there’s more.”
And then, slowly, with both tears and laughter safely at bay, I told him about my breast surgery. I must have given him enough details to satisfy him, because he didn’t ask questions, and his eyes, god bless him, his eyes didn’t go to my chest like some people’s do. They stayed with me, eye to eye.
And then he did it again, as he had last year at our high school reunion. Once again, he said the perfect thing at the perfect time.
“Oh, Annie. How can I miss what’s gone when what you have left is so beautiful?”
That’s not when our evening ended, but that’s the last thing I remember him saying: the perfect thing. Everything else that came after, the small talk, the we should do this again, the aren’t the cheeseburgers delicious, the call me next week, paled in comparison. He kissed me good-bye, just once, on the lips, and I felt that same electricity. It would never go away; it would run between us always, over hill and dale, through drought and famine, month to year to decade. It was a fact, not a feeling, and I had to accept it.
When I got home I went up to tuck in the baby. He was asleep, but I just wanted to look at him for a few seconds. Peter had asked me what day he was born. I could see him counting backward, fingers tapping it out on the nicked linoleum table, the months, the weeks. I told him in no uncertain terms that he was wrong. How do you know? he replied. How can you be sure? “He has blue eyes,” I said, looking straight into Peter’s brown.
Now the baby’s long-lashed eyes were closed, and it was as if I couldn’t remember their hue. Had I conjured it up, looked into them like a reflecting pool and seen what I’d wanted to see?
When I’d walked in, Theo had tilted his face up from the blueprints spread across the dining room table and sniffed the air. Like a dog, I thought.
“You smell of smoke,” he said, not distastefully.
“They should outlaw smoking in theaters,” I said, and he sniffed again.
He’s a dog and I’m a bird and he’ll forever be looking for me, searching me out, wondering where I am. I went to the kitchen and set the table for breakfast while Theo concentrated on his project. I don’t think I’d ever noticed before how much less handsome Theo was with his eyes downcast. And they were always down now, aimed toward his blueprints, low to the ground, an animal not meant to fly.
September 2, 1967
10 A.M.
no bath for three days
THE BABY WAS INCONSOLABLE the night before last. That’s a word you just don’t know the meaning of until you have children, is it? I was up with him at 2:00, at 3:15, and again at 4:00. I know he’s teething, although I don’t remember Emma going through this. It seems she always had teeth.
He didn’t want his pacifier; didn’t want a bottle; or teething biscuit, cereal, or cold spoon. I rubbed brandy on his bulging gums, but they stayed as red as a Monopoly house. I turned on the washing machine and set his basket near it, hoping it would lull him. He was momentarily startled into silence, then started to wail again. I felt my hands go into fists. I closed the door to the laundry room and took three steps away. Was the crying easier to take with the door between us? The muffling made it worse, as if I was choking him.
I took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling. I wanted another wife in the house. Polygamy, I wanted polygamy. I wanted someone else to rock him, someone else to tell me it was okay, that every baby does this and every mother feels this. I wanted platitudes and rhymes and clichés. I wanted this, too, shall pass. I wanted, I realized with an ache, a mother. Not my mother, necessarily, with her flawed memory and pampered habits, but a smart one. A patient one. Maybe any mother would do.
I cried on one side of the door while the baby wailed on the other. Our sobs blended together, like a composite character, louder and less happy than either one of us alone. We both wanted our mothers, and neither of us had them.
Finally I blew my nose and opened the door. I picked him up and brought his wailing face as