Mike First…
"April is my favorite month," Mike announced from the back seat of the car. Michael's foot itched to press the gas, waiting for the light to turn; they were just a bit late to school after indulging Mike's attempts at April Fools jokes all morning.
"Mine, too," he agreed.
"Why?" Mike asked. "April isn't your birthday."
"But it's yours, and then, right away after that, it's your mom's." Sara's birthday landed exactly a week after Mike's.
"I guess two is better than one," Mike agreed.
In some ways, this month felt a little like the Christmas holiday had; heavy with anticipation and hard-to-meet expectation. "What do you usually do for his birthday?" Michael asked Sara. He told himself he wasn't asking so he could outdo it.
"We eat out for dinner," she said, "his choice, and he's had different types of parties with friends. Let's see…Star Wars theme at the park one year, the science center in Albany once, Star Wars again, and oh!" She laughed. "When he was five, he wanted to host Greek hero games in the backyard. He gave me a list of things he'd need: broadswords, shields, flaming oil…he spelled it o-y-l-e," she spelled this in the air with her finger. "We had to talk him into downgrading to 'Olympic games', which basically involved a lot of sprinting and wrestling around the yard."
The word 'we' hit Michael like a sucker punch, but he did a passable job of hiding this. "What should we give him, birthday gift-wise?"
She looked at him pointedly. "You know he wants that insanely expensive R2D2 model. And you already know you're going to get it for him."
"Well," Michael admitted, "It's no Millennium Falcon, but yeah, I've thought about it. Too much?"
"Definitely," she told him, "But…whatever you want, Michael. Just, try not to overthink it."
"Mmmhmm," he answered, not really listening. He was busy thinking.
That night in their bed, Sara could tell he was still preoccupied as he rolled his palm over the gentle swell of her abdomen, fingers feather light on her skin. She closed her eyes, floating on the sensation of his touch. "What did you do for his first birthday?" he asked.
Immediately, her sense of peace vanished. "I don't want to talk about that," she said swiftly, a knee-jerk reaction, like pulling back from an open flame, and his hand stilled.
Guilt rolled over her. Therapy was obviously rubbing off, because she heard Dr. Kate's voice in her head, telling her not to close down like this. She laid her hand over Michael's on her stomach, and tried to refocus on the pleasant warmth of his palm. Maybe if he kept his hand there long enough, he'd get to feel the baby move. So far, she had only felt soft flutters, like butterfly wings somewhere deep within her, too quick for him to capture.
"We were still in Panama," she told him slowly, though he knew this. "Lincoln came over with half a dozen torta dulce in a plastic bag he'd picked up at the grocery store, but never made it past the porch. He just held me there, by the door, while I cried and cried." She stared up at the ceiling. "I mean, that's not even a real cake. It's basically just donuts." Michael smiled sadly, but Sara kept staring blankly upward. She could drop herself right back there, to that little cottage off the ocean, so easily. Too easily for her sanity, most days. The sand that gathered in all the cracks in the hardwood floor, the iguanas she'd had to herd outside, because they were roughly the size of Mike's leg, the humidity… "He smelled like axel grease," she said, remembering Lincoln's attempt at bettering that bad day. "He'd been trying to fix his generator."
For some reason, this was the detail that was too much. Michael pulled away from her, lifting his hands to his face, where he ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. "I was in El Salvador," he recalled roughly. "I remember thinking I wasn't really too far away from you. But it didn't help. I didn't check in for my assignment. I went dark all day. Just wallowed in despair."
They'd shared-not-shared so many days like that, separate and alone and miserable. Heartache hurts, Sara thought, in ways she never quite saw coming until it hit her - wham! - like a mac truck. She ought to be better at anticipating its punch by now. Trying to deflect her own pain, she rolled toward Michael hoping to absorb the impact. Tucking her chin into his chest, she wrapped her arms around him until he stopped hiding the tears on his face from her.
"Let's get him the damned R2D2," she said.
They bought it and wrapped it, but even though Michael had been obsessed as a kid with the elusive acquisition of the shiniest new toy, he wasn't satisfied with this gift for Mike. As his birthday neared, Michael was still thinking. If he could have had anything as a boy, what would it have been? More time with his parents was the obvious answer. Now that he had he advantage of perspective, he knew this was why that dumb birdhouse had been so memorable. An idea began to form, and by the time Mike's birthday dawned, it had developed into a full-grown plan.
