed,” she snuffled into his shirtfront. “For the next seven months I’m allowed.”
“So…can we tell the family?”
“Not yet. Please, not yet.”
Nick worried at her hesitation. Her lack of joy at the prospect of a baby. Maybe she was afraid he felt obligated. Not committed. If so, he’d have to rectify that misconception.
He needed help to convince her, and, for Chessie, he wasn’t afraid to ask for it. From Gabriella and Isabel. And from the rest of the McCabes. If they were going to raise another child, he needed to call in the tag-team.
IT TOOK HIM a couple days to set the stage, and as the plan unfolded in his mind, he wondered if it might be too over-the-top. But watching Chessie retreat into silence, taking long walks alone, he felt certain what he had in mind would show her he could think outside a buttoned-down world and give her what support and intimacy she needed.
On Friday he announced he’d asked Brad and Emily if Chessie and he could “borrow” one-year-old Eric for a day to get reacquainted with a baby.
Well, tomorrow was here. A rainy, gray Saturday that could not have suited his plan more if he’d been able to special order it. He’d make sure Chessie took her vitamins.
Before she awoke, he was downstairs collaborating on the final few details with Gabriella and Isabel. The girls took off as he readied a breakfast tray of tea and toast for Chessie.
When he re-entered their bedroom, she rolled over and opened one eye. “What’s the occasion?” she asked, indicating the tray.
“We have a minute alone. I thought we could enjoy the peace and quiet.”
She propped herself up against her pillows, and he sat on his side of the bed, carefully placing the tray between them.
“Thank you.” She nibbled on a slice of toast.
It hit him that they weren’t alone, hadn’t been for the past few days even when they were the only two people in the house. With the prospect of a baby looming over their heads, the room actually felt crowded. By the end of the day he hoped they’d be able to get back to the two of them. For a few moments at least.
“So, when is Emily bringing Eric over?” she asked.
“Any time now. I told her we’d like a whole day’s experience.”
She offered him a tentative smile. “You know, when you mentioned this idea last night, I thought you were crazy. But I’m starting to look forward to the day…especially since we’re doing it together.”
“It looks as if it’s just you, me and Eric, kid. Mariah called Izzy earlier. I don’t know what that was about. And Gabby’s spending the day in a special dance rehearsal. Seems she’s got to learn some new complicated number by this afternoon.”
He heard Emily’s van pull in the driveway, followed by Pop’s truck. Right on time.
“Our refresher course is here,” he said, standing. “I’ll go down to meet him.”
“Give me a second,” Chessie said, getting out of bed and opening the dresser drawer. “I don’t think the day calls for anything fancier than sweats.”
Truer words were never spoken.
By the time Chessie made it to the kitchen, Nick was balancing a very squirmy Eric on his hip while Alex, Nina, Noah and Olivia chased each other around the first floor. Alex had brought Nick’s junior-high-school trumpet, which she was using liberally to lead the troop charge.
“Eric started walking last week,” Emily said, “and he doesn’t think he needs to be held anymore. He loves to go for a walk, but if this rain keeps up all day, that won’t be an option. Sorry.”
Through the side door Nick could see Pop and Jonas unloading the power tools from their truck to the first floor of the barn. “We’ll be fine, Em. It’s not as if we’re first-time parents.”
“Not at all.” Chessie reached for Eric, held him aloft, then planted a big noisy raspberry on his tummy much to the one-year-old’s delight. Nick didn’t know how she could feel inadequate over having another child. She was a natural mother.
“Okay,” Emily said. “Good luck.”
When she turned to go and the four older children didn’t follow, Chessie shot Nick a questioning look.
“Uh, Em?” he said. “I thought we were going to just watch Eric.”
Emily looked guilty, and for a minute he thought she might not go through with the plan. After all, she was the one who’d told him either Chessie would love his creative effort…or she would divorce him on the spot. But she took a deep breath and said innocently, “Oh, dear, I must have misunderstood. I thought you wanted all the cousins. That’s why I had Alex sleep over. That’s why Brad and I made a date to go to Portland to shop for a new car. I… I suppose we could cancel.”
