"New reasons, that's how. Now I've made their granddaughter a shiksa."
"She's not a shiksa, Charlie. We've been through this. She's my daughter, so she's as Jewish as I am."
Charlie went down on one knee next to the bed and took one of Sophie's tiny hands between his fingers. "Daddy's sorry he made you a shiksa." He put his head down, buried his face in the crook where the baby met Rachel's side. Rachel traced his hairline with her fingernail, describing a tight U-turn around his narrow forehead.
"You need to go home and get some sleep."
Charlie mumbled something into the covers. When he looked up there were tears in his eyes. "She feels warm."
"She is warm. She's supposed to be. It's a mammal thing. Goes with the breast-feeding. Why are you crying?"
"You guys are so beautiful." He began arranging Rachel's dark hair across the pillow, brought a long lock down over Sophie's head, and started styling it into a baby hairpiece.
"It will be okay if she can't grow hair. There was that angry Irish singer who didn't have any hair and she was attractive. If we had her tail we could transplant plugs from that."
"Charlie! Go home!"
"Your parents will blame me. Their bald shiksa granddaughter turning tricks and getting a business degree - it will be all my fault."
Rachel grabbed the buzzer from the blanket and held it up like it was wired to a bomb. "Charlie, if you don't go home and get some sleep right now, I swear I'll buzz the nurse and have her throw you out."
She sounded stern, but she was smiling. Charlie liked looking at her smile, always had; it felt like approval and permission at the same time. Permission to be Charlie Asher.
"Okay, I'll go." He reached to feel her forehead. "Do you have a fever? You look tired."
"I just gave birth, you squirrel!"
"I'm just concerned about you." He was not a squirrel. She was blaming him for Sophie's tail, that's why she'd said squirrel, and not doofus like everyone else.
"Sweetie, go. Now. So I can get some rest."
Charlie fluffed her pillows, checked her water pitcher, tucked in the blankets, kissed her forehead, kissed the baby's head, fluffed the baby, then started to rearrange the flowers that his mother had sent, moving the big stargazer lily in the front, accenting it with a spray of baby's breath -
"Charlie!"
"I'm going. Jeez." He checked the room, one last time, then backed toward the door.
"Can I bring you anything from home?"
"I'll be fine. The ready kit you packed covered everything, I think. In fact, I may not even need the fire extinguisher."
"Better to have it and not need it, than to need it - "
"Go! I'll get some rest, the doctor will check Sophie out, and we'll take her home in the morning."
"That seems soon."
"It's standard."
"Should I bring more propane for the camp stove?"
"We'll try to make it last."
"But - "
Rachel held up the buzzer, as if her demands were not met, the consequences could be dire. "Love you," she said.
"Love you, too," Charlie said. "Both of you."
"Bye, Daddy." Rachel puppeted Sophie's little hand in a wave.
Charlie felt a lump rising in his throat. No one had ever called him Daddy before, not even a puppet. (He had once asked Rachel, "Who's your daddy?" during sex, to which she had replied, "Saul Goldstein," thus rendering him impotent for a week and raising all kinds of issues that he didn't really like to think about.)
He backed out of the room, palming the door shut as he went, then headed down the hall and past the desk where the neonatal nurse with the snake tattoo gave him a sideways smile as he went by.
Charlie drove a six-year-old minivan that he'd inherited from his father, along with the thrift store and the building that housed it. The minivan always smelled faintly of dust, mothballs, and body odor, despite a forest of smell-good Christmas trees that Charlie had hung from every hook, knob, and protrusion. He opened the car door and the odor of the unwanted - the wares of the thrift-store owner - washed over him.
Before he even had the key in the ignition, he noticed the Sarah McLachlan CD lying on the passenger seat. Well, Rachel was going to miss that. It was her favorite CD and there she was, recovering without it, and he could not have that. Charlie grabbed the CD, locked the van, and headed back up to Rachel's room.