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Show Motherlunge a novel 157 24. The Republican Before Pavia left, before Eli left, it was three months after X.'s birth and it was full-on summer. On the days Eli worked in my building, he and I were eating lunch outdoors, suffused in a chlorine mist as we sat on the edge of a sponsored fountain in the corporate plaza. At home, Pavia turned on the cooling units in the windows during the day. Also, she had started calling in to her office. She had found a daycare for X., and she > was going back to work. Although I told myself I was not directly responsible for this development, Jack's visits had titrated downward. He and Pavia had had a talk that Jack summarized one day on the front steps as he was leaving, pink-faced and brave, one arm in his windbreaker, thus: We need to achieve greater clarity around our relationship, and refocus on our shared goals for Xavier. For the moment, that was going to mean a more strictly divided style of co-parenting. Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday evenings Jack would tend X. without Pavia. "It's a good thing I taught him to take a bottle," Jack had grimly said that day on the steps, and I nodded. He had managed to get his other arm in the windbreaker, and now he clapped his dry-looking hands together like chalkboard erasers. "Want to get a drink?" I asked suddenly. I nodded toward the comer, around which there was an Irish bar, the Republican. |