The Birthdays by Heidi Pitlor Read Free Book Online Page A

simultaneous desire or energy level for sex, at least for a very long time.
    She drummed her fingers against the window and gazed out at their house. Once he’d filled the back seat with the plywood he’d bought to make a ramp over the front step and the new bathtub bench for Daniel, he walked to the passenger’s side and pressed his lips against the outside of her window. She made a disgusted face, and when he took his seat behind the wheel, she said, “That window’s dirty.”
    “I don’t care,” he said, and leaned toward her again.
    “Get those filthy lips away from me,” she barked, and he pushed his face against hers. “Yuck! Stop!” she howled, and shoved him a little too hard. His arm smacked the steering wheel and then the horn, and he felt a quick ache in his wrist, as well as a flash of irritation that she wouldn’t just kiss him. She was now laughing at a squirrel that had been next to the car and leapt into another squirrel after it heard the loud honk of the horn.
    They headed out and Liz reached for the radio dial.
    “You feeling up for a little something this weekend? Maybe before everyone gets there?” he asked.
    “What?” She settled on classical music. Chopin, he guessed. “I don’t know, maybe.”
    “Dr. M. said it was fine. It’s been four days. And, what, eight weeks before that?” He immediately regretted saying it this way, as if he’d been keeping track.
    “Frankly I am happy to take a prolonged break from doing it so much.” She looked at him. “Come on, you got tired of it too. I distinctly remember you saying you were worried that your pecker would fall off from overuse. Remember, before that last IVF?”
    “I guess you’re right.” He gazed at the traffic light ahead of them. “But my pecker’s still here. It managed to hang on.”
    “All right, all right, we’ll give it some attention later,” she groaned.
    It was as if he were demanding the moon from her right now. But she was just tired because of the pregnancy, he reminded himself. She was just grouchy and tired.
Let it go.
He drew a deep breath and tried to think of a way to change the subject.
    The drive slipped by, and they brainstormed a list of what they’d need to buy when they returned home after the weekend: another crib, car seat, stroller. Liz jotted down the list in the small blue notebook she kept in her purse. She chewed on the end of her pen happily as she thought of more items, and her cheerfulness began to rub off on him. He imagined announcing the news of the twins to his parents, and wondered what their expressions would be, and then what his brother and sister would say. He couldn’t help smiling.
    —
    Hilary knocked on the front door, but she was three hours early and no one answered. She looked up at the clapboard house perched on a slope overlooking the ocean. It was obviousthey’d added on a side porch and a couple of rooms to the right, but the addition was tastefully done. The house had been stained a subdued gray, and tall rosebushes lined the front, the flowers electric red in contrast with the gray. She could have been looking at the pages of a magazine. Jake had done well for himself. This fact still amazed her.
    She sat on the front stoop, rubbed her fingertips together, an old habit, and reached in her handbag for a piece of chewing gum. She’d had to give up smoking six months ago and, well, that’d be one thing her family would be grateful for. Not that she’d ever smoked in front of them. Only Daniel. Only he could handle such a thing, and only he knew that she was pregnant.
    Leaving her suitcase, she walked around the house and down a sandy path that had been cut into dense reeds to a rocky beach where seagulls pecked at an enormous black lump. The air smelled of something dead. She turned from the birds and the water rumbling in short waves to the shore. Hilary had never liked the beach, the sand everywhere, invading shoes and bags and books and food, the men and women