by Tish Cohen
“I’ve tried everything. Formula, changing, distractions. Do you think something’s wrong?”
“She’s an infant and infants sometimes don’t make sense. The sooner you accept that, the better. Besides, she’s jet-lagged and in a strange environment. Totally to be expected. How are you holding up?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t lie to your mother.”
“Okay, my back hurts, my arms ache, and I’m so jittery I could explode. She won’t stop crying and don’t ask if I’ve tried this or that. I’ve tried everything a person could try. I’m ready to start wailing myself.”
“This is what I try to tell people. Babies are tiny dictators cloaked in cuteness. It’s nature’s way of ensuring the survival of the human race.”
“Not helpful.”
“I’m booking myself a ticket and will be there for tomorrow night.”
“Ruth, you don’t have to do that.”
“What did you promise me?”
Eleanor smiles. “Mom.”
“That’s better. I’m coming and I won’t listen to any arguments. In the meantime, you’re going to pull out the big guns. Let her cry in her crib for a moment while you get yourself dressed.”
“What for?”
“You’re taking her out for a drive in the car. She’ll be out cold in ten or fifteen minutes and then you sneak her back up into bed. I promise you, this works.”
Only it doesn’t. It isn’t until nearly 5 a.m. that Eleanor piles Angus and the inconsolable Sylvie into the car, and after an hour of driving through the darkened streets of the city, Eleanor is spent. Her hands shake and she can barely keep her eyes open. She’s nauseated with nerves and desperate for sleep.
Adopting a child on her own was the worst decision she’s ever made. Jonathan was a thousand percent right. At this rate, she’ll have to close the business for lack of sleep. Go on welfare. And put Sylvie up for adoption so she can go to a loving couple who will raise her in tandem. Because that’s what it takes.
She stops at a red light and notices the sun is coming up. If she had the windows open, if Sylvie would stop crying, she’d likely hear birds chirping.
This baby doesn’t want her.
It isn’t until Eleanor sees the red tail lights of a plane landing that she realizes she’s driving toward the airport. Tears blur her vision as the child she’s waited nearly a lifetime for continues to wail. Maybe subconsciously I don’t want her, Eleanor thinks as she watches another plane approach.
Maybe I don’t have what it takes to be a mother.
That she even had this thought makes her slow the car, pull to the side of the road, and stop at the base of a chain-link fence. Sylvie is fully hysterical now. Eleanor unbuckles the carrier and turns it around so she can see her baby’s face. Sylvie’s crying loses its force, but doesn’t abate.
Eleanor offers her the bottle. Not only is it rejected, it’s hurled across the seat. Angus whines.
It’s steamy in the car and Eleanor opens the sunroof.
From ahead, a massive plane drones, dropping lower and lower as it approaches, the sound of the engine gaining force. Eleanor realizes, as it passes overhead, so close she can almost reach up and stroke the underbelly, the roar nearly deafening her, that she’s parked at the foot of a runway.
She’s never felt so small. Like a pencil dot in comparison. Eleanor spins around to make sure Sylvie isn’t frightened. Sylvie’s eyes, puffy and red, blink hard and fast as she stares through the roof; she isn’t frightened at all. She is utterly transfixed.
“See the airplane, Sylvie? See how big?”
The child has stopped crying. Eleanor offers her a finger and Sylvie takes it, gripping hard. But once the plane is gone, she starts to sob again.
Minutes later, another plane approaches. Again, Sylvie calms. This plane is smaller, sleeker, but passes just as low and roars just as loud. Eleanor looks up at the underside of the wings, the engines strapped beneath, and turns around again, excited. “Did you see that, Sylvie?”
Sylvie, still gripping Eleanor’s finger, is fast asleep.
Eleanor pulls the car to the side of the road on Newbury Street, just a half-block from her door. Sylvie appears to be in a deep slumber, but chances cannot be taken. The transfer from backseat to crib must be done with utmost care. It’s nearly 7 a.m. and Eleanor is exhausted.
Bracing herself for a piercing wail followed by another three hours of crying, she shuts off the engine. Nothing. Not a sound from the baby. Eleanor, having had only an hour of sleep, would slay a dragon for another few hours of rest. She climbs out, careful not to jangle the keys, and closes the car door as quietly as possible. The sun peeks out from behind the buildings across the street and a thin layer of frost glitters from the iron railings around the sidewalk trees.
Her skin tightens in the cold as she lets Angus out of the front seat. She sees her breath. “Shh,” she says to him.
She won’t take Sylvie out of the car seat, she’s decided. The seat will go straight into the crib, just to be safe.
In a picture of normalcy, of sleeping at night and waking in the morning, a pair of male joggers wearing mittens emerge from a side street, one adjusting his fleece headband. She feels a flash of envy, and pushes it from her mind. She has Sylvie. They come toward her and Eleanor closes the door quickly and waits until they pass, full of rhythmic chatter.
Now. No cars, no voices. It’s the perfect time. She puts her house keys in an easily accessible pocket and opens the door. Folds down the passenger seat. Partway through the removal process, Sylvie sighs and shifts her head to the left, works her mouth as if sucking from the bottle, but, mercifully, remains asleep.
Just as Eleanor nears her periwinkle door, car seat in hand, a crash sounds from the right. Noel strolls out from between the buildings, carrying a dented trash can. He sees her and calls out, “You gals are up early!” Angus bounds over to him, happier than Eleanor has perhaps ever seen him.
As Noel approaches, she shakes her head. “We haven’t gone to bed yet,” she whispers.
He checks his watch. “Up all night?”
She nods, handing him the carrier so she can pull out her keys and unlock the door. When she turns back, he has the car seat up on his hip. He’s watching the baby—her tininess, her shock of wild hair, her dot of a nose.
“Good night, Miss Sylvie,” he whispers.
She carries the car seat up the stairs, Angus following closely. Once Sylvie is in her crib, Eleanor tiptoes into the kitchen and pours plain kibble in Angus’s dish. For the first time in weeks, he attacks his food, right there in the apartment.
She sinks into a chair and watches. Everything is going to work out fine. Her daughter is sleeping. Angus is eating. Eleanor is surviving.
Her cell phone rings from her pocket and she jumps to answer before it wakes Sylvie. The number is familiar, but she’s too exhausted to recognize whose it is. “Hello.”
“Eleanor, it’s Nancy.”
“Hey, Nancy. Can I give you a call in a few hours? I’m just heading back to bed.”
“Listen, honey. I want to let you know what’s happening. And I’m not saying it’s necessarily going to present a problem. At this point we have no idea what it means, but Sylvie’s father has surfaced.”
Chapter 47
Well, it doesn’t mean he’s going to fight for her,” says Ruth from where she sits cross-legged on the sofa in her luxurious hotel suite. Sylvie sits peacefully in her lap, plucking Cheerios from Ruth’s palm and eating them, one by one. Her socks lie balled on the floor, where Sylvie yanked them off and tossed them upon being released from the stroller. “He didn’t know about the baby and now he does. I wouldn’t go getting worked up about it just yet.”
“I’ve thrown up three times today. Domenique Beaudoin is his name, and he’s originally from Haiti. Apparently he’s married. Has kids, has money, a business down in California. Sylvie’s mother, