Twenty-one

HE WALKED ACROSS THE doctor’s waiting room to stand beside her while she took care of the bill. Still holding their coats over his arm, he leaned against the wall behind him, looking low to get a glimpse of her face.

She was in pain—it always hurt afterward—but when she glanced up at him, it wasn’t in her eyes.

Over the years, he’d seen so much in or through her eyes. He smiled at all he knew without ever having heard it or read it or experienced it firsthand.

For instance, at a party, he knew exactly which guests he didn’t want to talk to if Livy’s eyes became fixed and glazed in their company. Childbirth is frightful, painful, and pure elation—she felt it, he saw it, there was no debate. He knew to haggle for a bargain if she cast a suspicious eye at a salesman. He was being selfish or unreasonable when she wouldn’t hold his stare—hard on her to see him that way, he supposed. He knew she was tired when her eyes didn’t sparkle. And when they flashed his way in anger, he was in deep doo-doo.

They talked like that now, deep doo-doo, dog-gone-it, holy smokes. Livy had cut her vocabulary in half—it was almost laughable. He, on the other hand, had set himself up in the position of having to set a good example for others. Him, a good example. That was laughable, too, and yet it was one of the few things in his life he took seriously. Had ever taken seriously.

Well, that and loving Livy, of course.

He only half-listened as she and the nurse talked for a few minutes, his mind stuck in a backward groove, slipping into the past.

He was born with a talent many people envied. He was lucky. He never had to wonder about what he wanted to do with his life, or where that would inevitably take him. All he ever had to do was use the gift he was born with, be the best he could be… and follow where it led him.

Strange the way it’s always the simplest lessons that are the hardest to learn. For him anyway. And Livy, too, he supposed. It was weird the way the world got smaller, the older you got. And the way you start out ready to conquer the whole thing, and settle contentedly with half an acre to call your own. Life was funny in so many ways.

Once you thought you had it figured out, it changed. That was the only guarantee it came with, actually. Eventually you learned that it was best to turn all corners with caution, expect the unexpected… and never take anything for granted.

She was still talking to the nurse when she reached out for her coat. She could have gotten into it herself—usually did, in fact—but he held it for her this time. Mostly, because she wasn’t expecting it but… well, also because he had an unexpected, engulfing urge to be near her.

That’s the way it was with them—and perhaps it was the strangest of all the strange phenomenons in life—that no matter how long or how well you think you know someone, she is bound to do the least expected and the most surprising.

She slipped her arms into the coat, covering her mild astonishment with a grateful smile, then asked the nurse to repeat the last of her instructions.

He smiled. It had taken him a long time—over half his life—to finally realize that he was just as startling to Livy as she was to him. He was. Although he couldn’t imagine anyone less startling than himself, she frequently said he was a constant amazement to her. Of course, that generally involved something he’d forgotten to do or something he’d done that was dumber than an average child would do, but sometimes it was something terrific. Something that made her happy, awed her speechless, made her giggle and laugh. Then she’d say that together, their life was an adventure.

An adventure. He was afraid it was more like skating on thin ice most of the time, but in a way—a crazy, convoluted, capricious way, he supposed that could be called an adventure. Besides, he liked the sound of it. Life as an adventure.

Livy said good-bye to the nurse and slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder. She turned to him smiling, expectant, and she held out her hand to him.

He remembered another time she reached out to him. Another time, another day. An adventure or so ago…

She needed to pay the bill. She turned away from the concern in his eyes as he crossed the room to join her. There was nothing she could do to stop his worrying.

Except to prove him wrong, perhaps.

That wouldn’t be hard.

She could feel him trying to get her attention, sliding down the wall he was leaning on, to get a better look at her face, to see some reassurance. He was like a child that way, taking the tone with which to deal with a situation from the expression on her—the mother’s—face. Men and babies were very similar, she’d discovered, and not in a derogatory fashion. They just were.

What was it the novelist Ellen Glasgow said? There wouldn’t be half as much fun in the world if it weren’t for children and men, and there ain’t a mite of difference between them under their skins.

To prove this once again, she glanced up at Brian and winked at him—his relief was a tangible thing.

Another example was… oh, say, Christmas. Men, like children, have a tendency to believe that Christmas simply happens once a year. They have no idea of what it takes to maintain a single family tradition. You badger them to string lights and put up trees and then the holiday, like snowfall, happens. Women, the mothers, create and maintain all the magic in the world. It’s true. Christmas, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy.

She was never too sure if that was a good thing or not, though, spreading tales of jolly fat men in red and elves and flying reindeer with bright, glowing noses to children, only to have them grow up to the disillusionment of it all—and the discovery that their most trusted adults had been lying to them since birth. Still, when they grow up, they fill their children’s heads with the same outrageous and wonderful tales.

Go figure.

Besides, what would life be without holidays like Christmas and Halloween and Easter? Without the magic and the supernatural and the beyond belief? Most of the time she contented herself with the idea that making magic for children wasn’t an all-bad thing. There was plenty of time for them to grow up and find out that reality wasn’t so nice. And maybe a hard-core foundation of magic, could be, and what if served as a basis for hope, for believing against the odds, for faith in miracles. Who knew?

All she did know for sure was that it took a really long time to grow up and figure out what in the world was really worth living for… and that most of it involved something closely akin to magic and miracles.

Nature. Love. Babies. Friendship. Kindness. All magic. All miracles. All rare. All worth living for. And somewhere along your lifeline you discover that you can’t change what’s wrong with the world until you change what’s wrong in your own backyard. It’s okay to send twenty bucks a month to starving children in Africa, but if you can’t give a bag of groceries to the people next door or the family down the street, what’s the point?

She wasn’t sorry or ashamed of the changes she had fought for in the sixties and seventies. Or of the money she had made in the eighties. She’d needed to learn that time was swift and change was slow… and that some things were more important than others. She’d needed to learn that making more money didn’t make happier children or better marriages, that it didn’t have anything to do with love, and that those drab, old humdrum middle-class family values her parents believed in weren’t so far off base.

She had no regrets—notwithstanding the fact that she was such a slow learner.

But that was okay, too. She was happy with what she had and who she was—and maybe wouldn’t be if she could go back and change things. She was lucky—more of that magic stuff.

The nurse was almost finished with her instructions. They were exactly the same as all the other times, except she wouldn’t have to come back for a year unless something went wrong.

She reached blindly for the coat she knew Brian was holding and was pleasantly surprised—even flustered a little like a teenager—when he held it open for her. She smiled at him, appending her previous thoughts on men and children.

Another thing they had in common was that they were a constant wonder. Children could be extremely independent and wise sometimes. And men could be incredibly brave and tolerant and insightful. Both could perform acts of daring no woman would consider—although sometimes that was just plain old stupidity. Both could love limitlessly, trust completely, and… well, both were made of that magic stuff that made her life worth living.

She said good-bye to the nurse, slipping the strap of her purse over her shoulder. She was ready to leave, to walk away from a part of herself that she wanted to forget and knew she never would, or could.

It was time to prove him wrong… again… a constant mission in her life, it seemed. And it was always so satisfying to see the look on his face when, once again, he realized she was right.

She turned to him, smiling, and reached out to take his hand. He learned best that way, if she took his hand and led him through the process one step at a time. His expression was wary, just like all the other times, and she couldn’t help but recall the last few times she had difficulty getting him to place his hand in hers…