Mike opened the R2D2 over a birthday breakfast of pancakes. "Can we put it together right after school?" he asked enthusiastically after thanking them dutifully, his eyes already trained on the detailed instruction manual. "Please?"
Michael almost caved, but stuck to his plan. "I have somewhere I want to take you after school," he said. "Somewhere I think you'll really like."
"Where?" Mike asked.
"It's a birthday surprise."
"But," Mike said, pointing at the toy. "I really want to do this."
Michael glanced at the instructions. Step 1, step 2, step 3…no imagination. No room for invention. They could do better, Mike just didn't know it yet. "How about this: we go where I want to take you, and when we get home, if you'd rather put together the R2D2, that's what we'll do."
"They'll be time?" Mike confirmed. "Even with homework?"
"No homework on your birthday," Michael decided. Sara raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment.
This deal satisfied Mike, and after school, he hopped in the car to run their mystery errand willingly enough. They drove across Ithaca, where Michael pulled into a storage unit facility that rented moving trucks and work vehicles. "What the…?" Mike asked when they got out and walked toward the office. "Is this the surprise place?"
Michael smiled. "No, this is just Step 1."
He rented a mid-sized work truck with 20 feet of cargo space, and hefted Mike into the cab. "My booster seat," Mike reminded him.
"You're seven today, Mike," Michael pointed out. When he was seven, he was pretty sure he had just been allowed to roll around the back of a car.
"Booster seats until age eight in the state of New York," Mike answered solemnly, and after double-checking if he was serious, Michael trotted back to the car to retrieve it. They rolled out of town, into the countryside along Route 13 toward Lansing. Mike started peering out his window curiously.
When Michael felt pretty sure Mike wouldn't be able to stand the not-knowing much longer, he said, "Almost there." A minute later, they pulled off onto a gravel road in the middle of nowhere, leading to a tall metal fence. At the gate, Mike nearly bounced out of his seat to get a better look.
"What is this place?"
"Patience," Michael said. He buzzed the intercom on the gate, spoke to an attendant, and the industrial slider rolled open with a groan.
They drove through, and Mike's jaw dropped. "What? Whoa!"
Michael grinned. The scrap yard was filled with junk cars stacked four, five high, twisted pipes and sheet metal, old tires, rusted pulleys and braided cables…and this was just one corner of the lot. He stopped the truck, Mike already reaching to unbuckle his seat belt, hand on the door. "What do you do here?" he asked, though he looked game for just about anything.
"it's a junk yard. You pick out anything you want," Michael told him.
"What, to keep?" Mike called over his shoulder, already running toward the scrap metal.
When he'd caught up to him, Michael said, "Sure. People toss all this away, because they can't think of anything to build with it. If you can think of something to build, we'll bring home whatever you need."
The look on Mike's face told Michael his instincts about his son had been 100% correct. He ran from pile to pile as though digging through life-sized LEGOs, pulling out sheets of siding, climbing into cars, and crawling over scrap piles. Belatedly, Michael wondered whether it would alarm Sara if he called to ask about Mike's most recent tetanus shot.
They gathered materials for the next hour, making their own pile of items that caught their eye. As Mike rolled over a steering wheel and hubcaps, Michael asked, "Are we building our own car?"
"I don't know yet!" Mike exclaimed. "Maybe!" He looked so giddy with joy, Michael felt tears prick the back of his eyes.
Mike found an old industrial door next, some sort of roofing material that Michael worried might contain Asbestos, and a whole line of piping, probably from a defunct sprinkler system. Standing back to survey their pile, Mike said, "I think I know what I can build now."
Michael squinted at the eclectic mountain of metal and rubber. "Yeah?"
"It will be like a go-kart, only way better, because it will be able to move in the water, too…like a submarine. And it will really be able to go, right?"
"Well," Michael said, "It will be able to roll. Maybe we should add pedals, from a bike."
"Okay! But it can be watertight, right? Because it will need to be."
Michael laughed, and studied the metal siding more carefully. He may need to learn to weld. "We'll need to watch a lot of YouTube tutorials," he warned.
"I love YouTube tutorials, Dad," Mike said earnestly.
Michael's throat tightened painfully again. He laid a hand on the top of Mike's head. "I know you do."
They weighed their pile, the attendant shaking his head at Michael like he was crazy as he paid by the pound, and on the way home, they stopped at the hardware store outside town and added a slew of washers, twine, rope, screws, nails, and carpenter's glue to their supply pile. As Michael lowered the bay door again on the truck, Mike asked, "Is all this going to fit in the backyard?"
