Four.
Earlier, after Iris watched Frances walk into her house, she’d turned and looked up the street for a moment. No Sara. Frowning, Iris had headed indoors, wondering what was keeping her wife. Sara had been gone very early, to do some voiceover fix or something, but was supposed to come home for brunch. Iris had run out after Frances had picked up Wyatt, to go to spin class and then to get the cinnamon rolls from Acme that Sara loved. Whatever. She was used to Sara’s occasional flakiness. OK, frequent flakiness. She herself had a meeting at noon, but there was plenty of time. Her work was only half-hearted anyway, if she were being honest with herself. She mostly had meetings to prove she could still get people to meet with her, that she hadn’t become invisible.
“Hello, Rosco.” The dog was beside himself to see her, his tail a barely visible whir of excitement. She stooped to scratch his ears, smooth his small head. He was a mutt, with a comical level of mismanagement in the continuity department: a small head like a fox, a cylindrical body like a dachshund, legs like a terrier, and the tail of a golden retriever. It was a look that didn’t quite work, unfortunately. It wasn’t so much cute as The Island of Doctor Moreau. But Iris had seen him in the pound and known immediately that this was the dog for her. He looked vaguely embarrassed that his outsides didn’t match his insides, and she knew how that felt.
She paused—Was that Sara’s car? It stopped short, didn’t turn into their driveway, so she shrugged and went into the kitchen, Rosco at her heels. First coffee, then the dishwasher, then the laundry. The familiar one, two, three of every single morning. Like many of the lesbian couples she knew, things were at least theoretically egalitarian. They shared the work. Except that theory was one thing and practice another. When Sara was busy Iris would pick up the slack, but somehow the favor was never returned, and when Sara’s schedule loosened up not all of the slack got taken back. Sara was supposed to empty the dishwasher. Iris would refill it. Sara was supposed to do the laundry. Iris would put it away. It all made sense, and yet none of it was happening these days.
Iris liked things to be clean, wanted to see uncluttered surfaces, items filed away. She worked efficiently: emptying, refilling, wiping counters, doing a sweep for stray dishes, topping up rinse aid, soap, hitting buttons, and slamming the door. Then she stood and drank her lukewarm coffee, looking out at nothing. The house was silent, so quiet she could hear a clock upstairs ticking away the hour. She supposed she looked calm and composed, but inside she was going slowly insane because she wanted another baby and Sara didn’t. She’d brought it up, but Sara had shrugged and said she thought things were great right now, why fix something that wasn’t broken, and the subject was dropped. Iris wasn’t entirely sure why she wasn’t pushing it, but she wasn’t.
Iris rinsed her coffee cup, pausing the machine to put it in. Steam wafted out, along with that hideous smell of newly heated old food and salty water, so she held her breath and turned away as her hand found a space for the cup.
She couldn’t stop thinking about a baby. Sara, for her part, was happy Wyatt was at an age where she and Iris had more freedom. Thank goodness we can sleep all night now, she would say, or, Isn’t it nice we can just leave him with a sitter and go out. And Iris would nod and agree, because those things were nice, she did appreciate them. And yet she wanted another child with a visceral pull that however hard she tried was just getting more and more insistent.
She cried whenever she got her period, and went to the back of her closet to hold the tiny clothes she’d hoarded from when Wyatt was a baby. Sara thought she’d given them away, and some she had. A good friend of hers had gotten pregnant “accidentally” when her husband was vacillating about a third child, and Iris was bitter that option wasn’t open to her. Conceiving Wyatt had been a whole mishegoss that took weeks of preparation, lawyers for all sides, thermometers, and doctors’ offices. She had been up for the turkey baster in the bedroom method, but Sara wanted the certainty of medical intervention. Sara had been very gung ho for a child. She’d been thrilled when Iris was pregnant, and showed ultrasounds around on the set and generally looked forward to their expanding family. But now she was done, she was happy, and if she knew that Iris ached to be pregnant again, to have another baby to care for, she didn’t show it.
“Rosco, do you think it would be possible for Wyatt to occasionally pick up a toy?” Rosco remained silent, though he looked supportive. Iris sat on the floor of Wyatt’s room and threw toys into various buckets and baskets artfully arranged around the perimeter. Sara had hired a great decorator for Wyatt’s room, and it was Land of Nod catalog ready, with that additional element of surprising hipness Sara loved.
