“Don’t be rude,” she said to Walter, but her correcting was much gentler than she was sure Matt’s would have been. “There are the two other rooms up here, or the one in the basement.”
Walter walked into the hall to check out the other rooms.
“What color does he want his room?” Maddie whispered.
“I don’t know,” Matt whispered back. They were in the master bathroom now. It wasn’t huge, and it had only a shower, but it made a big impression. They’d only ever had just one bathroom. This house had three—well, two full ones and then a half-bath on the main level.
“That’s why you go ask him.”
Matt shook his head and walked out into the hall. Maddie followed at a discreet distance.
“What color do you want your room?” Matt asked.
Maddie stood in the doorway and smiled at the surprise on Walter’s face. “I get to choose it?”
“Well, we get to agree on it. I think it should be pink.”
Walter just stared, looking unsure what to do. Maddie smiled inwardly and busied herself with looking at the door frame when Walter looked to her for help.
“Well,” Matt continued, leaning against the wall with a smirk on his face. “Do you want it pink?”
“Uh, no?” Walter said. It sounded like a question.
“Well then, we don’t agree,” Matt continued. “What color do you think?”
“Black,” Walter said.
“Nope, we still don’t agree. How about plain old white.”
“Green,” Walter said, catching on to the negotiations.
“What shade? Sea foam?”
“Dark, like a pine tree.”
“Can we paint kittens along the top?”
Walter laughed a deep, giggly laugh that Maddie hadn’t heard enough of. Her plan was working. She could kiss Matt for doing so well. “No kittens,” Walter said, turning and heading down the stairs with Matt right behind him. Maddie continued to follow at a distance.
“Blue jays, then,” she heard Matt say as they continued down to the basement to check out that bedroom again.
“Guns,” she heard Walter say back.
“Okay, maybe no border. Pine green, you say?”
Their voices faded away as she stopped in the living room and looked out the front window. It was a nice neighborhood with well-kept yards, but it wasn’t fancy. She knew they could afford much more if they waited, but with all the medical bills they still had and the years of saving they had made a habit, it felt good to be conservative. Outside, kids were enjoying the summer evening, and Maddie smiled, aching to see her own children among them. A family pulled up across the street. They looked Polynesian. Smiling at the realization that they would be right at home here, that Walter wouldn’t stick out, she knew the fit was good. This would be their home.
Matt and Walter returned a few minutes later. She had already mentally painted and curtained every room in the house—except Walter’s.
“I want the one in the basement,” Walter said. “And Matt said we could paint it forest green.”
“And I can make some nice curtains.”
“Curtains are for girls,” Walter said.
Matt and Maddie both laughed. Where did he come up with these things?
They got the ball officially rolling the next day. Whereas Maddie had been worried they wouldn’t find a place before their buyers closed on the condo, it turned out they had a few extra days instead. The sellers were moving in with the wife’s parents and were in as much of a hurry to get this over with as Matt and Maddie were.
They spent the next five days packing boxes, taking trips to Deseret Industries, and choosing paint while the sellers moved out. Matt worked on the loan and was able to get a little extra to help with improvements. The previous owners were out within a week, and they closed the loan a couple of days after that. Within two weeks of having their offer accepted, the new kitchen was installed and most rooms were freshly painted. It had taken every evening and all weekend to get it finished in time, but they were all grinning as they looked around at their new home. She was glad Walter had been part of such a monumental change in their lives—it seemed to bond all three of them a little stronger than before.
Maddie ran her hand across the new granite countertops and looked at the alder wood cabinets that had replaced the old Formica-covered ones. Life was coming together, but she still ached for what was missing. Soon, she told herself. Just hold on a little longer.
Chapter 34
A few days after they moved in, Matt’s dad called him at work to say that while cleaning out closets he’d found the wooden chess set Matt had made back in junior high. He asked Matt if he wanted it.
