Chapter 26
[January]
When the landlord raised the rent and a crack mysteriously appeared in the master bedroom wall, Eric and Tami decided it was time to take the plunge, break their lease, and buy a house.
Tami had a blast house hunting. She scoured the newspaper for listings every morning and e-mailed realtors in the evening. Every night, while Eric was grading papers in the living room, the dial-up modem would beep and whine its way online as Tami logged on to her AOL account from the corner desk in the cluttered living room.
"Why don't you just call them?" Eric asked. "Don't we have to pay an hourly fee for that AWOL thing?"
"Because it's late," she said. "And this is more fun. I'm leaving my number." She typed away on the keyboard. "Plus, I have to e-mail my sister."
On Saturdays, Eric and Tami would tour houses, sometimes letting Julie down to crawl her way across the floor.
"This is a nice one," Eric told her as they stood in the master bedroom of one house. He was holding Julie at this point because she'd recently tried to lick an electrical outlet. The girl was fighting to get out of his arms, but he had a firm grasp. "And it's in our budget."
"Hon, it only has the half bath in the hallway. We need two full baths."
"Why? We can all use the same shower."
"But I don't want guests showering in the master bath."
"We aren't buying a house for guests."
"And eventually, we're going to have a second child," she reminded him. They planned to have their kids four years apart.
"Well, this one has three bedrooms. One for each kid, and one for us."
She smiled coquettishly and kissed his cheek. "But what about the one we looked at yesterday? It was really nice. With the two full baths and three bred rooms and that open study where you can do all your planning? It had a garage too! That'll keep the car cooler in summer."
"This one has a shaded carport."
"But the other one has a much bigger backyard. More room for you and Julie to toss the football when she gets older."
He sighed. "We could only manage to put ten percent down on that house."
"The realtor said we can get a loan with only ten percent down."
"Just because we can qualify for a loan doesn't mean we can afford it." He released Julie because she was struggling so hard, but he kept an eye on her. She crawled over and pulled herself up on the bed. She just stood there bouncing. "My dad says it used to be a lot harder to qualify for home loans and that there's going to be a lot of people who end up in over their heads."
"Your dad? Your dad's an athletic director. What does he know about real estate?"
"He reads finance books just for fun. He knows stuff. He says we shouldn't take on a mortgage that' s more than two and a half times my annual income. This house is nice. It'll be good for us."
She hated that he wasn't even discussing it with her, that he didn't seem to care whether or not she even liked the house they were standing in at this moment. "I don't want this house." She scooped up Julie and walked down the hall.
When they were in the car and Eric was driving, she glanced at him. He was concentrating fiercely on the road, and his jaw was rigid. She looked in the rearview mirror at Julie and then back at Eric.
"I'm sorry I can't afford to give you the house you want," he said. "I'm sorry I'm not successful enough."
Now she understood she'd hurt rather than angered him. "That's not what this is about, Eric. That's not – "
"- You probably shouldn't have dumped Mo for me. I bet if you'd stuck with him, you'd have two houses by now."
"Sure," she said. "One for me and one for his mistress."
Eric's lips twitched into a half smile.
She put a hand on his knee. "What was behind that half bath? A storage closet, right?"
"Uh…yeah. I think so."
"You know, in a couple of years, when we have enough money, we could knock out that wall and expand the bathroom into a full bath. Right?"
"Sure."
"And I liked that little nook in the master bedroom," she said. "it's the perfect size for a little table and chair and a mirror. I could make that my vanity, sit and brush my hair at night."
He held the steering wheel with one hand and reached over to stroke her hair.
She smiled. "And you know, there were a lot of young kids playing outside in the street. I don't remember seeing any kids in the other neighbourhood."
He returned his hand to the wheel. "Listen, we don't have to get that house if you don't like it. We can look at bunch of other ones. I just want to try to stay in budget."
"And I just want to find something that feels right. Let's sit down tonight, go over all the finances together, and agree on a maximum price. Then we'll keep looking." She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "You're a success, Eric. You're a fine teacher and a good coach, and I respect you."
[February]
They found a one-story rambler with the two full baths Tami wanted but with a smaller master bedroom. "Happy Valentine's Day," he told her when they closed, and he insisted on carrying her over the threshold.
[March]
Julie took her first steps when she was just ten months old. Eric was there for the momentous occasion. He'd been sitting on his knees on the living room floor, urging her to "Come to Daddy." She'd crawled a little at first, pulled herself up on the coffee table, and then walked – four big steps at once – before falling, laughing, into his arms.
[April]
One afternoon, Eric came home from spring training and set a football down on the kitchen table. Julie toddled right on over, reached up, put her hand on it, and said, "Fooball."
"Tami!" Eric shouted. "Did you hear that?"
If Tami hadn't been standing a few feet away at the counter, she would have thought Eric was making it up.
Julie's second word was "Da-da" (or so Eric claimed), and her third was "mom." Not "mama" or even "mommy," but - "mom."
[May]
Some eight dozen photographs were taken at Julie's first birthday party, most of them by Eric's parents. Now that they lived in El Paso, they were two hours further away from their granddaughter and didn't get to visit as often.
Grandpa Taylor gave Julie a noisy activity table, a large, plastic Tot Tunes CD player, and a ball pit tent with 100 plastic multi-colored balls.
"Where the hell are we going to put that tent?" Eric grumbled when his parents left.
[July]
That summer, Eric and Tami spent three days in Houston at Angie and Grady's house. Their new baby was a cute, plump little boy by the name of Michael. Eric approved the choice, since it was his own middle name.
Tami would have stayed longer, but Eric refused to "impose" on Angie and Grady, even though they'd invited the Taylors to stay longer and their house had four bedrooms. "Fish and guests, Tami," Eric said. "Fish and guests."
Before they left Houston, they took a romantic tour of some of their old haunts, and Tami insisted on finding the tree beneath which he had proposed that first time. It was gone, however. The wooded short-cut from the corner to the dorms had been turned into a student parking lot.
"That's okay, babe," he reassured her. "We're still standing."
Julie toddled her way around the bookstore where Eric used to work, and they bought her a UH shirt and cap. They went to the MWU campus, too, and while Tami was gazing at those buildings where she used to enjoy learning, she said, "I might want to go back to school someday. Get a graduate degree."
Eric didn't say a word, but he didn't precisely appear thrilled by the suggestion.
