“Fireflies!” she cried. She hadn’t seen fireflies since she was little, in Ontario visiting her gramma. They didn’t see them in Vancouver.
She hugged Logan tight.
“Everything’s gone blue,” said Ajax with wonder. “Wow.”
“A van Gogh painting just for you,” said Logan.
“Starry Night with fireflies.” Blue tree trunks, indigo light, yellow bugs like a hundred spinning planets. She wasn’t crazy. She spun in the half-dark. Couldn’t she go out like this, at least, in love with Logan, addled with fireflies and a northern sultry night?
Logan leaned on the porch railing and said, “You realize this was how I fell for you, right?”
Ajax had her arms out as if she’d be able to grab the dusk and keep it in a jar. Stunning beautiful useless happiness.
“The way you’re open to everything. The way you notice. The way you haven’t lost your childlike glee.” Logan carried in the bags and reappeared. “Come on. I’m starving. Jump up. I want to get dinner on.”
Ajax swatted them, laughing as Logan tried to lift her. She probably had fifty pounds on them. “Don’t be a freaking idiot.”
Ajax pecked them all over their neck, but then she was in Logan’s arms like a solid sack of potatoes while Logan—they couldn’t fool Ajax—staggered over the threshold.
“I want to shower you in gifts for all your life,” said Logan.
The cottage was lit with dozens of fat cream candles.
“Wow,” Ajax said again. “Wow, Logan. Just wow.”
JOE
Elliot sauntered in with sacks of food, waking Joe, still in the jammies she’d worn for two days, naked from the waist up. “Whoa,” said Elliot as Joe sat sleepily up. “Your knockers.”
Joe covered them. The size of cantaloupes and crazed with sensations—buzzing and soreness and prickles near her clavicles.
Elliot said, “That’s what you want, right? Baby sleeps, you nap, your boobs grow. Milk coming in. It’s kinda fascinating. Can I touch them?”
“Hey,” said Joe and she could hear the loneliness and vulnerability in her voice. She patted the mattress. She didn’t dare sit on the couch—it swallowed her so it was hard to struggle up, her arms around the baby, plus she was worried she’d leak blood. “Sit with me a sec?”
This house: rubbed woods, sun-faded slipcovers, worn carpets.
“Just let me put these groceries away. Logan and Ajax will be here at eight.”
Joe felt the itch of sudden changed emotion and raised her voice. “Ell, wait. I’m filthy and weepy and I can’t take a proper shower with my stitches. I can’t even sit at the table yet.” Elliot had had to walk her to the tub, steady her under a handheld spray. “I need to wash my hair. I feel gross. Your daughter has peed and pooed on me.”
“I’ll help you shower,” called Elliot from the kitchen. Cabinet doors slammed, the fridge wooshed open and closed.
“Never … never mind,” Joe called. The baby was still conked out in the rocking cradle, so Joe felt safe enough to wobble to the shower without help. She grabbed furniture, the walls, as she went. She felt infirm crawling over the edge of the claw-foot tub, but soon she stood under the faucet’s soft flow. That, at least, felt good, even though it stung her stitches.
She wanted to see Logan, but she wanted to see them because of her dumb schoolgirl crush and to show off Scout—as if they’d be enchanted with an infant. Here she was with everything she had ever asked of life at her fingertips, everything: a beautiful summer home, a semi-detached in the Beaches, a kick-ass wife who designed houses for chi-chi Toronto clientele, a healthy baby girl, her own challenging job fighting through thickets of sexism. There wasn’t a solitary thing she was missing, except maybe milk in her breasts, which, despite Ell’s optimism, she still didn’t have; she was worried the baby must be starving; all babies got before milk was a few drops of colostrum.
“Why did you invite them over here?” she said at the kitchen door, pulling on a T-shirt. Elliot hacked veggies for salad. “Why on earth tonight? This is our first week as a family. I need … I don’t know. More of your attention. I don’t think I should have to ask.”
“I haven’t seen Logan for ages,” said Elliot.
“Battle of the butches?” Joe too was scorched with jealousy these days. Or was it even jealousy? She felt something, maybe wariness? Because they’d had a baby?