“Well, yeah,” Matt said. It had been almost three months since Matt’s announcement about Walter, and they had seen each other a few times for family dinners and the move, but Matt’s relationship with his parents had lost some closeness. Getting a call like this made him think that perhaps they could rediscover it.
“Good,” his dad said, “ ’cause I’m coming to take you to lunch and return it to you.” Then he lowered his voice. “Your mom is on a cleaning rampage. I’ve got to get out of here.”
It may well have been an excuse, but it went a long way to repairing those bridges that hadn’t been fixed thus far. They went to a deli down the street from Matt’s office, and once they were seated, his dad said he was sorry for how things had gone. Matt apologized for it happening in the first place, but his dad waved it off. Being men, that was all it took. Things were back to normal in a matter of minutes. Then his dad gave Matt the box that held the chess set. “Remember when I taught you to play chess?” he asked.
“I sure do,” Matt replied with a nod. “That’s why I made this set.”
“Now it’s time for you to teach your boy to play. He’s about the age you were when we first faced off.”
Matt smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. He’d wondered if his parents would ever come to terms with what had happened, and felt the burden of his worry lift from his shoulders. “I think I might just do that, Dad.”
****
“Hey,” Walter said when he got into the passenger seat that afternoon. Matt said hello and waved at Kim as they pulled out of the driveway. Matt knew that coming home with him wasn’t much fun for a little boy—at least, that was what he gathered from the way Walter watched Kim’s house until it disappeared from sight. But Matt was excited to see Walter today, and he loved the feeling.
“You have fun today?” Matt asked.
Walter shrugged.
“I got a game for us to play.”
“Not Go Fish, I hope,” Walter said.
“Nope, not Go Fish.”
“Uno? I hate card games.”
“Not a card game,” Matt said, shaking his head and putting on his blinker for a right-hand turn. “Chess.”
“Chess is for nerds,” Walter said.
Matt stuck his front teeth over his bottom lip and sucked his chin in. “Yah callin’ me a nerd, Son?”
Walter gave him an adults-are-so-dumb look, but Matt caught the glimmer of a smile as Walter turned to look out the window.
It had been years since Matt had played chess. They set up the board, and he reacquainted himself with the rules while teaching Walter at the same time.
“So this guy can only go straight and this guy goes up one and over two? That’s dumb.”
Matt sighed in frustration. “Look,” he said as nicely as he could, “I’m trying here, okay? Give it a shot.” As a last thought, he added, “Besides, it will make Maddie happy.”
That seemed to tip the scales. Walter shrugged, and they kept going over things.
Maddie came home at six-thirty with pizza.
“I hope it’s cheese,” Walter said as he jumped up to take the box from her hands.
“It is,” Maddie said with a smile. Relieved of the pizza, she bent down to kiss the top of his head. He made a face, like he always did, but Matt suspected he didn’t hate
it as much as he liked to pretend.
“What are my boys up to?” Maddie asked as she flopped on the couch. She kicked off her shoes and placed her feet in Matt’s lap, wiggling them as if to make him notice they were there. Matt looked from one corner of the ceiling to another, ignoring her, until she kicked him lightly in the stomach.
“They stink,” Matt whined.
“So do you, but I’ve learned to live with it.” She wiggled her feet more ferociously. Matt gave in and began massaging her feet. She sighed and closed her eyes.
“That’s gross,” Walter said, finishing off his first piece of pizza.
“I could kiss her instead,” Matt suggested.
“Dude, you want me to throw up all over the place?”
Matt and Maddie laughed. After a few minutes, Maddie opened her eyes and looked at the game set up on the table. “Chess?” she asked.
“Yep,” Walter said, suddenly enthusiastic about the game he’d been less than thrilled with all afternoon. “Matt’s teaching me to play.”
“Cool,” Maddie said. “How’s it going?”
Matt was about to say something about expecting it to be fun in a few more days, but Walter spoke up first. “It’s pretty much awesome,” he said with a confident nod. He moved onto pizza slice number three. “I love chess.”
