‘Is it?’ he said.
‘Yes. It is. But laws protect us from it. And when there aren’t laws, then love does the protecting. You’re protected from my hurting you, by my love. You’re vulnerable to me, of all people, but love shields you. I feel no fear of you, because love cushions all your irritations, unnatural instincts, hatreds and immaturities. But — what about the baby? It’s too young to know love, or a law of love, or anything, until we teach it.’
‘We’ll teach it, then.’
‘And in the meantime be vulnerable to it!’
‘Vulnerable? To a baby?’ He held her away from him and laughed gently at her.
‘Does a baby know the difference between rights and wrongs?’ she asked.
‘No. But it’ll learn.’
‘But a baby is so new, so amoral, so conscience-free,’ she argued. She stopped. Her arms dropped from him and she turned swiftly. ‘That noise? What was it?’
Leiber looked around the room. ‘I didn’t hear — ‘
She stared at the library door. ‘In there,’ she said, slowly.
Leiber crossed the room and opened the door and switched the library lights on and off. ‘Not a thing,’ he said, and came back to her. ‘You’re worn. To bed with you; right now.’
Turning out the lights together, they walked quietly up the soundless hall stairs, not speaking. At the top she apologized. ‘My wild talk, darling. Forgive me. I’m just exhausted.’
He understood, and said so.
She paused, undecided, by the nursery door. Then she fingered the brass knob sharply, walked in. He watched her approach the crib much too carefully, look down, and stiffen as if she’d been struck in the face. ‘David!’
Leiber stepped forward, reached the crib, and looked down.
The baby’s face was bright red and very moist. The little pink mouth gestured. Bright blue eyes stared as if being strangled outward. Small red hands weaved in the air.
‘Oh, he’s just been crying,’ said Leiber.
‘Has he?’ Alice Leiber grasped the crib-railing to hold herself erect. ‘I didn’t hear him crying.’
‘The door was closed.’
‘Is that why he breathes so hard, why his face is red?’
‘Sure. Poor little guy. Crying all alone in the dark. He can sleep in our room tonight, just in case he cries.’
‘You’ll spoil him,’ his wife said.
Leiber felt her eyes follow as he rolled the crib into their bedroom. He undressed silently, sat on the edge of the bed. Suddenly he lifted his head, swore under his breath, snapped his fingers. ‘Damn it. Forgot to tell you. Have to fly to Chicago Friday.’
‘Oh, David.’ She seemed a little lost girl. ‘So soon?’
‘I’ve put this trip off for two months, and now it’s so critical I just have to make it.’
‘I’m afraid to be alone.’
‘We’ll have the new cook here by Friday. She’ll be here all the time. All you have to do is call. I’ll only be away a little while.’
‘But I’m afraid. I don’t know of what. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I guess I’m crazy.’
He was in bed now. She darkened the room; he heard her walk around the bed, throw back crisp sheets, slide in. He smelled the warm woman smell of her next to him. He said, ‘If you want me to wait a few extra days, perhaps I could — ‘
‘No,’ she said, unconvinced. ‘You go. I know it’s important. It’s just that I keep thinking about what I told you. Laws and love and protection. Love protects you from me. But, the baby — ‘ She took a breath. ‘What protects you from him, David?’
Before he could answer, before he could tell her how silly it was, speaking of infants, she switched on the bed light, abruptly.
‘Look,’ she said, pointing.
The baby lay wide awake in its crib, staring straight at him, with deep, sharp, blue eyes. The eyes closed.
The lights went out again. She trembled against him.
‘It’s not nice, being afraid of the thing you birthed.’ Her whisper lowered, became harsh, fierce, swift. ‘He tried to kill me! He lies there, listens to us talking, waiting for you to go away so he can try to kill me again! I swear it!’
Sobs broke from her he could not stop by holding her. ‘Please,’ he kept saying, soothing her. ‘Stop it, stop it. Please.’
She cried in the dark for a long time. Very late she relaxed, shakingly, against him. Her breathing came soft, warm, regular, her body twitched its worn reflexes and she slept.
He drowsed.
And just before his eyes lidded wearily down, sinking into the deep sleep tides, he heard a strange little sound of awareness and awakeness in the room.
The sound of moist, small, pinkly elastic lips.
The baby.
