Read Online The Baby Agenda by Janice Kay Johnson - Free Book Online Page B

the walls and roofs, and simple ones at that. We’ve finally broken ground on the first clinic, and it will have brick walls and a metal roof, like the store in the village. The homes are crude, with thatched roofs.
    Â 
    He told her about the architectural drawings he’d scrapped and why, about his need to build structures that belonged, that people would be comfortable going to. In fact, when he reread his email a few minutes later, it was to find he’d waxed eloquent, revealing more of the passionquietly building in him than he’d intended. He frowned, finally, and left what he’d written. She was an architect herself; she might be interested. And anyway…he wanted to know her. To be fair, he had to reveal something of himself in return.
    By the next day, he had an email back from her. She waxed eloquent on her belief that structures should meld with their surroundings. Her partner, apparently, teased her about emphasizing function over form, although Gray, too, she said, preferred to design buildings that didn’t immediately command attention. She told him about her partner’s house, which appeared to be part of the riverbank so that a fisherman casting his line below might not even notice it was there atop the bluff. She thought many of the more admired homes featured in magazines were hideous. Original, yes, interesting, but jarring.
    Â 
    I’m content to design staid but dignified office buildings that have grace and pleasing proportions but do not startle. If I were to plan a medical clinic for a small town in the African savannah, I’d go with mud brick and a metal roof, too. Good for you.
    Â 
    Will found himself smiling.
    Â 
    I was sick to my stomach for a couple of months, although not as miserable as some women are—Gray’s wife, Charlotte, could hardly keep any food down—but it’s passed, thank heavens. Now I’m starved all the time, making up for the weight I lost. I dread my next monthly weigh-in and the lecture I’m bound to get from the doctor. I’m trying very hard not to gaintoo much. I am a little more tired than usual, but all it means is that I go to bed earlier than I used to. No big deal. So you see, I really am fine.
    Â 
    Without you, was what she meant. Will suppressed his irritation.
    He wrote an email in response longer than the ones he’d sent Clay and the others. He felt a strange tension, sitting here digging into himself for what was most important to tell her about his life and values. It was as if they were connected by a thread so delicate, he could snap it with the wrong word, but perhaps with the right ones he could lend it strength. He was hungry to hear back from her. Half an hour ago, when his messages had been loading, it was hers he’d hoped for with eagerness that embarrassed him.
    He felt, Will realized after he’d sent his response, like a boy with his first crush. Ridiculous, maybe, when they’d already made love and now he longed for so little: the equivalent of a shy glance.
    This time she didn’t write back right away. Stuck in Harare meeting with government officials, Will was therefore able to obsessively check his email in any stray minutes, which made the three days before he did get a reply from her seem endless. But her response was long and satisfying. She’d read more about Zimbabwe and wondered whether he was in any danger, a white man in a country where white-owned land was still being violently snatched by black mobs.
    She was worried about him. He felt a warm glow to realize it.
    She told him about a movie that had recently been released about South Africa and talking to a woman whose daughter was currently in Ghana with the Peace Corps.
    Several people I know who’ve been to Africa tell me they’d give anything to go back. They always have this look in their eyes, as though there’s some kind of magnetic pull. Although that’s silly, isn’t it?