“Don’t call me a butch, please.” Elliot’s voice was dull. She didn’t turn around, was careful not to display her reaction. Lately, Ell was thinking of following Logan toward transitioning; she’d been a butch three months ago, but now identified as genderqueer, using “she/her” pronouns. Joe had scarcely adapted to the change. She herself was probably genderqueer but despised labels and swore the descriptor would never tumble from her lips. Did everyone have to be so PC and predictable? You’re showing your age, she thought.
“Boi battle?”
Scout whimpered, waking in her cradle; Joe turned to check, smiled when she saw it would be a while before the baby yowled. She had a minute or two.
Elliot stopped chopping, carrots sliced into an orange mountain, and regarded Joe. “It’s not. We’re buds. We fuck hard sometimes. You don’t like to peg me; they peg me. You know these parameters. But lately, you’re—” Elliot struggled to express herself. “You always do this. You say you’re okay with me being poly and then you’re not, not really. Not the times I actually spend time with Logan.”
“I’m just feeling vulnerable. Insecure with us, Ell, because we haven’t been close lately.” Joe hated Elliot having orgasms with Logan; she was possessive of orgasms. She said, “Maybe it’s some rose-coloured fantasy I have of new parenting, but shouldn’t we be bonding now? Shouldn’t we be nesting, just you and me and Scout, is what I’m saying? Can’t we get together with Logan and Ajax tomorrow instead?”
“Tomorrow Logan’s popping the question,” said Ell. This made Elliot smile—naturally straight and white teeth, such seductive armour, while Joe’s were a snaggle in her jaw that required an every-night dental appliance.
Joe drew in her breath. “Oh!” she said. Grabbed the counter.
Elliot frowned, regarded her. “Why ‘oh!’?”
“Doesn’t it seem awfully—” She looked for the word. “Awfully rushed, to you? Didn’t they just meet? I don’t even know which one of them’s going to get hurt, but this has hurt written in wet red letters. Or maybe S.O.S. Throw them a life preserver. I’m not kidding.”
“Remember Liza and Kate; they got married after less than two weeks. People can be happy,” Elliot said, back stiffening. “Not that you’d know anything about that.”
Ouch. Joe blinked back tears. Lately there was a lot of this—Ell’s frontal attacks, stones slingshotted at Joe’s Achilles’ heels. There’d never been any convincing Ell to just say things out loud, bluntly, face them frontally rather than letting her hostilities ooze and leak in damaging ways.
Joe watched her scoop celery and carrots into a salad bowl and started to cry. “Aren’t we happy? Oh god, what am I saying? I know we’re not.”
Was it wrong to crave a means to fold Elliot back in? She heard mewls as Scout came alert in the living room. Joe was moody these days; she acknowledged it. It must be hell being around her. She could cry over finding the toilet paper roll empty. But past that, why was Elliot turning away? This was a finished puzzle with a now-missing piece.
She looked around the kitchen: vintage appliances, salvage finds, copper pots, bead board panels.
“What’s wrong now?” said Elliot, her voice a warning, a push away. She crossed the kitchen to pop a baby carrot into Joe’s mouth. “Eat.”
Joe felt guilty complaining. I want more, I want more. She blinked back tears, set her mouth. How could she begin to express herself to Ell cogently and reasonably? Put into words the swirling, chaotic mess she felt? At the first demonstration of emotion, Ell put up walls. “No, no, honestly, I was just admiring this place. I was just appreciatin
g the eye candy you made for us.”
Across at the other house, she heard Toby woofing, voice foghorn deep.
But Elliot didn’t like Joe when she was calm and systematic either, these days. She just didn’t like Joe was how it was shaking down. Her kindnesses now seemed to be flukes, one-offs, and Joe never knew when they were coming, which destabilized her.
By now, Scout was working herself up into a state—done fussing, she needed help, solace. Joe lifted her from her cradle, where smells of baby powder and urine blended to rise in a baby cloud.
