The Burning Side(25)
I huff. This has nothing to do with whether or not Rachel is lovely. I start scouring the already-clean counter. “Josie isn’t even married. You barely know Rachel, and you just graduated. Don’t you need a job first?”
“Josie doesn’t want to get married, and weddings don’t have to go in age order anyway.”
It pisses me off how assured he sounds. This is a lifelong commitment we’re talking about! At twenty-three years old, can you know what you’ll want when you’re sixty?
“Rachel and I have been together all year. I have like seven leads and decent savings. She has a job too. You seriously don’t need to worry.”
I squint my distaste at being told not to worry, and a wave of reality breaks against me: Cameron is not asking permission. He is heralding news. News that flings me back to the day I signed a marriage license while a baby took shape beneath my ribs. I gasp and look up. “Wait. Is Rachel—” For some reason I glance at uncomprehending Otto as I lower my voice. “Pregnant?”
Cameron has just popped a cashew in his mouth and nearly spits it out. He barks out a laugh, and again this irritates me. “Mom, no! God, we’re not stupid. We’re getting married because we’re in love and want to spend our lives together. I thought you’d be happy.”
I bite my tongue. There are two implications I take issue with. One: that I am stupid—never mind that Cameron has no clue his own parents got married because I was pregnant. Two: that love isn’t stupid. I watch my husband and son both coolly crunching cashews, and I nod to myself that yes, love is at least a little stupid.
I thought you’d be happy. Cameron isn’t wrong about his age, about Josie not wanting to get married, or about his proven responsibility. My regret beginning to surge, I say, “Sorry. I got caught off guard, but”—I glance at Billy, who nods—“we should celebrate!” I toss my words ten feet in front of my heart, willing it to follow, and I hug my son, getting the same sense I got when they were babies hitting milestones hand over fist. Like, When did you get old enough to smile, sit, crawl, walk, talk, read, stink, drive, get married? But they did get old enough. The proof is enveloping me in a bear hug, my head at his chest.
I look up at the boy who used to sleep on my shoulder and pronounce his name Cam-won, and I pat his arm. “You should go up and tell Jo.”
He grabs another handful of cashews and darts away with that dimpled half grin and his socked feet. I raise my eyebrows at Billy, who raises his right back and says, “I’ll go buy some champagne?”
I sigh. “Yeah, go on.” Then under my breath, “When it rains, it pours.”
Billy chuckles and kisses the top of my head. “It’s a good thing, D. Try to act like it?”
It hits me all at once. The inconvenience of these major changes happening in such rapid-fire succession, but also this: Cameron has his dad. Billy will get to have this. Is that what he’s thinking about as he goes for champagne? That this is actually happening in the nick of time, while I’m here worrying that Cameron is rushing? Billy is here with his faculties, and this makes my thoughts turn on a dime. Cameron should get married tomorrow, today, right this very minute, while his father can still sit in the front row. I’m not yet in the habit of considering a future Billy who is not fully Billy. We need a wedding, a bucket list, we need to fill our life with life. And we need it now. The important things must become more urgent.
Otto blows raspberries in his high chair, and I clean him up with a sigh. It doesn’t go fast, but it will have gone fast. Sadie prowls around for a snack, and there’s a pause in Josie’s singing upstairs, followed by whooping and hollering. Sadie and Otto both look at me in curious concern.
I explain, “Uncle Cam is going to get married.”
Sadie cheers, so Otto copies her. By the time April comes through the door an hour later, Sadie has made at least four congratulatory cards for Cameron and Rachel, and she races to share the news with her mom.
April looks at me over Sadie’s head. “Really?”
I nod, and her eyes go vacant. It’s not that she doesn’t have crises, but that they stay inside her. She kneels to kiss her children. She cups their chins and meets their eyes and says thickly that she missed them today. Then, with a crisper voice, that she better go congratulate the groom-to-be, life plowing forward around her.
She rises, giving my arm a squeeze. “Thanks for babysitting again.”
About an hour later, Leo makes a similar entrance and receives a similar greeting. Sadie’s card count is up to six and a half. Cameron promises to show the cards to Rachel, who will come over for dinner again next weekend.
Speaking of dinner, I check the clock. Hunger is a consistent rhythm that makes life more predictable, and what we all need is a good meal. Fish tacos should be easy enough, so I start to retrieve ingredients. Leo is the one to ask where Billy is, and at this I gasp, dropping a bag of shredded cheddar. Billy went out to get champagne over two hours ago.
APRIL
2018
“I’M SCARED.”
We’re surrounded by neatly packaged rompers in the baby’s room when Leo has this show of vulnerability.
I lower a package and look at him with affection. “I know.”
That shy smile of his. “Of course you do.”
It’s scary for anyone to become a parent, but especially Leo. His earliest memories are of being alone in his own parents’ single-wide as ants crawled through the bread and cereal and sheets. When he was seven, he got a raging stomach bug. He shivered through the dehydration, taking pains not to bother his parents. Later that year, they sent him away. He thought it was his fault for needing too much. And he didn’t want to have kids because he didn’t want to create someone who could ever feel discarded like that.