Ajax stroked the back of Logan’s hand. “I should go in and get a sweater,” she said but didn’t move.
Logan said, “I want to keep on doing this for a long time. I’m crazy about you.”
“My back is freezing and my front is burning.” Ajax got up to sit in a chair.
Logan turned their ball cap backward. “I don’t want to stop, is the thing.”
“It’s way too early for us to be having this convo,” said Ajax. A frog chirred. Way too early. She didn’t know what to say to Logan anyway—the distance wouldn’t vaporize by wishing it so.
Logan leaned forward, stuck a stick into the fire. “My buddy Mark said that people just know. I felt that way about you, Ajax, when I saw you again in Montreal.” They sounded almost ashamed by the admission.
The fire cracked like underfoot twigs. Flames shot up.
Logan continued. “I knew. I knew when you came around that pillar and said my name.” They gave the marshmallow to Ajax.
“Thanks,” said Ajax. And I still don’t know what we can do about it, she wanted to say next. She’d been in Montreal for a painting award. “All that night when we were walking around, I was thinking Fuck, fuck. I still like them. I didn’t know you liked me back. Why would I imagine that? I had a crush on your shoes.”
“You and your shoe fetish,” said Logan, slapping their arm. “I’m getting eaten alive.”
Ajax laughed. “Come on, brogues. You’re sartorially endowed is all I’m saying, and I noticed.”
Logan squeezed hard. “When we caught each other’s eyes at the drag show.”
“Yeah.” Crowded room. The bar’s anniversary show. Ten, maybe twelve drag queens on the stage at once. Perfume, makeup trowelled on. Good and horrible voices raised in song.
“When we were lying together on your bed looking up my ex on your computer,” said Logan. “I wanted to kiss you so bad.”
Same hotel, one night of overlap. Ajax remembered the surprise of sexual tension. “I didn’t want you to go back to your room. I almost went after you in the hallway, except I couldn’t make the first move. Then you texted me from the train something like, ‘I know one thing: your eyes smile when you laugh.’ That’s when I got it.”
Logan grinned. “Remember I texted, ‘If you’re looking for a bottom, that’s not me’? And you texted back, ‘If you’re looking for a top, that’s not me?’” Logan laughed. “Then I asked what you liked in bed.”
“And I told you!” Ajax grinned, embarrassed.
“I liked that I could think about what I wanted to do to you and know it would be what got you going.”
“I do like all that; I’m a kinky little thing. But as long as you’re clear that I’m not a masochist outside the bedroom.” She was sometimes; she knew it. “Or if I am, it’s something in me that needs squelching. If I see any disrespect or get a sense that I am less than equal, poof, I’m—” She turned to look at Logan.
“I’m getting lectures now?” Logan smiled.
“I just want respect, Logan. I want you to know how critical a piece of things that is for me—after my garbage ex.”
“Have I been less than respectful?”
“I’m just saying. For the future. Eventually, we’re going to be mad at each other. That’s what’ll test our mettle. How we behave then.”
“I just love to twist you sideways,” Logan said.
“As long as you keep it in the bedroom, baby,” said Ajax. “You can twist me any which way, as long as it’s sex. That’s all I ask. Exclusively for sex.”
They looked at each other in the flashing firelight, frank gazes that made promises. They’d had several long-distance months together before this trip—months to find out everything. And so far, so good, so very good.
They didn’t feed the fire. Ajax watched Logan staring up at the stars as it died, said softly, “You’re very handsome.” She realized how fleeting the weekend would be, how soon she would be flying back to BC, how quickly love, and all of this—the trees, the lake, the bugs, the blow jobs—were likely to disappear.
JOE
Joe felt an argument brewing. She knew she was silk-sensitive and should just button her lips, but—“You’re in love with them,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
Elliot took two places away from the table settings. “Oh, for god’s sake, don’t, Joe. How is it that you spend years coping with my lovers and then now, at this late date, this bullshit?”
“You are. You think you’re not, but I see you around them. I see how you light up. Anyway, come on. What are you referring to, ‘late date?’”
