Binding Arbitration (40 page)

Our security guy cough-laughed and Libby smiled at him, and he couldn’t resist smiling back. He accommodated Libby’s every whim. I ushered him alongside the store’s entrance. He was cramping my style, but Libby enjoyed having him as a buffer. I warned Gwen that if we didn’t lose the unnecessary security soon, she might lose a federal agent.

With my parents in town, they were with Cass, while Libby lassoed me into helping her and Rick pick up the baby furniture. We were supposed to load it, take it to Vicki and Rick’s house, and assemble it. I pulled the gate up on the crib. “This part comes assembled, right?”

Libby rolled her eyes. “No, I’ll put up the draperies and do the linens while you guys assemble.” She looked toward the front of the store. “I’m sure Dwight will help me, if you’re not interested.”

I pointed a finger at our agent, who now was on a first name basis with Libby and indicated that he better not move a muscle. I looked at Rick who hadn’t slept in two days. He’d had to take three Fed Ex cargo planes and one private charter back to Chicago. He’d barely gotten his hospital gown on before Betty made her screaming entry.

I had been pacing the hospital corridor, my stomach knotted, because Libby had promised to stay with Vicki until Rick or the baby arrived. I was a nervous wreck all night; I couldn’t imagine how Libby had gone through that whole ordeal without me, though I thanked God Vicki had been with her. When I mentioned that to Libby, she said it was ‘no big deal.’ She’d been only in labor for two-and-a-half hours.

“The first one’s supposed to take twenty-four hours.”

“What can I say? I’m an overachiever in everything.”

“As glad as I am it went fast for you, it means next time we might need to put you in the hospital the week before. I don’t want to have to deliver a baby in the back of Tank.”

She looked around at all the baby furniture, bemused. As if she’d never thought of birthing another child, she smiled shyly. “I think that’s putting the cart before the horse.”

I slid along her body and whispered, “I’m available for stud services as soon as you’re ready.”

Rick stumbled up to us, looking at his list. “Do I want to know what a diaper-wipe warmer is?” He looked as if whatever it was might soothe him. His hair was crumpled, his clothes wrinkled, and his five o’clock shadow needed a nap. I didn’t think I would be getting a lot out of him other than snoring, when it came to assembling baby furniture. Libby gave him a raised eyebrow and pointed him in the right direction.

“Okay, what’s first on our list?” I asked.

“We need to get the crib and dresser numbers so they can pull the pieces from the stock room.” She wandered over to a white, round metal crib I read it on the description card, ‘French antique in pink-and-white gingham with white eyelet trim.’ Libby laughed. “Vicki put a spell on this, so no one else would buy it.” She caressed the blanket folded over the rail.

“Is this the one we’re getting?”

“You read the tag, one of a kind, not in our budget. Come on, I’ll show you her second choice.”

We moved across the showroom, to a plain white wooden crib. It was like a dirt field compared to the friendly confines. She handed me her clip board. “Write down the style number and I’ll dig through the bedding to see if they have what we need.”

“What about a dresser or the changing table?”

Libby didn’t look up from her heap, but she pointed as if she had some internal mom radar knowing exactly where everything was. It was the first time I thought of her as a mom, because I never saw her with Cass as an infant, I thought of her as a grown-up version of my Libby. While she was Cass’ mother, and would hopefully be the mother of all my children, in my heart I couldn’t see her as anything other than the most interesting, exciting girl I ever knew.

I didn’t think, no matter how she aged, that would change for me. She somehow belonged to me, as if she’d grown inside of me the way Cass had grown inside of her. I wondered if she would grow stronger and surer with every child. It only seemed fair, and I laughed at myself out loud at the realization.

She looked up from the floor, where she had surrounded herself with heaps of baby items. “You find this funny? That I failed in my basic duty as best friend by not giving my friend a baby shower? Her baby doesn’t have a stitch of clothes.” She dropped her head, when tears started.

I kneeled alongside of her. “Babe, you’ve had a few things on your mind. And I wasn’t laughing at you. When you pointed to what you wanted, just now, it seemed so maternal to me.”

“I am a mother, you know.”