“Oh, I know how hard it is to find time for just the two of you,” Chessie said as Noah ran by with Nina in hot pursuit. “Isabel doesn’t go to work at the pound until later this afternoon. She can help entertain the older ones. You and Brad go and enjoy the day together.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” Nick said emphatically.
“You won’t have to worry about Eric being bothered by the chaos,” Emily said, backing to the door. “He’s used to it.”
“Chaos,” Chessie murmured as Emily drove off. “Let’s see if we can minimize it.” She put Eric on the floor where he happily toddled right toward the cupboard under the sink. “Find something to secure those doors,” she said, heading for the living room.
“Okay, gang,” Nick heard her say as he grabbed some duct tape off the counter and quickly taped all the Eric-accessible doors shut, “who wants to work with some clay?”
“Me!” came the chorused reply.
“Well, follow the Pied Piper!” Chessie marched out of the living room and through the kitchen. “You can bring Eric,” she said over her shoulder. “I bet he’d love to get squishy.”
Nick scooped up his nephew and joined the end of the line. The only way he could keep the boy from fussing was by “flying” him with all the appropriate noises. This was better than a weight-lifting program.
When they hit the utility room, they could hear the screech of power tools coming from the barn’s lower level. Pop and Jonas stopped when they saw the gang.
“Hey, Chessie!” Pop called out. “Jonas and I had a free morning, and we thought we’d get your shelves up. It’ll be noisy for a few hours, but it shouldn’t be too bad in the house.”
“Actually, we were headed to the loft for a pottery class.”
“You won’t disturb us,” Pop replied with a grin.
A dubious expression on her face, Chessie led the kids upstairs, but no sooner were they settled at a table than the din began in earnest. The power saw’s high-pitched whine could etch glass. Jonas added his own touch by turning up his radio to a favorite heavy metal station. And the hammering— Nick was sure professional carpenters never needed that many strokes per minute—the hammering rocked the rafters.
“We can’t work up here,” Chessie yelled.
“Awwww!” The cousins didn’t seem to mind the noise.
“He said they were only going to work this morning. We can come back this afternoon.” She motioned for everyone to follow her. “Let’s make cookies.”
“Yaaaay!” The cousins were really getting into it.
As they trooped downstairs and back through the gallery, Pop winked at Nick.
No sooner had they settled around the kitchen table than Isabel came through the door with Mariah’s big wet Airedale, Muffin. The cousins shrieked with glee as they rushed to manhandle the dog who stood in the middle of the kitchen and shook rain water all over everyone and everything.
From his perch on Nick’s shoulders, Eric crowed his approval.
“What are you doing with that dog, Isabel?” Chessie was trying to get the cousins corralled.
“Aunt Mariah is getting her apartment painted this weekend. She neede
d a dogsitter. I offered.”
“Well, put him in the utility room,” Chessie ordered. “And all my bakers need to wash their hands. Again.”
As Isabel led Muffin to the utility room, the cousins crowded around the sink, pushing each other in an attempt to be the one to use the spray nozzle. More water got on the countertops and the floor than on their hands.
“Yeowwww!” The caterwaul and hissing from the utility room and the subsequent barking were clear indications Muffin had discovered the cats. Nick handed Eric to Chessie, then went to help Isabel. The cats were both on top of the furnace, and Muffin was straining against the hold Isabel had on his collar.
“He’ll have to come in the kitchen,” Nick said, grabbing an old towel from the rag bag. “He can’t go out in the barn with all those power tools.”
“We’ll put the cousins to work drying him,” Isabel said with a big grin. “That should be fun.”
Oh, it was. The dog loved it. The cousins loved it, especially Eric who crawled all over Muffin, helping dry the dog with his tiny overalls.