Michael hadn't really thought about this. "We can store some of it in the garage, I guess."
Mike said, "What's Mom going to say, do you think?"
Michael's mind returned to the miserable memories they'd shared in the darkness of their bedroom. "I think she's going to love it. After she gets over the fact that all this junk is going in the backyard, of course."
Mike grinned. "She'll like it when she sees what we make." He paused. "We'll be busy working on it a lot though. Hopefully she won't be lonely."
It caught Michael unaware, sometimes, how thoughtful Mike could be, especially when it came to Sara. He shouldn't be surprised, probably, given how close they've always been, but it still had the ability to make his chest swell in a powerful concoction of pride and love and tenderness. "I'm certain she won't mind," Michael reassured him. "I don't think she feels lonely when she sees us together."
"Still," Mike hedged, "maybe we'd better unload it all right away, before she gets off work."
Michael glanced at him sideways. "I thought you wanted to put together the R2D2 when we got home."
Mike looked apologetic. "I like the R2D2, I really, really do, but I don't have time for that just now. I want to get started right away on this."
Michael smiled at him. "Sounds good to me."
…Then Sara
By the end of April, Michael had lived with Sara eight consecutive months…a longer stretch than they'd ever spent together by far, despite the technicality of their eight years of marriage. Bit by bit, he learned random things about her he'd never thought to research, back in those pre-Fox River days. Far and away, these discoveries were a delight: the way she genuinely laughed when Mike regaled them with dumb knock knock jokes, her strong sense of civic duty, probably honed by her parents' lifelong example, her almost saintly patience with people, from rude customers in line at the grocery store to the recovering addicts she sponsored. Of course, there was also her habit of ignoring dirty dishes until someone else did them, and her stubborn hatred of every type of squash, from butternut to zucchini. Most aggravating at the moment: Sara, it turned out, was a terribly difficult person to buy for.
"How about we just go out to a nice dinner?" she suggested, as they got ready for school and work. "Get a sitter."
Michael groaned at her lack of creativity. "Consider it done, but that's only a start. What else do you want?"
"Nothing, Michael. I really don't need anything."
"Birthday presents aren't about what you need." He set Mike's breakfast in front of him, then turned to grab his coffee.
"Maybe flowers," Mike suggested, reaching for his juice. "Maddy says —"
"I'm going to stop you and Maddy right there," Michael smiled. "I've seen firsthand how your mom treats a bouquet of flowers."
Sara rolled her eyes, while Mike argued, "She likes those paper ones a lot. Like, a lot a lot."
"That's true," Sara echoed. She kissed Mike, then Michael, on her way out the door to work. "I do like my paper roses a lot a lot."
"I can do better than arts and crafts this year," Michael called after her, a statement she only acknowledged with a wave.
He wracked his brain for gift ideas the rest of the day, to little avail. Money wasn't an issue: the loft in Chicago had just sold, and his clients paid almost embarrassingly exorbitant fees for his engineering services. But this fact did him little good; he knew Sara would be unimpressed by the cost of anything he could buy her. He kept coming back to her love of his origami roses, but even if he folded her a hundred of them, it didn't seem like enough. Anyway, she'd be equally enamored with just one.
Real flowers were a definite no-go; even the prettiest arrangement presented to her in tissue paper at dinner would result in abysmal failure. But what if…? The idea came to him suddenly, while he worked in his office, and his first instinct was that it was perfect. Absolutely, definitely the way to spend a healthy chunk of money. Then the doubt set in…maybe it was actually the worst idea he could possibly conjure. Plus, it would take some fast work to pull together in time, and there'd be no returning this gift with a receipt in hand. The irony was not lost on Michael that he'd gifted his son with literal garbage and had been more certain of its reception.
He forged ahead anyway, and a few phone calls to the right people later, it was clear that this idea would be possible. Welcome, even. He could only hope Sara would agree.
The evening of her birthday, Sara walked into the living room, ready for dinner, just before the babysitter arrived. "You look really pretty, Mom," Mike offered, glancing up from his efforts on a new maze. He was determined to stump his teenage sitter, and Michael felt more than a little worried that he might actually be successful.
When he looked up himself, his heart caught in his throat. (So many stupid cliches had begun to make sense, after meeting this woman.) Five months of pregnancy paired with a perfectly fitting, blousy dress that flattered this new figure of hers had him wondering if he should go down the hall to change into something more refined than his best suit, just to keep up with her. "Beautiful," he corrected, shaking his head slightly as he drank her in.