“For crying out loud,” said Elliot. “I can’t even stand that you’re starting this crap.” Joe was trying to nurse, but so unsuccessfully, milk squirting, that Elliot, done with the table, grabbed the baby, walking her as she wailed, in a football hold they’d seen friends use. According to their midwife, no soothers were permitted at this stage in order to force the baby into developing a good breast latch, in order to compel a habit of needing just breast.
“Hello, you little butterball of goodness,” said Elliot, bringing Scout close up to her face where the baby finally soothed—perhaps in surprise? Elliot sounded deliciously fond. “Hello, you scrunched-face alien. Are you MaPa’s little baby from Mars? You are, aren’t you? You’re MaPa’s little baby girl from Pluto.”
Joe melted. Her breasts let down. Lord, when it started, the milk thing, it just wouldn’t quit.
She was already regretting what she’d said, but at the same time, she wanted to say more, similar things, lots more, and furthermore, she couldn’t stop herself. “I can’t even tell that you’re my wife anymore,” she said, tears waterfalling down her face. “You’ve barely looked at me since Scout was born. I’m a person! I’m real! I have feelings!”
Elliot looked away from Scout, exasperated, looked back with a cleared expression. “Aren’t you MaPa’s scrunchy-wunchie?”
Joe sniffled and said, “Something’s going on. There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Maybe the baby was glad to hear Ell’s voice. Maybe she’d been missing the way Ell used to talk to Joe’s stomach when she was in-utero. The loving massaging hands, the cooing voice, old rock ’n’ roll songs, “Jailhouse Rock,” “In the Still of the Night,” “Maybellene.”
Joe scraped her face with tissue. “I’m sorry. Just come over here. I can feed her again and we can cuddle.”
“Joe, I’m getting ready for dinner. I’m cooking, the water is boiling out of the pot,” said Elliot. “The birthing pool is still up. There are three piles of laundry. I can’t do everything around this place and mollycoddle you, too.”
“Mollycoddle me?” Joe heard her voice rise dangerously.
“Oh, stop it. Unless you’re on some kind of stupid pills, you know perfectly well what I mean. I don’t mean you’re an asshole and I’ve never loved you. I just mean the chores are spiralling out of control, and there was a lot I was supposed to be accomplishing over the summer and I feel out of control and you know I hate that.”
The architect in her. It was all about straight lines going straight up. Could she at least acknowledge that the blueprints were changing?
“Those guys aren’t coming over, right? You were willing to stop everything and visit with them,” said Joe, rising to take Scout back. “So visit us instead. Come on. How are you feeling? Still flu-ish?”
“Not flu-ish. It came, it went.” Elliot slumped beside her, brooding and resentful. She watched Joe’s clumsy attempts to get Scout latched and drummed her fingers on the coffee table. Scout fussed when she couldn’t quite figure out the nipple. The milk drips started again which made latching harder. Joe opened her mouth at the baby to mimic what she wanted: wide open, guppy-lipped. And Scout responded. Silence reigned; the baby suckled, and Joe winced at a new pain she supposed was good news.
“We should watch the latching movie the midwife gave us,” said Joe.
Elliot drew in a sharp breath.
�
��What I said earlier. You really could think about breast-feeding, Elliot.”
“Do I have to remind you I don’t have nipples?”
“Now you’re being intentionally stupid.”
“I’ll be back at work in the fall,” said Elliot. “You’re off for a year. You have the freedom.” Ell looked small and vulnerable suddenly. “And Joe, if it’s okay, could you maybe not mention my deficiencies again, please?”
Elliot suffered phantom pain and numb skin. Can you feel that? Joe would ask, trickling her finger across Elliot’s chest or arm. No, Elliot would say. Now? No. Now? Maybe, sort of.
“God, you’re crabby. You don’t have to be mean, Ell. I’m just trying to do the best thing for Scout.” She paused, thought, didn’t resist. “Also I don’t see why you have to sleep with Logan anymore.”
Ell rose. “You asked me to come sit with you and now you’re attacking me. Can I say anything right?”
Joe thought about that. “Probably not. Probably no, you can’t.”
Elliot said, “Look, please, for fuck’s sake, don’t pick a fight with me when you don’t mean to.” She tickled the baby’s cheek.
