I haul the dog paraphernalia from the basement and set food out in the kitchen. For tonight, I’ll let Lizzie’s uncles watch over her in her bedroom, but I don’t think that should be a long-standing practice. It doesn’t seem like it would be good for her or them to be so dependent. I spread out the blankets near the dresser drawer and pat them invitingly. William stays where he is, but Dante ambles over and drops down with a noise that sounds like relief. I ruffle his fur again and then lean down to plant a kiss on the silky fur on the top of his head.
“Love you,” I whisper. “Even like this.”
In the morning, I wake to the smell of coffee brewing and the feel of Dante’s arms around my waist. It takes me a second to remember exactly how the situation stood last night when I collapsed into bed, but as soon as I do, I squeal and flip myself over.
He’s awake, he’s watching me, and he kisses me hard for a long moment. I am so happy to see him—days before I could have expected to have him back—that for a moment joy crowds out all other emotions, all other memories. I hug him as hard as I can and return the kiss with abandon.
When he pulls away, he’s smiling, but his face has been etched with a permanent sadness that suddenly reminds me of everything that has transpired in the past twenty-four hours. “Don’t get too enthusiastic,” he warns. “William’s in the other room making breakfast.”
I kiss him again, just to prove I’m not afraid of William, and then drop my head back to my own pillow. “There’s so much we have to talk about, the three of us,” I say. “But I don’t want to get out of bed as long as you’re in it.”
“Well, in about an hour or so, you’ll be in bed with a dog, so unless you want to start getting kinky—”
I flick him on the nose. “Fifteen years, you’ve managed not to make bestiality jokes, and now all of a sudden—”
“Lot of stuff has changed overnight,” he replies, suddenly serious.
I sigh. “It certainly has.”
He pats my cheek. “Come on. Let’s get up, get dressed, talk to William. Figure out everything we need to do next.”
It is a strange convocation at my kitchen table that morning. We take turns holding the baby on our laps as we eat breakfast in shifts. I notice that Lizzie is perfectly at ease with William, catching at his fingers, pulling at his long hair, giggling at the sound of his voice; she has been around him fairly often, I think. By contrast, when she’s in Dante’s arms, she’s a little more reserved, but a little more fascinated. She keeps her head turned so she can watch him, so she can memorize him, so she will know him by sight and scent and sound when she encounters him again.
I outline my ideas for delaying the news of Christina’s death, and they are in absolute agreement. Like me, they believe only disaster could result from the authorities discovering her identity and taking Lizzie into custody. Some of my legal worries melt away when William reveals that he is executor of Christina’s estate and named in her will as Lizzie’s guardian.
“No offense, but we still might need a lawyer and a social worker to help us make this a smooth transition, because you might not strike people as the most…mmm…obvious person to be caring for a baby,” I say.
They both laugh. “Hey, I have a Social Security number,” William says. “I pay taxes. My only income is in the form of a few investments that don’t yield too much, but I’m not a total derelict.”
It turns out that their names are on the house, along with Christina’s, which will make it much easier to dispose of it, if that’s what we decide to do. “Or keep it for Lizzie to inherit when she turns twenty-one,” Dante suggests.
“I suppose we could rent it out for the next few years but—ugh. I don’t feel like being a landlord,” I say. “Well, that’s not an urgent problem for today. What’s urgent is retrieving Christina’s car, creating a plausible lie about where she is, and then in a few weeks letting everyone know that she—that she died.”
Dante’s face tightens; William looks away. Dante is the one to speak. “What we really need to do,” he says, “is figure out what to do with Lizzie.”
I tell them what I told Ellen. “I’m keeping her.”
“For now, maybe,” Dante says. “But you—”
“Forever,” I interrupt. She’s currently sitting quietly on my lap, playing with the top button of my sweater. “Dante, you know I want a baby. I told you that a couple of months ago. And I adore Lizzie. And she’s yours, she belongs to you. I can’t possibly give her up, turn her over to strangers. I’m not going to. Don’t even bother arguing.”
