Wedding Cake for Breakfast

by Kim Perel

  Take the best qualities of a dog—loyalty, affection, sweetness—and pair them with the best qualities of a cat—self-sufficiency, cleanliness, softness—and you had Lion. He didn’t require much in the way of care: he never had a single accident, knew what a litter box was for, and used it from the moment we touched his paw to the sand. He happily ate dry food—no picky eater, he. He was always eager to jump on our laps and knead, but kept himself occupied with chasing down dust motes and attacking dangerous shoelaces when we were busy. He was my constant companion when Rob was working long hours—and Rob, a TV writer, was always working long hours during that first year of our marriage.

  Oh, and one more thing? Lion was hypoallergenic. He didn’t make anyone sneeze, not even my sensitive sisters.

  He was the gift that kept on giving—usually dead rodents, but I appreciated them for the love tokens they were.

  The floodgates were open: now that I knew the bliss of pet ownership, I wanted more. We adopted a tiny gray kitten. Named Ender after the hero of my favorite science-fiction novel, he proved that cats, like people, are not all equally lovable: sadly, Ender was a nut-job who’d cuddle with you for five minutes then suddenly gouge out a chunk of your arm and run off, leaving you bloody and cursing.

  He did, however, enlighten me in one area: I’d never completely understood the whole “cats have nine lives” thing, but after Ender survived hanging himself from a living room curtain pull (I cut them all after that so he couldn’t do it again) and after he’d taken several huge falls from heights he shouldn’t have been able to reach in the first place, I realized that cats really do recover from a lot of risky business that would take any other animal down.

  I never fell in love with Ender the way I did with Lion, but I tolerated his bad behavior because he was so cute (a mistake I’ve begged my teenage daughter not to make once she starts dating). Anyway, Lion was sweet enough for both of them: he gave me faith not just in cats but in the idea of pets. He was good and faithful and kind and warm. He was love.

  Lion lived with us for many years, in several different apartments and homes, but one night a friend came to visit with his dog, and Lion ran out of the house even though it was dark out. A little while later, I heard the sound of an animal screaming. Once.

  He never came home again. I had heard stories of cats that disappeared for long periods of time and then miraculously showed up on their owners’ doorsteps, and for months—even years—I clung to the hope that Lion would one day reappear, come strutting up with a throaty meow just as I left the house one day. Except . . . I couldn’t forget that scream. It haunted me. I knew what had happened. I could keep hoping I was wrong. But I knew.

  Some coyote had attacked and eaten him, in the dark recesses of the overgrown canyon below our house.

  I hope that coyote choked to death.

  We haven’t been petless since the day Lion came to live with us, and over the years we’ve branched out into other many other species. At the height of our lunacy, we had two dogs, a cat, two turtles, three mice, a frog, and three fish. (We also had four kids at that stage in our lives—I am not exaggerating when I use the word lunacy.) We’ve also had millipedes and snakes and spiders and mantids and hamsters.

  And, yes, my parents have hated every single one of our pets. To this day, my father scowls at our gentle yellow Lab and tells him to “go away” if he dares to greet him at the door.

  Well, what do you expect from someone who’s not an animal person?

  But over two decades and dozens of pets later, I still miss Lion. And when our current lazy hairball of a Persian cat (who makes my sisters sneeze their heads off) crawls on top of me and kneads my chest and purrs, I love him as much because he evokes the memory of Lion as for himself.

  And I love Lion’s memory not just because he was a great cat—although he was—but because of everything he meant to me in that first year of marriage.

  When Rob and I adopted him together, it brought home like nothing had before that we were forging our own path together. My parents and siblings might not have been animal people, but I was part of a new family now, and that new family could be whatever Rob and I wanted it to be. It was an exhilarating realization.

  And one more thing.

  I had married a man who had shown me during our years of dating that he was kind and supportive. I knew I wanted to have kids with him, but I had to take on faith that he would be a good father. It’s not something you can test ahead of time.

