ii.
On Christmas morning, Nick remembered Baby. He had not even thrown off the covers, and Baby was on his mind, which was odd, because he hardly ever thought of Baby anymore, and he could not understand why it had to happen on such a festive day. This time Baby showed up fully made, swaddled in pastel blankets, bald and cheerful, a toothless searching mouth. Nick imagined it crying in the other room, in the crib that had never been assembled but still sat in a box in the attic, and he could almost smell the talcum powder and the baby shampoo, could almost see his mother cross the floor and bring Baby to him, and it would curl its fingers around his pinkie, and he could almost feel its phantom weight in his arms. But there was no baby, he knew, and there never was, but that did not alter the strength of the sensation that Baby was here, had come at last.
His parents told him one day after school. In the beginning, the news meant no more to him than that night’s menu or their planned summer vacation up north to look for moose. They were happy, so he felt he should be happy, too, and he was. We’re going to have a baby, they said, a little brother or sister of your own. A due date around the Fourth of July. Which was miles away. Eons. He could barely remember last year’s fireworks, so the announcement that his mother was expecting was as mythical as every other expectation. What will come, will come. But once they told him about Baby, they could talk of little else. We have to get the spare room ready for Baby. You know when Baby comes, Nana and Pap will come from Florida and stay for a while to help. You’ll have to play quietly. Whenever guests visited the house, they wanted to talk of nothing but the plans for Baby. His father touched his mother on her tummy every night in case Baby wanted to kick, and one time, she asked Nick if he would put his hand on her to feel for Baby, but he did not. It was enough to see how her skin moved.
His mother had disappeared one morning, gone early to the hospital, but not to worry, his father would take care of him. On a hot day in June, Nick had come home from playing with Jack Peter on the rocks behind his house. He burst into the kitchen with a plastic pail laden with bits of shell and small fishes they had trapped in the tidal pools, and he was excited to show his mother the treasures. The house was cool and dark, and the screen door slammed behind him.
“Dad!” Nick yelled. “You’ll never guess what we found out there—”
There in the middle of the afternoon sat his father at the kitchen table, an ice-filled glass at his elbow, and the day’s crossword puzzle. He put a finger to his lips and said, “Hush.” Scraping the chair legs on the linoleum floor, he pushed away from the table and motioned for Nick to come sit in his lap. But that’s what he did when he was little, so instead he went to his father’s side and stood there, close enough to have a big arm around his shoulder. His father’s face looked puffy and red.
“I’ve got a bit of sad news for you, Nick.” His father used his serious voice. “Your mother lost the baby, son.”
“Lost Baby?”
“Yes, you see, sometimes the baby won’t be able to make it out in the world, and then the mother has what they call stillborn—”
“So the baby isn’t going to come?”
His father bent his neck and looked down. “No, Baby died and isn’t coming. Not anymore, not ever.”
“But Mom is going to be okay?”
The rest of his memory exists in a fog. He could not remember if his mother was at home that afternoon or had gone to the hospital for another day or two. Mrs. Keenan came and fetched him, and he stayed with Jack Peter overnight or longer. When he came back home, he found his mother lying on the couch in a robe and pajamas, bundled in June as though for December. His mother was never sick, and he never before saw her resting on the couch in the middle of the day. His father, yes, asleep in front of the TV tuned in to some dumb golf match, but never his mother. She was a life force, whirl of motion, always making and doing, and now washed out and wasted. Without the baby in her middle, she looked smaller and weaker than ever before. He could not tell, really, with her robe and pajamas as she stretched out, but it looked as if Baby was gone for good. “Come here, pet.” She held out her arms and he rushed into her embrace, and she engulfed him so tightly that he could feel the pulse in her neck beat against the side of his cheek. “Daddy tell you?”
He nodded in the swim of her, warm and soft and clean.