Disclaimer: The characters belong to Annie Proulx, and I make no profit.
AN: Many thanks to my beta, carbyville. I have no idea how often this will update, though.
Chapter One: Planting Trees
"Shit."
"What?"
"This is not shit."
"Huh?"
"I seen a lot of shit in my life and this--"
She started squalling.
"Can you get her to shut that up?"
"Can I get her to shut that up. What the hell." Jack cradled Antoinette's head and laid the crying baby back onto the changing table. He rose his voice over her high pitch. "You know, I didn't even want a kid."
"Yeah, and I wanted a boy."
"Well then, how'd we end up in this mess?"
"Lost our marbles, guess," Ennis left the room.
Jack was left laughing as he wiped the orange-green pudding-like goop from Toni's behind. He called down the hallway, "You oughta come see this stuff. It's like mashed yams."
"Thanks, I'd rather not," Ennis called back.
Jack carried the newly-quiet baby-powder-fresh bundle of blankets back to the living room. "Jesus Christ, why do I have to do all the diaper-changing?" He lowered Toni gently into Ennis's arms.
"Don't mind doin' it," Ennis offered.
"Well, it's not a pretty sight. Smells like goddamn roadkill or worse."
"Said I don't mind doin' it."
Jack eyed Ennis, who was carefully cradling the baby girl, looking down into her eyes. "Well, I'd be happy to switch with you."
"Alright then," Ennis nodded. "You can do the feeding."
When Toni fell asleep, they laid her back in her crib and Ennis took Jack into the kitchen and showed him the best way to heat a bottle of formula and test it to make sure it wasn't hot. Not three minutes after, they both crawled into bed. Ennis fell fast asleep to the silence of the baby monitor, despite the fact that it was two in the afternoon. Jack, though, stayed awake, lost in thought.
Once upon a time, a short while ago, life had been very different in the Twist/del Mar household. Ennis, junior manager at a concrete contractor, and Jack, starting out in a high-paying architecture company, would have been spending this Saturday afternoon hiking, probably, or having sex and then going out for a nice dinner or to catch a show, though Ennis preferred to stay at home, maybe invite their friends over for a barbecue.
But as they'd hit their late-twenties, their barbecues with friends had begun to change. Baby Sabina had been a novelty, had come to all the parties and been cooed on by all the adults. Pretty soon, though, she wasn't alone. Nearly a quarter of their friends had kids by the time Ennis and Jack were hitting thirty, and inevitably, it'd got them wondering about their own future.
Jack had always seen it as just the two of them together. Ennis, though, had always wanted a child, or even children. He never spoke about it much. He knew that wasn't what Jack wanted, and Jack knew Ennis knew. It was a whole unspoken minefield they never ventured into, but eventually whatever it was that drove that desire in Ennis had forced him to cut fence, to trespass into the DMZ and drag them both onto the minefield.
One night after their friends had left a backyard barbecue, Ennis said, real quiet-like, "Well, why couldn't we have a baby? I mean... Jack, would you like to live your whole life never knowin' what it's like to be a parent?"
Jack's jaw had dropped. "I just wasn't planning on giving up my life to be a parent."
"You heard what Prue said. Said it was the most rewarding..." But Ennis hadn't said more just then. And yet, he'd brought it up, nibbled at the edges of it, day in and day out for months, until finally Jack sat him down, big blue eyes large with a desire to understand, and they'd had a long, long talk about parenthood, kids, the future.
It wasn't the first. They had another talk. And another talk. Sometimes they devolved into fights. Sometimes into sex. Sometimes Jack was one hundred percent convinced. Sometimes it was Ennis who was backing out. But somewhere along the line they had both come to accept that this was something that was going to happen for them.
They were only thirty-three when they started to look into the options. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world, but their money made a lot of the headway for them. They were by no means poor. Fights and fights later, they settled on the idea of surrogacy. Ennis could not give up the desire for a biological offspring, it seemed, and Jack could understand that perspective, though he was wary about inviting a third party-- a mother-- into their relationship and into control of the baby. They found themselves an adoption lawyer, though, who recommended a center in San Diego she'd worked with once.
Surrogacy through the center cost an arm and a leg, but hooked them up with a local married woman. Jack felt more than a little stupid masturbating into a paper cup to make a baby, but the plan was he and Ennis both would, they'd mix all that sperm together, and what would happen, would happen. They'd foolishly thought maybe they wouldn't know whose the baby was.
What had happened was Antoinette, who had delicate feather-light blonde curls just barely coming in. Hair like her daddy's. Jack found he didn't mind knowing his boys had lost the race. And he certainly didn't mind holding Ennis's baby girl and calling her theirs.
Jack's company was happy to give him parenting leave, as they called it. Eight weeks paid, more if he wanted, unpaid, but Jack took the eight paid and decided by then he'd have hopefully found someone to stay with the baby while he and Ennis worked. They were going to interview for nannies. They weren't rich, by any means (especially after paying for the entire pre-natal expenses Jesus Christ! babies cost a lot), so it'd have to be someone affordable for the daytime only, but both Jack and Ennis had day jobs they had to keep.
On the ninth of July, 2007, there'd been a frantic race to the hospital. A red-haired, green-eyed young wife, who had agreed to be uninvolved after the baby's birth, released Antoinette Patricia del Mar - Twist after 18 hours of hard labor into the arms of her new parents.