Iris had grown up surrounded by mess and disorganization, her mother an exhausted working mom with four kids and a charming but feckless husband. Iris had spent a lot of time at Frances’s house as a kid because there was more room for her there, with only two kids. Then Frances’s brother had died at fourteen, struck down by a mysterious flu and dead forty-eight hours after he first said, Mom, my head really hurts. After that things reversed and Frances spent more time at Iris’s house than she did at home. Frances’s house had become too quiet, her parents literally struck dumb by their pain.
Iris envied her own son the many toys and clothes and space he had, the beautiful colors and prints of his sheets, the charm of his rugs and painted walls. At the same time, of course, she was happy he had it all, wanted his whole existence to be well-coordinated and whimsically decorated.
Where the hell was Sara?
When Sara left Frances’s house she knew she’d exited some kind of scene in progress, but she couldn’t work out what it was. Dismissing it as nothing to do with her, she crept around the back of her own house, hoping to surprise Iris. She spotted her through the kitchen window and ducked down behind a bush, giggling. She loved her wife so much. After nearly twenty years together she still felt glad to see her, every time. All she wanted was for Iris to be happy, for her to know how much she appreciated her.
As she peered between the leaves like a burglar or a baby deer, she was surprised to see Iris looking a little blue. Just staring off into the distance, drinking her coffee. Who knew what she was thinking? Maybe she was considering going back to work full time? She’d seemed preoccupied lately, and Sara thought maybe she was planning a return to her career. Iris had been a writer’s agent at one of the major talent agencies in town, very successful and glamorous, high-profile clients and dinners every night. When Sara first broached the idea of having kids she was certain Iris wasn’t going to be into it, but she’d been all for it. Once Wyatt had started school Iris had begun doing odd projects here and there, but now, of course, she might be ready to go back to work full time. Raising a kid was pretty thankless, and Sara wasn’t always sure Iris loved it. She herself hadn’t turned out to be as maternal as she’d expected, but hey, life is full of surprises. She briefly pondered her feelings about Iris going back to work and was surprised it made her sad: She liked being able to take everyone with her when she had to do a longer shoot. Even though she knew eventually Wyatt would need to stay in school all the time, she liked the freedom to be nomadic and artsy and bohemian. If Iris went back to work that would stop, presumably.
Shit, Iris had left the kitchen and headed off somewhere. Sara crept in through the back door and stalked her on pussycat feet. She came upon her in Wyatt’s room, talking to Rosco, who unfortunately ruined her surprise entrance by standing up and waving his flaggy tail. Iris turned.
“There you are! I was starting to feel stood up.”
Sara bent down and kissed her wife’s hair. “You smell good. I see you and Rosco are working as a team.” Rosco banged his tail on the ground, grinning up at her.
“You’re joking. Rosco is taking the toys out as fast as I can put them away. He’s no use at all.”
Iris stood, and Sara pulled her into a hug. “Do you want to go out for brunch?”
Iris shook her head. “No, I got cinnamon rolls.”
“From Acme?” Sara’s tone was hopeful. Iris nodded, and Sara squeezed her. “You are a wicked, wicked woman. It’s going to be pilot season soon and everyone will cast me as the plump friend.”
“Well, better that than the bitter single friend. That one doesn’t suit you at all.”
Sara laughed and watched Iris walk away from her down the hall. She still loved looking at her, she was so strong and curvy. Maybe she could talk her into bed; there were no kids around, thankfully. When Wyatt had been young there had been months, literally months, when they didn’t have sex at all. Now they had plenty of time, and often plenty of interest. But she’d missed her chance. Iris was already halfway down the stairs, and moving in a way that told Sara she was distracted. It was remarkable how much you could tell about someone’s state of mind purely by looking at the way they put down their bag at the end of the day, or by the sound of a door closing, or even by how long it took for them to walk into the house after you heard the beep of the car alarming itself. You become an anthropologist studying a tribe of one, and then if you have kids, you start studying them, too; but they’re harder because the little bastards are studying you right back, and changing and growing in a frustrating step function of leaps, bounds, and backward stumbles. Of course, maybe this was also an actor thing, because the semiotics of emotion were tools to her. Little hand gestures barely caught by the camera could make the difference between a visible performance and the true inhabiting of a character.
Sara looked down. Rosco was looking up at her uncertainly. He wanted to follow Iris, but it had seemed rude to do so while Sara was standing there. He waved his tail gently. She grinned at him. “Sorry, dear, I just drifted off there.” She headed downstairs to find her wife.