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Baby steps. Like her daughter Arizona’s life was now comprised of baby steps. Careful explorations of an unfamiliar world. They both stumbled. They both fell. They both cried. The only difference was Callie would swoop in and pick their daughter up and wipe away her tears. She never even saw Arizona shed hers.
Not if Arizona could help it.
Callie had unofficially moved back into their apartment. Move maybe being too drastic a word. She’d never entirely left. Her things had all stayed in their apartment. Their daughter was in their apartment. It was just Callie herself. Bathing. Sleeping. Living across the hall.
It never bothered Arizona. Seeing her wife churned up a vicious bile of hatred that scared her in the quiet moments and fueled her in the loud ones.
She trusted Callie to keep her safe and have faith in her and Callie had faltered. Costing Arizona everything. But now…Callie used to run. She used to get angry back. She’d shout or set her jaw squarely and slam the door on the life they’d had and leave Arizona all alone.
Now Callie stayed. Quiet. Resigned. Mute. The two of them had become ghosts haunting their apartment. Speaking in fragments. They never looked at each other. Never even touched except when Callie would help her into the shower or to the toilet. Then it was clinical. Cold and officious hands on her body. She could close her eyes and be back in the hospital. Close her eyes and for a second have a wife who didn’t see her at her worst and who still saw her as some enigmatic superhero—swooping in to love her forever.
A knock at the door dragged Arizona out of her circuitous thoughts and she grabbed her crutches to limp into the living room where Sofia sat in front of the television with blocks and something steamed on the stove. Callie closed the door she’d barely even opened and revealed her package, Zola.
She looked at the girl, apparently mildly cranky and hungry, and then at her wife.
“Meredith needs to stay with a patient tonight and Derek’s out of town so…we’ve got Zola.”
She raised her eyebrow, though she was unsure exactly why. Because her wife had agreed to babysit the daughter of two people she usually would only dare to call acquaintance? Or because she’d said “we”?
She set the girl down next to Sofia and both girls visibly brightened at the sight of their favorite playmate and fell into the odd pseudo-language they used when they were together.
Callie seemed to miss Arizona’s enchantment with the two girls, who were carefully building a tower with the blocks and engaging in more sharing than was normal for kids their age.
“I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready,” she said.
That snapped Arizona’s attention back to her wife. She stupidly motioned at the couch, “I was gonna, uh, sit in here if it’s okay?” It was lonely all alone in the bedroom and company that couldn’t really talk or stare at her in pity and shock was refreshing.
Callie blinked, surprised. “Uh sure.” Her voice rose a little and Arizona winced internally. That was Callie’s hopeful tone. She’d give Arizona a look filled with longing and love and awe and Arizona would have to look away.
She couldn’t handle seeing that. Part of her desperately wanted to, but seeing a wife that loved her and was still there chewed up her insides—masticating them between big, blunt teeth.
She ducked her head to make it easier and took a seat on the couch, leaning her crutches agains the arm and tucking her foot up underneath herself.
She spent most of the next fifteen minutes staring at the girls, but every once in a while she’d make a furtive glance in Callie’s direction. Her wife was at home in the kitchen where food and chemistry married in something easy and fruitful. Her hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail and there was a dirty dishcloth stuck in the waist of her jeans that she’d periodically wipe her hands on between dicing and breading and saucing—was saucing even a word?
Saucing. It sounded like one. You could turn it into a verb right? To make a sauce. There was a saucier. The person who made it. And the sauce itself. So saucing had to exist too.
She’d look it up later.
Callie paused in the midst of her saucing to stare into the space directly over Arizona’s head. Which meant Arizona should have looked away, but she never afforded herself the opportunity of actually watching her wife without being watched. Not since the amputation. So she continued to stare. If Callie would catch her eye she’d go blank and hope it had looked like she was staring into space too.
These little moments of domesticity, more and more common since the night they’d fallen asleep on the couch together watching a baking show, were wearing on her. Forcing her to miss more that just a leg and a life. She missed her wife. Missed the soft smiles and the gentle way she’d guide her by the elbow or caress her hand with her thumb.
But she really missed the way they’d talk. They could curl up on the couch or in bed and just talk about everything and find comfort through osmosis. What was worse was that as badly as she needed to touch her wife another part of her was still repulsed by the woman.
Loving and hating her all at once was almost as exhausting as walking on her prosthetic.
“Callie,” her wife’s snapped into focus, “where are they supposed to eat?”
Her dark eyes roamed over Arizona’s face become she blinked and turned to study their daughter and Zola. “Right. Um. There’s still a chair over at Mark’s. I’ll go—I’ll go get it.”
She threw her dish towel onto the counter and darted out of the room leaving Arizona alone with two very young girls.
Okay, saucing had to be a word. She’d try to ask Callie, without sounding conversational, later.
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Why did they never buy a nice dining room table? Just because Mark bought one didn’t mean Arizona and Callie should have skimped. Arizona had suggested it once during the pregnancy and Callie had dismissed her outright because she could be a selfish and terrible human being.
Hey. Stop that. You’re awesome.
Her wife hated her yet it was still her voice in Callie’s head building her up when she was depressed. She sighed and leaned her forehead against the cool metal of Mark’s front door.
She hated his apartment. Hated it. She hated getting off the elevator and seeing the stillness that the door seemed to wear like a cloak. She hated walking in there and smelling Mark and finding, always finding, little things still left behind.
After Arizona had shown a little crack in her resolve to hate Callie forever she’d moved back home. Sleeping on the couch and suffering eternal neck and back pain because of it, but she didn’t care. It was sleeping at Mark’s where the loss was more pronounced in the quiet. At home her wife was just beyond one door and her daughter another.
A door similar to the one she leaned against. She took the same fortifying breath she always did stepping into Mark’s apartment and pushed it open.
The living room was cold. Empty. Dead. She shuddered but resisted the urge to turn a light on, navigating only by the moonlight filtering in from the windows. She needed to clean his apartment out. Finally empty it and liquidate everything and roll the money into Sofia’s trust. But lately she’d been barely able to stay afloat, let alone go through the process of sorting and getting rid of her best friend’s things.
Her hand settled on the high chair and she pulled it out of the room, its legs dragging loudly on the hardwood. The longer she was in Mark’s apartment in the dark the more a tremble of fear shot through her until she was practically running, the chair clutched in her hand.
Out again in the hallway she paused for a breath. That had been…that had been new. She’d never run from his apartment before, or felt the discomfort of the place so acutely.
God she missed him.
Then she walked back into her own apartment. It was brightly lit and warm. Sofia and Zola were giggling and filling the space with happy chatter. Food sizzled loudly on the stove.
And Arizona.
Arizona was standing the kitchen draining the rice and schooling her face into her cranky and quiet mask. The one that said she was thinking about something, probably frivolous, but didn’t want to be bothered talking.
She looked up, the mask turning into a frown. “Is saucing a word?”
Callie missed Mark a little less in that moment.