“And you’re one of the best mothers I’ve ever seen. It’s just a little weird for me because I think of you as my Libby. Even though there’s Cass, I still think of you as mine first.” I brushed my lips against her jaw. “You didn’t fail Vicki, and Betty has no idea about what she’s wearing.”

“This from the man who came out of the womb in Prada.”

I pulled her to her feet. “Let’s go check out.”

“Wait, we need all the numbers.”

“I have them in here.” I pointed to my temple.

Rick had accumulated a heap of boxed items at the register; the young sales girl was talking on the phone. I went around the register and circled my finger around the pile indicating we were ready, and she immediately hung up.

“I was here for five minutes, and she ignored me.” Rick eyed me. “That’s the first thing about you I haven’t liked.”

Libby gave Rick a sideways glance. “Give it time.”

I ignored their angst and dealt with the matter at hand, “The antique French bedroom set. If we buy it, do we take it as-is, or do we have to assemble it?”

The girl had a fake French accent to go along with her rude demeanor. “Do you realize how much that ensemble costs?”

“I read the price. Does it come assembled?”

“
Oui
.”

I pulled out my American Express. “We’ll take the crib, the matching furniture, and the bedding.” I waved my hand over the diaper genie, the diapers, the clothes, the whole kit-and- caboodle. “And all this, too.”

Libby blanched. “Do you know how much that crib costs?”

“Will it bankrupt me?”

“No, but it will, me,” Rick said.

I turned to Rick. “Listen, you’re tired. None of us have had much sleep. Our kids are in the hospital. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather spend the day with them than putting together baby furniture. We can load and unload this in no time, and the best part is that Vicki gets her fantasy nursery.”

“Libby was going to pay for a lot of this stuff anyway.” The only thing holding Rick back from agreeing was masculine pride. “The extra expense is mine. I owe Vicki more than I could ever repay her. She helped Libby, when I didn’t. Let me do this for your family to repay the debt.”

“I wasn’t looking forward to putting all this stuff together.” Rick hesitated. “We can get this all done and get back to the hospital by dinner time.”

I handed the clerk my card. “Ring away.”

We took all the baby items to Vicki and Rick’s small bungalow. Rick said the only reason they’d been able to live in Evanston was because the house had been his grandparents’ and they’d sold it to him when they moved to Florida to retire. We stacked everything in the dining room against one wall and moved all the furniture directly into the room. Libby and Vicki had painted it before I had known we called the same city home.

We persuaded Rick to take a nap, while we put the room to rights. There were a few items to reattach on the canopy of the crib. I was putting together a swing when Libby came in with a load of clean linens, which she folded on the changing table and then put into baskets and drawers.

She held up a one-piece jumpsuit, which had snaps running from the frilly neck to the crotch and red roses dotting the soft fabric. “Cass lived in these his first few months.” And she drew it to her nose smelling the baby detergent.

“I hope it didn’t have roses on it and a frilly collar.”

“Of course not.” She wrinkled up her brow. “His were blues and tans with dogs and bears. He grew so fast the first three months that some of them he wore only once and then his toes were pushing out of them.”

“That’s my boy,” I said with a chuckle.

She drew herself away from the memory. “I should’ve come to you for help when he was a baby.” She paused. “I was afraid, you’d fall in love with him the way I did, and you’d want to take him away from me because of what I couldn’t give him.”

I became still, frozen with a wrench in my hand. Finally, we were going to have the conversation that could make or break our future. “I wouldn’t have taken him away from you.”

“I can see that now, but then you were so angry at me, and when you didn’t talk to me at graduation I convinced myself you hated me.” She turned away organizing the changing table. “That’s why I was in such a hurry for you to sign those papers. I was terrified you were going to want to see him.” She frowned. “And then I was devastated that you didn’t.”

“I was a coward, Libby. I was angry, but I knew it wasn’t your fault. Deep down, I knew you didn’t do it on purpose. I’d had plenty of experience with women. Maybe I did it on purpose. I’ve thought about that a lot, that maybe it was my way of making you mine without having to ask or risk rejection.”

