Closing In
But that sentiment does not pass: it remains, and slowly it consumes Peeta. At times, Katniss wonders if he has been brainwashed again, this time by his neighbors rather than by the Capitol.
Everyone around them is having children. In addition to having children, everyone is naming them after the happily-ever-after lovers. Perhaps the worst is that everyone asks them to attend baby showers, post-birth visits, and soon, first (and then second, and then third and then fourth…) birthdays.
The women also insist on inviting Peeta in addition to Katniss to these visits, despite protests that his presence may ruin the feminine bonding that such gatherings often hold.
Enthusiastically, he holds his hands over the woman's generously swollen stomach and feels the life kicking inside of her or he lifts up a child who smiles radiantly and squeals in his hands. He participates with alacrity in the lessons in diaper-changing, proper holding, and burping.
He admires the scattering of soft, fine hair on the heads and eyebrows of the little ones. He traces his hands over their cute little arms, their stubby and adorable legs, their impossibly large eyelids. They have the most delicate fingernails too, which he often compares to freshly-husked kernels of wheat.
It becomes a gibe among the women that having children will always bring more of Peeta's bread to their household. He looks for a reason to go to their houses and speak with them about their children. He holds them every time a woman offers, and the children cuddle closer to his familiar scent of yeast and flour. He loses count of the number of times husbands almost punch him in the face for staring as their wives breast-fed.
As he speaks with the families, he amasses their knowledge like cloth amasses water. Soon, people go to him for advice on children and on families because he holds the collective knowledge of the neighborhood and beyond. After he imparts his wisdom onto them, they pat his shoulders or take his hand in thanks, look at him admiringly, and tell him that he will make a wonderful father.
All the while, the women have their eyes on her. Why isn't her belly swelling? Why isn't she more often at home? Why doesn't she make more of an effort?
Katniss forces herself to keep quiet. It seemed almost unnatural for her to not want to have children, but she cannot change that thought.
The couple talks about children and having children more and more often as a result, and often ends with Katniss feeling like a pariah in the baby-crazed zeitgeist and Peeta gazing at his wife with sad, translucent eyes.
However, she stands by her decision; she can't have children…perhaps, not yet.
She manages to stave him off for another ten years, citing their work schedules and the needs of others. Also, she constant travel needs would only complicate things. "It wouldn't be practical or beneficial for either of us" she proclaims, "and we need to wait."
The more she talks about it, the less absolute she feels. This, Katniss freely admits to Peeta, finding that it is natural for her to stop thinking in absolute terms: the totalitarian regime had constantly proclaimed its immortality, and now it is little more than a dark ink-drop stain on the page of the world's history book. In retrospect, Peeta takes that as a sign that he will be able to convince her if he talks about it enough with her.
In the interim, Peeta plays the father; he "adopts" children that he sees regularly, gets to know them on a level rivaling that of their biological fathers, and becomes a valued playmate and fatherly figure to many of them.
However, that image in his play-world always shatters when the children's eyes flash with delight upon catching sight of someone approaching the shop, their legs automatically propel them away from Peeta and towards the road, their voices squealing "daddy!" in delight.
As the fathers sweep up the children, kissing them as the children laugh, Peeta walks stiffly into his shop to work with the dough he would need for tomorrow; as the fathers pass with their children in their arms, they hear especially loud slamming of rolling pins onto boards.
The day comes when Katniss no longer needs to travel frequently, when forces herself to let go of some of her responsibilities and to let others have control – if she did not, she would be no better than the totalitarians that she had despised and overthrown.
Life in her office becomes quiet, and she neither needs to stay as late nor come as early as she did before. The new president personally commends Katniss for all of her accomplishments and suggests that she take a well-deserved vacation. She wants to protest, but catches herself; why is she protesting at her superior's insistence that she takes time off? And then she accepts.
At home, the doldrums set in as Katniss finds that she cannot do much: her entire skill set revolved around hunting, combat, and reconstruction, none of which she needed at the time. Hobbies were foreign and convoluted to her, particularly because she cannot stand to keep still enough to craft and considers recreational art to be unproductive.
She talks with Peeta about it, and they decide to try something else: she comes and helps him at the bakery. He had wanted to bring her into this part of his world for the longest time, thinking how lovely they would look baking as a couple; he mixes the best ingredients and leaves it all to rise, she kneads and shapes the little masses of dough with her skilled hands, he pops the little ones into the oven, she waits and watches eagerly as he pulls out the golden, soft, and perfect results...
But, Katniss had never learned the delicate science of baking. The precision involved—careful weighing of each ingredient, constantly checking liquids to ensure that they are just the right temperature, specific means and order of folding additives such as fruit and nuts into bread—is lost to her, and her attempts must more often be sold as discount than as the quality products on which the Mellark family had built its name.
His mother snaps at Katniss often and exasperatedly when she sees Katniss doing something wrong, his father's eyes hold a perpetual glaze of disappointment when he sees her trying, he offers neither criticism nor support.
After two weeks of stagnant progress, Katniss kindly thanks her in-laws for giving her a chance to help them, but says that it would be better to leave this profession to those who are most adept at it.
"It is…very quiet around here." It makes Katniss feel guilty, thinking that this is what Peeta had to endure every night that she was gone.
She also wants something to do, something to occupy herself with, during the hours that Peeta is working.
Her friends at the bureau and in Panem were all busy, and their correspondences were few and far between: after all, they had their own families to take care of as well. They almost disappeared once they married and began having children; no more spontaneous meals together, no more talks about the pressing issues of Panem, no more visits that resulted in long pauses in which they would all bask in the serene silence.
The more the silence permeates her mind, the more having a child seems reasonable; she now has time to take care of one, the circumstances in which they would raise the child were much better than over a decade ago, and…there would be a lot of happiness.
It seems to Katniss that she had missed out on something that always brought people closer together: when she constantly goes to baby showers, she could feel the joy and the maternal bond radiating from the mothers, and she constantly felt that force field rebuffing her thin, childless pride.
"It is." Peeta agreed. They shifted in their bed again, Katniss pulled herself to meet his eyes.
"Maybe…Maybe we can fill it with some noise…better noise. Laughter…of children." She feels Peeta's breath hitches, almost daring to believe his ears.
"Do you mean it?" he whispers.
The younger side of her resurfaces, stopping the words in her throat, trying to argue with her present self. Katniss closes her eyes, telling off her younger self and trying to influence the decision that she has now made.
Peeta, feeling her hesitation, lays a hand on his cheek and gazes through the turbulence beneath her eyes. "Katniss…I promise you…it will work. We will all be happy."
To Katniss, marriage was all about happiness. Her mother and father had been happy, despite their situation, despite their burdens. One was happy when the other was happy; this, Katniss aspired the most to emulate. Peeta would be happy to have a child—ineffably happy.
And so, Katniss quickly concludes, she will be as well.
"Yes."