Maddie looked at Matt, and he smiled as if he’d expected nothing less. “It’s kind of a man’s game,” he said, puffing out his chest.
“You can have it,” she sighed. “I hate to run out the door again, but I’ve got Enrichment tonight. You guys going to be okay by yourselves?”
Walter nodded as if he had it all under control. Maddie smiled, sat up to kiss Matt, and headed upstairs to change.
By seven-thirty Walter was tired of chess again. They turned on the TV, but Walter didn’t like sports. They ended up watching The Crocodile Hunter. Matt made popcorn and Walter ate it. When Maddie came home around nine, they had family prayer, and Walter went off to bed.
Matt and Maddie slumped on the couch and watched the news. “You know,” Maddie started, “I always thought I would want a houseful of kids, five or six at least. But having Walter around . . . I think one or two more would be plenty . . . well, enough.”
“That’s good, ’cause adoption is expensive,” Matt said. “I called a couple more private agencies, and I think LDS Family Services is our best bet. The wait is sometimes longer, but I’m feeling anxious to get it going. Are you ready to turn the paperwork in?”
“Yeah,” Maddie said. “It makes me nervous, though.”
“Why?”
“Why not?” she said. “New parents get months to prepare; we might get a call one night and a baby the next. It’s hard to imagine.”
“So was this,” Matt said, waving his hand to indicate the house. “And him,” he said pointing over his head down the stairs toward Walter’s room. “But it’s been a good fit.”
Maddie snuggled into him and looked at his face, her brown eyes drawing him into her. “Yes, it has,” she said. He couldn’t resist kissing those lips and touching that face, counting his blessings as he did so.
****
Friday night Walter and Matt were playing chess again when Maddie came in from work. They had played here and there all week, and Walter was getting the bug. As soon as Matt had picked up Walter that afternoon, the boy had demanded that Matt let him be black tonight. “Black is usually bad luck, but I think it’s good luck in chess.”
“Maybe the reason I keep winning is because I’ve played chess for years. Maybe it has nothing to do with the color of the pieces.”
Walter shrugged, but Matt knew he wasn’t buying it.
They both looked up when Maddie came in a few hours later. She looked tired and sad—not like he expected. She’d been feeling so good lately, he hated to see that change.
“What’s wrong?” Matt asked.
“Two women on my team announced their pregnancies today,” she said, stepping out of her shoes and heading for the pantry. “Two.” She shuffled around the pantry and pulled out a package of Oreos, ripping it open. Matt hadn’t even known they had Oreos around anymore.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He moved to stand up, but she waved her hand for him to stay. He knew she didn’t like too much sympathy when she was angry about something, so he sat back down.
“The one girl, Angie, can’t spell my name right, and her husband’s a drunk bum. The other girl, Cara—she’s not even married.” She looked at Walter, and her cheeks colored. She shoved a couple of Oreos in her mouth and chewed, her cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk. Then she chewed more slowly, and then her eyes filled with tears.
Matt stood now and pulled her into a hug. She cried for only a minute before pulling from the embrace and wiping her cheeks. “I hate Oreos,” she said, as if trying to change the subject. “They’re full of trans fat, you know.” She picked up the package and dropped it in the garbage on her way to the stairs. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Matt waited until the door to their bedroom shut. Then he turned to Walter. “You okay with Oreos that have been in the garbage?”
Walter nodded.
“Do you have a problem with trans fats?”
Walter paused, looked at the Oreos, and shook his head. Matt was glad. He pulled the package out, relieved to see the trash can empty except for a few paper towels. It was his move in the game, and while he considered his options, he tried to think what he could do for Maddie. When Walter groaned for the third time, six Oreos later, Matt moved his knight.
“Why is Maddie mad?” Walter asked as he contemplated his own move.