“You need time to think it through—” Dante begins, but William looks over at him with a sweet smile.
“She told you not to argue,” he says.
Dante turns on him. “This is our mess, not hers,” he says. “She shouldn’t have to fix it for us.”
William shrugs. “She loves you, so she thinks it’s her mess, too. I think it’s a good solution. It feels right.”
“It feels like we’re taking advantage of Maria.”
I lean over to put a hand on his arm. “If it will make you happier, I’ll say I’ll keep Lizzie for a month and decide then what I want to do,” I tell him. “But I already know I want to keep her.”
He stares back at me. “I can’t help you,” he says in a low voice. “Or not very much. I think I’ve learned how to be human an hour or two a day, but that leaves all the other hours for you to have to deal with her.”
“Hey,” says William. “I’m not completely useless, you know.”
I smile at them both. “See? Lizzie will have me and both of you. More family than she knows what to do with.”
“I’m just not sure,” Dante says.
“Well, I am,” I reply.
William tilts his head at me. “Of course, your own family might start wondering how you ended up with a baby all of a sudden.”
I laugh. “I know. I’m already trying to decide how to spin that story. Beth’s met Lizzie, so I have to start with a version of the truth, I think. And I need to come up with a story line pretty soon, because I want to take Lizzie with me on Thanksgiving, and that’s just three days away.”
“We can watch her while you’re visiting your family,” William says.
“I want to take her with me,” I reply. “She’s part of my life now. She’s mine.” I lift my hand from Dante’s arm and wave it to indicate the three of them, Lizzie on my lap, Dante and William at the table. “You’re all mine. More than I ever could have hoped for.”
Of course, that one conversation doesn’t end the debate, but I’m not too worried about it. Once Dante believes I am utterly committed to keeping Lizzie, he will give in.
I love having him around at least briefly every morning, although I do wonder if all these single hours of being a man will cut into the extended period he will spend in human shape when it is time for him to transform again. I decide not to worry about it. I decide I like having him in the house, or near it, when he is shaped like a dog, and I secretly hope that, because he is spending so much time in a populated neighborhood, his body will realize he must continue to shift into this generally acceptable form. No more bears, no more deer, no more wild creatures foraging through the night. Just man’s best friend, a stray who has found a welcoming home.
I’m less certain how I feel about William’s continued presence in my life. But then, I’ve never been sure how to take William, and I am still learning what he’s like. It’s quickly apparent that he prefers to be in animal shape, and his default creature is that rangy golden setter. He is not always at the house when I get up in the mornings, but he usually checks in every day. It seems he’s always told the truth when he’s said that he can shift between forms at will. This comes in handy when, for instance, I need to run to the grocery store on Wednesday afternoon and I don’t want to bring Lizzie with me. William is more than happy to resume his human body and watch over her while I’m gone.
My guess is that, as we all get used to the new para
meters of our lives, William will be around less and less. I will have to find some way to let him know when I need him, or we will have to devise a schedule for when we expect him to appear. For now, I am thinking of asking Ellen’s boyfriend to install a doggy door for me so William and Dante can come and go at will. And then I will have to find some way to childproof it before Lizzie is old enough to crawl.
Funny—for so long, it has been just me in this house. Yes, I was joined at intense and satisfying intervals by Dante, but it was still my house, my life. I fit myself to him when he was here, but he was absent from so many of my daily calculations. And now my life has grown exponentially more complex. I am constantly juggling the requirements and contributions of three other souls, and I cannot make a single decision that does not take their needs into account. I am no longer a strong but lonely woman with a part-time lover; I am the head of a most unconventional family.
Sometimes I’m bewildered and sometimes I’m overwhelmed and sometimes my temper snaps or my mood plummets or my weariness sends me to bed on the edge of tears. But mostly I’m energized, I’m entertained, I’m constantly thinking and planning and solving a problem or easing the way. Mostly I really love my life.
