at his finger and slapped at his hand. The man laughed and took his hand away. He looked at his wife. She stood a step or two away from the table and was looking down at the baby dispassionately, her arms crossed against the front of her parka. She had neglected to remove her hat, a fur-lined leather aviator’s cap that had earflaps that could be pulled down and tied beneath her chin but which now somewhat comically stuck straight out on either side of her head.
Take off your hat, he told her.
What? she answered. She seemed submerged inside herself, which was an affect she often had. He knew it was a way she had of dealing with her pain or her depression, as if to be completely alive and fully engaged with the world only exacerbated her condition. He reached out and pulled the hat from her head. She seemed not to notice the removal of her hat and continued to stare down at the baby on the table.
Touch him, the man said. He reached out and touched the baby as he had done before, and this time the baby seemed surprised by the touch and stopped fidgeting and closed his eyes and lay perfectly still, as if he were an opossum playing dead.
He’s quite chubby, isn’t he? the man asked. How much does he weigh?
Four, maybe five, said the nurse. Six perhaps.
Pounds?
Pounds? No. Kilos.
The man turned to his wife. How many pounds is that?
I have no idea. She seemed to have roused herself from her stupor, for she stepped forward and leaned down toward the baby. For a moment she only observed him, closely, as if she were nearsighted, and then she picked up his arm and held it for a moment. Then she let it go, so that it dropped down upon the table.
She made an odd sound that might have expressed surprise or disgust and said, His muscle tone seems . . . poor.
Muscle! exclaimed the nurse. We have a baby. Later, the muscles grow. Pick him up! Don’t be scared! Hold your little baby!
But the woman had stepped back and once again crossed her arms before her, as if stopping them from somehow independently reaching out to pick up the baby.
To compensate for his wife’s behavior, the man reached down and scooped the child up into his arms and held him tightly against his chest. Even through his clothes he could feel the warm weight of the baby. His naked legs were soft and delightfully warm. The man wished that he were naked too, wished he could hold the baby against his naked chest, his beating heart pressed softly against the child’s. He closed his eyes. He bent forward and kissed the baby’s blond head and inhaled the clean scent of his hair. Then he slightly increased the pressure of his grasp, because he wanted to make sure the baby knew that he was being held.
When the taxi had left the parking lot of the orphanage and driven some distance back toward the town, the man turned to his wife, who was looking out the window.
Why were you like that? the man said. Why didn’t you pick him up?
She shrugged, but the motion was almost lost inside her cocoon of clothes.
It seemed perverse, he surprised himself by saying.
That made her turn and look at him—perhaps that’s why he had said it.
Perverse! What are you talking about?
To come so far, to come all this way, and then not pick him up. To drop his arm like that.
I’m sorry I didn’t respond the way you wanted.
No, said the man. Don’t be sorry. Just tell me why. Why did you respond like that?
I don’t know. It just seemed so . . . odd.
Odd? How odd?
So random. I didn’t feel connected to him.
Well, of course you didn’t! We were seeing him for the first time. How could you feel connected?
But you did. I could tell. When you held him—you felt connected.
Yes, because I was holding him. That’s why you should have held him. It was amazing—what it felt like, holding him.
That’s why I didn’t pick him up, the woman said. Because I knew even if I was holding him, I wouldn’t feel anything. I’d just be holding him and feeling nothing. And I couldn’t bear that.
But you don’t know. How can you know that?
I know, said the woman. Part of what’s happening to me—the change I’m feeling—is that I know things like that. Everything is very clear. Apparent. I