“I might mean to,” said Joe, tears tracking down her cheeks. “The book even says you are not supposed to leave me alone this week, not once, not for an instant. You read it, I know you read it.”
Elliot shrugged. “You’re not alone alone. I don’t want to argue. I wasn’t trying to do anything against you. Or us. I’m happy about Scout.”
“About the baby, but that’s where your interest here stops.”
“Well, I don’t want her to grow up hearing our fights, Joe, I don’t. We’re patterning the experiences she’ll gravitate toward later on. I know you don’t want to hurt her future chances either.”
“I don’t, but—”
“I am pulling with you, Joe. I am. I’m just overwhelmed with some things, some things I wasn’t expecting, that I’m having trouble dealing with.”
“See? See? I knew it!”
“Don’t go off the deep end now. Don’t. You do this. You explode into a fervour when I haven’t said anything to rile you up.”
“Okay, fine. Okay. What things?”
“Nothing things. Work things, some of them.” Elliot shrugged. “Things, okay?”
“You need to show me you care, is all,” said Joe.
“Don’t I show you? Isn’t cooking for you showing you?” Ell did almost all the cooking. A lot of the cleaning. She was no slouch around the house. And no slouch as a partner either, most of the time. Most of their years.
“I need you to notice me,” said Joe. There were small snuffling noises at her breast, but Scout kept falling asleep instead of nursing and coming off the nipple open-mouthed, head canted like a drunk—finally food comatose. Could babies feel the stress between a couple? Was Scout right this moment imprinting on her mother’s misery like a whooping crane following a light plane?
“I need you to notice me,” said Elliot.
Joe blinked in astonishment.
“All you see is Scout. Sometimes I feel that’s all you wanted me for was to have a baby, and now that you have her, you have no use for me.”
Oh, that was insane, insane! All she did was notice her! Dropped everything when she was around to smother her with attention! Joe felt as if lethal gasses were expanding inside her, pushing at her skin. “But I love you, Elliot! I’m wild about you! All I do is consider your welfare!”
Elliot pushed herself up, tucked a weary fist into the small of her back. “I admit, I am not as patient as I usually am. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Joe said, lifting bleary eyes. “You’re not entirely wrong. I’m absorbed with her. And I’ve been shrill with you, demanding. This experience is, I don’t know, consumptive.” Joe’s left arm was aching from Scout’s weight. “It’s how crappy and vulnerable I feel physically, the stitches, the fact that I can’t get more than two hours of sleep in a row, and then all the worry about getting her latched to establish breastfeeding, and is my milk ever going to come in—”
Elliot laughed. “I think your milk is definitely in.” Joe’s shirt was soaked to her waist. “I’m sorry you’re hurt,” said Elliot, relenting, wrapping her arm around Joe, pulling her as tightly in as she could without pushing up against Scout.
“Tell me you love me.”
“You know I do,” said Elliot, kissing her cheek. “I’m married to you, aren’t I? Obviously I love you.”
“It’s the best,” said Joe, sighing with pleasure, quelling the inner voice that said, Hey, wait a second! Snuggling down, she rested her head on Elliot’s shoulder. She could smell her own milk, sweet, sour. It was true that she was no kind of wife these days. It would be six weeks until they could have sex. And even then it might not be what she’d had before, since in birthing, somehow in all her magnificent pushing, her clitoris had torn. What was Logan, what was anyone else, compared to this, compared to the three of them becoming a family together?
JOE
Campfire next door, and Elliot said they should go. She’d been twitchy through dinner. “It’s not far. Do you think you can walk it if you hold on to me?” she asked Joe. “I’ll carry Scout.” They navigated across the rocks down to the campfire pit between the two houses, met Toby waggling his tail partway. Lightning bugs blinked on, blinked off, blinked on, blinked off. Joe realized that it felt amazing to be outside, even just creeping along as they of necessity had to, her arm slipped through Ell’s elbow to help steady her, the U-pillow huge and geriatric around Ell’s neck, the babe snuggled into the crook of Ell’s low-hanging free arm. It even felt amazing just to realize that she didn’t have to exist within the bubble that was their living room and spare room for perpetuity. Elliot gave the baby over, slung the U-pillow onto a stump for Joe, then stood behind her so she could lean for support.
“Y’all,” Logan said. “Take my chair, Joe.”
While they switched, Toby flopped down, a woof coming out of him as if he’d moved a great weight.
“Ajax, this is Joe, and baby Scout. Joe, Ajax,” said Logan.
Joe was seeing if she could sit comfortably on the pillow. It smarted, but then her stitches hurt no matter what.
Logan stoked the dying fire.
Ajax said, “Scout is a great name. I’m happy to meet you, Joe. May I hold her?” She walked around the campfire jiggling Scout, rubbing her back and patting her bottom.
“You must have kids?”
Ajax told them about her kids.
Though Joe had been hoping to avoid a feeding, Scout got hungry so she fiddled with fixing the tiny voracious mouth to her nipple. Crackles from the fire, the sound of the baby slurping. Preamble gotten through; how they all knew each other. How Logan and Ajax had met twenty years earlier and lost touch and met again. When she sat down, Ajax leaned into Logan as if she’d known them always. Joe had half a mind to say, “Wait a second, that’s Logan you’re talking about,” but it hadn’t been Logan’s hand on Elliot’s ass, but the reverse—Elliot’s hand on Logan’s ass. Joe was surprised that Ajax was older—Logan usually dated down, dated thirty-year-olds. Ajax, she said, was turning fifty; it was her birthday weekend.
Toby musically shook his collar, put his large head on Logan’s lap, and Logan petted him as long ropes of spittle fell. He didn’t sit long before he melted into the ground, his big head tucked onto his paws. Logan offered Dos Equis; Joe couldn’t, Elliot begged off, and Ajax didn’t.
Logan said, “Sure am glad to be up here again. I didn’t know when I was going to make it back.” Logan hugged Ajax close. “Was waiting for the girl to be able to come with me.”
“I thought we were going for an afternoon’s drive,” said Ajax.
“Oh, Logan is a real card,” said Joe dryly. “All about romance and true love.”
“I think they really are,” said Ajax, beaming over at Logan.
“Let me tell you about love. Here’s what I know about love,” said Logan. “My cousin
Miranda met this woman when she was young—nineteen. She met Daisy straight after she broke up with this loser dude she’d been dating in high school. She was in college at the time, taking a two-year program in insurance brokering. She wasn’t worldly. She hadn’t travelled. She didn’t really excel in school, and she certainly didn’t make any real friends, not in all those twelve years. Miranda was still living at home with her mother, but she worked at a foot-long shop, mostly for tips, and this woman came in a lot. She always ordered a BLT sub, and it got so my cousin was excited to have her come in, you know, looked forward to seeing her? She was always in nice clothing, and she flirted. I don’t know at what point Miranda figured out that Daisy was married and had a newborn, but by then she was in love. We all said, don’t hold your breath; she is not going to leave her wife. Go out with somebody else. But she couldn’t. She slept with Daisy in Daisy’s marital bed when her wife was out. She slept with her year after year until, eventually, yeah, Daisy left her wife and they moved in together. But then she caught Daisy having sex with other people—”
“Well, we all do that, pretty much,” said Elliot. “I mean, speaking for myself as someone poly.”
“We’re not,” said Ajax and reached for Logan’s hand. “Right, hon?”
“We’re not,” Logan confirmed. “I’m not anymore.”
“It’s a question of what a couple promises each other,” said Ajax. “It’s a question of being honourable. Pretty much if you’re keeping an element of what’s going on hidden from your partner, you’re about to be sucked under on the honour thing.”
“Exactly,” said Logan, raising her beer. “So Daisy did the opposite, and my cousin found out, but she was still really young, and she believed Daisy when she said it wouldn’t happen again. She liked to believe people were basically good at heart.”
“How very World War II,” said Elliot.
“So she got married to Daisy and it happened again, of course, and Miranda finally left Daisy. Then Daisy got into a bad car wreck, and my cousin took her back. Daisy couldn’t work anymore, but she could still philander. So she philandered. And Miranda found out and, kaboom! Apart. Again. Then Daisy messed Miranda around.”
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