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“The cottage on the beach, I can’t get it
right. I keep having to start over, so I decided to work on the
storm for now. I’ll fill that in later.”

“It’s amazing, Claire,” Ava whispered in
awe.

“Thank you. C’mon, let’s go meet your
friend.”

Ava made introductions all round, quickly
made more tea, and hurried to join the others in the living room.
Arianna had pulled a chair from the table and sat close to the
fire. The others sat on the couch with Shannon in the middle
holding the homemade calendar. “Now, here’s how you do it.” She
then detailed to the women how to keep track of female cycles to
find the safe week and pointed out the least safe days of all.
“It’s pretty easy to map out. Hard part is rollin’ over and goin’
to sleep when you should,” she said with a grin.

“Well, there’s always–” Arianna stopped
abruptly. Her naive friends had had enough sexual education for one
day, and she wasn’t in a flamboyant teaching mood anyway. This
information was nothing new to her, and she found herself rather
bored. She would save for another time revelations that her friends
would consider shocking alternatives. Claire leaned forward with an
elbow on her knee, her hand cradling her forehead.

“Seven days,” she said in frustration.
“That’s all? Really?”

“Yes, outside the curse, that’s all, so make
‘em count,” she said out of the side of her mouth. “My question is
how you girls got to this age without knowing of this?”

“My aunt,” Ava started, “would never speak of
such things. And, of course, my cousins were of no help.”

“And my family, well, they bought anything
they needed to prevent babies. They never talked about all this,”
Claire added.

“I knew,” Arianna said flatly. “I have a
book. I made Caleb buy it for me in Paris. It’s technically a
banned book, but he managed to find me a copy. It was written by
one of the most famous and successful madams in France. It has
everything you’d ever need or want to know in it. With
illustrations,” Arianna boasted. Ava and Claire looked at each
other and back to Arianna with wide eyes. She laughed and got up to
leave. “I'll see you all later. I’m tired. I think I’ll take a nap.
It was nice to meet you, Shannon,” she called out as she closed the
door behind her. Claire left a short time later, remembering bread
she had left to rise in the oven, and Ava talked with Shannon until
they heard her baby wailing.

“Well, nap-time’s over,” she announced,
standing up. “Ava, please come over for lunch tomorrow. It would be
so nice to have a visitor.”

“I’d love to,” Ava said with a smile.

∞∞∞

Ava paced the floor while waiting for
Jonathan to get home. She was anxious to share with him details of
Shannon’s visit and news of a letter from Jonathan’s parents as
well. She kept glancing at the little, knobby clock by the bed and
began to worry when he was nearly an hour late. Just as she was
putting on her coat to look for him, the door flew open, and he
backed in slowly, balancing the bottom and side of a mattress
between his hands. Caleb was at the other end dipping it below the
top of the door frame.

“Hey,” Jonathan said, giving Ava a quick peck
as he passed by her on his way to the bedroom. They set the
mattress down against the bedroom wall and he ripped the blankets
and sheets from the old mattress. He and Caleb carried it out and
leaned it against the side of the building.

“Good riddance,” Jonathan muttered as he
walked away. He thanked Caleb for his help; Caleb nodded, and then
hurried down the hall to his own door.

“What is this?” Ava asked when he came back
in.

“It’s a mattress, Ava,” he said, peeling off
his coat, gloves and hat.

“Well, I can see that,” she said. “What I
meant was, where did you get it?” She walked over to the bed and
bent over to put her nose to the fabric. “It smells new.”

“That’s because it is new. Tonight, we are
going to sleep like babies,” he said blissfully.

“I thought we agreed not to spend money on a
mattress. I was still working on stuffing the holes on the other
one.”

“I don’t remember agreeing not to buy one.”
He picked up a sheet, stood on the opposite side of the bed from
Ava and shook it out. Once they had the new bed made, he fell back
on it and sighed. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to get up in the
morning.” He rolled his head toward her. She stood at the doorway
with her arms crossed, glaring at him.

“Come here,” he said, patting the bed. “You
gotta feel this.” She sat down reluctantly, still upset that he
hadn't talked to her first. She had to admit it felt wonderful, and
it wasn’t long before she gave in and lay beside him, their legs
dangling over the side.