Joe didn’t want to use disposable diapers, but the cloth ones soaked through in record time, too quickly for the baby to have anything resembling a nap. She’d grown up working-class, but now that she wasn’t, she wanted every iota of pleasure and ease that Elliot’s money brought—even the ease that was environmentally conscious disposables. Yes, this made her feel guilty. Yes, of course she knew cloth diapers were best. Yes, of course none of this was supportable—not her longing, not the ecological damage of disposable diapers, because even if they were biodegradable, they went to a landfill first. Yet, yet, yet. Scout in cloth diapers might as well have been a doll from childhood—bottle in its mouth, pee streaming out the other end.
Babyhood was wet. It had caught her off guard. Pee and liquid yellow poop and spit-up and tears and blood. If the baby had woken up with green pea soup sluicing from her pores she wouldn’t have been surprised.
Was Scout going to interrupt every conversation she and Ell had for the next twenty years?
Logan Logan Logan, Joe thought. She ruminated on Logan just so she didn’t have to think of unsolvable problems, marital problems. Lately Logan moved through Joe like a wildfire, like the fires set in the fields around town every summer when she was a little girl, the controlled burn-offs, the smoulder and smoke. Men in helmets hefting hoses. She needed dousing. She fantasized about sleeping with Elliot and Logan together, which she probably could do if only she asked them; she never had because she knew it would be dangerous for her to bed Logan.
She changed Scout and carried her into the kitchen, jiggling her. Watched Elliot chopping broccoli. Scout was Elliot’s mini-me, with scruffs of Elliot’s hair and Elliot’s almond eyes. The same thin lips.
Elliot kissed the baby’s head, popped more carrots into Joe’s mouth.
“My breasts are buzzing,” Joe said. She felt a wash of relief. Her milk coming in, at last? She wouldn’t be pointless any longer—she’d be a font of nourishment. There was a sensation up near her clavicles trickling down toward her breasts.
Relief, but also a recognition of how bizarre her body was that it could do this.
Everything about pregnancy and birth and now, having an infant, was unexpectedly freaky. She wanted to be all I got this, but she didn’t have it, she didn’t have it at all.
The doorbell rang. Joe went to answer it.
“We can’t come for dinner,” Logan told her. “Sorry to be so late saying so.”
They stared at each other—Logan’s always frank appraisal, half-challenging stare.
Don’t, thought Joe. Stop it. Just stop it. “Sure,” said Joe, “we get that you guys are busy.” Joe’s breasts started leaking. She felt it, milk skiing from her shoulders to the moguls of her breasts. To her horror, it oozed through her shirt, a spreading dark stain. Milk bubbles appeared on her pj shirt and began to pop.
“This is not awkward at all,” Joe said, looking up at Logan with an embarrassed grin.
Logan’s mouth fell agape, their gaze fixated.
Joe was pretty sure not too many women had caused Logan’s mouth to fall open. She felt some rueful satisfaction in that, at least.
Logan looked up, finally. “Jesus,” they said, “you really do have a baby.”
“Say hello to Scout,” said Joe and jiggled her.
Logan nodded, stepped inside. “Well,” they said. “A baby. Congrats.”
“Elliot’s cooking already. Trout with lemon and almonds.” She led Logan to the kitchen.
“Girl wants to be alone,” said Logan to Elliot. “Girl says this is our weekend. I kinda maybe didn’t tell her that I had a cottage to begin with, let alone that I co-owned the property with my ex or that my ex was picking us up in the boat. You know. A few missing deets. I had a blueprint and didn’t share it.” A look shot between Logan and Elliot; the world of things bois didn’t mention to their femmier halves. The secret world they moved in, the tree houses: NO GIRLS ALLOWED.
Elliot said, peeved, “Logan, I’m half done here.” She’d set the table, lit candles, picked a bouquet of roses and poppies.
Joe felt the currents between the two. Not just a morning paddle, but rapids.
Joe pushed on her right boob, hard, with the palm of her hand, watched milk weep through her fingers. Elliot passed her a tea towel, draped a loose arm around Joe. “Look at that, would you? You go.”
“I’d better feed her,” said Joe, “now that I can. I can’t believe seven million women have already done this.”
“Her boobs are getting enormous, that’s one good thing,” said Ell.
“Elliot, fuck off.” Joe laughed. “But true. They are the size of two small houses.” She sat down to feed Scout, staunching her flow on the right and feeding with the left.
Logan stared. “That’s wild.”
Joe said, “I feel like I should live in a barnyard.”