Thanksgiving at Aunt Andrea’s comes and goes more smoothly than I could have hoped. Everybody loves Lizzie. Aunt Vannie and Clara fight over who gets to play with her the most, and all three of them settle on the floor after the meal to bat around small soft toys free of any choking hazards. Beth drags me out to Aunt Andrea’s back porch to demand more details about this sudden addition to my life, but I’ve rehearsed my cover story, down to my pauses and gestures.
I wasn’t entirely honest when I told you that her mom got in touch with me over Facebook. The truth is, her mother is the sister of this guy I dated for a while in college—Dante, remember him? Yeah, the sort of dark mysterious one. Well, he resurfaced a year or so ago and we’ve been dating ever since—I know, I know, I should have told you, but I didn’t know how long it would last and—anyway. I’m still crazy about him. And he’s really worried about Lizzie’s mom, he says she’s so wild, she’s always going off with guys she doesn’t know, and he asked if I’d help out with her from time to time, so—here we are.
As I anticipated, she’s so intrigued by Dante’s reappearance in my life that she doesn’t pay too much attention to the details about Lizzie. That may change in the future if I formally adopt Lizzie, but for now I am able to skate by with a minimum investment in the truth.
My mother’s reaction is the most matter-of-fact—but also the most insightful. First she tells me they’re having a rummage sale at her church this weekend, and she can buy clothes and other baby accessories, perhaps even a high chair if I’d like one. Later she asks if I’ll have Lizzie during Christmas.
“It’s possible,” I say. “Christina’s been traveling a lot. And she’s very—unreliable.”
My mother nods serenely. “Good. Then I’ll start looking for Christmas presents for her.” She smiles. “I love buying gifts for little girls. And for my big girl.”
I think this over as she helps me load up the car, a task that takes forever. Not only are there cartons of leftovers and a stack of books Aunt Vannie has saved for me, there is all of Lizzie’s stuff. And Lizzie. It seems my mother has realized, when no one else has, that I intend for Lizzie to be a permanent part of my life. She hasn’t figured out why that should be, but somehow she has recognized in me a certain resolve, a certain possessiveness. She knows from long experience that once I find a toy, a friend, an idea, or a house I love, it takes an act of God to make me let go.
I kiss her, climb in the Saturn, and head home. Lizzie is already sleeping in the backseat. I have tears in my eyes for the first five miles of the return trip, but I’m smiling.
Friday we all head down to Christina’s house. Dante conserves his energy by staying in animal form for the ride, so William does, too. I never thought I would be the kind of person who drove down the highway with dogs in the backseat, sticking their heads out the window, but, in fact, that is exactly the kind of person I am this chilly November day. I have bundled Lizzie up in several layers of blankets, so I’m pretty sure she’s not too cold as she sleeps in the car seat with her uncles on either side of her. I’m probably the only one who’s uncomfortable, but I just turn up the heat and slip my gloves back on, and then I’m just as happy as the rest of them.
There is too much to do at Christina’s house to finish it all in one day, but we go through the mail, pay the bills, and thoroughly clean the house. Dante and I disassemble the crib and manage to get it in the trunk; I think I might need to borrow someone’s truck to get the rest of Lizzie’s furniture to my place. At some point we’ll need to go through everything else—Christina’s clothes and jewelry, the furniture, the dishes, the idiosyncratic accumulations of a life—but that won’t be a quick or easy process. We still haven’t decided what to do with the house; we still haven’t told her friends that Christina is dead. It is as if—by not making these final decisions, saying these irrevocable words—we can hold back the truth. It is as if, by not acknowledging her death, we can pretend she is still alive, just missing. Just traveling somewhere, visiting her friends, staying a little longer than she planned. She might be back tomorrow, or one day next week. All we have to do is await her call.
