The First Night

Theron

The thing nobody had told him about a newborn was the noise it made when it was not crying.

It was a continuous soft assortment of sounds, a wet, rustling, creaking, snuffling underscore to the night: a series of small grunts, like a pig dreaming; a faint rhythmic click, like a clock with a damp spring; a sigh, abrupt and enormous, of the sort that issues from a very old gentleman settling into an armchair. Sometimes there was a squeak. Sometimes a sound like a kitten being stepped upon. And sometimes, for a space of perhaps three or four seconds, there was nothing at all, and in that nothing his entire body would go rigid and his hand would fly to the small chest, and he would feel it rise, and fall, and rise, and he would let out a breath he had not known he was holding.

It was a quarter to one on the morning of Saturday, the twelfth of June.

He sat in the rocking chair in the corner of Dess's bedroom, in the dark, with his bare feet on the cold floorboards and his shirt open and a person asleep on his chest.

It was the fourth night of the person's life. It was the first that he had spent in the house.

…

They had come home on Friday, in the rain.

It had been Dell's idea to take the Bentley, and Mrs. Ferreira's to forbid it, on the grounds that a Bentley in front of number 13 would "bring the whole of Rhode Island out in their pajamas." It had been decided, after twenty minutes of delicate negotiation in the hospital car park, that they would go in Joelle's Subaru, with Theron in the back beside the car seat, one hand resting on the padded rim and one on the grab handle, and Dess in the front, white as a candle, strapped in and flinching at every pothole. Joelle had driven at eleven miles an hour. She had stopped at every light, including the green ones. She'd refused to turn on the radio. When a Dunkin' truck had passed them on Gano Street, blowing its horn, she had leaned out of the window and shouted, in a voice that carried to the fourth floor of the hospital, "THERE'S A BABY IN HERE."

"There is, indeed," Theron had murmured.

The baby, in the car seat, had slept.

He had slept through the stairs. They'd gone up the thirty-nine steps with Mr. Okafor at the front carrying the bag and Mrs. Okafor at the back with a lasagna, Chidi dancing ahead with a handmade sign in crayon that said WELCOME HOME BABY CAL (BRING SUBMARINE), and Mrs. Ferreira stationed on the second landing with her arms folded, exactly as though she had been there since the Armistice. Dess had gone up one step at a time, with her hand on his arm, grimacing, refusing to be carried, and at each landing someone had said "How are you doing, honey?" and she had said "Fine," and he had known from the set of her mouth that it was a lie.

He'd said nothing. It was not his place.

At the third floor she had stopped at her own door.

"Home," she'd said, half to herself.

"Yes."

"I thought it'd feel different." She looked at the key. "I thought I'd feel like... like somebody who'd had a baby."

"And?"

"I feel like somebody who got hit by a bus and then given a prize."

He'd made a sound he'd tried to disguise as a cough.

"Don't laugh," said Dess. "It hurts."

"I am not laughing."

"Your shoulders are."

"They are acting independently."

"Tell them they're fired." She had pushed open the door. And then she had stood there, on the threshold of her own kitchen, and looked at the thing that was in it, and her face had done something complicated.

It was a kitchen full of casseroles.

There were nineteen. He had counted. They covered the table and the counter and the shelves, and a good part of the floor; they were stacked on the windowsill and on the top of the fridge and in the oven, in dishes of Pyrex and ceramic and foil, each with a strip of masking tape on the lid and a name in marker: LASAGNA (OKAFOR). TUNA NOODLE (BAPTISTE). CALDO VERDE (FERREIRA, DO NOT TOUCH). CHICKEN & RICE (COLLEEN, SORRY). POT ROAST (ALDRICH). And in the exact center of the table, flanked by a bunch of yellow daisies and a card in a looping, upright, antique hand, a small brown earthenware dish, with a lid, and a note taped to it that said only:

*Sir, I took the liberty. —D.*

"Dell made a casserole," said Dess.

"Dell makes a remarkable casserole," said Theron, faintly. "He learned in the Navy. It's chicken. It's the only thing he cooks. I believe he has been preparing it since April."

"Oh my God."

"Yes."

"It's like a... a shrine."

"There is, I understand, a shrine."

She had turned. She had looked at him, in the open door, in the rain-light, with her hand on the frame and her hair dull and flat and her face drawn thin with pain and fatigue, and her eyes had filled and spilled over. "Theron," she'd said. "I don't know how to say thank you to nineteen casseroles."

"You do not have to."

"Yes I do. I have to write it down. It's the rule."

"Then write it down tomorrow," he had said gently. "Tonight, eat the lasagna."

…

By ten o'clock the house was asleep.

That was an overstatement. By ten o'clock the house had arranged itself into its several postures of exhaustion, like a battlefield at dusk. Colleen lay on the pull-out in the living room in a nest of afghans, snoring in a high, even, wheezing whistle, with a pair of foam earplugs in her ears and a rosary draped round one wrist. The Okafors' television was a faint blue murmur through the floor. Mrs. Ferreira had gone down at eight, after standing in the bedroom doorway for a full ten minutes, gazing at the bassinet with her hand pressed to her breast, and murmuring in Portuguese a long, ardent, sibilant litany that included, as far as he could tell, every saint in the calendar, and an exhortation to "this child" to "grow up tall and good and unlike his uncle."

And in the bedroom, in the bed, Dess lay on her side with her knees drawn up, awake.

He knew, because he had been standing in the hall.

He had told himself he was not listening. He had told himself it was a matter of propriety: she had asked him, kindly, in the tone one uses to a large and sensitive dog, to "go home, get some sleep," and he had said "of course," and had gone as far as the stair. And he had stopped on the top step, with his hat in his hand, in the yellow light of the landing, and heard, from behind the half-open door, the sound.

It was not loud. It was a high, thin, cracked, whimpering cry. It rose and broke, and rose, and broke, with a regularity that was dreadful. It was the sound of someone who had been trying for three hours not to make a noise, and had failed.

It was not the baby.

It was a woman.

"Dess?"

The crying stopped.

There was a silence. He stood at the door with his hand on the frame.

"I'm fine," said Dess's voice. It was wet and shaky and unconvincing. "Go home."

"May I come in?"

"No. I'm— I'm just— It's just hormones. They said it would happen. They said around day three. It's called the baby blues, it's normal, I'm not..." Her voice broke. "I'm okay."

"Dess."

"Go."

"I shall," said Theron, "if you tell me to once more and mean it."

A pause.

"I don't mean it," said the voice, in a very small whisper.

He pushed open the door.

…

It was a small room, dim and warm and smelling of lavender and milk and, faintly, of blood. A nightlight burned in the corner, a plastic seashell that cast a pearly oval of light across the ceiling. The window was open an inch; he could hear the rain on the maple. Against the wall stood the cradle, the one he had made in January out of cherry, with his own hands, in a loft, at four in the morning; it had come over in pieces, in the back of the Bentley, and been assembled by Dell with a socket wrench and an expression of private reverence. It had a quilt on it that Mrs. Aldrich had pieced. And in it, on his back, in a swaddle of striped flannel, with one tiny fist beside his ear, lay the baby.

He was asleep.

Dess was not. She sat on the edge of the bed in her nightgown, bent double, with both arms wrapped around her middle and her wet face turned to the window, and her shoulders heaving. A glass of water stood untouched on the nightstand. Beside it were a pump, a nursing pillow, a tube of lanolin, and a bowl of ice chips. A bottle lay on its side on the quilt.

"It's not working," she said, without turning.

"What is not?"

"Any of it." She was gasping. "He won't latch. He screams. I try, and he screams, and I try, and my... it hurts, Theron, it hurts, and he's hungry, and I'm doing it wrong, and the nurse said it takes a few days, and the lactation lady said it takes patience, and the book says it's natural." She laughed, a high, hysterical bark. "It's the most natural thing in the world. Women have been doing it for a million years. And I can't do it. I can't even feed my baby."

"Dess."

"I can't feed him."

"You can."

"I can't."

"May I sit?"

She didn't answer. She was sobbing now, in a helpless, shuddering, open way, with her mouth wide, and her head bowed, and her whole body rocking. He crossed the room in three steps. He sat down on the bed beside her, not close, an arm's length, on the very edge of the quilt, and he did not touch her. He put his hands between his knees. He looked at the floor.

"I am going to say something," he said. "You may tell me to stop."

"Mm."

"I have been reading."

"Of course you have."

"I have read eleven books on childbirth. I have read four on infant feeding. I have read the instructions on the formula tin, and the nurse's printed sheet, and the leaflet from the Rhode Island Department of Health. I can tell you, with a good deal of confidence, that the figures are against you." He kept his voice low and level. "A great many women find it difficult. A great many find it very nearly impossible. A great many, in the first week, weep exactly as you are weeping. I do not say it to console you. I say it because it is statistics."

She gave a wet, ragged snort.

"The nurse said he is gaining," said Theron. "The lactation consultant said it is early. Dr. Pratt said, and I wrote it down, that a fed baby is a good baby, however it is done." He paused. "It is not a test, Dess."

"It feels like a test."

"Yes."

"And I'm failing."

"You are not." He lifted his head. "You are exhausted. You have had your abdomen opened. You have not slept for four days. You have had a person attached to your body for nine months, and now he is outside it, and he is asking for something you cannot yet give, and every instinct you have is telling you that this is the only thing that matters in the world." His voice dropped. "I think it would be extraordinary if you did not weep."

She said nothing.

She sat with her face in her hands. The rain ticked on the sill. In the cradle, the baby grunted, and sucked once at nothing, and was still.

"Can I tell you what I'm afraid of?" said Dess.

"Please."

"I'm afraid I'm going to be my mother."

It was said so quietly that for a moment he thought he had misheard.

"I don't mean Colleen. I love Colleen." She wiped her face. "I mean the thing she was. When I was a kid. For a while. After my dad died, and before Gary, and Mike, and Ray. When it was just us. She'd come home from the casino at four in the morning and fall asleep on the sofa with her shoes on. And I'd get up for school and make my own breakfast and put the cereal bowl in the sink. And she'd wake up at noon and look at me like I was a bill she'd forgotten to pay."

"Dess."

"She wasn't a bad mother. She wasn't. She was tired. She was tired in a way I didn't understand, because I was seven." Her voice shook. "I understand it now. I understand it so well. I've been up for four days. I can barely hold my head up. And every time he cries, I think: there it is. That's the bill. And I want to cry and I want to run, and I want to... God. I want to put him down, and walk out the door, and not come back."

She stopped.

She had said it. She sat there, hunched, with her wet hands over her mouth, as though the words had been something physical that she had thrown, and now could not retrieve.

He did not move.

He sat on the edge of the bed with his hands between his knees and his eyes on the cherrywood cradle. The nightlight cast its seashell glow on the ceiling. He thought of what he ought to say. He thought of the eleven books, and the leaflet, and the nurse's printed sheet, and a wise old voice in a corridor saying you hold the baby, you hold the mom, you hold the door.

She has said the unsayable thing, he thought. And she is waiting for me to flinch.

"I used to want to run," he said.

She lifted her head.

"At nine. At twelve. At sixteen." He spoke to the cradle. "I used to stand outside my father's study with my ear against the door. I used to think: if I walked away, now, down the stairs, through the hall, out of the front door, and kept walking, I could be in Boston by morning. I could be a different person. I could be nobody's son." He drew a breath. "I never did. I was too frightened. But I thought it, every day, for years, and I thought it was a sign that I was wicked."

"It's not."

"No. I know that now." He glanced at her. "It is a sign that a person is tired. And that the thing they are carrying is too heavy for one pair of arms. And that they would like, very much, for someone to take half."

She was looking at him.

"That is not the same as wanting to leave," said Theron. "I think it is the opposite. I think the people who want to leave for good do not lie awake in the dark crying about it. They go." He turned his hands palm up. "You are sitting in a bedroom at one o'clock in the morning with your breasts aching and your stitches pulling, and you are weeping because you cannot feed a child. That is not a woman who is going to walk out of the door. That is a woman who is trying so hard that she is breaking."

"Theron..."

"Let me take him."

She went very still.

"Not forever. Not for the night, unless you wish it. For an hour." He kept his hands open on his knees. "I shall bring him to you when he is hungry. I shall warm the bottle. I shall change him, and swaddle him, and walk him up and down. You will lie down, and close your eyes, and I swear to you on my brother's name that I shall not let anything happen to him."

"I can't ask you to do that."

"You are not asking. I am offering."

"It's the same thing."

"It is not." He met her eyes. "It is the difference, I believe, between a lever and a hand. You may refuse."

She stared at him for what seemed a long time.

Her face was swollen and blotched, and her mouth trembled, and her hair stuck to her cheek in dark wet strands. She looked, he thought, about fifteen years old. And she looked, in the same moment, as fierce as an old queen on a battlement, deciding what ground to give.

"One hour," she said.

"One hour."

"Wake me if he cries."

"I shall."

"Wake me if he doesn't cry. If he's too quiet. If you can't tell if he's breathing."

"Dess."

"Promise."

"I promise." He rose, and went to the cradle, and looked down. "Madam. If I may."

She nodded.

He bent. He slid one hand under the small warm bundle, the other under the head, as the nurse had shown him, and lifted. The baby's face scrunched. His mouth worked. He gave a single outraged squeak, and the lids lifted, and two cloudy dark eyes stared up with an expression of total and unforgiving affront. Then they closed.

Theron stood with the child against his shoulder.

"Dess," he said.

"Mm?"

"Lie down."

She lay down.

It was a slow business, like a ship being warped into a berth. She eased onto her side with a gasp, one hand on her belly, and pulled the quilt to her chin. Her braid lay on the pillow. Her face was turned toward him. She said, in a whisper, already slurred:

"Don't let me sleep more than an hour."

"I shall wake you at two."

"Promise."

"I have made you one promise tonight. Two seems a great deal."

"Theron."

"Yes?"

"Thank you." Her eyes closed. "That's term fourteen. You can't apologize."

"I am not apologizing."

"Good." She exhaled. "Good boy."

He stood in the dim room, with a sleeping infant on his shoulder and the rain on the glass, and looked at the face on the pillow. It was already slack. Her mouth had fallen open. The long dark lashes lay on the swollen cheek. She was asleep before he had reached the door.

One hour, he thought.

I shall wake her at two.

He did not wake her at two.

…

He realized, around half past one, that he was singing.

He had not intended to. He had been walking the baby up and down in the narrow space between the cradle and the window, as the books had advised, with a rolling, swaying, sailor's gait, patting the small back; and the child, who had woken at the end of the first hour and begun to rumble in his chest like a distant train, had worked himself up, by degrees, to a full-throated, mottled, furious wail. Theron had warmed the bottle. He had tested it on his wrist. He had given it, with great care, in the rocking chair, and the baby had taken it, fiercely, in gulps, with a noise like a drain, his eyes screwed shut and his fists beating the air.

Then he had finished. And he had begun, once more, to cry.

"There," said Theron. "There, there. What is it? What is it?"

The baby cried.

"Are you wet? Shall I look?"

He looked. He was not wet.

"Are you cold? You are wrapped like a mummy."

The baby cried.

"Are you lonely?"

He thought. It was an unscientific question. But it came, as the best questions come, from nowhere, and with it, quite unbidden, a tune. It rose in his throat. It was low, slow, wide, a tune of great spaces and long swells. He had not heard it for fifteen years. He had not known he remembered it.

He began to hum.

It was a thing his brother used to do. He could see it, quite clearly, as clear as a photograph: a hot August night, in the cupola hall, with the windows open to the sound of the sea, and Kit, nine years old, in his pajamas, on the black-and-white marble floor with his knees drawn up and his arms around them, singing very softly into the dark. He had been frightened. There had been a storm. There was always a storm, in the Wexcombe house, on the nights their father locked the study door. And Theron, twelve, had come down in his dressing gown with a candle and found him there, and sat beside him on the cold tiles, and said nothing. And Kit had sung.

Oh Shenandoah, I long to see you,

Away, you rolling river.

It was a chantey. It was an old one, a sailor's song, slow and sad and half-forgotten, and the boy had learned it from Dell, who had learned it from his own father, on a trawler out of New Bedford. He sang it badly. His voice was an uncertain boy's alto, cracking on the high notes. But he had sung it, night after night, for a year, into the dark, with his arms round his knees, until the study door opened again.

Oh Shenandoah, I long to hear you,

Away, I'm bound away,

Across the wide Missouri.

Theron sang it.

He sang it very low, in a rough, tuneless, cracked baritone, with the baby against his collarbone and his cheek on the small warm head. He did not know all the words. He sang the ones he knew and hummed the rest. He swayed, from foot to foot. He felt the little body, which had been rigid as a board, go slack, by degrees, like a clenched fist relaxing, until the wail dwindled to a whimper, and the whimper to a snuffle, and the snuffle to a long hiccuping sigh.

Oh Shenandoah, I'm bound to leave you,

Away, you rolling river.

The baby slept.

He stood in the middle of the room with the child in his arms and the song finished and his throat tight and his face wet, and discovered that he was weeping, silently, without effort, as one sweats in summer.

"Kit," he said.

It was barely a breath.

"He is asleep."

The rain ticked on the glass.

"It worked. Your song. It worked on him, just as it worked on me." He drew in a ragged breath. "I should like you to know. I should like you to know that I sang it. In the dark. In a room I am not entitled to be in. To your son."

There was no answer.

There never was.

But the curtain, which had hung motionless at the window, stirred a little in the draft; and on the floor of the room, where the nightlight laid its pale oval of seashell glow, a small shadow moved. And Theron, standing there with the baby's head tucked under his chin, was visited by a sense, quite distinct and quite unreasonable, that he was not alone in the room. It was not a ghost. It was not a voice. It was something much simpler: a feeling of being, for a moment, seen, by someone who thought well of him.

Thank you, he thought.

I'll look after him.

I'll look after both of them.

And the second thought arrived with such clarity, and such force, and such an exact and appalling weight, that his knees very nearly gave.

…

He sat in the rocking chair.

He sat with the baby on his chest and his feet flat on the floor and his head back against the wall, in the dark, and looked at the thing.

Both of them.

It had been there all along, he supposed. It had been in the room since the car park. It had sat down beside him in the Subaru, on the leather, and held his hand on the grab bar, and he had not looked. It had stood in the kitchen among the casseroles. It had watched him on the stair. It was not a new thing. It was the oldest thing in the world, and it was entirely his, and it had a name, and he had been avoiding the name for the better part of a year.

He did not want the child.

He thought it carefully. He turned it over, as he would a plank, looking for the flaw. He had come into this affair, in October, on the strength of a promise to a dead man. He had come to find a child, to protect a child, to secure a child, a thing called Kit's last legacy. He had said it to Ansel and Dell and his mother. He had said it in a hundred forms. The boy. The heir. The last of him. It had been the engine of the whole enterprise: the camera, the flat, the building, the lie.

And it had been, he saw now, in the dark, with a sleeping infant on his chest and the memory of a chantey in his throat, a cover.

I did not want the boy, he thought.

I wanted a reason to be near her.

It was a terrible thought. It was a clear one. It rose out of the depths of the night with the shining inevitability of a fish out of black water, and he looked at it, and could not look away. He had sat at a window for four months and called it vigilance. He had counted the minutes of a woman's morning. He had known, to the second, when her lamp would come on. He had known the sound of her step, and the color of her cup. And he had told himself that it was for the child.

It was never for the child.

It was for her.

I wanted both of them. I wanted both from the first. I did not want a boy in a bassinet. I wanted a woman in a kitchen, humming, and a boy who was hers, and a house with a lamp lit in it, and I wanted to be in the house.

He closed his eyes.

He felt it go through him, like a long cold wind. It was not shame, exactly. It was something more like vertigo, the sensation of having been standing, for months, on the edge of a precipice with one's eyes shut, and of opening them. Because it was one thing to want her. It was a human thing. It was a thing a man could confess, in a kitchen, on his knees.

It was another to know what the wanting would do.

He knew precisely. He had a very clear picture. It rose before him in the dark, in every detail: a house on the water in Bristol, a white clapboard thing with a porch, two miles from the yard. A nursery, with a view of the bay. A study for her, with a good desk and a window. A car in the drive, safe and sensible, with all the latest features. A schedule. A staff. A small, discreet, competent person to help in the mornings. A trust. A tutor. A school. A life, in short, with every rough edge sanded and every risk removed, and a man at the head of the table, quietly, tenderly, lovingly, arranging it.

It is not even a bad picture, he thought.

It is a perfectly lovely one. It is the picture of a happy family.

And she would be in it as a bird is in a cage.

He opened his eyes.

I could do it. That is the horror. I could do it tomorrow. I could buy the house. I could draw up the plans. I could do it with the very best of intentions, and she would find herself, within a year, in a beautiful room, with every need supplied, and no door, and she would not even know when the lock had turned.

It is the shape of my hand.

It is the shape I was born with. I do not know how to hold a thing that I love without closing my fingers.

The baby sighed.

He felt it against his sternum, a long warm breath, and the soft flutter of a heartbeat, and the tiny fist, clenched on a fold of his shirt. He looked down. In the shell-colored light, the face was a small perfect oval, with the lashes lying on the cheek, and the mouth open in a pink bow.

"I am afraid of myself," said Theron.

He said it aloud. He said it to the child, in a whisper, in the dark, as one confesses to a priest who is asleep.

"I am afraid that I will love you both so much that I will ruin you."

The baby slept.

"I do not know what to do about it." His voice cracked. "I do not know how to be near a person without taking her. I have tried, I have tried so hard, and it is in my hands. It is in my hands."

The room was quiet.

The rain had stopped. He had not noticed it go. A thin gray light had begun, at the window, to stain the edge of the curtain. Somewhere beyond the wall, in the living room, Colleen turned over on her pull-out with a creak and a sleepy mutter. A truck went by on Wickenden. And from the bed behind him came a sound, a rustle, a quilt being pushed aside.

He did not turn.

"What time is it?" said Dess.

Her voice was thick with sleep. It was low, and warm, and a good deal slurred.

"A quarter to five."

"I said two."

"I know."

"You said you'd wake me."

"I did not wish to." He kept his eyes on the window. "I am sorry. I am in violation of the agreement."

"Mm." A creak of springs. A slow, painful, shuffling step across the floor. "I slept for four hours."

"Yes."

"I haven't slept for four hours since June."

"I am glad."

She had come to stand beside the chair.

He could see her, from the corner of his eye: a small figure in a white nightgown, barefoot, with her braid half undone and one hand pressed to her side, looking down at the sleeping child. Her face was gray with fatigue. But the swollen, blotched, desperate look was gone. She looked, in the first thin light, like a person who had been rinsed.

"He's asleep," she said.

"Since half past one."

"He's on your chest."

"Yes."

"You've been holding him for three hours."

"It did not seem worth the risk of moving."

She made a sound that was almost a laugh. She sank down, with great care, onto the arm of the rocking chair, so that her hip rested against his shoulder, and laid her hand on the baby's back, beside his own. Their two hands lay together on the small striped swaddle: hers brown and slender and ink-stained at the second finger, his long and pale and still.

"Were you singing?" she said.

"You heard?"

"A little. I was half out. I thought I was dreaming." She stroked the small back, once, with her thumb. "It was 'Shenandoah.'"

"Yes."

"My dad used to hum that. In the truck. I remember it. I don't remember anything else." She was quiet a moment. "It's a very sad song."

"It is a song about leaving."

"It's a song about coming back," said Dess. "Isn't it? The river. The 'bound away.' It's all about someone who's going, and the person who's saying: I'll hear you. I'll long to see you. Away, you rolling river." She looked down. "It's the saddest thing in the world, and it's got a promise in it."

He said nothing.

"What were you saying to him?" she said. "Before? I couldn't hear."

He considered lying.

It was an instinctive flicker, a reflex. He felt it rise, and recognized it, and set it down. He had said, in a kitchen in April, that a man who held a thing back was a man who held a thing. He had said it aloud, to her face. And he sat in the rocking chair in the gray dawn with his son's small weight on his chest, no, his nephew's, no, the child's, and said, as plainly as he could:

"I was telling him that I am afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of myself." His throat worked. "Of what I would do, if you let me. I was telling him that I have a picture in my head of a house. And that it is a lovely house. And that you would be in it like a bird."

She did not move.

"I have been looking at it for three hours," said Theron. "I have been looking at it very closely. And I have found, I am sorry to say, that it is a perfect picture of everything I am trying not to be." He swallowed. "I wished you to know. I thought if I told you, it might not... it might lose some of its hold."

There was a long silence.

The light grew. It lay in a pale wash on the floor, on the cradle, on the pearly shell of the nightlight, which had gone dim. It lay on her hand, and his. Outside, a bird began, a single sleepy note, repeated, and a second answered it, and the whole gray street began slowly to come awake.

"Okay," said Dess.

"Okay?"

"Okay. Thank you for telling me."

"That is all?"

"That's all I've got." She was smiling, faintly, in the half-light. "It's five in the morning. I'm a mess. I've got a stitched-up stomach and I smell like milk. I can't process much. But I can tell you what I think."

"Please."

"I think that a man who sits up for three hours holding a baby so a woman can sleep, and then tells her he's afraid he'll lock her in a house, isn't a man who's going to lock her in a house." She laid her head, very lightly, against his hair. "I think that's a man who's got a window."

He closed his eyes.

"And I think," she said, "that I'm going to have to keep an eye on you anyway."

"Yes."

"Daily."

"Gladly."

"With a ledger."

"I should be disappointed with less."

She laughed. It was a small, tired, crackling sound, and it shook the chair. The baby stirred, snuffled, and turned his face deeper into Theron's shirt. And they sat there, a man and a woman, in a rocking chair, in the first light of a Saturday in June, with a sleeping child between them and a song in the room that neither would name; and neither of them spoke; and the sun came up over Fox Point, and slid in through the crack in the curtain, and found them.

He did not say the word.

It had come to him at last, at three o'clock, with a diaper in his hand. It was a very small word, and a very large one. It had one syllable. He turned it over, and put it carefully away, like a thing one keeps in a drawer to be taken out on a day of one's choosing.

Stay, he thought.

Not yet.

But soon.