There was a blissful quiet. A rest in the household that had had no peace since they arrived.
Could he really choke, I mean, choke to death, because he’s on his back? To risk flipping him seemed insane. Luke was at peace, at last; why bother him?
Eric went to bed. Nina slept stretched out, sunning herself in the night, a position she had gotten used to while big from the pregnancy. She used to sleep curled up, shrinking into infancy. Now she lay like a continent, floating on the world. One leg crossed onto his side. He nudged it to get room. She stirred, angrily (that day everything from her was either angry or hysterical), and he turned on his side, hugging the pillow.
He listened. He would hear choking.
The ticker began. ITT ANNOUNCES BUYBACK, TRADING CLOSED, ITT REOPENS AT 50. The options would be worth fifteen hundred each and he had paid two. They would be worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Silly. A boy’s dream.
Nina woke him with a yell. “Eric! Eric!”
Eric stumbled on his way out of bed, his hand on his soft penis. He usually wore his underpants to sleep.
“Eric! Come in here!” She was screeching in a high pitch.
“What?” he asked, coming into Luke’s room. The sunlight glowed in Nina’s hair. She was crying.
“I can’t wake him!” she screamed, tears streaming down her face.
And there in the carriage was Luke. Dead.
Eric woke up.
He woke up gasping for air, his head thrust forward.
It was still night. Outside he heard a car alarm wailing for its owner. His heart pounded in his chest, rapping out its criticisms: put Luke on his stomach, you selfish pig.
There would be no rest anyway, he realized, lying there, his ear aching to hear sounds from Luke.
He got up, went inside, and stared at the motionless body. For a moment he thought the nightmare had come true: the chest was still. But he finally saw a slight rise and fall.
He pulled the blanket off.
He put his hands under the little arms.
He turned Luke. The legs curled; the head nosed into the mattress. For a moment Luke rubbed his face sideways, settling in.
Then the little empty mouth opened. A silent yell.
Eric nodded to himself with dismay.
Now came the scream.
Luke was up again.
5
NINA ACHED for bed. she begged her body for more energy. She peered past the nursing head of Luke to look at her thighs, studying the flab squashed out by the hard wood of the kitchen chair, and wondered if all her muscles were gone. She closed her eyes, her hot eyes, watering to relieve the harsh sandpaper lids, and felt her neck go liquid, her weighted chin sag. One deep breath and she would be asleep.
Sleep.
Dark.
Warm.
The dance of dreams. The storytelling of memory and desire.
Luke’s hard gums slid down onto the nipple and pressed together, pressed together with slow cunning.
“No!” She was awake again, her poor boneless body in retreat from her baby’s evil intent. She pushed a finger into the corner of Luke’s mouth. The hard, mean little gums were closing. “No!” She forced him off with her finger. He wailed immediately. “Don’t bite!” she said to the senseless creature, its face nothing but a gaping mouth. “Goddammit!” She got to her feet. Luke’s head flopped back, screaming. The thing had no understanding: it yelled with the conviction that it was entitled to all her energy, to all her milk, to all her love. It had no inkling that her servitude was voluntary.
She paced, letting Luke screech in her arms. She paced, cursing the walls. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” She passed her reflection in a little mirror, seeing a flash of her own face. Her eyes stared with rage and hopelessness; her jaw was slack, her mouth open, her hair dull and disarranged. She looked wild.
“Okay, okay, okay,” she said to the screams of her son. Calm down, she told herself. She walked rapidly to the couch, sat, and offered her breast again, holding his head fast against her so he wouldn’t clamp on her red and tender nipple.
Sighing, hiccuping, farting, jawing, Luke settled in. His rage ebbed, his eyes closed, he relaxed. She did not. Her head pounded from the suppression of the pulsing blood of her anger. She tried to fix herself in time, to remember where she was by a logical procession of events. But the disjointed sleeping schedule made her stupid.
Luke never slept. Her mind fought to understand how that could be. How could an infant sleep only four hours out of every twenty-four? How could this baby stand to be awake, fussing, crying the second his body wasn’t being rocked or moved? She had read explanations: he had colic, he was in pain, an almost continual pain that kept him awake; the motion soothed him, reminded him of the womb, calmed him. He did need sleep, but his digestion wasn’t permitting him the rest. The book said he couldn’t wake himself up any more than he could prevent himself from falling asleep; those perverse abilities came around eight months. This was out of his control. It was not Luke’s fault; he was an innocent in pain and all her patience was required.
“Let him cry if you can’t take it,” her pediatrician had advised over the phone. She had called the doctor a few hours ago, in a desperate state, exhausted by five hours of walking Luke in the Snugli. The Snugli was a womb made of fabric, a carrying pouch which put Luke’s face into her chest, and curled him up against her stomach. Inside it, Luke was quiet and even got snatches of sleep. But the Snugli gave her no rest; on the contrary, its cross straps bit across her back and strained muscles which had escaped the ravages of pregnancy. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” she had said to the doctor. This was the first week Eric had gone to work and left her alone with the baby. Today she had broken down and called Eric to ask if he could come home early. Eric said no, the market was very active, and suggested she phone his parents, but she declined. This was the first goddamned week. She couldn’t ask for their help so soon. “I feel like I’m going crazy,” she repeated to the pediatrician. “Isn’t there some medicine you can give him?”
“Colic lasts three months. And then it goes away. It doesn’t do him any harm. His digestive tract needs time to mature. Comfort him as much as you can, but let him cry if you can’t handle it.”
Let him cry! Who raised these people, these doctors? she wondered. Did they all go to military school?
So she went back to pushing the carriage, harnessing herself into the Snugli, rocking Luke in her arms. The moment, the instant, the split second, sometimes even a fraction before she stopped the various movements, he cried, he raged, his legs pulled up, his face distorted in pain, his rear end expelled gas, his stomach compressed into a tight ball. Why does it only hurt him when I stop moving? She began to suspect Luke. He knows. He knows. If he pretends to hurt, I’ll pamper him. He knows.
Can’t he tell he’s killing me? He’s breaking me; he’s making me a failure.
Tears came from her as she sagged into despair. I can’t even be a mother. The simplest goddamned thing in the world. A peasant, an idiot can do it. While Luke sucked, tears collected at Nina’s jaw and formed a large drop, which then fell on his stretchy. Luke chewed away, unconcerned.
Nina studied him. He was content now. His curly black hair was damp from the humidity; the oppressive weather, the hot gray stifling days, drained her energy.
Luke peered blankly at her while he sucked her dry. There was no apology in his eyes. No sheepishness in his chewing. No fear of reprisal. Only suspicion, a wary surveillance of her. Don’t you make a move, his expressionless blue eyes seemed to say. You stay right here for me.