She didn't deflect this compliment, beaming at Michael instead, color on her cheeks, eyes crinkling at the corners, which gave him a satisfying kick of pleasure. The sitter arrived, gave Sara a similar compliment to Mike's, earning her a smile of her own, and she and Michael departed for the restaurant on time. So far, so good. At the table, he waited for their glasses to be filled, then slid the origami rose he'd made (of course) across the table to her. "This is not your gift," he clarified.
She smiled again, but by the time the paper stem of the rose twirled between her fingers, she had sobered. "I know it's not," she assured him. "But I wish I could make you understand that it could be. That this would be enough. I don't think you have any idea…" She trailed off, just as she had a habit of doing in therapy.
"Don't have any idea of what?" Michael probed.
She studied the rose, and he had to admit to himself that she really did look completely contented with it. "Of how hard I've tried to conjure this rose into existence on my birthday every year, the past six years." She bit her lower lip in a very distracting way and leaned toward him, affording him an ample glimpse of cleavage. "Pinch me," she whispered.
Heat stirred in Michael's veins at her tone, somehow both suggestive and heartfelt, and he said, "I'd like to, actually, but I promise you're not dreaming, and in a fairly crowded public place."
Her eyes danced impishly over the edge of the red tissue paper of the rose, and he wondered for perhaps the hundredth time how such intense sexual energy could arise between them out of thin air. "I love you," he said impulsively.
"And I'll never get tired of hearing it," she answered huskily, and he thought he might have to excuse himself to dash cold water on his face (but was afraid she might follow him). Mercifully, their waiter arrived with a list of specials on his tongue, and they both gave him their attention politely. When he'd left, Michael said, "Do you want your real present now, or after dessert?"
"I don't know. Am I going to like it?" She smiled, and his chest tightened again.
"Honestly? I don't know," Michael admitted. As much as he enjoyed her flirtation, he might as well be straight with her. He shifted in his uncomfortable chair. Why did trendy bistros always have uncomfortable chairs?
Sara seemed undeterred. "Well, best get on with it, then. If you've royally messed up, I can storm out of here, and we'll save some money on the sitter."
He gave her a look. "Try to behave," he requested. The waiter returned, and they ordered, then Michael slid a rolled tube of legal-sized paper across the table to her, wrapped in a ribbon. "Happy birthday," he said quietly.
She untied the ribbon slowly, unrolling two pieces of paper with a questioning glance at him. Now that it came down to it, she seemed just as apprehensive to receive his gift as Michael was to offer it. She read the first paper, a form he'd printed, then shuffled it behind the second, which featured a penciled architectural sketch, drawn by Michael. Her eyes narrowed slightly, studying it, and then she read the first paper again. Michael waited, heart pounding, while she bit her lip some more in nervous habit, then glanced back up. "Will you walk me through this, please? Because I think I understand what you've done, but I want to make sure."
This statement did nothing to quell Michael's now unsettled stomach. The salad course arrived, and they both ignored it. Michael swallowed a big gulp of ice water. "Well, what you're holding is a Deed of Gift. It's the standard form provided to donors by the Illinois State Capitol Building, in conjunction with the Secretary of State." He indicated the second paper, with the sketch, and took a deep breath. "I thought we could donate a garden, a rose garden, specifically (he winced at the sentimentality of this), to the capitol grounds…um, in your parents' names." He paused. "Real, living flowers, there year round, never…dying." He stopped talking then, clamping his jaw tightly around his tongue.
Sara looked at him with an expression he absolutely couldn't read. He'd never seen it on her face before. "Could donate, or already have?" she asked quietly. She said this with a frown, as if working out a complex equation in her head.
"Already have," he admitted. He couldn't take his eyes off her.
"At the state capitol? And it would - will - say their names on it? Like this?" She pointed at the sketch of the garden, where elegantly blocked print marched across the mock up of a low brick wall marking the entrance. Michael could make out the TAN of Tancredi and MEMORIAL ROSE around the curve of the paper in her hands.
He nodded, his mouth dry despite having swallowed half his water.
"Really?" Her voice lifted upward on the second syllable, like she might cry. For the first time since handing her this gift, Michael felt an inkling of hope that maybe it hadn't been a completely misguided and horrible idea. "You did that?"