  And then we got our first cat.

  When Rob spoke to Lion, his voice would lower to a soft, reassuring rumble. He always had room on his lap for the cat, was always willing to give an ear scritch or endure a good, long knead—even if the claws hadn’t been trimmed recently and the knead had its painful moments. If the cat was sleeping on the bed, Rob would arrange his own limbs carefully around the supine fluffy body. He never kicked or hit Lion in anger, never touched him except with affection, always was willing to clean up the occasional rat carcass or bird-bone vomit without complaint. The cat wasn’t just mine; he was ours, and Rob shared the work as well as the pleasures.

  Sometimes I’d look at them curled up in bed together, a man and his cat, and I knew I had linked my life with someone who would not only be a good husband but the best kind of father. Because if he could love a stupid little pet that much, if his heart was that tender and open toward an animal who had come into our lives as an adult with an unknown past, if he was willing to give up his free time to care for and protect something small and vulnerable and dependent—wasn’t that evidence right there that when we actually had kids together, he would be the kindest, best father there ever was?

  Yeah. It was and he is.

  The First Year

  CLAIRE BIDWELL SMITH

  Greg and I got married on a hot July day on Cape Cod. Two months later I walked into the bathroom of our Chicago apartment and took a pregnancy test.

  You’re not pregnant, Greg called through the door.

  When I came out of the bathroom, I handed the test to him, watching his face as he stared down at the miniature plus sign. He looked back up at me and I offered him a wobbly smile, and he returned one of his own. I was indeed pregnant.

  Greg wasn’t entirely convinced, though. I think this was mostly because my being pregnant didn’t quite fit into his idea of what our first year of marriage was supposed to be like. It didn’t exactly fit into mine either, but then again, nothing did.

  Marriage and pregnancy are two things I’ve always felt ambivalent about. I even told Greg on our very first date that I didn’t know if I ever wanted to have children. We were walking across a bridge in Chicago’s Millennium Park and it suddenly seemed like one of those things he should know about me right away.

  The words trickled out of my mouth before I’d even had a chance to consider the impact they might have on my future with this man, but I needn’t have worried. Greg simply smiled at me mysteriously. Either he didn’t care, or he knew something I didn’t.

  Although that was our first official date, we’d actually known each other for a few months, having corresponded by e-mail after “meeting” when we both became writers for the same literary site. On a whim, I changed a flight, stopping in Chicago for sixteen hours so that we might finally meet in person.

  I’d always scoffed a bit at the idea of love at first sight, but the moment I met Greg in baggage claim at O’Hare Airport, I knew that he was going to be my husband. I moved to Chicago three months later, and hardly a year passed before we found ourselves standing before an altar, reciting carefully written vows.

  Greg is a husky-voiced and handsome writer, the son of Ohio farmers, one of six kids. When we met he’d never lived outside of the Midwest. Compared with the lengthy list of big cities I’d inhabited, coupled with my penchant for world travel and my lack of an immediate family,
we were an unlikely match.

  I lost both of my parents to cancer by the time I was twenty-five, and as a result, my twenties were tumultuous, and my sense of independence had become a force to be reckoned with. For me to go from living alone in Los Angeles to being married and pregnant in the space of a year was enough to make anyone dizzy.

  The Monday after I took the test, Greg met me at the doctor’s office to confirm the pregnancy. She gave me another test, we all peered down at another little plus sign, and then she gave us a date: June 6.

  Satisfied, and also a little stunned, Greg kept his hand on my knee during the drive back to our apartment. We spent that night in a daze of wonderment. Someone was growing inside of me, part him, and part me.

  That wondrous feeling never quite dissipated, although I spent most of that fall battling a morning sickness that was most prevalent in the afternoon. I would come home early from work and lie on the couch in the living room watching old TV shows. The way I felt was more akin to seasickness, and the sofa became my gently rocking boat. I thought a lot about my life during those afternoons. What I’d imagined for it, compared to what it had become.

