Rich and Pretty(76)

“Still, he’s the best, right? Our baby is the best.”

“Our baby is the best. Can I go look at him?” Dan knows to ask permission.

“As long as you tiptoe. Seriously, wake him and I’m sending you to the pharmacist for estrogen shots. You can feed him yourself.” She unwinds the towel from her hair, which flops down unhappily. The hummus is drying and cracking like mud in the blue enameled bowl. There’s a stack of napkins, unused, and a bowl of chocolates, wrapped in gold foil, from a box sent by the staff at the store, a box of chocolates to celebrate a new baby, how incongruous, though it’s the thought that counts. She should clean up. She should dry her hair, put on some comfortable clothes, make them something for dinner, nothing elaborate; there’s a box of baby spinach that could easily become a salad, there’s half of a rotisserie chicken inside the fridge that could easily become two sandwiches. Dinner, on plates, with napkins, at the table, or on the coffee table, a glass of water for her, a glass of wine for Dan, this should be easy. She has the wherewithal. He worked all day, he works every day; this is her work.

Dan creeps back into the living room, leaving the bedroom door open the barest crack. “That is one good-looking kid,” he says.

“It can’t be denied.” She’s in the kitchen. She’ll dress later. She pulls the spinach from the box, using her hands; it’s been rinsed, right? She drops it into a big wooden bowl, douses it with olive oil, looks for the half lemon she knows is around there somewhere. She’s forever cutting new lemons when there’s already a cut half rolling around in the fridge. She unearths one, from behind the jar of mustard; gets both, and the mayonnaise, and the chicken. She rips the skin from the carcass, tosses it into the sink, pulls off fistfuls of the flesh.

“How was Lulu?”

“She’s herself. A very pleased grandmother. I’m not sure I would have predicted that.”

“You wouldn’t have?” Dan’s typing on his phone.

She slides a bottle of wine across the counter toward Dan, then the wine key, then a glass, one of the set they received as a wedding gift, from her cousin Tatiana, she thinks. They’re massive, these glasses, you could keep goldfish in them, and though they’re quite expensive, Sarah believes in using their best things in their everyday life. It makes things seem more special.

“Thanks.” Dan pries the foil off the top of the bottle. “I think doting grandmother—excuse me, Mamina—is the role Lulu was born to play, frankly.” He sits on the stool on the other side of the counter, sighing as he does.

“Tired?”

“We’re prepping Topoforimax for the final round of tests. We’ve been back and forth about a million times with the ethicists about the test, and of course, we’re getting a lot of pressure to rush this one.”

“This one is diabetes?” She can barely remember.

“Topical insulin.” Dan pours the wine into the glass, peers down into the bowl of it suspiciously.

“The patch.” She nods. She runs the knife roughly over the chicken, dumps it into a bowl, scoops in mayonnaise, studies it, tosses in more. A few flakes of sea salt, some pepper, some mustard, a stir. There’s dill, she remembers, pulls some of the fragrant fluff from the stalk, doesn’t bother chopping, just drops it into the mix. There’s two-thirds of a baguette, and she finds the serrated knife, slices a segment of the bread, halves that, then splits it. She spoons the chicken salad into the bread, replaces the top on the bottom half, pushes down on it, forcing out the air. It’s still resilient, the bread, so she takes a clean kitchen towel from the drawer by the stove, drapes it over the two sandwiches, balances the heaviest cast-iron casserole on top of it.

“I have some news, though,” Dan says.

“Oh?”

“I have to go to Minneapolis for the final phase of the test,” he says. “It won’t be until November, but Doctor Inglis had to drop out, and there’s no one else.”

“Well, if you have to go, you have to go.” She squeezes the half lemon into the palm of her hand, catching the seeds in the crevices between fingers, tossing the sticky pips in the general direction of the sink. Since Henry, Botswana has been forgotten. Even Minneapolis now sounds to her as far away as the moon. She dips her lemony hands into the spinach, tosses it, working her fingers over the oily leaves. She shakes them clean, washes them quickly, pauses, listening: Is that the baby? No, nothing.

“I’ll fly back, weekends, of course.”

“So much flying,” she says. “Back and forth. If you need to stay, you should. You should get some downtime. Find a nice hotel, order room service, the whole thing. You don’t want to spend every weekend at the airport.”

“We’ll see. November in Minneapolis.” Dan yawns. “I’m not exactly thrilled about it.”

Pecans. She remembers there are pecans. She breaks the seal on the airtight canister, snaps pecans in half and tosses them on top of the spinach. “What about Thanksgiving? Mom mentioned maybe doing it in the country this year.”

“In the country?”

“A new tradition,” she says. “Grandchild playing in the leaves while Huck bastes.”

“I’m all for new traditions,” he says. “Though I don’t know that he’ll be up for frolicking in the leaves this year. We’ll be lucky if he can hold his head up by then.”