“Still angry?” he asked, rolling over toward
her with that silly smile she loved. His short, black hair was
somewhat tousled, and his evening stubble gave him a rugged look.
She glanced at him and then at the ceiling. He looked utterly
delicious.

“I just don’t know that we should have spent
the money is all.”

“We have to get decent sleep, Ava. You have
no idea how hard I work. I need to feel rested for a change. I’ll
have two things now–two whole things, in this world to look forward
to coming home to. You and this bed.” She sighed, unable to stay
mad at him as he reached over her, pulling her by the waist onto
her side to face him. “And if I’m really lucky, I’ll get to enjoy
both of these things at the same time,” he said and grinned
devilishly.

“If you’re lucky,” she replied casually.

“What?”

“I just don’t want you making promises you
won’t keep.”

“It’s not that I don’t mean to, or want to
honey, I’m just tired. And I get really angry at this life. This
isn’t what I had planned for us.” He reached out and touched her
face. “I’m doing the best that I can, Ava.”

She smiled weakly at him. “I know you are. We
got a letter from your parents today,” she said, changing the
subject.

“Really? How are they?”

“They’re good. They want to know if we could
come for Christmas. They offered to buy train tickets for us.”
Jonathan stiffened.

“If we did go, we’d buy our own tickets,” he
said stubbornly, sitting up.

“Well, they would consider it a Christmas
present, I’m sure, Jonathan.” She sat up beside him and put her
hand on his leg. “It would be good to see them again.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be good for them to see
us. Not like this. Besides, I can’t take any time off work.” He
stood with a small grunt and reached for a sweater. “It’s cold in
here. I’ll go stoke the fire. What’s for dinner? I’m starving.” A
disappointed Ava walked past him out of the bedroom and into the
kitchen to serve dinner.

“Stew. And the neighbor I met today brought
over soda bread,” she said.

∞∞∞

Claire explained over dinner the delicate
details of the calendar planning to Aryl.

“Seven days?” he repeated, looking up from
his dinner plate. “Serious?”

She nodded soberly.

“I’m getting a second job.”

“You can’t get a second job. Then you’d never
be here, so what would be the point?”

“That’s intolerable,” he scoffed.

“I’m not thrilled about it either.” Not
seeing a solution, she decided to change the subject.

“Ava’s neighbor is really nice. We had a good
visit today.”

“That’s nice. I wonder if her husband works
down at the dock. Maybe I know him.”

“We didn’t talk too much about him. Mainly
she just explained about the calendar and talked about her two
babies.”

“Wait.” Aryl stopped eating. “The woman who
taught you how to avoid babies has two babies? Are you sure her
little plan is credible?”

“Well, she admitted that for it to work, you
have to go to sleep when you’re supposed to go to sleep. If you
don’t, Waa, Waa.”

“We just can’t have that right now, Claire.”
His mind touched on the consequences of such an event, and he
shuddered.

“I know.” She stood up to clear their plates.
She wasn’t in a rush to start having children anyhow. She enjoyed
this time with just the two of them. Wanting that to last a while
longer, she was fine with postponing a baby.

Whenever the subject of a baby came up,
however, Aryl found himself pulled into the same daydream. He
pictured the possibilities; a tiny boy with brown eyes like his own
or maybe a baby girl as beautiful as her mother, whose
bright-blonde hair would triumph over his own dark curls. He
imagined himself holding the baby in a grand nursery where no
expense was spared to provide every luxury imaginable for mother
and child. A set of oak shelves across the room holding stacks of
folded linen, sleeping outfits and quilted blankets and hand woven
baskets brimming with toys and rattles. A carousel music box
spinning slowly, playing soothing music and an oak rocking chair
sits next to a window facing a blooming, cherry blossom tree. A
fresh, spring breeze causes colorful shapes hung on the window’s
frame to sway, and cheerful animations painted on the walls of the
room occasionally steal the baby’s attention. Then Aryl speaks
softly, and the little eyes focus on his face again. The infant
gives a toothless grin.

“What’s that smile for?” she asked. Aryl
straightened in his chair, his smile fading along with the vision.
He shook his head to imply it was for nothing and stood, digging
some folded papers out of his back pocket.

