French Braid(71)

When he had lain awake so long that he thought he might go crazy, he would rise and pad downstairs and turn on the TV. (The people in old-time movies stood so close to each other! Unmasked! He flinched at the sight.) Eventually he would fall asleep sitting upright on the couch, and wake only when Greta discovered him there in the morning.

“I think I know what’s wrong with you,” she told him over breakfast one day.

“What do you mean, wrong with me?”

“Why you are so edgy lately.”

“Well, that’s not exactly a mystery,” he said. “I don’t know if you’ve happened to notice that everything’s falling apart.”

“You were like this once before,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Before Nicholas was born.”

“I was?”

“You started worrying it had been a mistake to decide on a second child. ‘We were doing fine with just Emily,’ you said. ‘What if this new one’s not a good fit? What if we’re not compatible?’ ‘Compatible!’ I said. ‘This is our very own baby! Of course he’ll be compatible!’ But you said, ‘No “of course” about it. We can never be sure of such things. And why did you say “he”?’ you asked. ‘Are you thinking this is a boy? But I’m not used to boys!’ you said. ‘I wouldn’t know how to raise one!’?”

“I don’t remember that,” David said.

“Yet you see how it all turned out. You were a wonderful father.”

“I don’t remember a word of that,” David said. Although it did have a vaguely familiar ring, now that he thought about it.

“I heard what you asked Emily on the phone yesterday,” Greta told him, and she flashed him a triumphant glance that he couldn’t interpret. “You asked her about Benny. How well did she know him, you were asking, and what was he like, exactly, and when was the last time she’d seen him?”

“So?” David said. “Your point is?”

She started laughing. “So,” she said, “you’re anxious because you’re expecting again. In a manner of speaking. Expecting another child and worrying you’ll fail him somehow.”

“Well, that’s ridiculous,” David said. But he was smiling now.

Greta often knew best, he had learned.

He was aware that some people had been surprised when they heard he’d married her. Well, he’d been surprised himself, for that matter. At first he’d barely registered her existence. She was peripheral at the school, not a teacher but the school nurse, a slightly older woman with a hint of a foreign accent and a limp. But then one day she and Lillian Washington, the college counselor, had brought their sandwiches to the faculty lounge while he was brewing himself some coffee. He started complaining about the new coffee maker, which required a fresh filter every time it was used. (David’s role at the school was Lovable Curmudgeon; he fell into it naturally, surrounded as he was by motherly middle-aged women, for the most part.) “Why must they keep changing things?” he was grumbling. “It’s my considered opinion,” he said, “that all change is for the worse.”

He wasn’t expecting a response—or at least, no more than a sympathetic chuckle—but Greta made a tsking sound. “You say that to me,” she told him, “who could have used the Salk vaccine, and Lillian here, who is Black.”

That made him turn to look at her. She was surveying him with a cool, challenging gaze—a woman more handsome than pretty, with a strong face and short, crinkly hair streaked like woodgrain, brown and light brown mingled. He’d been planning to make some flip retort (“Okay, well, not all change, but just tell me what was so bad about our old-style percolator”) when something caused him to truly notice her. And she, it seemed, noticed him, because her lips all at once parted and she took on a startled expression.

They were married six months later. Even that seemed to him a very long time to wait, because by then he had met Emily, and he couldn’t have borne it if Greta’s ex-husband had followed through with his threat to wrest Emily away from her.



* * *



—

Nicholas pulled up at the curb on a Wednesday afternoon in early June. David and Greta had been keeping an eye out, and they emerged from the house immediately—Greta flying down the front walk while David followed at a more dignified pace. While Nicholas was still unfolding himself from behind the wheel, Greta was tugging the rear door open and leaning in to unlatch Benny’s booster seat. But he could do that for himself, it appeared, and so she straightened and took a step back to give him room. “No hugs, remember,” Nicholas warned her as he approached, but she said, “How could I not hug you?” and flung her arms around him.

With Benny, though, she was more reserved; she did know enough not to rush him. He stepped forth and stood blinking a moment—a serious-looking little boy under an upside-down bowl of straight black hair. “Say hello to Grandma and Grandpa,” Nicholas told him, and Benny said, “Hi, Granna. Hi, Grappa.” It made David happy to hear that Benny hadn’t outgrown his toddler names for them. And he still had that snuffly, croaky little voice—adenoids, maybe, or tonsils, but David found it appealing even so.

“How was traffic?” he asked Nicholas, and Nicholas said, “There wasn’t any. We could have roller-skated down the middle of the highway.”