“You, mister, are soaking wet,” Nick declared, picking up the baby. “Let’s see if your mom packed you a change of clothes.”
Muffin plopped down under the table and fell asleep.
“Here’s the carry bag,” Chessie said. “You might as well change his diaper while you’re at it. Izzy and I will start the cousins on cookies.”
“Cookies, yum!” Gabriella exclaimed as she burst into the house with three teenagers in tow. “Hey, guys! This is Owen, Grady and Allie. We have to learn a new dance by rehearsal this afternoon, but the quilters are using the Atlantic Hall. I said we could use our living room.”
“Now isn’t a good time,” Chessie protested as she tried to supervise Alex opening a five-pound bag of flour. Nina, Noah, Olivia and Isabel were helping themselves to the chocolate chips.
“We’d do it in the driveway, but it’s raining,” Gabriella explained. “And we really, really have to learn it by two this afternoon.”
“Honey,” Nick said, “we wanted her to get involved in a community project.”
“Okay.” Chessie wiped a smudge of flour from her nose and sneezed. “Far be it for me to stifle creativity.”
As Nick laid Eric on a changing pad on the dining room table, Gabby and her friends headed for the living room where he could hear them pushing back furniture and rolling up the rug. Within minutes the whole house was pulsing to the rhythm of rain on the roof and the music of Grease.
He looked in the kitchen to see Chessie’s reaction. It was a fine line he was walking, and he didn’t want to push her over the edge. But Isabel was helping keep things chaotically fun. She’d started to sing along to the music and had gotten the cousins to join in. Soon their little fannies were waggling to the jitterbug beat as they knelt on their chairs to put their mark on the cookie-making process.
The house sounded like a YMCA on a Saturday and smelled like a kennel.
Isabel boogied into the dining room and picked up Eric, now freshly diapered and sporting a dry pair of overalls. “Ask Mom to dance,” she nearly shouted in his ear.
He needed no further urging.
Coming up behind Chessie, he spun her around and began a bump-and-grind he didn’t know he had in him. The cousins stood on their chairs, applauding. When Chessie threw back her head and laughed, the sound filled Nick’s heart with joy.
If family life was messy, this was the best possible mess.
At noon his plan began to unwind on schedule. Pop and Jonas stopped in to say the shelves were built. A little later Mariah came by to say she’d take Muffin. The “painters never showed.” Kit stopped by not long after to say she’d take the four older cousins off their hands. Midafternoon, Isabel went to work at the lobster pound, and Gabriella and her friends traipsed off to their rehearsal. At three-thirty, Emily came to retrieve Eric.
And then there were two.
With a look of astonishment on her face, Chessie stumbled into the living room and collapsed on the sofa. “What a day!”
Nick sat beside her. “Listen,” he said.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, this is lovely.” With a tremendous smile, she lay back against the sofa cushions and plopped her legs in his lap.
He took off her sneakers and her socks, then began to massage her feet.
“And this is divine!” She closed her eyes.
“It’s nice. Just the two of us.”
She opened one eye. “But for how long?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “If we can sneak only ten minutes for ourselves out of a crazy day does it mean those ten minutes are less intimate than, say, a night out?”
She opened both eyes. “Are you finding a lesson in today?”
“Maybe. Was the experience so bad?”
She laughed. “Actually, it was fun.”
“And now?” He deepened the foot massage.
“This is heaven. Even if the whole gang bursts back in here in five minutes, these two minutes have been worth it.”
“I’m beginning to think intimacy isn’t quantitative. It’s comparative.”
She sat up, her expression suspicious. “Why, Nick, when did you become a philosopher?”
“Well, I—”
Unexpectedly, she straddled his lap and skewered him with those intense hazel eyes. “Or should I say scriptwriter?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Today.” She smiled and there was mischief in the tilt of her head. “Today reminded me of Gabby’s favorite bedtime story when she was little. A man seeks advice on curing the awful noise in his house. Seems the bed squeaks, the floor creaks and the tree branches rustle against his windowpane.” She settled on Nick’s lap in a way she had to know tormented him. It wasn’t a bedtime story he wanted now.
