Khaki

ANY ATTENTION

Every now and then, I’ll just be hanging around at home, and it will hit me that I completely despise the room I’m sitting in. Of course, I’ve designed every room in my life. But it goes without saying that tastes change. Sometimes, no matter how perfect something once seemed, it’s time to reassess.

Being pregnant with my third child was the stimulus for completely reevaluating not only my house but also my entire life. I stopped by my antiques store the first day we were in the city to chat with Daniel, who had turned into the full-time coordinator of everything furniture. He kissed me, examined my burgeoning bump, and said, “Oh, darling, you look fab-u-lous.”

He was lying. All those women I grew up with who said, “Girls steal your beauty and boys let you keep it,” were right on. Grace was a criminal caught red-handed before her little eyelids were even formed.

We walked around the store, where I casually wiped a spot of dust here, switched an accessory there, but, all in all, it was somewhat devastating how well Daniel did without me. We communicated via FaceTime daily so that I could see what was going on, but, when you got right down to it, it was his store now, not mine.

“We are in desperate need of several chests-on-chests, headboards, and secretaries,” Daniel said, clicking through a list on his iPhone. “I think we’re okay on dining tables and chairs, but if you see anything amazing when you’re buying, we do have a tad bit of extra space in the warehouse.”

That was when I realized it: If I was going to have another baby, I was going to have to let some things go. “When you’re buying,” I said.

Daniel stopped, ran his hand through his thick hair, crossed his arms, and said, “Come again?”

I smiled. “When you’re buying.”

“But I live here,” he said, wiping his hands down the front of his signature, pressed-to-military-standards khakis. “You buy in North Carolina.”

I nodded, and when a smile spread across his face, I could tell that he was starting to get it. “There are no less than fifty direct flights from LaGuardia and JFK to Raleigh every single day. And if you get super brave you can head on to New Bern or Greenville.”

“Oh my gosh,” Daniel said. “This is so major. You would trust me to do the buying?”

Handing over control has never been one of my strong suits. “Well, let’s not get carried away,” I said. “I might check in on you from time to time.”

There were two bright sides: One, Daniel had fabulous taste. Two, the places I was sending him to had very few opportunities for critical mistakes.

“Obviously, you’ll get a raise,” I said, “and use your company card for travel expenses.”

“Can I—”

I cut him off and said, “You can start flying first class when I do.”

“Damn,” he said under his breath. “That will be a quarter after never.”

I shrugged. “It’s absurd to pay five times the price for an hour and a half flight.” I kissed him on both cheeks and said, “Okay, love. I’m off to see Anna.”

Every year when I had this contract renewal meeting with my boss, Anna, she looked increasingly nervous when I walked through the door. I held the majority of the firm’s biggest accounts and attracted the biggest jobs. We always skirted around the issue of me opening my own firm, and, hands down, it made the most sense. My clients would follow me because they didn’t need a big-name design firm as long as they had a big-name designer.

This year, I noticed that Anna’s chestnut hair was a couple of inches shorter and the black patent French chairs across from her lacquered French desk had been changed to Lucite. And, this year, she wasn’t mincing words. “So that I don’t have to sit here for an hour making small talk and feeling like I need a ginger mint, please tell me if you’re leaving me or not.”

I had fully planned on leaving her. It made no sense to stay. I could hire my own accountant and assistants, and I could keep a much larger percentage of my profits. Staying at her firm was the worst business decision I could make. Graham and I had gone over and over the situation and decided time and time again that staying with Anna made about as much financial sense as growing your money by planting it in the yard.

But here’s the thing: What the job cost me in money, it made up for in convenience. I wasn’t living in the city, and finding great staff was so difficult. At Anna’s, there was always someone to run and take measurements or pick up fabric samples or send me pictures from Waterworks. Plus, I loved coming into the city and rushing straight to see Anna so that we could collaborate on our latest ideas.

So I smiled and said, “I know it makes me crazy, but I’m sticking with you.”

She walked around the desk and hugged me. “Do you think you should at least become a partner or something?”

I shook my head. “I’m about to have three kids, Anna. I barely have time to brush my teeth.”

I kissed her, and, as I walked out the door, the phone rang.

“I’m so glad it’s you!” I practically squealed. Before Scott could even say anything I said, “Do you want to meet for coffee at Zibetto?”