Matt wavered on how much to tell him, but realized that although only nine years old, Walter had a lot more education in some things than Matt had had at that age. He would probably understand.
“Maddie can’t have babies. It makes her sad when someone else finds out they’re pregnant, or when someone else has a baby.”
Walter moved his pawn. “Why can’t she have her own babies?”
Yikes. “Well . . . uh . . . boys have baby-making parts and girls have baby-making parts. But Maddie’s parts don’t work.”
“Why not?”
“Well, she had some of them taken out during a surgery, because there were problems.”
“Like when I had my wart removed?” Walter asked as if Matt had been there.
“Except you didn’t want that wart, and Maddie really, really, really wanted to have a baby.”
“So she’s mad other ladies can have ’em?”
“She’s not mad, she’s sad. I mean—do you have friends who have something you want but can’t have?”
Walter looked up and thought for a minute. “Sam has a super cool bike—but it doesn’t make me sad as long as he lets me ride it when I’m over there.”
“Maybe that was a bad example,” Matt said.
“Or,” Walter cut in before Matt could rephrase, “Harlan has a mom and a dad that live at the same house.”
Matt paused in the middle of his move. He looked up. “And you wish you had that?”
Walter shrugged. “It’s just cool, ’cause his mom doesn’t go to work, and his dad teaches him stuff. He’s the best bow hunter at my school. But my mom hates you, so you couldn’t live with us anyway.”
The statement shocked Matt, but he tried not to take it personally. Why would Sonja hate him? She made money through this whole venture and was quite happy to have the summer off. He chose not to dwell on it, calmed himself down, and ate another Oreo. “Well, that’s what it’s like for Maddie. She’s glad other people can have babies, but when they do, it kind of reminds her that she can’t.”
Walter nodded, and Matt felt a little pride at having said the right thing for once. A few moves later, Walter spoke again. “I don’t like it when Maddie’s sad.”
Matt felt a lump in his throat, picturing Maddie upstairs in the bath crying over the latest reminder. “Me neither,” he said. Then he remembered something. “A few mo
nths ago, when Kim had her baby and it made Maddie sad, we decided that every time someone else had that kind of thing happen, we would reward ourselves—celebrate our infertility, we called it.”
“Infantry?”
“No, infertility. I know, it’s a big word. It means when someone can’t have a baby. Anyway, we decided we should do something fun so that it wouldn’t make us sad.”
“Well, that’s dumb,” Walter said, looking back at the game.
“No,” Matt laughed, realizing it did sound dumb, but knowing Walter didn’t understand. “Maybe you and I can come up with something.”
“And celebrate?” Walter said, looking skeptical.
“Yeah,” Matt said, thinking hard about what he could do. “Something to cheer her up. I’m just not sure what it would be.” She wouldn’t want to go out now that she was taking a shower, and he didn’t dare try to shop for clothes. She always took them back when he did. Maybe he could buy something for the new house—but what? She’d want to pick that out, too.
“When she took me to buy new shoes, she was looking at a fancy pair of earrings, but said she couldn’t buy them that day,” Walter said, moving his rook and killing off Matt’s last bishop.
“That’s perfect,” Matt said, brightening. “Do you remember what store?”
“It’s at the mall.”
“Do you remember what store in the mall?”
Walter shrugged as if Matt had asked a stupid question.
“Well, we’ll go look until we find it.”
Walter smiled, obviously proud of himself for finding the solution. “Cool.”
“Totally cool,” Matt said back. He slid a note under the door of the bathroom, and they snuck away.
They started on the JC Penney end of the Valley Fair Mall a few blocks from the house.
“Is this the store?” Matt asked when they walked in.
“Um, I’m not sure.” They found the jewelry counter, at which point Walter said it wasn’t the right store.
“Was it a big store or a little store?” Matt asked as they walked into the main corridor of the mall, forty different stores shooting off to the sides.
“I dunno,” Walter said, looking around. “Let’s just look in all of them.”
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