She looked around, as if the words she wanted might be written on the walls and she could just recite them rather than pull them from her soul. “I stayed away because I was afraid that if you wanted Cass, you would take me along in the bargain, and I wouldn’t have been strong enough to say no. That’s why I never came to see you. I was afraid I would never know if you wanted me, or if you would’ve felt obligated. I couldn’t live with you, if we weren’t equals. You held so many of my dreams. I wanted to know, for once in my life, someone wanted me for me.”

I reached for her and she came into my arms easily now, as if she had accepted, understood, that she belonged there. “I want you for you. Not because of Cass, not because of the past. I want you because you’re stubborn, and quirky, and sweet, and sexy. I want you because you’re on my mind and in my heart and filling my soul. I want you because with you beside me I feel whole, and no one else has ever made me feel that way. I want you because of you. Cass makes us all the better, but the love I feel for him couldn’t inspire the kind of love I’ve always felt for you.”

Tears ran down her face. She had cried a lot since I’d come back into her world. In the past she’d always seemed so strong. Now I witnessed the raw, startling, vulnerable side, but it didn’t make her weak. It made her more precious to me, and my love for her more tender. And in that lay the crux of everything, the vast expanse of the emotion I felt for her. She could make me seethe with anger and burn with passion. She humbled me with joy and brought me to my knees in gut-wrenching agony.

No one touched my emotions in so many ways. There were never so many triggers, no one made me love the way I loved Libby. I wrapped her in my arms, my chin stroked the top of her head. Her loose hair swept across my hands, and her presence filled my heart with flutters. My mouth found her lips.

In some ways, I hadn’t been really living until the day Libby gave me a wake-up call. “You’ve made me feel things I hadn’t felt in years, and I needed to feel them to know something was missing. I’ve never been benched by anyone but you, Libby. Thank you for making me feel more.”

“Bone-deep hatred?” She cry-laughed.

“The first thing I think of in the morning is you and Cass, and you’re my last thought at night. I dream of you, and I have since the first moment I laid eyes on you. I know exactly what you smell like, how your skin feels, the texture of your hair, what you taste like. I care about your happiness before mine. I want you, and more importantly, I need you, and I’ve never needed anyone before.”

She came up on her tip toes and kissed me. I couldn’t remember the times before, when she never came into my arms as willingly as she does now. Life wasn’t as simple as it once had been, but it held more promise.

What exactly I had said or done that led to this moment of clarity, I couldn’t place my finger on. But I knew things had changed, that we were closer to becoming us. With every step in that direction, I was closer to where I was supposed to be. I had always thought the pinnacle of life for me would be marked by baseball, but I was coming to learn that all the truly momentous events of my life would occur off the field, and I felt content with that truth.

A flash of the ump’s face filled my vision, and he smiled.
A wise old owl lived in an oak. The more he saw the less he spoke. The less he spoke the more he heard. Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?

* * *

It was black Friday, and while the rest of Chicago bustled through malls, we had a quiet day in the hospital. My parents arrived about 3 p.m. for Friday movie night.

Libby had a meeting earlier this afternoon at Whitney, Brown and Rodgers. She was wearing one of her kick-ass lawyer suits when she arrived at the hospital. I swear the woman could run in stilettos like an Olympic track-star. I wanted to hustle her out of the building before she realized I was taking her away for the evening.

“Where are we going in such a rush?”

“I have some business you can help me take care of.”

She looked perturbed. “I would think, with all the phone calls you’ve been making, you wouldn’t be so busy.”

Oh, we were going to get busy. “How’d things go at the meeting?” I asked by way of distraction.

“They fired Rat Bastard, apologized, and offered me a job and a financial incentive not to file a sexual harassment suit.”

“What’d you say?”

“Yippee, thank you, no thank you, and how very generous.”

“You’re not going back?”

She sighed. “I just don’t have the heart for it right now. Once Cass is better, I’ll figure out what I want to do. The severance package will give me time to figure it out.”

“That’s great. I’m at the point where I might need your help with this project.” I pulled out of the parking garage.

She pulled her head out of scavenging inside her bag. “If you’ve been working on the project for a few weeks, then you’re headed in the wrong direction, and you’re ahead of schedule.”