He tries not to smile, but all of a sudden I see where those deep lines on either side of his mouth come from.
“It’s what you were drinking the night you got pregnant.”
“Oh God,” I say, pushing open the door. “I grew up to be a goddamn cliché.”
Brandi is sitting in her crib, screaming. Her arms go up the minute she sees me. I’ve never had a baby reach for me before; they like me less than I like them.
I pick her up, and she immediately stops wailing. She’s little. Petite. And she has so much hair she looks like a little lion. I guess if I liked babies, this one would be considered cute. I carry her out to her … father. “Here,” I say, offering her to him. He shakes his head. “You hold her.”
I do so stiffly as we walk toward what looks like another living room. This one less Pottery Barn adult, and more Pottery Barn kids. God. If this was all real, what happened to me? I didn’t like shit like this. My apartment looked like a garage sale gone wrong.
“Why does everything look like this?” I ask him.
“Look like what?”
“Like I have no personality.”
Kit looks surprised. “I don’t know. This is what you like. I’ve never thought about it before.”
“How long have we been together?”
The corners of his mouth twitch, and before he says anything, I know he’s going to lie.
“Few years.”
“And we love each other?”
He stops rifling through a drawer to look at me.
“Do you know that feeling you have right now? The bewilderment, the fear, the fascination?”
I nod.
“That’s what I feel every day. Because I’ve never loved someone like I love you.”
My stomach does this involuntary flutter thingy. I feel guilty that my best friend’s boyfriend made my stomach flutter. Luckily, Brandi yanks on my hair so it looks more like pain than a reaction to his words.
He goes back to his drawer and pulls out a coloring book. At first I think he’s getting it for the little boy, but then he hands it to me.
“Do you want me to give it to Tim?” I ask, confused.
“Tom,” he says. “And no. That’s what I wanted to show you.”
I flip to the first page and find what I’m not expecting. Beautiful pictures of castles made of candy, fairy houses perched in fruit trees, and princesses fighting dragons. The type of coloring book I would have wanted as a child.
“What’s this?” I ask, not looking up. I want to see more.
“It’s yours,” he says, taking the baby from me.
I laugh. “I can’t draw. I’m not artistic at all.” I slam it shut and hand it back to him. This is such a strange dream. I pinch myself, but I don’t wake up, and it hurts.
“That’s how you bought this house, moved to Washington. You have a line of them, and they’re very popular. There are even posters and notebooks. You can buy them in Target.”
“Target?” I repeat. “I’m in school to be an accountant,” I say. “This is silly. I want to wake up.”
Why am I getting upset? If this is a dream, I should just go with it, right?
Tom comes running in just then and announces that he spilled grape juice on the floor. Kit leaves in a hurry, and I am left alone to tend to the little girl. I sit her on my lap and touch her mane of silky hair. She sighs contentedly, and I figure she likes it. “I like it too,” I tell her. “One time I fell asleep at a funeral because my dad was playing with my hair.” I keep doing it so she doesn’t cry and alert Kit to the fact that I know nothing about babies. When he comes back, we are sitting on the couch, her half-drugged against my chest. I’m still trying to wake myself from this strange dream. He leans against the doorframe, smiling that half-smile he does. “She’s just like you.”
“You don’t know what I’m like,” I say.
“Really, Helena? Don’t I?”
I hesitate. I don’t know anything.
I keep expecting the dream to end, but it doesn’t. I spend what seems like hours with Kit, Tom, and Brandi as they move through their day. I try to be a good sport, pretending to fit in with his life, even taking a walk with them through the greenest woods I have ever seen. Do dreams really go on this long? Why when you wake up, do dreams seem so hazy and distorted? We stop at a lake, and Kit and Tom skip rocks while I hold Brandi, who really, to my horror, doesn’t want anyone but me. I scoop some of the rich, wet dirt onto a fingertip and taste it. Dirt shouldn’t have a taste in a dream. Or it should taste like Oreos. It definitely shouldn’t taste like dirt. After the walk, Kit cooks us all dinner. Fish he caught himself. He grills it outside on the patio he says that I designed. Again, I remind him that I’m not creative enough to have designed something as majestic as the patio. It reminds me a little of the coloring books, with their carved wood tree houses, and lanterns hanging from trees. The fish is delicious. By the time Kit carries Brandi and Tom inside to give them their baths, I am in full panic mode. I reference the movies I’ve seen to help me: Inception, BIG, The Wizard of Oz. When Kit comes back carrying a bottle of wine and two glasses, I’m crying and ripping the paper napkins into confetti.
He doesn’t say anything about my tears. He opens the bottle and fills a glass, setting it in front of me.
I throw it back like a college girl. Because I am a college girl—not a mom.