Free What We Hold In Our Hands by Kim Aubrey

the art gallery while they’d tried to get pregnant.
    He’d loved coming home to a wife fragrant with baking, her cotton pullover dusted with flour, her tongue sweet from cookie dough or cake batter. He remembered licking a smudge of chocolate off her chin as he undressed her on the living-room rug. When they’d failed to conceive, she’d claimed that his enthusiasm for getting her pregnant was making her feel ambivalent, afraid of becoming what he seemed so much to want her to be—nothing more or less than a mother and a wife.
    â€œI don’t feel like myself,” she’d said. “I need to go back to work so I can remember why having a baby seemed like a good idea.”
    â€œFine,” he’d said. “But no more ten-hour days or skipping lunch. Your body is going to be nourishing our child.”
    When she’d finally gotten pregnant, he’d tried to persuade her to quit work for good, to leave those modern monstrosities of paint and plaster behind to stay home with the baby.
    â€œYou can start painting again in your spare time,” he’d said.
    â€œWhat spare time? At least at the gallery I can talk about painting, and help other artists get their work noticed.”
    Liz had taken the standard maternity leave, and André had spent two weeks at home, sleeping in with her, cooking big breakfasts while she nursed Braden, the three of them napping on their queen-size bed through the quiet winter afternoons. If he woke before Braden, he’d bury his face between Liz’s heavy breasts, counting the seconds to discover how long he could hold his breath, then tasting each nipple to see which one was sweeter.
    â€œThe left one today.” He’d held it between his fingers, watching the milk spurt up in a thin bluish fountain.
    â€œBradie doesn’t notice any difference,” Liz had said, turning away to stroke their son’s sleeping face. “You always have to be judging everything.”
    Even with Liz’s moodiness, those two weeks stood out as the happiest of his life, but, returning to the law firm, he’d been penalized for them, his biggest client handed over to one of the junior partners.
    Holding the hot mugs out in front of him, André walked upstairs, watching for toys on the steps.
    Braden was in bed, reading his favourite book— Green Eggs and Ham . His fine brown hair had been cut short and straight across his forehead by André’s barber. The soft down on his cheeks and nose glowed in the lamplight, which cast his shadow, large and diffuse, onto the opposite wall.
    â€œDaddy!” He put down his book. “Hot chocolate!”
    André set Braden’s mug onto the bedside table. “Where’s Bridget?”
    â€œIn her room. She got a phone call.”
    Long distance no doubt. Better not be collect. Bridget had dozens of long-winded friends and relatives in New Brunswick, where she’d grown up and lived until just a few months ago.
    â€œNo marshmallows?” Braden asked, showing André his sad face, lower lip pushed out, hound dog eyes.
    â€œNot tonight. How was school?”
    â€œWe made poppies for Remember Day, to remember the soldiers who died. Mrs. Skinner put my poppy on the wall.”
    â€œGood.” André sipped his cocoa, thinking of his high school art teacher, Mrs. Flynn, how she’d praised him, misleading him to believe he could be an artist. Now, with Barry’s terse encouragement, he was trying to paint again. Liz would laugh at him if she found out. She used to call watercolours old-lady paintings.
    â€œWhat about Winslow Homer?” he’d asked her. “What about Sargent? Their watercolours are more artful than those blobs of paint on a canvas you love so much.”
    â€œThey were both old ladies,” she’d replied with that tenderly mocking smile of hers.
    Would she call him an old lady too? Would she call Katya an old lady?