Tears, Michael registered. But happy tears. They came more readily when she was pregnant, he was learning. He nodded. "What do you think?" he breathed.
"I think…" She looked stunned. It was this amazement, combined with an agonizing cocktail of bereavement and remorse and memory, that he hadn't been able to identify in her expression a few seconds before. Suddenly she rose from the table. "Stand up," she told him in a strangled half-laugh-half-sob, when he stared at her. "Come here."
He met her around the side of the small table and she wrapped her arms around his neck, the jut of her growing belly pressed firmly against the linen of his suit. The somewhat alarming laugh-cry carried on quietly, muffled against his collar. "Thank you," she told him fervently, while fellow patrons of the bistro started to stare at them.
"It's alright? I didn't overstep?" Michael held her as close as he could, turning them a few degrees toward the wall to block her face from the curious looks from adjacent tables.
"It's the best gift I've ever gotten," she whispered roughly. "Or, given, or whichever." She laughed again, but it still ended on another weak sob. She pulled back to look at him, and he smiled at her, reaching up to brush the wetness from her cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. She laughed again, finally glancing around. "I guess we should sit," she said sheepishly, sliding Michael another look that made his heart hurt. He guided her back into her seat, then returned to his own, waving away an inquiry from a nearby diner, who had expressed concern.
He took her hands across the table. "I'm told they'll break ground next month, which could be nice timing. Maybe we could go see it in the fall, after the baby's born." Perhaps on the way to Baja, again, if they were up for it.
She exhaled, still trying to gather herself. "I'd like that."
Michael squeezed her hands and released them to pick up his fork. "It's not too corny then? The roses, in a garden at the capitol instead of in a vase?"
Sara laughed lightly. "The funny thing is," she confessed, then added, "well, not 'ha ha' funny," her emotions still all over the map, "my father would have hated it. The whole idea…allocating money for beautification that could have been donated to police force funding or some such thing." She grinned at Michael. "Which is how I know I love it."
Michael smiled back as she picked up her salad fork, and said, "Well, I think you know which of you I did it for."
Sara's eyes were warm. "My mother though…she would have approved completely. Especially of the sentiment." Sara set her fork back down without tasting her salad. "People always thought she was a hard woman, but that wasn't true. It was just hard being married to Frank Tancredi."
She very rarely told him anything at all about her parents, especially her mother. Michael set his salad aside as well. "They must have cared for each other at one point," he reminded her.
She sighed. "I never said they didn't," she pointed out. "Growing up, all my parents seemed to do was hurt each other. Now that I look back on it as an adult, I can see this meant they cared quite a lot, to have given each other that kind of ammunition." She looked down at her plate for a moment, then sharply back up at Michael. "I never want to be them."
"I'd really like to think we're more than the sum of our parents," he told her firmly.
She acknowledged this with a wry lift of one eyebrow. "You know what my father said to me, after he had to bail me out of my first mess? He said, 'Careful you don't turn into your mother', like this was the worst scenario he could imagine for me. I remember looking at him, and marveling, even as hungover as I was, that he couldn't see I was actually just like him."
Michael nodded. The fierce determination applied to everything she did. The unwavering loyalty to a cause. She was in every way Frank Tancredi's daughter. They just came at life from opposite corners. "I've come to understand my father better than I ever wanted to as well," Michael said slowly, because if they were going down this path of paternal similarities, it had to be said. "I judged him so harshly for leaving us. Absolutely no attempt at compassion. Even when I knew why, even as a grown man, caught in the same damned conspiracy…forgiveness, far too late. " He took stock for a second, then told her one of his greatest fears. "I wouldn't have blamed Mike, had he reacted the same and categorically denied me. I expected it, actually."
She frowned at this. "The difference is, Mike is much younger still. He hadn't seen you leave. And you've done such a good job of explaining."
He disagreed. "No. The difference is you." God, her loyalty. She actually put her father to shame. "Had my mother told me every day that my dad had been good, and true, and loved me…" He couldn't even fathom it. "You amaze me, Sara. You absolutely astound me. Do I tell you that enough?" Could he possibly? If he said it every day for the rest of his life, it wouldn't be adequate.
Color rose in her cheeks at this, which just made him want to pull her back into his arms and kiss her senseless. It wasn't physically possible, he decided, to love a woman more. "When you had your surgery," she said after a beat, "the one I was there for, I mean, the General asked me whether it was the cause I believed in, or the man. Do you remember?"
