in the middle, between her bunny and her teddy bear, where there was still an indentation on the covers. But my aim was off, and her cheek rolled against her bunny and she cried, “Ow, my eye, my eye!” Since the bunny was soft, plush as a mink coat, I couldn’t imagine she was doing anything but exaggerating.
“Oh, please, Emma. Your eye is fine,” I said.
“The whiskers!” she wailed. “The whiskers!”
Was it possible the bunny’s fine nylon whiskers, as thin as hair, had actually poked her in the eye as I lowered her down? I pulled her hand away to look; her eye wasn’t even red.
“Emma, you’re fine,” I said more firmly.
“I’m not fine! I’m not fine!”
My breasts seized up, tingling, preparing to nurse, as they sometimes did when she cried, not just her brother. It had shocked me the first time it happened; made me understand why mothers in Europe breast-fed toddlers: because their breasts told them to. I squeezed my arm against it, willing it to stop. For it all to stop, really. I tightened the strap on that side of my bra for more support. I would never be one of those hippies who burned her bras; I needed mine more than ever.
I don’t know how long I watched her flail on her bed. Ten seconds? Enough. Enough to see her pound her fists into her pastel chenille spread, hard enough to raise dust. I left her mid-tantrum, closing the door to her small room, and to the baby’s room. If she wakes him up, I thought, I’ll kill her.
“We can talk about this when you’re calm,” I called to her from the other side of the door.
She pounded her fists against the door, shrieking louder, and a few seconds later I heard the baby crying in his crib. I closed my eyes and counted to ten, willing him to stop, or her to stop; neither one did. Guilt seeped from my heart into my limbs. Two sobbing children, and it wasn’t even daylight.
I stood up and went to the baby’s room and put his pacifier back in his mouth and turned on his music mobile, hoping he’d go back to sleep, hoping he didn’t want to nurse.
I backed out of his room slowly and nearly stepped on Emma, in the hallway.
“Ow!” she cried and I winced, expecting the baby’s cry. I closed his door swiftly.
“Emma, what is wrong with you this morning?” I whispered.
“That bunny made me mad.”
“Well, should we put the bunny in the naughty chair?”
“No, I forgave him.”
“Then…,” I sighed, “then I forgive you for waking up your brother.” I hesitated a moment and then added, “Do you want to come help me in the garden later this morning? We could find some worms, we could—”
“No,” she said. “The garden is dumb.”
And the moment, the crack in the armor, is gone.
Later, Betsy would point out that the tantrum was all Theo’s fault. We laughed at all the different ways Betsy could absolve me and blame Theo. Theo’s fault for never being home. Theo’s fault for not making enough money to have servants. Theo’s fault for the genes that combined with mine to make Emma just a bit different from the child we saw in our minds, the photograph of a life, the one you hope for, plan for. Not the one you have. But when I thought of my married life, the picket fence, the Christmas photos with children dressed in red velvet, I never thought there would be a shadow behind my husband, of another man.
My high school reunion was a bit like being trapped in the world’s longest receiving line. So many people I half knew. My old lab partner, Bill Miller. Lou Ann Banner, whose locker was next to mine for four years. It was as if there were two of me: one who hugged each of them, and one who scanned the room for Peter over their shoulders. He was there, I just knew it. I imagined him hiding behind a nest of emerald balloons, peeking around the wide bass of the jazz trio, cloaked in the camouflage of a blue blazer. At most Main Line parties you couldn’t tell the men apart from the back, but I was certain I would know Peter right away. Certain he wasn’t one of the pairs of flannel shoulders I watched heaving with laughter. I nibbled on a cracker with cucumber and pimiento and watched the band. It was one of those earnest