Chapter 18

The enchiladas were good, but then there's very little Cecelia cooks that isn't, and even then I'm sure it's just that I don't like meatloaf or eggs or most kinds of soup. I'd like to have her cook something for that British twit, Gordon Ramsey or whatever his name is, who bullies cooks on his TV show. I'm sure he'd love what she makes, and if he didn't he'd find that he couldn't bulldoze her – she pushes back, and hard, and for every more or less big word he uses she's got a dozen really big ones at the tip of her mind.

When supper was over, and we'd each demolished a healthy piece of cheesecake – Darlia's smaller than mine and Cecelia's, though at the rate she's growing that won't last much longer – Darlia brought me her homework to check. Cecelia checks the math, for she can do equations in her head that I have trouble with on a calculator. But I'm better at science of all sorts, though I'm no scientist, and history, and such things. I caught a mistake in Darlia's answers about a historical matter, in fact – a matter of which document the inalienable rights appear in, but there are college-educated adults who don't know the answer and I didn't rag her about it. There are, I think, benefits to being largely self-educated. What I know is about as systematic as a plate of worms, but what I know, I know, for I've learned it the hard way and because I wanted to. I'm not much of a quoter, but I probably know more about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – the actual texts – than some lawyers and historians who focus mostly on what others have said about what others have said about what others have said about the primary sources.

With Darlia's homework straight, we sent her off to get a bath. Cecelia looked after her down the hallway with a pensive expression. "She's growing up, Darvin."

"Yeah, fast."

"Do you know how long it's been since she's asked me to sit in the bathtub with her?"

"Nope."

"Two years, or around there. I know she's growing up, and it's no longer appropriate for us to be in the tub together, but I miss that."

I thought about it. Cecelia had loved to sit in the tub, with Darlia between her legs, both playing in the bubble bath, splashing about with various floating toys, Cecelia eventually washing Darlia's hair before they both got out and dried off. No, it wasn't appropriate anymore, but I missed it on my wife's behalf. Probably if Darlia had been a son there would have been something he and I had done together that he would have grown out of. "You know," I said, taking off on that last thought, "I never wanted either a son or a daughter, just a healthy kid, but I'm kind of glad Darlia's a girl."

"I'm happy that she is who she is, but I'm curious as to your reasoning."

"It's that whole bath thing. By growing up Darlia's taking that away from you, and I suspect it hurts a little bit. I'm seeing it from the outside, and it doesn't bother me. But if we'd had a boy, who knows what he and I would have been doing, that he'd eventually grow out of?"

"I had not thought of that." She reached her hand out and covered mine. "Did you know that I love the juxtaposition of the colors of our skin?" she asked. It must have been a rhetorical question, for she didn't wait for an answer. "Darlia, being a girl, has certain things in common with me. It was possible for us both to bathe together long past the point where you could have legitimately done so – if, indeed, you ever could have, and I'm not sure you could; bathing her, yes, but not bathing with her. We will always share our femininity, and you will always be outside that. And I foresee times when that exclusivity she and I share will cause you sadness. Yet now, I perceive that you are having an easier time of it. You are indeed not feeling the pain of someone very like you who's growing away from you."

She smiled at me, and squeezed my hand again before taking hers back, and picking up her bottle of Mountain Dew – now almost gone. Before she drank she said, "But you will, one day, feel a smaller pain. Think of her wedding, Darvin, and tell me that won't be a poignant day for you."

"That child ain't gettin' married till I'm dead an' gone," I said, but I smiled as I said it. "Yeah, I know what you mean. I'll be prouder of her that day than probably a man ought to be, but there'll go my Weightlifter, off into another man's arms and another man's house."

"I wonder if Daddy felt anything like that when we got married."

I grunted. "Thanks to my stupidity, he didn't even have a chance to be there. We just went an' done it, and I met him afterwards."

"It wasn't entirely your fault, Darvin. I could have insisted, but you know the fear I felt when I contemplated bringing a white man into Daddy's house and saying I was marrying you. Daddy was better than I gave him credit for, better than I was – than I am. But my fear compromised your relationship with Daddy."

"Whoever's fault it was, he missed that. And I suspect that was a different sort of sadness for him."

"Probably." She finally finished off her Mountain Dew, and screwed the cap down hard. "I observe that you are better, lately, at overcoming your bouts of depression."

"I am?"

"Darvin, please don't play games with me. I know that you don't like to talk about it – just as when you're physically ill you prefer to get up and try to do things as though you were healthy, without discussing it. But this is serious; it affects me, and I shall not drop it."

"Okay, C, sorry." I touched her forearm with a forefinger – that muscular forearm, with its tendons and veins clearly showing since she was wearing a blouse with sleeves only down to the elbow.

"I know why you go out and walk all day without telling me about it. I know what sort of things strain you, I know when to expect you to become depressed. At least, I can detect an impending bout 75 percent of the time, or thereabouts. I have expected it of you, with all the emotional stress you've been under this past week. You have had to deal with Alison's father returning, you have had to deal with the retirement of a man who is to you almost as a father, you have had to deal with the very great shock of finding yourself an elder of our church. If you did not yield a bit under such pressure you wouldn't be Darvin Carpenter. Yet other than the grit of dried sweat on your skin, which I permitted to remain only because supper was ready when you walked in, I have not detected signs of depression in you. I applaud you, my husband, and give thanks to God for your recovery."

I leaned back and scratched my neck. "Yeah, I guess you're right. I have been kind of upset, here and there. But I've managed to walk it off."

"Yet in the past walking has not sufficed. You are growing, Darvin."