Tacking an extra ten minutes on a trip to the store or inventing an excuse to get away to the mall for half an hour just didn't do enough to help. Besides, Mary got stir-crazy too, all the more so when she was cooped up with Doug by herself. She started inventing excuses of her own.
Pete even called San Flavio State about ending his sabbatical early.
The department chairperson's laugh was not altogether kind. "Baby's not as much fun as you thought, Peter?" David Endicott turned serious. "It's not just that I'd look like a fool, having to go to the assistant dean irregularly to get her to undo something I'd gone to her to approve irregularly only six months ago. It really isn't; I hope you understand that. But we've already done the budget transfer, so we can't pay you till next September anyhow. This is the '80s, Peter. Soft money for that kind of thing just isn't there any more."
"I know. Thanks anyhow, David." Pete hung up. He took off his glasses, bent his head and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. He'd known what Endicott would tell him before he picked up the phone. That he'd called regardless didn't seem a good sign.
Doug started up again, though he'd only been asleep a little while. Mary hadn't heard Pete on the phone, but she heard Doug. "Get him, will you?" she called from the kitchen. "My hands are greasy."
"All right." Pete walked slowly into his son's bedroom. He slammed his closed fist against the wall, as hard as he could. Pain shot up his arm.
"What was that?" Mary exclaimed.
That was your husband, not hitting his kid. Pete tried the taste of the words in his mouth, tried hearing them with Mary's ears. They would never do. They would frighten her. They frightened him.
"It's that bitch next door again," he answered after a pause he hoped she did not notice, "pounding for Doug to be quiet." He could not remember the last time he had lied to her about anything important.
"Well, she can go to hell, too," Mary said indignantly. The tigress defending her young, Pete thought. No, he could not have said what he almost told her. He would have to bear his secret, and his secret shame, alone.
He picked up Doug, who was now yowling indignantly at the slight delay. He put his face close to the baby's. Those small, wide, darkening eyes met his. "Will you please for God's sake just shut up?" he whispered. He did not know if he was taking the name of the Lord in vain or making one of the few honest prayers he had ever made in his life.
Doug actually did quiet down pretty fast; Pete's arms were automatically rocking him the way he liked?when he liked anything. His father was not reassured. Doug's face wore the smug expression he had come to know only too well.
"That wasn't too bad," Mary said when Pete toted the baby in a few minutes later. Doug was awake but not fussing. He tried to turn his head toward his mother's voice, and smiled in her direction. Mary smiled back; it was hard not to. Then she saw Pete's face. "Why so glum, hon?"
"Just tired, I guess." Pete knew he had shown weakness in the presence of the enemy. He also knew that was something else he could not tell his wife, not when the enemy was their son.
Mary could see what was going on, though, even if she did not understand it. When they went to bed that night, too worn for anything but whatever sleep Doug was going to let them have, she touched her husband's arm. "Pete, please don't take it so personally when Doug cries. I hate to watch you clamping your jaw when you carry him around. You act as though you think he deliberately sets out to provoke you."
"Sometimes I do wonder. His timing is awfully good." Pete kept his tone light on purpose. Mary could take his words as a routine complaint if she wanted… or she could ask just how serious he was. He was ready to cite chapter and verse to her, if she gave him half a chance.
"Pete." His heart sank. Her voice had that ring that sounds like patience but is really anything but. "He's just?"
"?a baby," Pete finished sourly.
"Well, he is." Mary was starting to sound angry. "Now let's go to sleep, shall we? We don't have time for this foolishness, not when Doug's liable to wake up any old time at all."
Pete was angry too, silently, frustratedly furious. It seemed to him that his wife had contradicted herself without so much as noticing. If Doug were "just a baby," they'd have some idea, at least, of when he'd be awake and when he'd be asleep. The only thing they were sure of now was that he'd pick the most inconvenient times possible.
That struck Pete as something nobody ought to find normal. Then something else struck him: fatigue, which laid him low as surely as if he had been sapped. For once, even Doug's howls failed to wake him. He never noticed Mary twice stumbling out of bed to nurse the baby. It was a splendid victory, and he did not know he'd won it.
The next few days made Pete wonder if he'd been wrong all along. Doug was amazingly civilized. He slept regular hours and was cheerful when he was awake. Pete paid him the ultimate compliment: "You wouldn't think it was the same baby."
Mary snorted but, he noticed, did not disagree.
The fragile hope Pete had nourished only made him hurt worse when it was dashed. His first stab at a Christmas list disintegrated in his mind when Doug let out a screech that should have burst from the iron throat of an insane calliope. Mary got to the baby before he did. He saw tears in her eyes. She'd had hopes, too.
"Hush, hush, hush," she murmured. She hugged Doug's little body against the softness of her breast, leaned his chin on her shoulder. She moved in the little dance steps that sometimes helped calm him. Nothing helped calm him today. Somehow Pete had thought it was going to be like that.
After a while, with an apprehensive look in her eye, Mary handed the baby to him and went into the kitchen to make dinner. Pete was fine with steaks and chops and hamburger, and had done most of the cooking since Doug was born. But Mary was a really good cook. She missed being in front of a stove; Doug's amiable spell had encouraged her to send her husband out for fancier food than he was up to making himself. Tonight she had something exotic and oriental planned for a pork roast.
That left Pete holding the baby. He carried Doug into the living room, turned on the stereo, and started going round and round the coffee table. The pile on the carpet was noticeably more beaten down there than anywhere else in the room.
"Hush, hush, hush, you little monster." Despite his words, his tone was a fair imitation of Mary's croon. He was determined not to let Doug get his goat?or not to let him know he had; listening to Doug at close range would have turned the back of Job's neck red. But Pete swayed and jiggled, as dedicated to calming his son as Doug was to driving him out of his tree.
He thought he was earning at least a draw. Doug's howls came further and further apart, and took on the rusty-hinge quality that showed the baby was getting tired. "Shh, shh," Pete sang. He turned his head. "How's dinner coming?"
"Getting there. How's he doing?"
"Not too bad." Pete glanced down at Doug. The baby's gaze met his with more directness and intelligence than ten-week-olds are supposed to show. Then Doug let out all the stops. Pete only thought he'd heard him cry before. He wished he'd been right.
He looked at Doug again. His son's face wasn't all screwed up, as baby's faces usually are when they pitch fits. Except for having his mouth open wide enough to let out all that horrible noise, Doug wasn't acting upset at all. He seemed… positively smug.
Rage filled Pete. "What sort of noise would you make if you really were hurting?" he growled. For a moment, the idea of dropping the kid just to find out looked awfully good. Almost without willing it, Pete felt his arm start to straighten to let go of Doug.