“I need to run these down to Jon. I’ll be
right back.”

∞∞∞

“Aryl saw Jonathan’s blue eye on the other
side of the peephole and smiled. He put his own eye to the door to
stare back at Jonathan, who pulled his head away, laughing.

“Here, I brought you these,” Aryl said,
smiling when Jonathan opened the door.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“I told you that when Caleb and I got some
information together, I’d bring it to you to look at. You can let
us know if this is feasible.”

“Right, right. The flour idea.” Jonathan
shook his head, looking at his friend with pessimistic eyes, but
relented. “I’ll look at it,” he said, tucking the papers in his
pocket.

“Listen, did Claire mention anything to you
about a calendar tonight?” he asked in a hushed tone with one
eyebrow raised. Aryl nodded slowly with a grim expression. He
looked back in the apartment as he stepped out into the hall,
closing the door behind him. “Ava just told me about that over
dinner.” He looked at Aryl, appalled, waiting for him to provide a
solution. Both men stood staring at each other for a moment. “What
are we supposed to do?” Jonathan finally asked.

“Apparently nothing,” Aryl said and laughed,
even though he didn’t think it was funny at all.

“Well, this just gets better and better,
doesn’t it?” Jonathan grumbled.

“We’ll figure something out. Maybe we can
trade a bottle of rum or something,” Aryl suggested. Jonathan
pointed at him.

“That’s a good idea!” he exclaimed. “We
should start asking around.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said and
grinned, turning toward the stairs. “See you tomorrow, Jon.”

∞∞∞

On the way up to his apartment, he passed the
open door of the family across the hall from him. He
unintentionally looked in as he passed and saw a baby positioned by
the fireplace that was starting to fuss in a makeshift crib made of
a large fruit crate. Several well-worn and stained cloth diapers
hung on a line across the room to dry. The faint smell of urine met
Aryl’s nose. A tired mother crossed the room speaking soothingly to
her baby in Italian. Aryl quickly turned his head away. He
preferred his idyllic vision to the depressing reality of having a
baby in the tenement. The sight reinforced his resignation that a
baby could never happen here.

Inside the apartment, Claire was taking down
the five or six pieces of clothes that hung on a rope in front of
the fireplace. She found that if she did the previous day’s laundry
each morning, it wouldn’t grow to an unmanageable pile that caused
her to spend the entire day scrubbing and wringing. She lit candles
on the mantel and table, turned off the overhead light, and tuned
the radio to a mystery program. She had extra firewood on the
hearth and a blanket on the couch, now moved closer to the
fireplace, which filled the room with flickering, radiant light.
They snuggled under the blanket as they listened to the program and
watched the fire dance.

Afterward, they ran across the cold floor on
tiptoes to the bedroom, jumped under the covers and, after much
struggling, chose to conserve certain precious resources.

Well after midnight, Aryl woke up shivering
fiercely, fully covered with Claire curled close to him. She jumped
when her leg moved to a freezing cold section of the sheet. Aryl
turned on the light, and he could see his breath.

“Heat must have gone out in the whole
building,” he assumed and immediately thought of the baby across
the hall. He pulled on an extra set of day clothes over his
nightclothes. Claire followed suit, shivering as she piled on two
sweaters and a pair of Aryl’s wool socks.

He went out to the living room and saw that
there were still some embers left from the fire. He stoked them a
bit, so they could breathe and come back to life. He added more
wood and crouched by the hearth, blowing warm breath into his hands
until it caught.

“We’re not g-going to g-get any h-h-heat in
the b-bedroom, Aryl.” Claire shook in the doorway with her arms
wrapped around herself.

“We’re not going to sleep in the bedroom,” he
said as he walked by her, pulled the blankets off the bed and drug
the ragged mattress into the living room. Claire pushed the couch
against the wall of the living room, and he laid the old mattress
in front of the hearth. She picked up the blankets from the bedroom
floor and spread them out while Aryl brought the pillows. They
hopped under the covers, and Aryl placed the poker on the floor
next to him, so he could stoke the fire when needed. They burrowed
as close to each other as they could, shivering and waiting for the
fire to fully roll and start putting out some appreciable heat.