He pointed the rag at James in the way that Marcus pointed things at people when he was trying to make sure the point landed. Make sure you're doing both. James looked at his old friend for a moment. Go work on the Buick, he said. Marcus took the rag and walked away.
But James heard him under his breath say something that sounded very much like, "Lord, have mercy on this man." James went back under the car. He worked for 3 hours straight. The kind of focused physical work that is its own form of prayer, the kind where you are so completely inside the problem in front of you that the rest of the world temporarily loses its claim on your attention. He found the issue in the exhaust system. Fixed it, checked three other things while he was in there, and rolled out feeling for the first time all morning like himself.
He checked his phone, one text from his mother, a photo of Ava making a face at the camera with a caption that said, "She wants pancakes for dinner." I said, "Absolutely not. She is currently giving me the negotiation eyes." James smiled. He typed back, "Tell her three pancakes and that's the deal." His mother responded with a thumbs up and then 2 seconds later, "Is everything all right?" He stared at that question for a moment. He typed, "Everything's fine. I'll explain Sunday." He put the phone in his pocket.
He was back at his house by 11:47. When he walked in, Sophia was on the living room floor with Noah between her knees doing something with a soft toy that made the baby laugh. A real laugh. A big one. The kind of laugh that only exists in creatures under one year old and sounds like pure oxygen.
James stopped in the doorway. He had not heard a baby laugh in this house in 9 years. The sound hit him somewhere so old and so specific that it took him a second to identify it. It was the sound of Ava at that age on the floor of their first apartment when everything was hard and everything was uncertain and the only thing that made any of it make sense was that laugh. Noah looked up and saw James standing there and the laugh transformed immediately into a look of profound evaluative seriousness.
The expression of a baby who is deciding whether this new large person is safe. He's deciding about you. Sophia said. She was watching James's face. How do I know when he's decided?
He'll either reach for you or turn away. James crouched down to the baby's level. Noah stared at him. James stayed still and let the baby look the way he would let a cautious animal get used to his presence without urgency, without performance. After about 7 seconds, Noah reached out one fat, dimpled hand in James' direction.
James felt something break open in his chest that he did not have a name for and did not try to name. He offered the baby his finger. Noah grabbed it and pulled it toward his mouth with the decisive confidence of someone who had made his evaluation and was now done with formalities. James laughed, actually laughed. It surprised him.
Sophia watched all of this with an expression that was too complicated to read in a single glance. He likes you, she said. He wants to eat my finger. He likes you, she repeated quietly. James stood up, put his hands in his pockets, got himself back under control.
You eat anything else today? I had the rest of the eggs. Good. He turned toward the kitchen. I'll figure out something for lunch.
He made sandwiches. Turkey, which was what he had. He put chips on the side because there were chips and because it required no further thought. He brought the plates out and they sat at the kitchen table again. Noah on the floor between them in a bouncy seat Sophia had set up which James had carried in from the car last night and which he now looked at and realized was actually pretty worn.
One of the buckle clips showing stress fractures in the plastic. He made a note of that, not out loud, just in his head, in the running list he kept of things that needed to be addressed. "Tell me about Atlanta," he said. Sophia looked up from her sandwich. "What do you want to know?" "Whatever you're willing to say." She was quiet for a moment, organizing something inside herself.
I went there about a year after I left here. I was staying with a cousin in Greensboro first, just trying to get my head right. Then I got a job offer in Atlanta. Good money, office management for a logistics company. I took it, I thought.
She paused. I thought if I got far enough away and built something solid enough, I would stop feeling like I'd made a mistake. James looked at her. Did it work? For a while, she picked at the edge of her sandwich.
The job was good. I was good at it. I made friends. I had a life. It wasn't the life I She stopped, redirected.
It was a real life. And then I met someone. The kitchen was quiet. Noah's father, James, said it wasn't a question. His name was David.
He was He seemed like a good man. He was attentive and stable, and I thought, "Okay, okay. This is the thing that everything I gave up worth it." Her voice stayed even, but her eyes went somewhere he couldn't follow. I found out I was pregnant about 8 months into the relationship. I told him.
He was quiet for a long time. She exhaled. And then he told me he already had a family, a wife, two kids in Marietta. James said nothing. He had been careful about it.
Sophia said. Very careful. The kind of careful that takes practice. Her jaw tightened for just a second before she smoothed it back down. I ended it immediately.
I wasn't going to I wasn't going to do that to another woman. And I wasn't going to raise Noah in that situation. So, you were alone, James said. I was alone. She looked feet kicking at nothing in particular.
Content in the way that babies are content when everything they need is within arms reach. And it was hard. It was really genuinely hard. But I handled it. I worked until I couldn't work anymore.
I saved. I made a plan. She looked back up at James. And then the company folded the department and the plan went with it. James pushed his plate to one side and folded his hands on the table.