On my walk to the restaurant, I thought about getting back to the apartment and how I needed to soak some oats to make the homemade oat yogurt that you loved so much. And Alex would want a new batch of those strawberry muffins he had no idea were so good for him. I needed to get Jodi to make some applesauce, because she scolded me last time I bought it. You were in desperate need of new socks, Alex had completely outgrown every bathing suit he owned, and I needed some gorgeous sandals. Combine that with a phone interview for the book, a cocktail party with signing, paying the bills for both houses, and picking out tile, and this momma was starting to feel tired, tired, tired.

When I walked through the door, Scott was already sitting, looking rather dismayed. I took a moment to savor the white tiles, white marble counter, and glass shelves. One of my favorite things about Zibetto was how meticulously clean it was. If you could keep glass shelves and white grout sparkling, you could certainly keep a cappuccino machine to my standards.

Scott stood up to kiss me, pout still firmly in place. I rubbed my expanding belly and said, “What is the matter, my little love?”

Scott fiddled with the spoon on his cappuccino plate and said, “Don’t you think two daddies would be better than none at all?”

I thought of my father, the slow smile that was warmer than the inside of Scott’s coffee mug, the soothing smell of pipe tobacco that floated wherever he was. “Honey,” I said, “if I’d had two dads and no mom I can’t even figure how much I would have saved in therapy bills. It would boggle the mind.”

“Then why hasn’t anyone picked Clive and me to be parents?”

I gasped, wiping the foam off my mouth. And it shocked me to realize that, while it was good, I would take the soy latte down at Queen Street Deli in Kinston any day of the week. The first time I met my sweet daddy there for coffee, I ordered my one-pump white mocha. He said, “You know, I’ll take that same thing.”

I whispered to the man behind the counter, “Just put it on my tab.” My daddy is the kind of man who brews his own Folgers in the morning because eighty-nine cents at the Rightway is too expensive.

But Daddy said, “Now, you know my girl isn’t paying.”

I grimaced as he pulled out that ten-dollar bill and couldn’t believe it when he didn’t say a thing about the price. He held his tongue the entire half hour we were down there catching up. But the minute we got back on the sidewalk, he hiked up his pants and said, “Lord, Khaki. I thought I was meeting you for coffee, not putting a down payment on the building.”

We both laughed, but those coffee dates have become a regular thing for us now. And Daddy always says, “Now, darlin’, just you don’t tell your momma I’m spending money on coffee. It’d ruin my reputation.”

I smiled again, thinking that daddies really were the best. Then I said, “You and Clive are going to have a baby?”

He shrugged, his shirt so starched that when his shoulder went back down, the fabric above it stayed in place. Of everyone I’d ever known, Scott couldn’t tolerate a wrinkle. I didn’t know how he was going to take aging. With a vial of Botox and a jar of Crème de la Mer, I assumed.

“We got on some adoption lists, but nothing has happened yet.” He sighed. “So I need to ask you something.”

I could feel the panic rise through my body. He was going to ask me to carry his child. I loved Scott, and he had been one of my best friends for years. But I couldn’t bear the thoughts of forming a nine-month bond with a child and then being separated. Praise God, my sister and Charlie—for whom I would have carried a child—already had children and didn’t want them, respectively.

Scott smiled. “Does hubby have any other teenaged, knocked-up, alcoholic cousins we could help out?”

I laughed, the tension melting away like the fluffy top of my drink. I took another sip and said, “Unfortunately, the rest of the childbearing-aged family is free from addiction.” I thought back to my conversation with Daniel a few months earlier and added, “Daniel told me surrogacy is really in right now.”

Scott ran his finger through his hair, and said, “Yeah. That’s Plan B. But we both feel very strongly that one of our callings as a couple is to love and nurture a child that needs a home and a better life.”

I could feel the tears rise to my eyes, when, fortunately, Scott pointed to my belly and added, “Maybe we could take one of yours off your hands. Poor kids won’t get any attention.”

We both laughed, but, through my laughter, I thought of you, my bright-eyed, beautiful little angel. I leaned over and patted Scott’s hand. “All I know, honey,” I said, “is that when you least expect it, God will bring you the rest of your family.” I winked at him. “And then you’ll understand why I’m so crazy.”