But he couldn’t remember it.
“Do you remember that awful woman Paula?” his mother said idly at one interminable Thanksgiving dinner.
“Gary’s mother? Of course.”
“She liked to tell people that we dumped you on them. That you were constantly at their house.”
“I did spend a lot of time there.”
“Because you wanted to! And because Gary refused to stay over with you. Remember? He was too sensitive.”
Peter thought about it, tried to recall. He just naturally seemed to end up staying for dinner at Gary’s. Adding him wasn’t hard. After all, Gary’s parents almost never cooked. Mostly it was a diet of pizza, deli, Chinese food.
“They didn’t seem to mind,” he had answered.
“No! She loved it. Kept Gary out of her hair. And she could brag we were neglectful parents.”
But you were, Mother. Children didn’t interest you.
“Peter! Peter!” Diane’s voice, hoarse and angry, called out. Behind it, a background noise: he heard a siren wail. Not a siren. His son, crying.
Peter got up from his desk, opened the study door. “What is it?”
“Give him a bottle!”
“What!” he said, shouting to be heard above Byron’s siren.
“There’s a bottle of formula on the counter!” she shouted from the dark of their bedroom. “Give it to him!”
Peter had heard the first time. He considered reminding Diane that he had warned her — he wouldn’t help take care of Byron. He listened to Byron’s wail, rising to a pitch, fading out, rising again. It didn’t bother him.
“Hurry up!” she said.
Why not? Peter walked into the kitchen. A bottle — it looked like a missile to him — stood on the counter. He took it into Byron’s room.
Byron’s body was thrashing in the crib. He grunted and farted and then let his siren sound. There was something frightening in the activeness of his activity. Arms flailed. He bumped his face into the mattress repeatedly, trying to lift himself.
For a moment, Peter puzzled over how to pick up Byron and hold on to the bottle. He put it on a shelf beside the rocker. When he grabbed Byron, the siren was cut off. Peter lifted him by his bird’s chest, puffed with bone. Byron arched his back when Peter took him in his arms, his head thrusting for escape. But when Peter brought the bottle into Byron’s vision, the little boy went still. His eyes widened.
With delight at the sight.
With suspense at the pause.
His mouth opened in an O. Peter put the bottle nipple inside and the lips clamped, the cheeks puffed, his jaw worked.
“You like this,” Peter said, chuckling.
“What?” Diane called out.
Byron’s body started. “Shhh,” Peter said. “Nothing,” he called out.
“Is he okay?” she screamed.
“Yes, he’s fine.” Byron’s eyes closed, the lids wrinkled and tired. But his jaw worked and a stream of little bubbles running up the bottle showed he was drawing formula. Byron’s legs, emanating heat from the soft material of the stretchy, pushed out with pleasure at the onset of getting liquid. His body, taut with desire moments ago, sighed in Peter’s arms. The weight of Byron’s neck pressed against the crook of Peter’s elbow, and then Byron’s legs sagged at the knees and his plump arms dipped into the air, like idle oars. Peter envied Byron’s pleasure. He admired Byron’s passionate desire — wailing to be fed — and his equally fervent satisfaction — the tiny body absorbed, obsessed, by a single longing.
Once there must have been such lust in himself, an ache which, frustrated, caused rage and despair. Diane had taken to complaining that babies were so selfish, so completely unaware of everyone else’s feelings. How marvelous that very quality seemed to Peter.
Byron fell asleep. His mouth, that pink hole of suction, sagged open, the bottle nipple sliding out. Peter put it back on the shelf, half empty. Byron lay relaxed in his arms, romantically enervated, like Hamlet borne offstage. He touched the puffy jowl. Soft.
Peter carried Byron to the crib. Byron’s body started at being let go, but quickly loosened into unconsciousness again.
“Sometimes,” an exhausted Diane had said over dinner, “I think he looks at me and thinks: food.”
That’s right, Byron, Peter thought to the sleeping figure of his son. Fuck ’em. Get what you can.
ERIC PUSHED the carriage back and forth. Back and forth. A little less far away, then a little less back. Back and forth. He measured the distance by the darker edge of the floorboards at the living room’s doorsill. The white wheels had been crossing them, then they only touched, now they failed to reach.
Luke’s body was still, a hump underneath the baby blue cotton blanket. His head, covered by soft curls of black hair, was on its side, treating Eric to a view of his profile. The eyes were shut — at last. But his back still heaved rapidly, panting. Back and forth on the silent wheels, slower and slower. Eric let his eyes stray to the television, tuned to an idle cable television channel that ran that day’s closing stock market prices. ITT rolled by … 351/2. Fuck.
His options had five days to go. They were still in the money, but each day closer to expiration without a further move up meant an erosion of his profit. Bulls get rich, Bears get rich, Pigs get nothing. He should have taken his profit last week. Now he would barely clear 10 percent. If ITT were unchanged for three more days, even that would be gone. Why the fuck wasn’t there a confirmation on the buyback rumor? It would push the stock by five points. That would quadruple his options; he’d clear a hundred thousand. If something didn’t happen tomorrow morning, he’d have to sell. Couldn’t afford a loss now.
He had lost track of the motion of the carriage. The quiet rubber wheels had shifted, so the hood was pointed at the wall instead of the open doorway. Eric looked away from the television just as he gave a push forward. He saw, only a second before it happened, that he had aimed the carriage and its sleeping occupant into the wall.
“No!” he said, but it was too late. The carriage recoiled from the impact, its springs bouncing. Eric yanked the carriage back. A spasm went through Luke’s body — the legs kicked out, his head jerked. The mouth opened and the groaning squeaks began again. “Dammit.” He rolled the carriage back and forth quickly again. “Pay attention!” he lectured himself. Luke continued to complain, his body tense, fighting the motion. “Come on,” Eric said. “I’m sorry. Forget it happened.” Back — forth — back — forth, fast, the vibrations diminishing Luke’s squalling into musical moans, until finally they subsided into smacking sounds of desperate suction on his pacifier.
Eric looked toward the hallway, wondering if Nina had been disturbed by the wails. She was wrecked. They had been home twelve hours and Luke was still up. Other than momentary lulls, unless he was being fed or rocked, he had cried — horrible, protesting screeches. Like a soldier back from a ghastly war, Luke seemed to be reliving some horror, pained by unseen hurts. They had tried everything. Changed him, fed him, rocked him, played music, walked with him clutched to their bosoms, kissed him, pleaded — nothing really soothed him. Movement made Luke quiet, but not relaxed, or asleep. He couldn’t be set down in the carriage unless they pushed it; he couldn’t be put on the couch or the rug or their bed; he couldn’t even be held in a chair. Unless there was movement, he screamed. And even when there was motion, his mouth still worked on the pacifier, and at the bottom of his heavy-lidded eyes, open slits remained, peep-holes, filled by suspicion, ready to protest any change.
By nightfall Nina couldn’t hold out. She went to bed with instructions to be roused in four hours if Luke was awake. She said Luke could be given two ounces of distilled water in two hours.