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After the kids pass out in their bunkbeds downstairs, goodnight Tom, goodnight Mike, sleep well, who loves you? who loves you the most? one more kiss, one more kiss, after they finish watching a sitcom on TV, after Sonia drinks that extra glass of wine, after Dick sips his scotch on ice, after they brush their teeth, relieve their bladders, and slide into the clean white, cotton sateen sheets Sonia put on that very morning, Dick leans into Sonia's face and kisses her. First he kisses her on the edge of her cheek, on the part of the cheek that is right next to her mouth. Then he moves in closer to her lips, touching the corner of her mouth with his mouth. She turns her face toward him now, in the dark, her eyes closed, and he leans his upper body over hers and turns his face so his nose won't get in the way and he pushes his mouth against hers and, open-mouthed, they kiss. Their tongues reach out and taste, and damn, if it doesn't taste good. Damn if it doesn't taste like warmth, like booze and like that familiar flavor that is each other.
This is not a night when Dick will fart obscenely in bed next to her, pretending not to, and Sonia, despising him, will snap her magazine angrily into a perfect tent in front of her face. Nor is it a night, like so many nights just before this night, where Sonia, stinking of sweat from the  summer heat, from the sweat of fear and the sharp stink of bile and vomit, is so disgusting, no not disgusting, so terrifying, terrifying in her foreignness, in her stink, in her pale, ugly, possum-in-a-trap look on her face, that Dick just wouldn't look at her. I'm afraid! I'm afraid! I can't do this again! her every movement said. She'd be folding laundry and she'd say something, we're out of milk, or, Tom skinned his knee today, or something like that, and he'd look at her, catch her eyes, and her eyes were full of fear and sickness. Her jaw loose and weak. Her face bloated and sickly. Her tone insupportably whiny.
Those first three months are over. Those three months of hell, that first trimester of pregnancy when the only thing Dick could do to survive being in the house with her was to pretend she wasn't there. Gone is that horrible time. Done with it. She'd be there, and he'd pretend, just like he did as a child when his father was yelling, or his mother was yelling, that the person in question was not there. Dick's imagination is so powerful and has always been so powerful, that he can play this trick very well. He draws a white chalk line around the person, just like if the person were dead, and then "poof!" he can no longer see them. They disappear.
But not tonight. Tonight he can't not see her. He couldn't, if he wanted to, which he doesn't, imagine her gone. Tonight he is mesmerized. Tonight he looked at her on the couch, lazing with him in front of the TV, and he saw a beautiful, young woman. The woman he fell in love with. He saw her as she was fifteen years ago, he saw her as no different than she was when she was barely twenty. And now, in their marriage bed, in her blue nightgown that he lifts over her head, he sees her and loves what he sees. The bones in her face are strong but womanly, her mouth is wet and inviting, her eyes are smart but slightly troubled, definitely knowing. Often thinking of something dirty. His wife is still his dirty-minded college girl. And this, in the dark now, now that she is over that first part of her pregnancy, now that she no longer repulses him, no longer hates him, now that she is resigned to her body and the strange creature inhabiting her, the stranger that neither of them have any idea who it will be,  this bud of a person that he planted in her womb, now that this baby isn't torturing his wife anymore, now, now, she is so fuckable. Her skin seems powdered with stardust, it's moist dammit, and sparkling at him he swears, and her eyes are wet like a healthy cat's, glowing at him in the dark, open now, looking at him while their tongues stroke the insides of their mouths like they've never tasted each other before.
How could kissing this woman be anything that ever happened again? After years of marriage, years of just fucking, not that anything's wrong with that, but years really where they would never, ever have kissed, preferring to get straight to the part that matters, kissing having bored them, kissing having been something of the past. Kissing not being on their minds, but they still needed to get off. His balls would fill. There's the nice lady next to him who empties them for him. He always felt gratitude, but he had stopped feeling wonder. Excitement. Urgency. Except during these precious months when she was pregnant with their first son. And their second son. And now, again, this gift. This time, this fleeting moment in their lives.
Here he is, his hands on her breasts which are so swollen, so sensitive she moans and pulls away slightly and he just can't believe these are his wife's tits because these were not his wife's tits a few months ago. His wife's tits a few months again were dried out, tired nipples that lay nearly flat against her ribcage. His wife's breasts, when she's not pregnant, were never as fleshy as her upper arms. It would be jangly arms and flat breasts. Now he can't even see her arms. His wife has breasts! Serious breasts. Not yet full of milk, but swollen and ready for what's to come. He has one in his hand and another in his mouth and she's shaking now, because all those hormones that are making her breasts grow into these beautiful flowers are making them raw with Hooksexups. He has to be gentle. He doesn't want to be gentle, precisely because he must be in the face of her painful, swollen breasts. He squeezes and sucks them and she can't stay still, she's just squirming, he can tell it's uncomfortable, hears her breathe out the word ouch, and she puts her own hand on them to protect herself, but also to feel them herself. Because these breasts are a gift from God, the God who gave humans the ability to reproduce, and to feed their young. These tits are blessed and she wants to hold them too.
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