Finally, at three in the morning, Maryanne put her arms around him, holding him like a child, and they both fell asleep that way.
At seven in the morning, the second knock came.
Alice
1950s | 1962 | Winter 1973 | June 1975 | July 1975 | August 1975
She wanted to love the new baby.
Over the course of a nearly unbearable labor, Alice chanted these words like a prayer: I will love the new baby. I will love the new baby.
Peter, of course, was nowhere. Other fathers waited in the waiting room, reading newspapers—but not her husband, who had a meeting he couldn’t miss. When the baby was born, he’d be driven over from the bank. The baby would be handed to him. And then he’d go back to work, and the baby would be taken to the nursery, and then, at last, Alice could sleep.
She pictured only this as she labored: the moment of rest.
I will love the new baby, thought Alice.
• • •
It hadn’t been like this with Bear. She knew she would love him from the moment she felt his first kick. She’d been eighteen years old then, married only a few months. She had nothing to do inside her new house, with Peter gone all day. The first fluttering motions of her baby felt to her like gifts.
After nearly ten months of carrying her son inside her like a pearl, she delivered him into the world, and he was no longer hers alone. As soon as Alice brought her son home, people began to take him from her.
First there was her own mother, who lifted the babe from her arms as soon as she walked in the door to the Albany house. Ordered Alice upstairs to wash her hair.
Next came the Van Laars, mainly Peter’s father, who inspected Bear as if inspecting livestock. He made pronouncements about the size of his head, the length of his legs. Both were deemed respectable. The baby was handed back.
Last came the two nurses—Peter’s idea. One for the day. One for the night.
Peter interviewed them in private, so she only met each of them on their first day of work. The day nurse, Francine, was a matron, gray-haired and thin, who worked with quiet efficiency and smiled frequently and tended as much to Alice as she did to Bear, especially in the months just after his birth. Alice liked her very much, actually, and told Peter so.
But the night nurse, Sharon, was different. She was red-haired, stout, not much older than Alice. Catholic, Alice thought: she lived at home with her parents still. She spoke often of being the oldest of ten, with a kind of pride in her voice that often turned to authority when Alice questioned anything she did.
The worst part was that Peter generally took her side.
“He’s cold,” said Alice, hearing Bear cry in the night. “She has him in those light pajamas. The house is so drafty.”
And Peter would say—“A lowered body temperature induces sleep.”
“He’s hungry,” said Alice. “He didn’t eat a good dinner.”
“If he starts eating at night he’ll only want more.”
Sharon stayed with them for several years at the start of Bear’s life, impervious to Alice’s disapproval of nearly every choice she made. She hummed cheerfully to herself as she took him up to bed, and Alice watched her go, longing to hold the soft small body of her son, clad in cotton; longing to feel that weight in her arms.
“Maybe,” she said once to Peter, “maybe I could put Bear to bed each night, and then Sharon could be the one to wake up with him, if he’s restless.”
Peter, who’d been reading, looked up in annoyance. “Honestly, Alice,” he said. “What are we paying her for? To sleep here? Sharon should be paying us,” he said. “Rent.”
The best parts of Alice’s day were the two hours between Sharon’s departure in the morning and Francine’s arrival, and the two hours at the end of the day, when they switched. During these four hours, with no one to watch or correct her, she played with him, or read to him, or lay with him on her bed, observing him. He was smart, Alice thought—most importantly, he was smart. He spoke early and he made observations about the world that shocked her with their clarity. He counted early. He sang in a sweet voice all the songs she taught him—Alice liked to sing—and repeated them sometimes for Peter, at Alice’s urging. Even Peter smiled, on these occasions.
When he cried, he was easy to console, said Sharon. Alice heard him overnight—she always did—but his cries were over quickly.
When Bear was two, though, and saying words, he suddenly began to cry for Alice in the night. Mamma, he began to say.
The first night he did this, Alice sat up straight in bed.
“What is it?” said Peter, sleepily.
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.
