close to mine as my ears could stand; I needed to smell the beauty of his scalp, his skin. Even angry. Even loud. Even screeching, wailing like a lunatic, you are a miracle. What I used to say to Emma. Every child is a miracle, I would repeat over her tantrums. Every one.
It didn’t help. “What do you want?” I cried. “What?”
I knew I couldn’t stop it—I just had to endure it. Wasn’t that what Betsy told me once? When you can’t stop it, just endure it?
I rocked him and walked around the house, up the stairs, into his room. I watched his open mouth in the air. Opening and closing. Rooting for worms, like a baby bird. There was nothing else I could do, nothing left on the list. I unbuttoned my nightgown, and took out my left breast. It hadn’t been used in weeks, and I had no reason to hope it would work. But he latched on and pulled, finding whatever was left of me. It must have been enough, because we fell asleep together that way, he and I, in our chair.
I didn’t wake up until Emma opened the door. The sound of her in the room, her confusion and jealousy in the air, woke me up. I covered myself hastily and put the baby back in his crib.
The next day his tooth broke through. He woke up giggling and gurgling, and when I brought him downstairs, he sat happily in his high chair, banging on the metal tray with a spoon while I filled the percolator with coffee.
The phone rang and I frowned; only bad news came this early in the day. I was right: it was Sarah, the sitter, canceling for the afternoon and evening. She was sick, and I summoned sympathy for a minute or two, asked about her symptoms. But when I hung up the phone, I felt tears in my eyes. It had been a long few days. I needed a bath, fresh air, a drink. I needed an evening with Peter.
“Oh well,” I said to the baby as I opened a jar of Gerber applesauce, “maybe there’s a movie of the week on TV tonight, huh?” And he smiled. “Maybe I’ll grow old and fat and stinky wearing the same nightgown forever,” I said, and he smiled.
A few minutes later Emma came downstairs, and he smiled for her.
“He’s showing off his tooth,” I said.
She smiled at him, and he smiled back, and she giggled.
“We all have teeth now,” she said, and I said, yes, you’re right.
I patted her on the hand and couldn’t help noticing her knuckles felt dry, scratchy. Maybe the bubble baths were drying out her skin again. Betsy had suggested baby oil in the bath instead, but that made it too slippery, and Emma always protested the lack of bubbles.
I set out Emma’s raisin bran and orange juice and she rubbed her eyes and yawned.
“Is Daddy back from his trip?”
“No, honey. Do you want bacon? There’s bacon in the oven and I can make you an egg.”
She ate her cereal; that was my answer. Why did I expect anything more? My memories of my own childhood, I suppose; my mother cheery and me polite in our sunroom overlooking the pond. The calm stirring of sugar in tea, the sighing over the beauty of the day, the napkins always on our laps. The arrival of my father, freshly shaved, and the smell of his lime soap hovering over me as he kissed me on the forehead.
I turned to the sink to wash the bacon pan. When I heard it, at first I thought it was just the water I was running. And then, louder, a gurgling that was different. I spun around. My baby was gasping for air.
I yanked on the metal high chair tray, squeezing it until it popped and clattered to the floor. I pulled him up to my shoulder and hit him sharply on the back. He gagged and tears flew out suddenly, as if his ducts had been clogged and not his throat. I held him up in the air. His face was reversing itself, back into baby pink.
“Don’t scare me like that,” I said. My hands were shaking, and his chin buckled and quivered, as if in response.
I put him back in his high chair. As I turned away something dark caught my eye on the floor: three soggy raisins, plumped up by milk.
“Emma, did you throw these on the—”
I knelt to pick