And then — sleep.
In the morning, the sun blazed. Alice smiled.
David Leiber dangled his watch over the crib. ‘See, baby? Something bright. Something pretty. Sure. Sure. Something bright. Something pretty.’
Alice smiled. She told him to go ahead, fly to Chicago, she’d try to be a brave girl, no need to worry. She’d take care of baby. Oh, yes, she’d take care of him, all right. This last she said with a peculiar emphasis, which David Leiber ignored.
The airplane went east with Leiber. There was a lot of sky, a lot of sun and clouds and then Chicago came running over the horizon. Leiber was dropped into the rush of ordering, planning, banqueting, making the rounds, telephoning, arguing in conference, downing coffee in scalding gulps betweentimes. But he wrote letters each day and sent telegrams that said brief, nice, direct things to Alice and baby.
On the evening of his sixth day away from home he received the long-distance phone call. Los Angeles.
‘Alice?’
‘No, Dave. This is Jeffers, speaking.’
‘Doctor!’
‘Hold on to yourself, son. Alice is sick. You’d better get the next plane home. It’s pneumonia. I’ll do everything I can, boy. If only it wasn’t so soon after the baby. She needs strength.’
Leiber dropped the phone into its cradle. He got up, with no feet under him, and no hands and no body. The hotel room blurred and fell apart.
‘Alice,’ he said, blindly, starting for the door.
The airplane went west and California came up, and out of the twisting circular metal of propellers came a vibratingly sudden materialization of Alice lying in bed, Dr. Jeffers standing in the sunlight at a window, and the reality of Leiber feeling his feet walking slowly, becoming more real and more real, until, when he reached her bed, everything was whole, intact, a reality.
Nobody spoke. Alice smiled, faintly. Jeffers talked, but only a little of it got through to David.
‘Your wife’s too good a mother, son. She worried more about your baby than about herself. . .’
A muscle in Alice’s cheek flattened out, taut, then.
Alice began to talk. She talked like a mother should, now. Or did she — Wasn’t there a trace of anger, fear, repulsion in her voice? Dr. Jeffers didn’t notice it, but he wasn’t looking for it.
‘The baby wouldn’t sleep,’ said Alice. ‘I thought he was sick. He just lay in his crib, staring. Late at night, he’d cry. Loud. He cried all night and all night. I couldn’t quiet him. I couldn’t sleep.’
Dr. Jeffers nodded. ‘Tired herself right into pneumonia. But she’s full of sulfa drug now, and she’s on the safe side.’
Leiber felt ill. ‘The baby, what about him?’
‘Chipper as ever; healthy as a cock.’
‘Thanks, doctor.’
The doctor took leave, walked down the stairs, opened the front door faintly, and was gone. Leiber listened to him go.
‘David!’
He turned to her whisper.
‘It was the baby, again,’ she said. ‘I try to lie to myself — convince myself I’m a fool. But the baby knew I was weak from the hospital. So he cried all night. And when he wasn’t crying he’d be too quiet. If I switched the light on he’d be there, staring at me.’
Leiber jerked inside. He remembered seeing the baby, awake in the dark, himself. Awake very late at night when babies should sleep. He pushed it aside. It was crazy.
Alice went on. ‘I was going to kill the baby. Yes, I was. When you’d been gone only an hour on your trip I went to his room and put my hands about his neck, and I stood there, for a long time, thinking, afraid. Then I put the covers up over his face and turned him over on his face and pressed him down and left him that way and ran out of the room.’
He tried to stop her.
‘No, let me finish,’ she said, hoarsely, looking at the wall. ‘When I left his room I thought, it’s simple. Babies die every day of smothering. No one’ll ever know. But when I came back to see him dead, David, he was alive! Yes, alive, turned over on his back, alive and smiling and breathing. And I couldn’t touch him again after that.
I left him there and I didn’t come back, not to feed him or look at him or do anything. Perhaps the cook tended to him. I don’t know. All I know is that his crying kept me awake and I thought all through the night, and walked around the rooms and now I’m sick.’ She was almost finished now. ‘The baby lies there and thinks of ways to kill me. Simple ways. Because he knows that I know so much about him. I have no love for him, there is no protection between us, there never will be again.’
She was through. She collapsed inwards on herself and finally