“I think I’ll stay here a few days,” William says as we load the final bag of Lizzie’s toys into the car. “Maybe start going through her things. Maybe see if any of the neighbors come around looking for her. Most of them know me, at least by sight, so they won’t be too alarmed when they see me.”
Dante nods. “All right. I’ve probably got another ten days before I’m human again for any length of time. We can come back then and get some serious work done.”
“Sounds good.” William kisses Lizzie on the forehead and smiles at me. “See you later.”
I think Dante might want to sit beside me for the drive home, but he climbs in back beside Lizzie’s car seat without a word of explanation. “Put on some music,” he says as I pull onto the street. “She seems to like classic rock.”
“You like classic rock,” I retort, but I obligingly punch stations until I find one that suits.
I still have never seen him in the act of transformation; I still don’t know how long it takes, how unnerving it is to watch, if it is accompanied by the preternatural creak of expanding bones or the eerie pant of resizing lungs. But I am pretty sure Dante requested the music to cover any sounds that might occur during the process, and he has chosen to sit in the backseat so I cannot watch.
At any rate, when we arrive back at my house an hour later, he is curled up on the seat beside Lizzie in the shape of the now-familiar German shepherd. She is awake; her fingers are knotted in his fur. Both of them seem content.
Over the weekend, I try to put some order back into my own life, cleaning the house, buying groceries, doing so many loads of laundry I expect my washer to break down in protest. Beth has given me the name of a friend of a friend who runs a day care in her house and only lives about three miles from me. Lizzie and I go check her out. We both like the proprietor, a cheerful fifty-something woman with curly brown hair, wide hips, and powerful forearms. I approve of her setup, two playrooms in the house, hard plastic climbing walls in the yard, and a thirty-year-old daughter who works alongside her every day.
“I only take two infants at a time, but right now I’m down to one, so I’ve got room for your little girl,” she tells me. She’s holding Lizzie against her shoulder with all the practiced ease of someone who has spent her life around babies. She’s already told me she raised seven children of her own, something that makes me view her as almost super-human. I’ve already told her that Lizzie’s uncles are authorized to pick her up whenever they’re available. “She’s a real cutie. I’d be glad to have her.”
“I’ll bring her by Monday morning, then.”
The following week goes much less smoothly than I had h
oped. It is just so difficult to get yourself and a child ready to leave the house by seven in the morning. I begin every day feeling frazzled and tardy, and end every day almost too exhausted to stand. I can tell Dante is concerned about me—even when he is in animal form, he watches me with worried brown eyes—but I am not complaining. I am simply adjusting. I still love my new life. Or I will, once I am rested enough to appreciate it.
The first Thursday of December, Dante is back.
I mean Dante the man, Dante my lover, Dante who is standing at the stove, making dinner, when I get home from work. Lizzie is in her punkin seat on the kitchen table, chortling and waving her hands; she looks like a baby who’s recently been changed and fed and doesn’t have too many other worries at the moment.
“Ooh, well, isn’t this a charming advertisement for the new world order,” I say, coming up behind Dante and slipping my arms around him. I rest my cheek against his broad back. His ponytail is long enough to tickle my nose. “The brilliant female executive goes off to work while the house-husband stays home with the baby.”
“Careful, the pan is hot,” he warns, but he pats my arm with a hand encased in an oven mitt.
“You’re hot,” I say into his shirt.
He laughs. “No ripping off my clothes until our little audience of one has gone down for the night.”
“Mmm, even better. Anticipation will build the excitement.”
It would, of course, except that I am so worn out from the unfamiliar exertions of the past four days. Dressed in my silkiest nightgown, I fall asleep in bed while I wait for Dante to get Lizzie settled in her room. I don’t wake up until the clock radio goes off an hour late Friday morning.
Dante laughs away my instant panic. “I reset the alarm last night. All you have to do is get yourself dressed. I’ll take Lizzie to the day care today. I’ll get groceries while you’re gone. All you have to do today is work. And exist.”
I kiss him on the mouth. “And love you.”