CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION
"I would've given anything to see the look on her face." Hugh was laughing so hard he had to put his fork down. They decided to celebrate off their usual budget, and so they went into Georgetown for an Italian dinner. Hugh wore the blue seersucker jacket he always felt uncomfortable in; this was for Rachel's benefit -she loved the way he looked in that jacket with his faded khakis, blue shirt and bow tie.
"You just might be the only man in America who doesn't look goofy in a bow tie," she told him as she adjusted it against his neck earlier in the evening. Hugh felt he looked too conspicuously "Yup." Rachel thought he looked disarmingly handsome.
"You're so attractive with linguini on your chin, here -" Rachel reached across the red-checkered tablecloth with her napkin and wiped away the bit of food beneath her husband's lower lip. She'd already spilled tomato sauce raindrops down the front of her blouse, and in trying to daub them away had turned the droplets into a crimson smudge. (“You can dress me up," she'd said, half joking, half despairing, "but you can't take me out.")
Hugh shook his head from side to side. "Most obscene," he bit down on the words in his imitation of Mrs. Deerfield.
"They hated cats."
"Everyone's watching, now will you stop it?" But Rachel could not help laughing herself. "Imagine, Kahlua and milk at ten in the morning." She glanced towards the waiter for a minute because she realized what she had just said and could not bring herself to meet Hugh's brief glare. Hadn't she seen Hugh downing Bloody Marys that last year he was in law school, always before his eight o'clock class? But she mustn't think about that: it had been her one condition that before they got married he would stop drinking. And he had stopped, or at least cut down considerably which was the next best thing. The same way I've cut out smoking, Rachel thought, guiltily remembering the single cigarette she kept in her purse for life's little emotional emergencies. She'd given up her pack-a-day habit with her pregnancy and had stayed off them even after the miscarriage. "She really is something, though. In this world but not of it, as daddy would say."
"I'm willing to bet the former tenants really did give her a good scare."
"Who were they?" Rachel's eyes returned to him. She looked like a child ready for a particularly good bedtime story. Sometimes, not always, but sometimes she felt as comfortable and safe with Hugh as she had as a girl with her father.
"Oh, a nice gay couple -it was really they who were responsible for cleaning that place out, getting rid of the garbage. The place was practically empty for nearly twenty years -every vagrant in D.C. must've slept there at one time or another. So when the Old Man decides that folks are returning to the city, he kicks out whoever's squatting there, has a team go in and do some superficial cleaning, but it was really those two young men who deserve all the credit. They're the ones who did the bookshelves.
And the ornate banister -as shaky as it is. And the fireplace. Did you notice how well the ceiling was restored?
Them, too. I'm a little surprised by the grimy kitchen and the filth in the turret room, but you can't have everything."
"And they just left? They buy their own place or something?"
"Who knows? I think they moved out to the suburbs themselves. Too many breeders moving in to D.C."
“You know, Hugh, that's one of your less attractive qualities, saying that word breeders like people are cattle." Rachel wanted to add, and I wouldn't mind breeding a little in the next year or two, either, but decided that wouldn't be subtle enough for Hugh. "Or when you call your father 'the Old Man' like he's not even worth considering."
"I'm not about to call him 'daddy' like some debutante from Potomac." Hugh raised his palms as if to ward off a curse. "Just joking, Scout, you're not even from Potomac.
Jeez, Scout, is the honeymoon really over?" She felt his shoe scuffing against her ankle beneath the table. "I'm sorry, I guess I'm not in the best of humors. Daddy's sort of my sacred cow, and I know if he were alive, the two of you would get along really well. I guess when I hear you, you know, talk about your father like that…well, I'm just tired right now."
"All right, I'll lay off the lousy jokes for a few minutes anyway. So how did you like the stuff about the ghost?" Hugh asked.
"I think it's romantic," Rachel said. "I think it's neat that old Rose Draper still walks the halls waiting for Julian Marlowe to return."
"Ah, yeah," Hugh wrinkled his nose, "except for one little detail, Scout."
Rachel raised her eyebrows inquiringly. Hugh grinned that perfect orthodontic grin of his.
"Really romantic, if it weren't for the fact that Rosie Draper was a notorious whore. They say she was the Typhoid Mary of syphilis cases this side of the Potomac.
They called her The Clapper as a term of endearment." As she got ready for bed that night, Rachel looked not so fondly at their tiny one-bedroom basement for what she hoped was one of the last times. "Sassy and I can move the stuff that fits into the car on Thursday -I'm not going in to the office -and you've got an interview in the morning, right? But if you could be home by, say, two, "she called out from the bathroom to Hugh who didn't respond. "Hugh?" Rachel glanced out the door to the square bedroom. Hugh had fallen asleep on top of the covers in his khakis and pale blue button-down shirt. He looked adorable with his hair all mussed, the way his chest expanded and deflated while he snored lightly. It all comes out in the wash, right? Between you and me, Hugh, I don't think we were fit to be parents yet. It was a silly thing, and maybe you were right, maybe it was a blessing in disguise. You’ll get a job, and then in a few years when we have put away a little nest egg, we'll have some kiddos and I'll just be a mommy for a while. But first, first over everything else, we'll make a home together.
"Thank you for letting us take the house," she whispered quietly. Her husband snarled a reply as he sleepily turned over on his stomach. Rachel went over to the edge of the bed and sat down. She reached out and stroked Hugh's back. She felt the breaths he was taking, anticipated the snores, wondered what he was dreaming. They'd had their problems in the past year, but things seemed to be working out. Rachel was positive that the new home would help. In a larger place they would at least avoid the arguments that cramped quarters seemed to encourage. And maybe on Thursday he would come back from the job interview, into their new home, with good news.