“Just call Ajax and tell her to come over,” said Elliot. “Please? Do it for me.” She took Logan’s elbow to turn them to face her.
For me? thought Joe. They had language like do it for me? Logan’s hair fell into their face.
The two went into a clutch that made Joe uneasy. The baby slurped. She could feel the child’s rhythmic pull—so earthy and elemental. Elliot’s hand rubbed Logan’s ass, slow and sexy. “Um,” Joe said as milk squished out even past the cloth, “you guys, please, get a room.”
Could a person re-negotiate polyamory after years? Could she say, Look, Elliot. I need us to be monogamous from here on?
Did she even mean get a room, or did she mean, hey, guys, you’ve got partners? One of you has a new baby and the other one is about to propose. Those are serious relationships to be fucking with.
Ass-rubbing. Joe made a disgusted noise and left the kitchen.
AJAX
Dinner was a quick meal of cold cuts artfully assembled—dolmades, asparagus, olives, cheeses, breads—delicious, but Ajax wondered if they should have accepted Elliot’s offer.
After the dishes, Logan wandered outside to build a fire, taking horse-sized Toby along. The screen door slapped behind Ajax; a long squeal, a woody wallop.
When Ajax had the last plate dried, she wandered out—but not before slathering herself in bug juice—toward the orange glow. She leaned to smell nicotiana, white bugles on tall stalks. She turned back to look at the cottages, admiring the chimneys, the screened porches, Logan’s boot scrape in the shape of a Corgi, the herb garden raucous with mints and rosemary, the field of Shirley poppies waving on their hairy night stems. Did Logan even know that poppies were her favourite flower?
In the clearing, at a bonfire on the lake’s edge, Logan choked in a cowl of smoke, poking at their struggling fire. Toby, curled on the ground, sighed, stretched, cracked a tired, red-limned eye, didn’t get up for Ajax. Ajax stood downwind and waved a bag of marshmallows. “Dishes, check.” She kissed the top of Logan’s head. “Lovely as hell to have food prepared. Thank you.”
Logan smiled. “Every time I ask you on the phone, you’re always eating cauliflower.”
Ajax laughed. “At least it’s vegetable; It could be fucking marshmallows.” Flames came off the wood like excited insects, orange-blue, tracing skyward toward the paint spill of the milky way in the sky.
Ajax thought the sloppily romantic Logan gave me the stars.
Logan used their Swiss Army knife to sharpen a stick and passed it over. “Do you think about where this is going?”
Ajax pushed a s
tick into a marshmallow. She bit down on what she wanted to say, that she’d love Logan forever, that Logan didn’t have to earn it. This was it. She leaned into her lover’s shoulder, shrugged, and said softly, “I’ll go where it goes.”
“I wish you didn’t live so far away,” said Logan.
Ajax swatted at mosquitoes. “Doesn’t it make every second count?”
“It makes them hard,” said Logan. “Knowing I’ll lose you again.”
The smell of burning sugar rose. The sky was bright, except for clouds hovering at the horizon. Ajax yanked her marshmallow out, blew out the flames, ate it charred. The goo inside stayed on the stick, white and melting. Ajax couldn’t afford to travel east; Logan couldn’t afford the time to travel west. Logan had their aging mom to care for in Toronto; Ajax had two grown daughters; one in Vancouver and one, pregnant, in the Bahamas. Ajax and Logan had just three options: end the relationship, travel to see each other, or move, and most of the time, to Ajax anyhow, none of those seemed manageable.
“Whoa, sweet,” said Ajax, biting into the marshmallow goo and offering it to Logan.
Logan motioned her away. “Too much sugar for me.”
Toby snapped at a bug. Ajax moved across the clearing, leaning back onto Logan’s legs. They watched the fire catapulting, listened to frogs croaking and logs snapping. Mosquitoes dive-bombed, buzzing irritatingly beside their ears, so that their evening was punctuated with slaps. “I’m glad I brought you up here,” said Logan.
“I get so wrapped up in the city, I forget this exists, you know,” said Ajax. “The wilderness. Basic pleasures like these.”
Logan squeezed Ajax’s knee. Across the lake, they could hear shouts and laughter from other properties.
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