Are You Happy Now? (38 page)

Now what to do? Lincoln walks back to the curb, fumbling with his BlackBerry. She mentioned Land of Nod, but where the hell is that in Chicago? While he waits for Google to come up on his phone, a taxi starts backing toward him from down the street. The cabbie who dropped him off has waited. “Still in a hurry?” he asks in his lilting English.

Lincoln hops in the back and finds Land of Nod on his BlackBerry—900 West North.

The driver knows the place. “Ah, no wonder you’re in a hurry,” he says, laughing. “A baby!”

The trip takes only fifteen minutes on the Sunday morning streets. “Congratulations,” says the driver when he drops Lincoln off in front of the store. It’s a tawny, one-story warehouse of a
building in the shopping maze that’s sprouted around North and Clybourn. Lincoln pushes through the doors, and a sparkling new world opens up to him, all pastels on white with accents of stained wood. The atmosphere of cheer even survives the relentless track lighting. The space is divided into alcoves, cubbies, and three-sided rooms, and Lincoln wanders among the furniture and other baby paraphernalia. From a distance, he spots a middle-aged woman reading the tag on a white-slatted crib. She’s small and slight, with short auburn hair and a splash of freckles. Very well kept-up and youthful and wearing a light, beige spring coat. Amy’s mother?

Bracing himself, Lincoln approaches and inquires gently, “Mrs. O’Malley?”

She turns to him pleasantly. “Yes?”

“I’m John Lincoln...Amy’s friend.”

Her soft features harden, and Lincoln feels her probing gaze—examining, poking, covering all six feet two of him, up and down several times. He thinks of a Louisville horseman evaluating a prospective stallion. (Well, in this case it’s really too late for that.)

“The editor,” she says finally, a trace of Ireland in her voice. “This is a surprise.” Smiling tentatively, she offers a delicate hand, and Lincoln gives it a firm but careful shake. “Is Amy expecting you?” she asks.

“Not really.”

“Well, let’s find her,” Mrs. O’Malley says, with the air of efficient authority that has steered a classroom for two decades. She leads Lincoln through the slalom of beds and cribs until they come upon Amy, standing, with her hands on her hips in front of a bunk bed done up with a celestial theme. She’s staring in exasperation at Lincoln.

“I came to warn you about the crib,” he explains.

Amy winces. “What are you talking about?” But as if his response, whatever it is, will be nonsense, she doesn’t stop for an answer and says to her mother, “Why don’t you give us a minute.”

Amy used to grumble that her mother hovered, but here Mrs. O’Malley shows admirable discretion. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Lincoln,” she says, amusing herself by drawing out the formal address for the father of her grandchild.

“Me, too,” he says.

She ignores his non sequitur and leaves quietly for another area of the store.

When she’s out of hearing, Amy says angrily, “John, why are you here?”

“I came to warn you about the crib,” he repeats and sputters on for a minute about some of the alarming facts he gleaned.

When at last he runs out of horror stories, Amy says quietly, “Don’t you think I know all that? Don’t you think I’ve spent hours reading up about cribs—and about baby furniture and baby clothes and baby food and
everything there is to know about babies
!”

“Yes,” he says weakly.

Amy drops heavily onto the bottom tier of the celestial bunk bed. “John, why are you doing this to me?” she asks pleadingly.

The question—direct, pained, bristling with blame, yet somehow acknowledging the helplessness they both suffer when fate and character intertwine—hits Lincoln like a hard wind. He plops down beside her. As she stares blankly across the narrow room, where a framed poster announces, GO ASK YOUR MOTHER—
BY
O
RDER OF THE
M
ANAGEMENT
, Lincoln absently starts combing her hair with his fingers. The velvety softness, the heat of her mysteriously changed body, the polar swings of emotion he’s undergone in the last few days—he feels light-headed, his eyes loose in their sockets, his spine soft. Is this the start of a swoon? He fights his way back to lucidity, and it’s as if he’s breaking the surface of a lake, bursting into the fierce light of the sun. “I want to be with you,” he insists, and Lincoln knows from the unanticipated urgency in his voice that he means not just the pregnancy, but beyond—the disrupted nights, the afternoons at
the playground, the messy dinners, the pleasures, the woes, life before the three of them, in all its unarrangeable sprawl.

Amy says softly, “You don’t, John. That’s sweet of you, but you really don’t.”

“But I
do
,” Lincoln sputters like a desperate child. “I really do.” For all his frantic plotting, he senses that everything that came before has led to this accidental moment—as if nature has finally intervened and is giving him one last chance. “I do!” he cries again.

Amy laughs at his artlessness and places her hand on his cheek. He covers her small hand with his. “Listen,” he says, recovering enough to lay the groundwork to make his case. “Let’s have dinner tonight. We’ll talk.”

“I can’t, John,” Amy tells him gently. “I’m working.”

“Fuck that. Call in sick. We’ve got to talk.” Lincoln presses her hand against his cheek. He’s not going to let her go until she agrees.

She pats her stomach with her free hand. “I can’t drink,” she points out.

“So what? I won’t either.”

Amy studies him intensely. Lincoln can’t imagine what his face is telling her, but he keeps pressing her hand. He’ll never outlive the pain if she removes her hand now.

“But what about New York?” she asks finally. “I won’t leave Chicago.”

“Fuck New York.”

Amy pulls away. “I can’t believe you said that.”

