I opened the top drawer again.
Nothing had changed since the last time. The little clothes were still little. The dividers were still keeping them apart with a seriousness I appreciated.
My husband appeared in the doorway.
“Looking for something?”
“No.”
He looked at the open drawer.
“I’m checking.”
He had assembled enough furniture by then to know that this was an activity in its own right.
We started with the things that could be measured.
The dresser. The wardrobe. How much room a drawer needed to open without meeting something else halfway.
I liked this part. There were dimensions, instructions and small bags of fittings. A question could be answered with a tape measure. If something did not fit, we would know before putting a person in the room.
We chose a white dresser and organisers for inside it. The wardrobe gave us shelves and drawers to decide about. I had opinions about all of them.
“What goes here?” my husband asked.
I told him.
“And here?”
I told him that too.
It was lovely to be consulted about a life I had not yet learned how to live.
We bought a grey recliner too. I sat in it to see how much room it needed and pressed the button. The footrest rose. My husband was still talking about where to put it.
“Here seems good,” I said.
“You haven’t tried anywhere else.”
I had already put my feet up. This seemed relevant.
By summer, the room was acquiring smaller things.
A bamboo pendant lamp. Three safari animal pictures. A mobile with clouds and a moon, because apparently a person arriving on earth should have a few familiar things overhead.
There were practical purchases too. A monitor. Curtains. Little things to wash, fold, put somewhere sensible and then move to somewhere more sensible.
I could spend an evening comparing two versions of an object I had never needed before.
My husband would ask which one I preferred.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
Sometimes the difference was important. Sometimes I had been looking at the screen too long.
The name sign was different.
It was a round wooden plaque, and the shop sent a mock-up for us to check. Spelling. Layout. The things you check before someone makes something you cannot quietly edit afterwards.
I looked at it for longer than the spelling required.
We had said his name to each other. We had tried it out in conversation, letting it become less strange each time. On the sign, it looked as though somebody already lived here.
“What do you think?” my husband asked.
“I like it.”
He waited.
“I really like it.”
There was not much else to say without saying quite a lot.
I had also ordered wooden milestone discs. One month. Two months. Small circles for a future in which I would apparently know what day it was and have time to arrange a photograph.
I laid them out and tried to imagine him at each age.
I could picture the photograph more easily than the child.
What would make him laugh? Would he like being carried around the house? Would he look at us as though we were doing a reasonable job?
There was no option to select for any of this.
I put the discs away.
One evening, I stood in the doorway after we had finished for the day.
The room was quiet in a way it would not be for much longer. No one had needed anything in it yet. Every drawer closed. Everything we had chosen still had the job we had imagined for it.
I tried to picture myself coming in tired, reaching for something without turning on all the lights. I wondered whether I had put it in the right place.
“We can move things,” my husband said.
I had not realised I was asking aloud.
“I know.”
He came to stand beside me.
For a second I could almost hear a drawer opening in the dark, months from now. One of us whispering, “Where are the clean ones?” The other pointing without opening their eyes.
Then the room was quiet again.
I left the drawer where it was.
His name was on the wall before he came home.
Below it were the things we had worked out so far: somewhere for his clothes, somewhere for the books, a room we kept finding reasons to walk into.
I opened the top drawer once more.
“Still checking?”
I picked up one of the little outfits. Held it against my arm, as though that might explain the size of the person who would wear it.
Then I folded it and put it back.
“Just looking.”