Blue Skies by T. C. Boyle

Author:T. C. Boyle
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Epub3
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE NEXT MORNING, SHE FELT like shit. Todd had slept on the couch, which he was doing more and more lately, because he said he didn’t want the girls waking him up in the middle of the night. “I’ve got to sleep straight through or I’m just destroyed the next day, you know that,” he said, and she said, “Well, what about me?” and he said, “You’re the mother,” as if that settled it, point/counterpoint, end of discussion. He also said—and had reiterated it at the party for everybody gathered round—that he wasn’t really all that enthused about the concept of diapers, of shit, that is, baby shit. “It’s an evolutionary thing,” he said. “Men don’t mind killing things, gutting them, stripping off the hide or the scales or whatever—fish, I don’t know, deer, wild boar, right?—and we’ve got no problem with worms, slime, cockroaches, piss and vomit and all the rest of it, but you got to draw the line somewhere. Known fact,” he said, gazing around the table, “—women actually enjoy baby shit, isn’t that right, babe?” he added, turning to her with his big toothy ambassador’s grin.

He was being funny. Or tying to be.

“I don’t know,” she said, “but since Darwin isn’t around to back you up, why don’t we try an experiment and you change the girls ten times a day for the next week and see just how thrilling it is?”

He didn’t answer, shifting his focus to R.J. and Stoneman instead. “Do either of you have a dog?”

R.J. shook his head. “Uh-uh, no way. Snakes and dogs don’t make for a good mix.”

“Because there’s something I just don’t get. The dogs keep turning over the garbage can to make off with the diapers—they just can’t resist that mother’s-milk-flavored shit. Or maybe it’s the raccoons, I don’t know, but somebody’s really hot on it.”

“Thanks for sharing that with us,” Daria said.

“My pleasure.” Todd, three-quarters gone at this point, tipped his glass to her.

If she felt embarrassed, Cat tried not to show it. He was striving to be just this side of outrageous, working up a routine as a way of dealing with his emotions over this sea change in their lives—parenthood, fatherhood, babies—and again, she could forgive him that, but for the fact that he left her out of the equation. She hadn’t really been ready yet either, but once she got pregnant, she never looked back. He’d hounded her to have an abortion, day and night, but she kept throwing it back at him (You told me you wanted a family) and he countered with what would become his refrain (Yeah, sure, in like ten years maybe), but here they were, sitting round the table with their new Florida friends, the babies no longer theoretical but living breathing proof that the biology worked between them and there was no stopping it. Really, how do you think all these people got on the planet? she said, and he said, Beats me.

“What he means,” she said, “is that he’s just thrilled.

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