Gabe’s parents came to New York two weeks into Jack’s life, when I was still so raw and weepy I could hardly look at anyone. They marveled at what they called Gabe’s involvement. Imagine, Hank and Diane Feldman’s own son changing diapers! Their own son with his special trick of bouncing the baby through the air, simulating the soothing sensation of riding an old elevator.
“You’ve got it made,” Diane told me. “Hank was always at the office. Day or night, didn’t matter, I was on my own.”
She meant to shame me as I sat on the couch in my sweatpants, scrolling hungrily through the internet while Gabe tended to our infant. I was unmoved. I did pity Diane though. Gabe plus his two older brothers amounted to nine years of diaper changes, nine years of teething and temper tantrums. Hadn’t Diane deserved a break?
Carrie’s bathroom is stocked with hand soap and hand towels, the accoutrements of a level of adulthood to which Gabe and I still aspire. Ten times a day a single bar of Ivory travels between our sink and the edge of our tub. Occasionally one of us will cloak our annoyance in vague intention: “Whoever goes to the store next should buy some hand soap.” But whoever goes to the store next will be daunted by the aisle of toiletries and cleaning supplies. Beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights, all of it will seem frivolous, exorbitantly priced. Three ninety-nine? For what—the plastic pump?
In Carrie’s shower I’m happy, almost drunk on autonomy. I try to ignore the phantom baby who always cries behind the clamor of the water hitting the tiles. Even harder is ignoring the real baby—mine—who has woken up. Who is screaming now.
As we drove across the interminable state of Pennsylvania—Clinton signage gradually conceding to red barns branded, in white paint, trump—I tried to desensitize myself to the sound of crying. I remembered that Jack had been fed, burped, and changed. That he was, by definition, okay. My zen would last for a minute or two, tops, before a switch would flip. With my heart racing, nerves fraying, I had to pull over. In the back seat I would hug him close to me, furious but unable to bear his fury.
Carrie has four different kinds of conditioner—the packaging sleek and sexy, splashed with niche terms like keratin—and about two squirts left in a bottle of generic shampoo. I skip the shampoo and massage something oily into my scalp. Since the birth my hair has been brittle, as dry as September grass. Rushing to rinse it, I’m not anxious so much as excited. To have gained entry into Carrie’s house thrills me. So she didn’t wrap me in her arms, and maybe never will again, but she did reach for Jack. Automatically and without fear.
Doesn’t that count for something?
After putting back on my stale clothes, I go to the kitchen, where Carrie calmly hands me my enraged baby. He shakes his head from side to side, clenched fist waving in front of his mouth. Sinking into a chair, I lift up my shirt and latch him onto my breast. There’s a twinge of pain, a wave of shame, a sudden awareness of my own hunger—and then nothing. I’m at ease, feeding my kid in Carrie’s kitchen. Like it’s nothing new.
Carrie leans against the counter, holding her empty juice glass. “Where does Gabe think you are?”
“Here,” I say, wishing she hadn’t thought to ask.
“Here in my house?”
“Here in Deerling.”
She waits.
“I’m sure he assumes I’m staying with my mom,” I say.
“But you’re leaving him to assume?”
I search her expression for signs of triumph or satisfaction. She looks only concerned. “I’ll fill him in,” I say.
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Amanda.” Carrie drops her chin, looking at me like she means business. “What happened?”
Nothing happened, except that Gabe and I were nice to each other for thirteen years. His weekday alarm was set to ring ten minutes before mine, allowing him to make coffee and eggs while I negotiated myself out of bed. On a Friday night a friend would text him after dark, hoping Gabe was up for grabbing a drink at the Deep End, and Gabe would frown at his phone and say to me, puzzled, “But I’m hanging out with you.” Throughout my pregnancy we exchanged handwritten notes, compiled playlists for each other, and made out on the couch like teenagers. And then came the baby, with his ceaseless hunger, his cries so hot the windows fogged over. And suddenly I couldn’t look at Gabe without seeing yet another creature wanting something.
When I don’t answer her, Carrie says, “Did you guys get a second car?”
“No.”
“So Gabe’s stuck in New York.”
“He’s flying out after the last day of school. We’ll drive home together and everything. We had a fight, but we’re still . . . We’ll be fine.”
“Okay.” She accepts my claim. And I guess it doesn’t matter to her whether Gabe and I break up or stay together. What she wants is to know what I’m doing in her kitchen.
“I need some help,” I say. “Gabe’s at work until six every day. Taking care of the baby by myself is impossible. It’s a two-
person job.”
She lifts her eyebrows and waits for me to realize what I’ve said. Hot-cheeked, I try to take it back. “I mean, it’s either a job for two incompetent people or one extraordinarily competent person. Gabe and I fall into the first category, whereas you—”
“Right.” Carrie turns her back to me, placing the glass in the sink. “So, are you pumping?”
I shake my head. “I rented an electric pump for the first few weeks, but I hated it. The sound it made was like a bullfrog dying.”
Facing me again, Carrie watches Jack’s hand as he reaches toward my neck, searching for jewelry or a lock of hair, anything he can grab and pull. “If you start pumping, I can give him a bottle sometimes while you catch up on sleep.”
I lock eyes with Carrie. Her gaze is so neutral, so steady, I’m forced to look away.
“Okay,” I say. “That would be good.”
She nods, and it’s settled.
We’re staying.
* * *
Last night, back in New York, Jack wouldn’t sleep. All of us collapsed into bed around ten. Jack woke up at 10:45, 11:51, and 12:38. Then, around 2:00 a.m., he woke up mad and stayed that way, refusing my breast, refusing his pacifier, refusing “Hotline Bling” and any other song with a bass line like a heartbeat. He didn’t care to be swaddled, shushed, or swung. Instead he cried—his face scrunched and tomato red, his lung capacity limitless. I seethed with a kind of as-seen-on-TV anger, the kind that inspires aggrieved male characters to heave chairs across rooms. Last night, I did not feel like anyone’s mother; I felt like a victim. My baby, who did not sleep and did not appear to love anything, was the perpetrator. But because Jack was tiny and I knew, in a purely theoretical way, that he was innocent, I took out my anger on Gabe.