Two Kisses for Maddy_ A Memoir of Loss & Love - Matthew Logelin [82]
“Two hundred dollars,” she said.
I briefly considered fleeing, but I saw the bitchy look on the salesgirl’s face as I tried to comprehend a baby dress that cost more than my entire wardrobe, and its lace trim caught my eye. I looked at Maddy sleeping in her stroller, and I bought the dress.
For two hundred fucking dollars.
With my credit card still smarting from the purchase, I put her and our new cargo into the car. When it was me and Liz, I was thinking, I knew how things would go. I would have followed her lead at the beginning and, as I got more and more comfortable, played an increasingly bigger role in raising our daughter, even doing the little things like making sure her outfits matched. But I had to learn how to care about all the girly things I didn’t grow up with without Liz’s help. I had to close my eyes and imagine how she would have done things, because few things were more important to me than making sure I channeled her influence in Madeline’s life.
* * *
Before Madeline was born, I had talked to Liz about buying a rug for our living room. It wasn’t that I was interested in helping redecorate our house or anything—that was her thing—but I was worried that the wood floors would hurt our baby’s little knees when she eventually learned to crawl.
“What? She’ll be fine on the wood floors.”
“Liz, she’s going to hurt her knees if she starts crawling on these floors.”
“She’ll be fine.”
I was adamant. “What’s going to happen when she collapses facefirst on the floor? She’s going to have a broken nose, and I’m pretty sure no doctor would perform a nose job on a baby.”
“Seriously, Matt. She’ll be fine.”
“Have you ever crawled across a wood floor when you were drunk? I have, and that shit hurts.”
Her head tilted, her beautiful long eyelashes waving at me as if to tell me to go away.
“Our daughter is going to be a late crawler if we don’t do this,” I said.
She laughed. “Okay, we’ll get a rug. But only if you shut your mouth.”
Now I watched as Madeline used her arms to lift up her tiny body—a definite sign that she would soon start crawling. I thought back to that conversation with Liz. I had to go get a rug. And soon.
That same afternoon I took photos of the living room and I went to the Pottery Barn in Beverly Hills. I walked in and, as usual, felt out of place. I waited patiently, watching as the salespeople went from yuppie couple to yuppie couple, ignoring the mountain man with the baby growing from his chest. I decided that I would probably be getting better service if I were cleanly shaven and had a white cable-knit sweater tied around my neck. And they’d certainly be paying more attention to me if there were a woman standing beside me.
I wasn’t going to shave for these fuckers, and the sweater was way out of the question. And my wife was dead. How would Liz have handled being ignored when all she wanted to do was give a store a bunch of her money? She definitely would not be standing quietly in the back of the place just waiting for someone to help her like I was. I decided to take matters into my own hands. I approached one of the saleswomen and the buttoned-up couple she was with and said I needed her help, telling her to come toward the sound of the babbling baby when she was finished with the folks she was talking to. I didn’t deliver the message with the sort of sternness Liz would have, but I did channel the annoyed smile she would have been wearing.
When the saleswoman finally came over to me, I pulled my camera from Madeline’s diaper bag and held the display in front of her face. “Okay,” I said. “What rug would match this living room?”
Within a few minutes the