Their lives had changed forever in a moment. Ennis took a week off from work, and that was how things had been. Toni, luckily, slept most of the time, but there'd been a lot of assembling of baby furniture that they'd stupidly left to the very last minute, and simply a lot of learning, reading, and exhaustion. Jack didn't know how they were going to get by when Toni was actually staying awake at all hours. The week had been busy with family as well: Jack's mom and dad visited, and Ennis's sister stopped by and brought food. Ennis's brother and his family lived in Iowa but were already talking about coming up.
None of their family had expected this particular gay couple to be entrenched in their ultra-modern home with a baby girl.
Jack had been spending a lot of time baby-proofing things as well, which pissed him the hell off because he had spent so much time putting out all this fragile crap in the first place when they'd moved here several years ago.
Everything since Monday had been a whirlwind that didn't seem real or permanent. Toni was like a house guest and surely she'd leave when she was done fucking with their lives, right? Then they could get back to their normal schedules, clean the house, go out to eat and see shows and host barbecues, and laugh about the time Toni came to stay for a week. Only Jack knew that wasn't how it was going to be. Her visit wasn't going to be over for a long, long time yet.
Ennis rolled over and wrapped Jack in warm arms, making a muffled noise in his sleep. Jack smiled. They had love to spare, though, didn't they, and didn't Toni deserve it? Yeah, Jack thought, remembering her tiny little fingers and knowing already a kind of achy need to feel them curl around his own calloused ones. Toni deserves everything. What was the point of saving money, and having a great home, and decorating it beautifully, and going on hikes in the summertimes, if you didn't have anyone to pass it on to when you weren't there any more? He and Ennis were so close they were like one person, sometimes-- when they weren't screaming at each other. But they had something to share, something they could give back to the world-- love.
Jack leaned over and kissed Ennis forehead, then mouth. Ennis, even in his sleep, returned the kiss wholeheartedly. Jack smiled. He squished his face against Ennis's cheek and whispered, "Now that's one daddy I'd like to fuck," chuckling to himself as he turned and got out of bed.
Jack padded down the hallway and carefully opened the door to Toni's room. He found her fast asleep, breathing quietly, and he pulled up a chair and watched her for the longest while.
"Hey baby girl," Jack whispered. "I was thinking, maybe you should be a musician. How about that? I'll buy you a violin tomorrow." He smiled down at her. "Or a professional golfer. They make a lot of money. Or a cowgirl. Yee to the fucking haw. Your daddy doesn't like it when I say that word around you. Says you need boundaries so you can break 'em when you're older. What do you think? You think I'm encouraging you to get tattoos and ride around with bikers?"
Jack sat back against the chair and waited for a moment more. Finally he stood. "Anyway, you see your daddy, tell him I'm glad he talked me into this."
Jack went into the bathroom hallway to pee.
The soliloquy ended, and Ennis laughed at the baby monitor. Jackass probably didn't even realize it was on.
Ennis stumbled downstairs sometime later. He heard Jack loading the dishwasher, and then talking, "I just cannot believe they fucking killed him."
"China is not exactly known as the paradigm of human rights and due process." Ennis winced when he heard his sister's voice. This was the fourth time this week she'd been over, and he was getting kind of tired of her attitude, like she really thought the two of them were totally incapable of taking care of one baby. And not just one baby, their baby, their fucking baby to make their own parenting mistake with.
"But, could you imagine a world where every corrupt politician is executed?"
Ennis arrived in the kitchen just in time to see Olivia shrug it off. "Maybe it would be a better place if we did."
Jack was shaking his head.
Ennis cleared his throat, and Olivia spun. "Ennis! I brought dinner."
"You don't have to."
"I know."
Ennis forced a smile, and caught Jack casting a half-smile half-grimace at him over Olivia's shoulder.
"How's the angel?" Olivia asked.
"Sleeping like one," Jack interrupted. "So what'd you bring us?" Jack started poking the paper bag she'd left on the counter.
"Just some soup I made."
Jack and Ennis nodded in unison. Luckily, Olivia's cooking was pretty darn good. They managed to convince her to stay for soup, and then ushered her out the door before things could go much farther. Toni slept through the whole affair.
She woke around nine at night for a couple hours. Ennis changed her while Jack fixed a bottle. They settled in front of the TV, and Jack held his very own baby girl-- not a concept that had soaked in yet, but still one that made his heart beat faster at the merest thought-- while she ate. He fixed a cloth onto his shoulder and burped her, pausing to laugh at some joke a comic had made on the TV.
Ennis flipped the station quickly.
"I was watching that!"
"Not appropriate for her."
"The hell? It's just sound to her."
"You want her to grow up talking like that comedian?"
"Well, I'd need a hell of a lot of Depends if she did. I thought he was funny."
Ennis grumbled.
"You hear that, Toni? Forget what I said earlier. Ennis says you have to be a comedian."
"That's not what I said."
Jack laughed and went back to burping. "Hey Ennis, I think she said something!"
"Huh?"
"What's that, Toni? Ennis is an asshole?"
Ennis kicked Jack in the foot, and Jack chuckled.
When she was done being burped, Toni fell asleep in Jack's arms. Ennis leaned against him and fell asleep on his shoulder. Jack had always thought of himself and Ennis as a family, but now he saw that they really were a family, and no matter what happened to them in the unknown years to come ahead, they'd have to stick together. They were what each other had to rely on.