  I spent most of my twenties terribly sad and lonely, and although I knew that I didn’t want to feel that way for the rest of my life, I couldn’t deny that pregnancy and marriage were heavy anchors in an ocean I was used to navigating freely.

  Greg was sweet those months, bringing me saltines and massaging my legs when they grew restless. His family was excited, too, although with six kids, ours would be just another number in a handful of growing grandchildren.

  I missed my own mother a lot during the months that my gently swelling belly grew. There were a hundred questions I wanted to ask her, but couldn’t. I listened to Greg on the phone with his own mom, happily reporting the latest update with the pregnancy, and I was envious. I could have talked to her myself, and sometimes I did, but it was never the same as I knew it would have been with my own mother. We’d had a connection that would be impossible for me to replicate with any other woman.

  Perhaps this was the reason I longed for a daughter. I knew that having a girl might be my only chance to replace my long-lost mother-daughter bond. I knew that having a girl meant that in some small way I would get my mother back, if only because I would become her.

  Greg and I decided not to find out the sex. Me for the already stated reasons, and Greg because he is sweet and sensitive, and would be equally at home playing with mermaids as he would with trucks. As the months wore on, we speculated constantly. Everyone around us had an opinion, too. Coworkers, checkout clerks, strangers on the street—all stopped what they were doing in order to declare their prediction. It was unanimous: I was going to have a boy.

  Greg felt the baby move for the first time one cold January morning. It was early and we were lying in bed in the dark. I took his hand, pressing it to my lower abdomen at the exact moment that our unborn child gave a swift kick. Greg’s eyes flew open in the dimly lit room, barreling into mine. It was one of the most intimate moments of my life.

  It’s one thing to commit yourself to spending the rest of your life with someone. It’s another thing to create a physical manifestation of that commitment, one that’s going to grow up and go to school and need new shoes and kiss someone for the first time.

  As the months drew themselves out, we both grew a little wistful. Pregnancy didn’t suit me. I was huge and listless, prone to hormone-induced anxiety and tearful days. I could tell that Greg missed the vibrant and happy young woman he had married only months earlier. Sometimes we whispered secrets to each other in bed, in the dark.

  I wish we’d had more time to just have fun, he said into his pillow one night.

  Me, too, I admitted, lying on my side to accommodate my protruding belly.

  I’m afraid that I won’t be a good mom, I told him. That I won’t love the baby.

  I’m afraid that I won’t be able to support all of us. I want our baby to have a good life, he whispered back.

  There was nothing either of us could say that would reassure the other. Because the truth was that we didn’t have the answers. While our secrets stayed safe, hidden in the hushed gloom of our bedroom, I caught glints of them now and then in Greg’s eyes or in mine, reflected back in the mirror as I observed myself.

  When spring came we took a weekend and turned the guest room into a nursery. We painted the walls a pale yellow, assembled the crib, and hung a pair of soft, pretty curtains. I washed and folded dozens of little onesies and carefully folded them into the dresser.

  I took a bath almost every night, and as I lay still in the clear, warm water, I tried to imagine the person growing inside me. I thought about how even though Greg and I chose each other, the baby wouldn’t have the same experience—we would simply always be its parents. Greg and I—once two strangers, who are still getting to know each other—would never be anything but the two people who most understand this little person we would soon meet.

  This thought gave me a sense of peace. Almost just as suddenly as I’d lost the threesome I’d always been a part of, I’d re-created it.

  I went into labor on an unseasonably cool June night, four days past my due date. I’d worked hard throughout pregnancy to prepare for a natural birth and I wanted to labor without pain medications, aiming for as raw an experience as I could have. Greg had been a good sport, going along to HypnoBirthing workshops and interviewing doulas, even though the whole concept was a new one for him.

  His willingness to participate in these trainings, to help me prepare for something he would mostly just witness, only served to further emphasize that I had married the right person. So far, everything about me, from my scattered past, to a grief that he could never quite relate to, had never fazed him. He embraced each facet of my personality with an interest and an openness that I myself couldn’t even match.

