Accidentally on Purpose by Mary F. Pols

Author:Mary F. Pols
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER 10

A Gift Horse

DOLAN HAD BEEN the beneficiary of great generosity even before he was born. Liza and Hugh had practically emptied their garage into the trunk of my car: a bassinet, two kinds of strollers, and a white wicker crib. Kir had come by with two enormous boxes full of hand-me-downs in great condition—clothes, toys, even extra diapers. Then there were the gifts, which seemed to arrive every day in the last month of my pregnancy and came from people I barely knew or had never even met. Women at work kept turning up at my desk with offerings: outfits, stuffed animals, soft blankets. Adrian, my gruff big brother, sent me a check for $1,000. Matt’s cousins sent a Baltimore Orioles uniform for the baby. His grandmother, about to become a great-grandmother, sent one of those portable cribs, better known in twenty-first-century parental parlance as a pack-and-play.

It was overwhelmingly kind of everyone and I loved it. Until the second pack-and-play arrived.

Matt had mentioned a couple of weeks before Dolan was born that some “girl” (I had been trying to get Matt to say “woman” but hadn’t made much headway) who hung around Finnegan’s Wake and regularly came to the bar team’s softball games had expressed a desire to get Dolan a gift. She’d asked if I was registered anywhere.

“It’s weird,” he said. “I don’t know why she wants to get him something.”

“People are incredibly nice,” I said. I was holding paint chips up to the wall in the baby’s bedroom. “The receptionist at the paper gave me a blanket the other day. What do you think, is Bahamian Blue just too freaking bright?”

“It’s pretty bright,” he said. “It just seems strange.”

“How about this one? Cool Blue?” I said. “I think I like it more. Just say we’re not registered anywhere and there’s no need to get anything, but an outfit is always welcome.”

At the time, I was too busy nesting to dwell on the conversation. The girl probably had a crush on Matt, which seemed misplaced, given that he was about to have a baby, but whatever. Then one night, right after Katy had gone home, Matt called from San Francisco. I was sitting on the couch, Dolan asleep at my breast. He sounded excited.

“So she, this girl, just dropped off all of this stuff,” he said. “You wouldn’t believe this crap. Another pack-and-play—and it looks like a nice one—and this huge box of diapers, and all of these little clothes hangers and things to separate out his clothes by age. It’s like $200 worth of stuff.”

He was laughing. I was suddenly very alert. I was still puffy from the C-section, although my ankles were almost back to their normal size.

“Why is this girl buying you all of this expensive equipment?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I think she just has a lot of money.”

“Have you been flirting with her or something, Matt?”

“No,” he said vehemently. “I don’t even talk to her. She’s always asking if I want to go get a drink or something, but I barely know her.

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