So much from those awful weeks remained jumbled in his mind. "Tell me."
"I told him it was the same to me. The cause is the man, and I love the man." She looked at him, and he basked in that love for what felt like a long moment. "So I believe in the man." She frowned again, like adding up these facts made everything so simple. "Alive, gone, with me, far away from me… why would that change anything? Who's not loyal to what they love?"
He shook his head at her, overwhelmed. Since his throat had closed off any ability to answer such a statement, he reached across the table for her hand again, and kissed it firmly. The waiter came back to check on them, probably wondering if he should delay their entrees in the kitchen, and Michael released her to retrieve his fork. "Eat your salad," he told her roughly, his voice still raw.
They ate in silence for a while, then Sara looked back up at him over her water glass. "My mother would have liked you," she told him. "Very much."
"That makes me happy to hear," he said sincerely. Then, "Of course, your father…he would have been a different story."
She flashed him a quick smile. "Just an added bonus, as far as my mother would have been concerned."
He laughed as their salad plates were cleared.
After their entrees arrived, Sara pushed her risotto around her plate a bit before asking with an air of causality, "So what does donating a rose garden cost, these days?"
"I'm confident you were taught it's impolite to inquire about the price of a gift," Michael chided, but added softly, "We could afford it." He knew she'd been discovering things about him, too, these past months. One, surely, was that he was responsible with money. Probably in her opinion, excessively so. But when you'd grown up without a dollar to your name, you knew the value of one.
She nodded, trusting him, as he knew she would. But suddenly he didn't like the idea of secrets between them, even benign ones. He told her the number.
Her eyebrows lifted slightly, but she resumed eating her meal. "I love the idea that it will be there, always," she stated simply, succinctly arriving at the exact point of his gift. A piece of her family, her history, would live forever in Springfield, and a rose Michael could give her would never fade, flatten, or get left behind. He actually thought such a feat should have cost him more. He certainly would have paid more.
As though she'd read his mind, Sara leaned over the table to kiss him, one hand on the rise of her stomach as she lifted herself from her chair. He tasted olive oil on her lips. She left her hand cradled against herself when she settled back again.
"Is the baby moving?" Michael asked. He felt envious…he wanted a turn with his hands on her belly.
She nodded. "I think the blood sugar just kicked in."
"Maybe," he ventured, "we name the baby after one of your parents."
She rejected this idea without even considering it, and Michael sighed, unsurprised. He was starting to wonder if they'd ever agree on a name they both loved.
"It's going to come to us," she promised.
His lips quirked. "Stop doing that," he demanded. "You keep reading my mind."
She laughed. "I know everything you're thinking," she informed him.
He pushed his finished plate away and signaled for the check. "Do you?" he challenged her, his eyes burning into hers as he let his gaze linger.
She swallowed. "Let's get out of here," she whispered.
Finally, Michael…
Last year, Michael's birthday had landed just days after he had, back in Sara and Mike's lives. They'd all still been a bit off-balance, feeling their way along with one another. There had been a cake, presented after a bit of a stumble when Sara hadn't actually known what type he would prefer, and a birthday card drawn by Mike, which had been handed over perhaps more dutifully and less authentically than Michael would have wished. Only an extra-arduous evening in Michael and Sara's newly shared bedroom that night had really saved the day.
This year, Henry just turned five weeks old. The difference was between night and day, in just about every way imaginable. Mike nearly threw himself on his father, waking him entirely too early with a homemade gift he'd labored over without any prompting whatsoever, Henry gifted him with need of a full-blown outfit change before 7 am, and Sara felt nowhere near arduous. In fact, much to her frustration, she had been placed back on bedrest following a scheduled doctor appointment just that morning. Low iron levels and still-too-low blood pressure. Michael only knew this because Dr. Coleson had 'accidentally' texted the lab results and prescribed bedrest to his phone number instead of Sara's. She'd arrived back home full of promises to file a HIPPA breach of confidentiality complaint.
She'd followed the bedrest order grudgingly, only because Michael made her. "I had plans for you," she complained, fretting completely unnecessarily over the cake she wanted to pick up, some place she wanted to take him, an errand she needed to run for him. "At the very least, you should take a break. Go do something without me."
"I don't see what I need a break from," he told her, and she stared back at him like she couldn't decide whether he was a saint or a liar. What was he supposed to do, go hit a bucket of golf balls? Grab a beer with a buddy? These ideas, like so many other 'normal' activities 'regular' people seemed to do, still sounded like absurd wastes of time to him. He'd far rather be right where he was, taking care of Henry while keeping one eye on Sara, making sure she stayed mostly horizontal, the other eye on the clock and Mike's school pick-up time.