  When the time came, Greg drove us to the hospital in an old car he bought just after he graduated high school. Things went as planned and I was admitted to the alternative birthing suite. So there we were, not even married a year, huddled into each other on a queen-size bed, working to bring into the world a small version of the two of us. I gritted my teeth and screamed, squeezing Greg’s hand as hard as I could.

  A few hours went by before it was finally time to push, officially the hardest thing I have ever done. I sat with my back up against the headboard of the bed, Greg on my left, the doula on our right. The midwife knelt before me and a team of nurses assembled in the back of the room.

  Greg told me later how each time the midwife instructed to me to push through a contraction, the nurses in the back of the room would all rise, expecting to receive the baby. I don’t remember this because I had my eyes closed, straining with every muscle in my body to expel the creature everyone was so eager to meet. Greg explained that halfway through my pushing, the nurses would be able to tell that it wasn’t going to happen during this particular contraction, and they would all sit down again while I not so blissfully pushed on. The sympathy in his eyes each time he told this story became tiny windows into his first experience of fatherhood, for that unrelenting ability to feel someone else’s pain.

  When I finally did reach the final push, I felt my hip bones spread apart, and the baby burst forth into being. Before I could really understand what had happened, Greg was placing her on my chest.

  It’s a girl, he said.

  We both cried then, overcome by the enormity of it all. By the swift disappearance of our quiet union. By the way we had produced something so much bigger than either of us. And by the way that we would forever move through life, inextricably linked by a living extension of the first moment we met.

  He Chose Me

  SOPHIE LITTLEFIELD

  Many years ago, when I met my future husband, I was barely twenty-four. Does that seem young to you? It does,
now, to me—an age of impossible innocence, an age imbued with the sweet wrongheadedness of youth.

  I seized upon him and he upon me. We were instantly inseparable. That part of the story you can imagine for yourself, if you’ve ever fallen hard and fast. It was intoxicating and invigorating and exhausting all at once, and I will never, until the moment I die, forget the feeling of his gloved hand holding mine as we ice-skated beneath the frozen sparkle of the Chicago skyline at night.

  It lasted a long, long time. Not forever. But this is not a story about the undoing. It is the story of what came first. If love is a lucky pebble tossed into a pond, spinning concentric circles out across the still waters, this is the story of the innermost circles, when it seems that the magic can radiate out forever and change everything. I was as foolish as any lover, and I forgive my former self without hesitation—with affection, warmly. How could I have known? The world is far more complicated than any of us imagine, and each passing year reveals a little more of the truth, glimpses of the game maker’s odds. But in the beginning—and if you are lucky, as I was, it will be a long and splendid beginning—there is the shiny patina, the sleight-of-hand magic of Cupid and Eros, and if you are truly blessed, you will drink deeply.

  • • • • • • • •

  I came from a childhood marred by chaos and abrupt changes, rarely good; my adolescent years were marked by loss and anger and loneliness. I was the apple of no one’s eye. I was often a burden, but on the worst days I was just . . . extraneous. Unneeded. Unnoticed. Unremarked.

  Maybe that was why I loved the drama of fairy tales. Not just the Disney variety either; in our home were volumes of Grimm and equally frightening Polish and Russian anthologies, which I supplemented with folk and fairy tales from every culture represented in the public library of our small town. These stories were often violent and vengeful and passionate; people were constantly being starved and beaten and imprisoned. It was not enough merely to love; suitors had to prove themselves and earn their beloved’s troth, and their trials were deliciously appalling if incomprehensible. I remember a tale in which seven handsome brothers were turned into swans by an angry witch. To regain human form, they had to convince seven beautiful maidens, sisters, to spin seven shirts of rough flax, which pierced their fingers while they spun. They bled extravagantly—and somehow, in the process, fell deeply in love with the brothers.