Lincoln can’t either. But he said it, and now the words and the logic pour out, as if the flood tide had been building for two days. “I mean, I love New York, but ever since they offered me the job, I’ve been thinking—is that really what I want to do? It’s as if I got visited by the Ghost of Christmas Future. A lot of boring lunches with agents, all that maneuvering to get ahead of rivals. Pretending I’m a big deal just because of my job. I’ll probably
just go home and drink, turn into an alcoholic. Talk about growing old alone in a smelly apartment! I need to be editing manuscripts, trying to improve things. That’s what I’m good at.” He reaches for her hand again. “I could go, I
would
do it—if it weren’t for you, but I’m embedded in Chicago now. I’m a part of it, and it’s a part of me. You’re here.”

“You’re like Gatsby,” Amy teases. “You lived too long with a single dream.”

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, Lincoln gushes tears, using Amy’s hand to mop his sloppy face while she laughs at his childish display. She pulls his head close with her free hand and whispers, “I didn’t really mean what I said yesterday—that I didn’t want to spend my life with you. I’m just confused. It’s all happened so fast. I don’t know what I think.”

Lincoln’s body goes soft. Every muscle, every cell, has been tensed. “We’ll talk,” he says. “And talk and talk and talk.”

Amy takes a deep breath and pulls her hand away. “But now you have to go. My mom’s waiting.”

“Do you want me to help?”

“God, no.”

“But we’re having dinner tonight,” Lincoln reminds. “You promised.”

“I’ll call you later.” Amy stands. “Go wash your face,” she instructs, motioning toward the restroom. “New parents won’t want to see you cry.”

In the restroom, Lincoln douses himself with cold water. What has happened? He has leaped from taking Amy with him to New York on a romantic lark to settling with her and their child in Chicago. And he did it without even thinking. It just...came to him. He’s found someone he loves. They are having a baby. Doesn’t that trump everything else?

When he emerges from the bathroom, Amy is still standing beside the bunk bed, looking slightly puzzled. “Let me shop with you,” Lincoln asks again. “I should be there.”

Amy shakes her head. “No, no, no, this is better.” Then she collapses onto the bunk. “Oh, John, I’m so confused. I convinced myself of one thing, and now I don’t know. How will we live? Maybe you
should
go to New York.”

This is a test. Lincoln knows he’s being tested. By Amy? Her subconscious? The world? He places his hands on either side of her head. He lifts her face, nuzzles her nose with his, kisses her lightly on the lips. “We can do this,” he says. “We’ll do it
together
.”

Amy hesitates, smiles. She takes Lincoln’s right hand between her palms. “You aren’t rubbing your arm,” she points out.

“See!”

She laughs and leads him by the hand to the store’s entrance, then stands on tiptoe to kiss him. “I’ll call you after,” she says.

Lincoln backs out, and through the glass door, Amy blows him another kiss.

A few hours later, Lincoln goes for a bike ride. After the shocks of the last few days, he needs his rock to settle himself. He keeps thinking of that moment years ago, lying on the filthy canvas in West Virginia, at the end of his encounter with the bear. He had an overwhelming sense that his course had veered suddenly, taken an unexpected new direction, and that, if you viewed his life from afar, as a line, it would forever angle in a small way, like the forearm he was clutching close to his chest. Now he has that sense again. He doesn’t know where the direction leads—there is much to be discussed, much to be arranged, but that is Lincoln’s métier. He can pull this off.

The day offers the first real sweetness of summer. Blue sky, soft air, the sort of weather that lets Chicagoans imagine that the dismal winter, the endless cold and gray, the delayed pleasure—it all pays off in the end (a deal that seems worth it until November). Lincoln pedals over to the lake, then north along the bike path. He passes his rock, circles, and comes back to perch. Already, several families are picnicking behind him, their grills firing, their kids of assorted heights and widths kicking soccer
balls. The lake is quiet, and though Lincoln knows the water is bitterly cold, the smooth expanse of sun-blessed turquoise looks inviting enough to swim in, or maybe drink. Lincoln stares east, as always. A squad of gulls swoops over the water in indecipherable but precise flight patterns, then settles on the surface just a few feet away. Beyond, he sees an early-season sailboat, a brilliant white triangle, catching a wind from somewhere, dipping over the horizon. Who would have thought—the curve of the earth, evident even here, in this low-slung, landlocked enclave. Chicago. There’s so much he has to learn.

Lincoln wonders where he should take Amy for dinner tonight. Someplace special. Gibsons, that’s it. Gibsons, the city’s favorite steak joint. Amy loves red meat, and now she’s eating for two. Gibsons is always festive, always memorable—visiting ballplayers drawing crowds in the bar, waiters hauling around great trays of beef. Amy will like that. He sees her smiling. He imagines pulling her under his arm and kissing her just on the top of her forehead, where the tiny, unruly hairs always escape her control. But Gibsons is a busy place. He’d better call for a reservation. He pulls out his cell phone.

Behind him, a child squeals in pursuit of a ball. And Lincoln thinks: yes. Yes, I am happy now.

###

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe many thanks to many people. Lucy Childs Baker and Frances Jalet-Miller offered outstanding advice and remained warmly loyal. Ed Park provided an acute and friendly editorial eye. Richard Cahan, Shane Tritsch, and James Ylisela Jr. helped nail down Chicago facts and history (any lingering mistakes are entirely my own). Billy Clyde Puckett, the protagonist in Dan Jenkins’s wonderful 1972 football novel,
Semi-Tough
, refers constantly to the “dog-ass Jets.” That tic inspired my protagonist to speak of the Chicago Cubs with similar regular disparagement. Above all, I owe a measureless debt of gratitude to my wife, Gioia Diliberto, who has been making me happy now for thirty-two years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR