“Really, it’s okay,” Suzanne assures her. She sends her up to her room, which they have allowed her to decorate however she likes, with whatever religious icons and candles.
Suzanne is actually looking forward to putting her son to bed tonight. There is a new understanding between them now, she imagines—the bond of travelers who have been through a taxing journey together—and she is eager to explore its boundaries and variegations.
She turns the television off. As its strident chatter ceases and the screen dies to black, Elliot’s fists clench and his body turns rigid. A low moan of protest emerges from his throat. It is the sound of a pained animal, a pup deserted in the woods. Suzanne squats down in front of her child and attempts eye contact. For a suspended instant, she is certain that he will return her gaze the way he had on the grass yesterday, that he will bestow that seal of recognition, of rightness. And she is confused when his eyes and mouth squeeze to slits, when his face seizes into a mask of outrage. And then, all at once, he is upon her.
The pain is a surprise. His teeth penetrate the linen of her trouser leg at the back of her calf. She yelps and stands, tries to yank away, but the clamp of his jaw is as strong as a dog’s. The instinct to reach down and wrench him off, to hurl him away, is almost overwhelming, but with all her will she resists doing this. She stands in place as the boy bites with growing ferocity, deep into her flesh. She stands with her own teeth clenched and feels the force of it.
The pain burns through her like an electrical bolt. It keeps burning even after her son has released her leg and rolled onto the floor, sobbing. It keeps burning after she has picked him up, thrashing, and carried him upstairs, and after she has lowered him screaming into his crib, still in his clothing and wet diaper. It burns when she is lying in bed alone, and later when Brian lies down beside her and when he puts a lazy hand on her breast. It burns as she turns away toward the wall. It is there, sharp and searing, as she stares at the bedroom wallpaper, the delicate black-on-white toile she’d chosen for its delicacy, its smiling maidens with their lambs, shaded by trees in leaf.
SENTRY
THE LITTLE girl is trampling the flowers. For the past half hour, Helen has watched her move closer to the property line, then finally duck beneath the split-rail fence and edge into the garden. The peonies have only just sprung five days ago, have only just lifted their faces to the world, and Helen has felt the same quickening she does every May, the same pride of a new mother.
She sits with her tea, which she drinks from a fine, hand-painted cup passed down from her great-grandmother in Bremen. She sees no reason to store such treasures away, to use cheaper objects for everyday life. Her ethic is to live among beauty.
The girl next door is a garish bird, clumsy among the garden’s tender shoots. She wears a blaring pink shirt and glittered sneakers. There had been another girl with her earlier—an underage babysitter, it seemed—who is now absent. Helen clinks the teacup onto its saucer and rises from her chair.
Outside, she walks with a measured step around the side of the house. As she approaches the garden, the girl freezes in place with the round eyes of a hatchling. Helen walks slowly closer, puts a kindly smile on her face. She peers over the fence to the scrubby yard next door. There is no one there that she can see, no one monitoring the situation.
“Where is your mother?” she enunciates carefully.
The girl shakes her head.
“Do you have a babysitter?”
The girl just looks at her. The pink T-shirt is pocked with faux jewels that spell the word DIVA. A cheap barrette hangs from her hair.
“Is anyone here with you?”
The girl continues to stare. It occurs to Helen that there might be something wrong with her.
“Come,” Helen says. She takes the little girl’s hand, plump and sticky. They walk up Helen’s own driveway and down the one beside it.