[Monday, August 20]

When Julie was six and a half weeks old, Tami returned to work in the Admissions Office, arriving at 8 AM for her ten hour shift. She settled the baby into the portable pack n' play by her desk. Tomorrow she would start the fall classes she'd stacked entirely on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but today she had to juggle phones and filing and typing and bottle feeding and quieting the baby when she cried.

Tami ended up wearing Julie in the baby sling most of the day. She received quizzical looks from some of the staff and kept having to explain that the Assistant Dean had said it was okay to bring the baby to work. She got home at 6:15 and, exhausted, lay down in bed with Julie on her chest. She woke up at 7:00 when Julie started wailing and fixed her a bottle. Eric came home just as she was burping the baby, and she realized she hadn't started heating dinner. She had a lasagna prepared she'd meant to warm.

Fortunately, Eric came bearing Chinese take-out, and, with it, a single red rose. He set the table while Tami changed Julie and lay her on her back under the play gym.

"You're so sweet," she told him as she sat down to dinner.

"Look at her," he said as he glanced over Tami's shoulder to Julie on the floor. "Look at that arm. She's got a really good arm, don't you think? For a six week old? She's a bit over six weeks old now, isn't she?"

Tami laughed. "I don't know what's normal arm strength at this age."

"Look at her slap that octopus. She's just slapping it, babe."

Tami smiled.

He volunteered to wash the dishes while she settled Julie into the crib. (They'd moved Julie out of their room on Sunday, before Tami went back to work, in hope that they would get better sleep. She was waking up at 12:30 AM and 5 AM now, which gave them 4.5 solid hours of sleep in the middle of the night.) Also, she'd been growing fast since they'd switched to formula, and she would soon be too big for the bassinet.

They settled onto the couch, and Eric stretched an arm around her. "How was your day?"

"Exhausting. People kept looking at me funny. But I got my work done. How was yours?"

"Same," he said.

"People kept looking at you funny?"

"Turns out I had my jersey on inside out."

She laughed.

He kissed a bare spot between her neck and her shoulder. She was wearing just a tank top. "So…uh….six weeks, huh?" he asked. "Six weeks. That's when the doctor said you'd have the green light and be good to go, right?"

"Jesus, Eric!" Tami pulled away from him. "Is that why you were being so nice? The dinner and the rose? Because you want to get laid?"

"I was being nice because I love you. And because I know it's important for you to have that emotional connection before the sexual connection. You told me how much that matters to you. So I was making the effort."

"So you could get laid! After I worked all day while taking care of the baby all day!" Tami wasn't quite sure why she was so mad about this, but she was mad.

"I worked all day too, Tami. I went to a two-hour morning practice, and then I went to two classes, and then I studied game tape, and then I went to a two-hour evening practice. Back to back to back to back. I'm tried too. But I'm not too tired for you."

"So you bring a rose. Did you read that in a playbook somewhere? Bring a rose, get laid?"

"Damn, Tami, why do you have to be so judgmental? We haven't had sex in over two months! You haven't even touched me in a sexual way since the baby was born. Even though, on our honeymoon, you promised you would give me hand jobs and blow jobs during the first six weeks."

"Well forgive me for not realizing how little sleep I'd get and how I'd be turned into a cow! How little you'd be home to help!"

"Please don't yell at me," he said quietly but thinly. "I am doing what I can to help. But I have to work and train and take classes. I have to do these things. I'm not out partying. I'm working. And then I come home and get treated like…" He threw up a hand and shook his head. "You act like there's something wrong with me for wanting sex with my own wife. For wanting some kind of sexual connection. Anything. Some kind of acknowledgment that you're not…un-attracted to me." He didn't sound angry so much as wounded. He looked like he was about to cry. That was when she noticed the dark bags beginning to form under his eyes from lack of sleep.

"Eric, I'm sorry."

They'd had a fight like this before. How often were they doomed to repeat the same arguments? Is that what married couples did? Hadn't they both learned from the first round? Well, it seemed Eric had learned something. He'd tried tonight, at least. He'd wooed her before he'd made his move, but she didn't like that he'd done it with a single goal in mind. Why couldn't spending time together and being nice to her be his goal?

Part of her couldn't help resenting him his freedom from the responsibility of motherhood. Fatherhood wasn't quite the same. It was nowhere near as physically and emotionally demanding, at least not as far as she could see. But she wished she hadn't yelled.

"You're right," she told him. "I don't know why I reacted like that. I shouldn't have reacted like that. I'm just so tired. And I don't feel ready for sex yet. I'll just give you a blow job instead. Let me give you a blow job."

"I don't want it like that. I don't want a reluctant, duty blow job, Tami. No one wants that!"

"Eric…" She reached out to stroke the hair at the nape of his neck, a conciliatory gesture, but he just jerked his head away.

"Let's just go to bed early." He stood.

She followed him down the hall. When they had their teeth brushed and eased under the sheets, she lay her head on his chest. He felt stiff, and his arm lay very loosely around her. He didn't stroke her back or arm or anything. "I can't sleep on my back, Tami," he said after two minutes of lying rigidly beneath her touch.

She rolled to her side, hoping against hope that he would roll over and spoon with her, as he did so many nights when they were drifting off to sleep, but instead he rolled in the other direction, his back toward hers.

She scooted back until they were at least touching, back to back.