When Julia and baby Alice were home in the Northwestern apartment with the sunlight streaming through the living room window, they set up in the armchair. The nurse in the hospital had taught Julia how to breastfeed, and Alice had taken to it easily, so they spent their days in that chair with feeding and resting as their only activities. Breastfeeding made both Julia and Alice sleepy. Julia was surprised every time she woke to find that she had slept sitting up, in the middle of the day. Time moved like waves across a waterbed; hours and minutes surged and then settled under her heavier weight. She never knew what day of the week it was, to the extent that each time William told her he was leaving for work, Julia was startled. When he was home, her husband brought her food and glasses of water, and took care of dishes and laundry, and let her sisters in when they rang the doorbell. Julia felt drugged with a kind of dazed happiness with the baby in her arms.
Her newfound power was like a wonderful secret. She smiled to herself at odd moments, thinking of it, but she allowed herself this rest, this recovery, to gather her strength. Sometimes when the baby napped, Julia would lie beside her and daydream about the future. She would become truly independent. When the baby was a little older, she would call Professor Cooper and ask him for work. She would use her gleaming brain, and while William was in graduate school, she would make money. There would be no more financial hiccups, with her in the mix. She could see this new life so clearly. Emeline worked in a daycare, so Julia could leave Alice with her loving aunt when she went to work. With two incomes, she and William could buy a house sooner rather than later. They could afford to send Alice to private school. This vision was less complicated and fraught than any other that Julia had had in her life, because instead of depending on her husband, she was depending on her own capacity, which had been revealed to be limitless.
Hour to hour, though, the baby pulled Julia’s attention as if she were a magnet. Julia had thought Alice would be a boy, but regardless of the gender, she’d expected the baby to look like Izzy. Newborn Izzy had been dark-eyed and serious. Alice, though, had sea-blue eyes and a friendly expression. She seemed interested in and somehow optimistic about the landscape around her. Sylvie used Charlie’s old camera to take a picture of Julia and Alice in the armchair, to send to Rose. Julia had expected it to be difficult to smile for this particular photo, to express anything other than loss or anger. To her surprise, though, she beamed. The pain of her mother’s departure had nearly disappeared; all that remained was the faintest trace of a bruise. The obvious explanation was that Alice’s birth had reshuffled Julia’s place in her family. She was the mother now. Alice was the daughter. Julia wondered if Rose had sensed that she was about to become a supporting character, instead of the main one, and left to avoid that fate.
In the middle of the night, in the armchair, Julia found herself talking out loud, not to her mother but to her father. It was him that she missed in those moments. In the darkness, it was easy to imagine Charlie sitting on the couch, his eyes filled with delight each time Alice waved a tiny hand or pursed her lips. “Daddy, she’s exquisite, isn’t she? You would adore her. Her middle name is Padavano. Alice Padavano Waters.”
Emeline came over most days during the small window of time between her shift at the daycare and her evening classes at the community college. She joked that she was taking the long road to graduation, because she was only able to manage one or two classes at a time toward her early-childhood education degree. She was enthralled with the new baby, though, and couldn’t bear to stay away. “I get to snuggle Alice,” she said into the newborn’s cheek, “and then go home at the end of the night to Izzy. I’m sooo lucky.”
Julia smiled at her sister’s happiness. “We need to find you someone to make babies with,” she said. “You’ll be the most amazing mother.”
“I know—I wish I could just skip ahead to that point.” Emeline was shy, and nervous around men. She stood behind her sisters in social settings, the same way she’d hidden behind them at parties when she was a child. “I’m a homebody,” Emeline said, whenever she had to explain herself to someone new. Her propensity to stay home was even greater since Izzy had been born. Emeline wanted to leave Izzy’s side only to visit Alice.
Alice was three weeks old when Emeline said, one afternoon when they were alone in the apartment, “I’ve noticed that William doesn’t seem to, well, hold the baby much. Do you think he’s scared?”
Alice was asleep, a solid, delicious weight against Julia’s chest, so she spoke softly. “You’re right. I’ve noticed that too.” William held the baby only when Julia directly asked him to—for instance, when she used the bathroom or took a shower. And he always walked directly to the bassinet or changing table and set Alice down. He never snuggled her or leaned his face down to kiss her soft cheek.
“I don’t know if he’s scared,” Julia said. “I don’t know what he’s feeling, because he won’t tell me.”
“I wonder if maybe it’s because his parents weren’t…normal,” Emeline said. “Maybe he doesn’t know how to act with her?”
This hadn’t occurred to Julia, but she shook her head. “I don’t think that’s it. He always says he’s fine, everything is fine.” She shifted in her chair, careful not to wake the baby. She found she was relieved to have the chance to share her frustration with her sister. “I thought it was so nice that William was doing the dishes and laundry, and I know it is, technically, but he’s clearly doing those things because they keep him away from Alice. Emmie, he doesn’t even look at her.”
“Well, he might just need more time. Men aren’t naturals with babies like we are. He’ll come around, though. How could he not? Alice is scrumptious,” she said, and peppered the baby’s foot with kisses.
Sunday was the only day that William had no classes or work, and his presence in the apartment threw off Julia and the baby’s normal routine. Julia sent her husband out for any errand she could think of and took a long afternoon nap, but it still felt like every time she looked up, William was in front of her, asking a silly question. Which shirt should he wear? Should he contact the movers about what time they planned to show up on the designated day? Did she want him to ask the super about the elevator button? Did these grapes look okay to eat?
Julia finally said, “I can’t give you every single answer in the universe! I’m busy with the baby, and I don’t have time to take care of two children.”
William looked hurt, and he apologized. This irritated her too. Julia shifted in her chair, beneath the baby, and wished it were Monday morning. She could feel the real questions in their marriage lurking beneath the surface of William’s tiny ones. These questions were hers: Do you really want this life? Me, and Alice? Do you want to be here with us?
William asked fewer questions after that, but this meant that he spoke less. This irritated Julia too, and the way he avoided the baby made her increasingly sad. Now that one of the main equations of their marriage—William’s questions plus Julia’s answers equaled a plan—had broken down, they were awkward around each other. “Am I doing something wrong?” he asked her one night, after they’d turned out the lights. “Oh, William, you’re fine,” she said into the darkness, and then fell asleep.