C4 antho - Chamber Four

For the Sake of the Children ~71~
you do, it’s the way that you do it as she walks up her path.
Then she stands still for a moment, patting her stomach.
On the other side of town, Dawn tells Peter that if he says
again how it doesn’t really matter if they have a child anyway,
she’ll leave him. What she hasn’t told him is how she
hears him crying in the bath, that she’s found the pair of tiny
blue and red striped baby socks tucked away in the bottom of
his drawer. In the place where some men keep perfumed letters.
“There’s no need to be so macho,” Dawn says, squeezing
his arm because in many ways she feels the same. It is him
she loves, with or without. She opens another bottle of wine,
red this time because they’ve run out of white, and they toast.
“To us,” she says. “To us,” Peter replies, pushing his glass
gently into Dawn’s stomach.
* * * *
Dr. Owen Jones always washes his hands four times
when he gets back home after the clinic. It’s his lucky charm.
He likes to do it properly. Wash, then dry. Wash, then dry.
Only then does he feel able to touch his own children. “You
are so important to me,” he whispers into his daughter’s hair,
letting her crawl into his lap, using his body as a gymnasium
to pull and tweak as she tells him about a pair of shoes she’s
seen that change into roller blades at the click of a button.
Could she have some, daddy? Could she?
Karen Jones stands at the doorway watching them.
“Your dad’s not made of money,” she says and little Michele
laughs, tugging at her father’s ears. “Yes he is. These are five
pounds each,” she crows. “I’m going to spend daddy.”
A spasm of fear chills through Owen. What if he only
washed three times? He pushes his daughter away sharply