But she continued in mock innocence. “The man was advised to get a cat, a dog, a chicken, a goat, a donkey, a cow and a horse and house them in his bedroom until the chaos nearly drove him crazy. But when he got rid of the livestock, the squeaky bed, the creaky floor and the rustling branch seemed oh, so peaceful.” She tweaked Nick’s nose. “Does that scenario sound familiar, oh, great philosopher?”
“I seem to remember it…”
She pressed her forehead to his. “Did you engineer today?”
“Some people throw laundry out the window to make a point…others create morality plays.”
With a whoop of laughter, she bopped him over the head with a sofa cushion. “That is so unlike you!”
“Did I make my point?”
“Which was…?”
“Actually, Pop reminded me when I talked to him a few days ago about deciding whether I should take that Atlanta job. He told me when things get complicated, clear away the clutter to the essentials.”
“So you thought you’d dramatize the process for me today?”
“Hey,” he brushed a lock of hair behind her ears, “you’re an artist. I thought you’d respond to a demo.”
“You surprise me. Every day.” Her look turned wistful.
“So what’s wrong?”
“Not wrong. But…throughout the chaos today, you were with me. When we have this baby, you’ll still be working six days a week.”
“Not necessarily. I talked to Richard Filmore about getting the board to fund a second assistant principal or administrative assistant. When Eleanor and Hattie heard, they promised to look into federal grant monies to fund what the board couldn’t.” He smiled and felt an old weight lifting from his shoulders. “That got me thinking. I have a highly capable staff. I need to delegate more. That’s my new resolution.”
“Wow.”
“Not only that, Emily gave me a list of reliable teenage babysitters plus the name of an agency that supplies part-time nannies. If you need more time for your work, we can budget.”
“Did Emily ask why you needed this list?”
“To get everyone’s
help, I told them we’d be making a big announcement. Soon. They don’t officially know, but they know. Are you upset?”
She looked at him with love and admiration. “You’ve really thought this through.”
“Like it or not, you and baby McCabe are going to be seeing a lot more of me.”
“So you think you’ll be around for the sticky parts?”
“Many of them.” He crossed his heart. “Promise.”
“You’ll make time for the two of us?”
“Did I not get the entire cast to exit stage left and leave us these few minutes?”
“Dear Lord—” she raised her eyes heavenward “—what else is there to learn about my husband?”
“Chessie, I want us to raise this child together.”
She flung her arms around his neck and hugged him hard. When she looked him in the face, the worry lines across her forehead had disappeared, and her expression was filled with joy.
“So,” he asked, “can we officially tell the family about this new rugrat?”
She grinned. “Give me five more minutes of foot rub, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”
LATER THAT NIGHT Nick came up behind Chessie as she stood by the rain-drenched window and put his strong arms around her. She inhaled his freshly showered scent and thought back to the Fourth of July when she’d stood on this very spot and jettisoned the family laundry. When she’d struck what she’d thought was a blow for separating and distinguishing her wants and needs. How naïve she’d been. Nick had helped her realize that fulfillment came, not from separating ourselves from others, but from finding moments of strong connection to those we love and cherish.
“What’s the status on that no-sex ultimatum?” Nick asked, his voice low and husky in her ear.
“I wasn’t very good at it, was I?” She thought back to her willing participation in the shower days earlier.
“Then why’d you hit me with it? Just curious, in case you ever decide to use that strategy again.”
“I won’t.” She turned in his arms to face him. “I thought I was getting to what was fundamental to a man. To make you sit up and take notice. I’m ashamed to admit I tried to use sex as leverage to focus on me. But I underestimated you. And me. I love the intimacy of married sex. Need it. I nearly cut off my nose to spite my face.”