He ignored her when she offered to take Mike's car pool to soccer practice, when she tried to walk Henry around the room to soothe him for his nap, when she asked to take over dinner prep. Finally, he turned on her. "There is one thing I could use a break from," he informed her pointedly, and she finally stopped complaining about her uselessness and her penchant for ruining birthdays. Stoically, she allowed him to make dinner, to clean up, and to get Mike through homework and bedtime.
She tried to rally in the bedroom, however, after the kids had finally gone down. Michael gave her points for effort, but… "Guilt is actually not the best aphrodisiac," he finally told her gently, untangling himself from her to let her simply lay against his chest in bed. She didn't protest much, clearly tired. No way he was going to let anything happen between them so soon anyway. Doctor's orders. "As I recall," he told her softly, "I enjoyed my birthday evening enough last year to last me some time." It had involved a lot more enthusiasm and a very thin and slippery silk number that had clung to every curve of Sara's body.
Remembering only made her groan, the comparison apparently too much for her to take. She looked down at herself. "I am literally wearing a decade-old t-shirt with spit up on it right now."
If he told her she looked just as beautiful this way, she wouldn't believe him, so he saved his breath. He buried his face in her shirt instead, playfully kissing cleavage and tasting sour, spit up milk. "Mmm," he said, and meant it.
"You're insane," she informed him. "Or desperate."
"I'm neither," he promised her.
"I wasn't even able to pick up your present," she added in self-disgust.
What would it take to make her see he really, truly didn't care? The fact that this still eluded her baffled Michael…he tried to tell her every single day how completely happy he was. He tried again. "I don't want anything but the three of you," he told her. "My gift is being here with you. Being home."
"You said that last year," she wallowed.
"And I'll say it again next year." She sighed into his chest, but at least it was a slightly more contented sound. "And anyway," Michael added, "Isn't this almost as good as birthday sex…a completely quiet house?"
She smiled against him. He saw her eyes crinkle the way he loved against the cotton of his shirt. But before she could answer him, he realized he'd jinxed them. The hard wail suddenly coming from Henry's room turned Sara's smile to another groan. "Ugh…he just went down."
Michael eased himself from her, sliding out of bed to make his way down the hall and up the stairs by the weak light coming from the kitchen. Putting Henry to bed in his own room next to Mike's was still in the experimental stage. The experiment wasn't going swimmingly.
By the time he reached the side of the crib, Henry had really worked himself up into a fit. "Hey, hey," Michael whispered to him, scooping him up immediately to cradle him to his chest. He and Sara had had a bit of a philosophical difference of opinion that Michael had won very early on: no child of his would be left to 'self soothe' in a crib all alone. Ever. End of story.
"Did you let Mike cry?" he'd asked her, because he already knew the answer.
"I didn't let Mike farther than an arm's distance from me for at least a year," she'd admitted.
"Exactly," he'd concluded, case closed.
In the dark bedroom, he checked off all the boxes in his head: Henry was dry, he'd just eaten, he wasn't cold. He also wasn't sleepy, apparently. He stared at Michael with his sea-green eyes wide open, still hiccuping slightly. Michael tried to convince himself to at least try to place him back in his crib and tip-toe out, but then Henry laid his wobbly head down against Michael's shoulder and let out a soft, contented sigh against his neck, and nope…he was definitely coming back to bed with them.
Sara just slid over to make room for the baby between them when they returned together. "You are such a sucker," she smiled.
"This way, we still have a quiet house," he told her, taking her hand to pull her closer to them. Henry found his fist and tried to insert it in his mouth. They lay there contentedly a few minutes, until Henry started to doze and Michael closed his eyes, his hand still tangled in Sara's. Then:
"Mom? Dad?" A disembodied whisper in the dark.
Michael opened his eyes. Sara started to rise, but he guided her back down with a hand on her shoulder. She complied, flinging an arm over her eyes in protest at being sidelined yet again. Michael ignored this. "What are you doing up, Mike?"
Mike just stood there by the side of the bed, like he wasn't sure himself. It was hard to tell in the dark, but Michael thought he looked a little off. He sat up, swinging his legs to the floor. "Mike?" he repeated.
