“How’s the birthday girl”? He speaks softly because our daughter is asleep on his chest, her thumb in her mouth. We both know that if Josephine Jane “Josie” Callahan wakes up before she has enough sleep there will be hell to pay.
“I can put her down in her crib,” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “She’s fine.” That little girl has T.J. wrapped around her finger.
I hand the second beer to Ben. He’s sitting in the chair next to the couch looking remarkably comfortable with Thomas James Callahan III asleep on his lap. Surprising, because when Ben came to the hospital after we had the twins, he told me he’d never held a baby before.
“What are you gonna call him,” he asked, after T.J. got him settled in a chair and carefully handed him our son. “If there are two T.J’s, I’ll get confused.”
“We’re going to call him Mick,” T.J. said.
“You’re naming your kid after Mick Jagger? That’s so cool!”
T.J. and I laughed and smiled at each other.
“Different Mick,” T.J. said.
We didn’t try to have a baby right away. I was adamant about not rushing anything, and if it turned out we waited too long, well, there were lots of ways to have a family. It ultimately took six months of trying and a boost from a fertility drug, the conception taking place in a doctor’s office, the way we always knew it would, using sperm T.J. banked when he was fifteen years old.
I like to think things happen for a reason, and I believe the twins arrived exactly when we were ready for them. “Two will be hard,” everyone said, but T.J. and I know what hard is and being blessed with two healthy babies isn’t it. I’m not saying it’s easy, though. We have our days.
The twins are already eleven months old and it’s true what they say, time does speed up when you have kids. It seems like just yesterday I was waddling around with my hand on my lower back, wondering how much longer I would be carrying them and now here they are, crawling everywhere and getting close to taking their first steps.
I leave T.J. and Ben and head back into the kitchen. David has joined Jane and Sarah, and he gives me a kiss on the cheek.
“Happy birthday,” he says, handing me a bouquet of flowers. I trim the stems under running water, then place them in a vase and set them on the counter next to the pink roses T.J. gave me this morning.
“Wine?” I ask him.
“I’ll get it. You sit down and relax.”
I join Sarah and Jane. Stefani is here, too. Rob and the kids have the stomach flu so she has come alone, not wanting to risk getting anyone sick. At moments like this, when everyone I love and care about is under one roof, I feel complete. I only wish my parents were here, too. To know my husband. To hold their grandchildren.
I still went to the shelter three days a week until just recently, but the commute into the city finally took its toll. Jane watched the twins on the days I volunteered, but it was time to do something different. I set up a charitable foundation to assist homeless families, and I run it out of our home office, the twins playing at my feet. It makes me happy. Henry’s shelter gets a large donation every year and always will.
I also tacked up a flyer at the local high school and I’ve picked up a few students to tutor. They come to our house in the evening and we sit at the kitchen table crossing off completed assignments one by one. Sometimes I miss standing in front of a classroom, but I think this is enough, for now.
T.J. runs a small construction company. He builds homes, one or two a year, framing them alongside the men he employs. He never went back to school after completing his first semester at community college, but I don’t care. It’s not my choice to make. Outside is where T.J. is happy.
He also gives his time, and money, to Habitat for Humanity. Dean Lewis volunteers there, too; the sixth house he helped build was his own. He married Julie, a girl he met at the restaurant, and Leo loves being a big brother to the baby girl his parents named Annie.
I brought lunch to T.J. at his construction site a few months ago. Watching him do what he loves makes me happy, too. A new subcontractor, there to work on the plumbing, whistled and yelled out “Hey, baby,” when I walked up, not knowing who I was. T.J. set him straight immediately. I know I’m supposed to be offended, to view the catcall as an affront to women and all that. I’m okay with it, though.
T.J. and I found out something interesting a couple years ago. A police officer from Malé called us with a few questions, hoping to close out the case of a missing person. The family of a man who disappeared in May of 1999 recently discovered a journal in his belongings. In it, Owen Sparks, a dot-com millionaire from California, wrote in meticulous detail about a plan to trade his high-pressure lifestyle for the peace and solitude of island-living in the Maldives. They followed his trail to Malé, but that’s where it ended. The officer wanted to know more about the skeleton T.J. and I discovered. There’s no way to know for sure if it was him, but it seems likely. I wonder if Owen would have made it if he’d had someone to lean on, the way T.J. and I did. I guess we’ll never know.
I carry a pitcher of lemonade out to the front porch and refill drinks, inhaling the smell of fresh-cut grass and spring flowers. Tom pulls into the driveway. We decided that a feast from Perry’s Deli is perfect for this warm May evening and David comes out of the house to help Tom carry it all in. Stefani and I set it out on the kitchen island and I am just about to call everyone in to make a plate when Ben walks up to me, holding Mick out in front of him. The smell of the dirty diaper is hard to miss.
“I think something came out of Mick’s butt,” he says.
“There are diapers and wipes by the changing table in the nursery and can you make sure to use plenty of diaper cream because Mick has a little bit of a rash.”
Ben stands, frozen, wondering how he’s going to get out of it when T.J., who has been watching the whole thing, starts laughing.
“Dude, she’s messing with you.”
Ben looks at me and I shrug, smiling. “It’s just so easy.”
The relief on his face is so profound it’s almost comical.
T.J. holds out his arms for Mick. “Josie’s got a load, too. I might as well change them both.”
“You’re a good man,” I say. And he is.
Ben hands the baby over.
“Pussy,” T.J. says to him as he walks out of the room, his arms full of his children. I smile because I know T.J. is teasing, but also because I know he’s happy to have his best friend involved in our lives. At twenty-four, Ben could just as easily be at the bars instead of here, holding a baby. He has a serious girlfriend named Stacy, and T.J. says she’s the one responsible for turning Ben into a mature adult. He’s not quite there yet.
Everyone fills a plate and finds somewhere to sit. Some choose the front steps, some the screened-in porch, and others, like T.J. and me, remain in the kitchen.
We strap the twins into their high chairs and give them small pieces of bread and deli meat. I spoon potato salad into their mouths and take bites of my sandwich and sips of my iced tea. T.J. sits beside me, retrieving the sippy cup Josie insists on flinging to the ground, just to see if he’ll pick it up for her. He always does.
When everyone finishes eating, they sing happy birthday to me. I blow out all thirty-eight candles Chloe insisted on putting on the cake. It’s an absolute inferno, but all I can do is laugh. From now until September twentieth, when T.J. turns twenty-five, I’m technically fourteen years older than him, not thirteen, but there’s nothing I can do about that either.
They all toast me with their drinks. I’m so happy I feel like crying.
Later, when everyone has gone and we’ve put the twins to bed, T.J. joins me on the screened-in porch. He brings two glasses of ice water and hands one to me. “Thanks,” I say. The novelty of cold water in a glass has not worn off for either of us. I take a long drink and set it on the table beside me.