Down the hall, Bear called again. Mamma.
“He’s never done that before,” said Alice. Peter shrugged. Turned over.
“Sharon’s in the room with him,” said Peter. “She’ll tell us if anything’s wrong.”
The cries stopped quickly, but Alice couldn’t sleep for an hour. What if he had been calling for her because of something Sharon was doing? What if she was hurting him in some way?
The next night, the same thing happened, and the next. Until one night, she heard him say, clearly and plaintively—Mamma, you hear me?
The first time he called out this way, Alice bolted out of bed with an urgency she had never felt before. Her whole body was on fire with the need to go to her son. Peter, behind her, called after her, but she didn’t stop.
She threw open the door to Bear’s nursery, and light from the hallway spilled in. Sharon was still prone on the twin bed in her corner of the room, awake but unmoving. When she saw Alice she sat up. Her nightgown was bunched up around her knees. She wore curlers in her hair.
“Mrs. Van Laar, what are you doing?” said Sharon, but Alice was already at Bear’s crib. There he was, her son, soft in his cotton pajamas, his arms outstretched to her, grinning now with glee at the novelty of seeing his mother overnight. She lifted him out and he wrapped his limbs around her tightly and her body rewarded her, flooded her with the same calm that came whenever she was reunited with her son.
“Mrs. Van Laar,” said Sharon, and Bear said, “Mamma!” Delighted. He put both hands on her cheeks. She put her forehead to his.
Then, from the doorway, she heard a different voice. Peter’s. Angry.
“Alice,” he said. “What are you thinking?”
She turned to him, the boy still in her arms. “He called out for me,” she said.
Peter held a hand out, palm up, in Sharon’s direction. “He has his nurse right here,” he said. Sharon nodded once, firmly, victoriously.
“Give him to Sharon,” said Peter. “Alice.”
Her son held her more tightly.
“Alice,” said Peter. And he went to her, and took the boy gently from her—immediately, Bear began to wail—and handed him to Sharon, in her curlers, in her nightgown, and then he took Alice by the elbow and led her from the room.
Bear’s cries continued. For ten minutes, he cried forcefully, screaming for Alice.
It was torture: a sort of physical distress that surpassed almost every pain she’d ever known. Alice cried too. “He needs me,” she said. “Peter, he’s calling for me.”
“Put some beeswax in your ears,” said Peter. “Tie yourself to a mast.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. He often spoke in riddles, or used references to literature or history that she didn’t understand. She felt he got some pleasure out of doing so—out of flaunting his education, when she didn’t have one. Not like his, anyway. During the day, the long hours in between her mornings and evenings with Bear, she sometimes tried to make herself read the books in Peter’s library that he had kept from college. But generally she got bored of them, and went for walks instead, or read smutty novels she’d found in bins outside the public library in town.
Mamma? Bear called down the hall—one more time, a certain defeat in his voice—one more question unanswered, and finally he was silent.
“I can’t do this,” whispered Alice. She was certain Peter was asleep. He hadn’t moved in minutes.
But he spoke to her. “You can,” he said.
You will, he meant.
• • •
Now, in labor with her second child, Alice was fighting the urge to push.
If she could just keep the child inside her, she thought—if she could just protect him or her from the world for one minute longer.
But the urge was becoming unbearable, and at last a balding doctor was brought in holding a mask, which he placed over her face without warning. She remembered this from Bear’s birth. This is very rude, Alice thought, and then suddenly she had no more words.
That was when she heard her own name being called—not Alice, but Mamma, a distressed cry that she recognized at once as her son’s.
• • •
Bear was there.
He was standing in a corner, eight years old, wearing an expression she had rarely ever seen on his beautiful face. Over the nurse’s shoulder, she saw him, and she cried out.
“He’s there,” she said—“he’s right there.”
Why did nobody notice him? “He’s come back,” said Alice. The search was over.
She tried to point but the nurse restrained her.
“Please,” said Alice. “Please bring him to me. I don’t want him to leave again.”
Bear was flickering now, candle-like.
“Go to him,” Alice said. “Please, please. He’s leaving.”
She had to get off the bed. She had to get to him. If she didn’t get to him quickly he would be gone. She rocked left and right.
“Mrs. Van Laar,” the doctor said, “Mrs. Van Laar, you need to keep still.”
With all of her strength she wrested her ankles from the doctor’s grip and rose off the table. She was trying to get her legs to the floor.
In the corner, Bear raised his arms to her as if he were a toddler who wanted to be held. It was unbearable—unbearable—to be kept from him.
The doctor shouted something she could not understand. She was weeping, and she could not see well, but she was almost to the corner where Bear was. He stretched his hands toward her, and she lunged for him. She could almost touch him. She could almost feel his skin. Her hands and his hands grasped for one another.
Someone took hold of her. She was forced backward, onto the bed. Her limbs were held down by hands and then cords.
She was wailing now, openly, great yells that shook her whole body, and the nurse put a hand on her forehead, telling her it would be all right, that her baby was coming soon.
My baby is there, thought Alice. In the corner. Right there.
Over and over again she wailed his name. Bear. Bear. And the name itself became a chant or incantation, assumed all of its many meanings at once. Abide. Endure. Sustain. Accept. Convey. Bring forth. Give birth to.
If she said it enough, she thought, perhaps the word would summon him in her direction.
But it was too late: he flickered out of sight, and was gone.
He had left her again. The place in the corner where he had been was empty.