"I feel…weird," Mike said, and then, without a moment's additional warning, threw up all over the floor and Michael's feet.
Ohhh..kay. "Uh, Sara? Towel?"
She'd opened her eyes at the unmistakable sound of Mike losing the contents of his stomach, and now groaned again as she fully took in the scene. "Yeah, on it." She paused. "If you'll let me?"
He nodded in defeat, and she eased herself from the bed; so as not to unsettle Henry, or because sitting up suddenly still caused her pain? She disappeared into the bathroom and returned with a bath towel, which she passed off to Michael, her free hand on Mike's forehead. "He's burning up."
"I'm sorry," Mike gasped, and then started to cry. This woke Henry, who joined him. "It's okay, baby," Sara said, maybe to both boys. Michael wasn't sure. She pulled Henry to her chest, soothing him as Michael tried to wipe down his feet and mop up the floor, simultaneously attempting to comfort Mike, who cried miserably by the bed.
"Do you think you need to - " Michael asked him, and Mike nodded swiftly. Abandoning his efforts with his feet, he scooped up Mike and ran for the bathroom. They made it, though barely. "I'll be right back to deal with that," he called to Sara. "Don't get back up." He heard her getting up anyway.
In the bathroom, he rinsed his feet in the shower stall and then returned to Mike, slumped on the floor by the toilet. He made quite the pathetic sight. He picked him up gently and Mike wrapped his arms around his neck. "I'm sorry, Dad," he mumbled again, "for throwing up on you on your birthday."
"Don't you start with that, too," Michael scolded softly. He carried him back upstairs to his room, pulled the trash can over to the bed, then went in search of the thermometer. When he returned, Mike's face looked flushed, but he hadn't thrown up again. He handed him a glass of water, then took his temperature. Sara had been right. 102 F. Poor kid. "Do you still feel sick to your stomach?" he asked quietly.
Mike shook his head in the negative. "Just…regular sick now. My head hurts." Michael handed him two children's Tylenol chewables from a box he'd found by the thermometer, then said, "Let me ask Mom what else to give you. Be right back up."
Sara had cleaned up the floor (he shook his head at her in disapproval) and was back in bed with Henry, who had stopped fussing. "102," he told her.
"Armpit or tongue?"
"Uh, that forehead strip thing."
Sara frowned. "Then it might be even higher. Dammit."
"I gave him Tylenol. Should he have something else, too?" She thought about this, pinching her eyes shut. She looked so tired, Michael said, "I'll figure it out. Don't worry."
She said, "I was just thinking…maybe water, but otherwise, let's see if the Tylenol helps. He stopped vomiting?"
"Yes." He bent over her, and kissed her forehead. Henry slept soundly now, swaddled in his blanket next to her. "Go to sleep. I don't want you or Henry to catch this. I'm going back to Mike's room."
"Are you sure?" she asked, eyes already closed again.
"I'm sure."
Upstairs, his son stirred uncomfortably under his blankets. Michael dragged the comforter back, and lay down beside Mike, only the sheet covering them.
"Will you stay here with me, Dad?" he asked pitifully.
"I will," Michael promised.
"Even if Henry needs something?"
"Mom has Henry. I'm here all night. Okay?"
Mike sighed shakily. "Yes. Okay."
Michael lay beside him, eyes suddenly smarting. This parenting thing was so simple, really: love your kids beyond reason, do anything for them. Repeat. Why had his parents been so abysmally bad at it? Company or no Company, he and Lincoln had deserved better. And Mike and Henry would have better, he thought fiercely. They'd have the best…of Michael, of everything.
After a while, Mike's forehead felt cooler to the touch. A while after that, when Michael had thought he'd drifted off, he said, "Dad? How many birthdays have you had?"
It had to be after eleven. Best not to indulge him. "Many, Mike. You need to try to sleep."
"Which was your best one?"
He gave in to this question, scrolling through past birthdays in his mind. Birthdays he barely remembered with his parents, birthdays in uncaring foster homes, where he was given generic cards and recycled presents, birthdays in college with rowdy friends he hadn't had much in common with, birthdays at work at the firm, marked by sheet cake in the break room and flirtatious offers to buy him drinks. His birthday last year, when everything had felt new and promising but also unsteady and terrifying. Finally, he asked Mike, "What one has been your best?"
"I don't remember them all, but, this year," Mike answered without hesitation. "Definitely this year."
There was Michael's answer. "Me, too," he told his son, checking his forehead again in the dark.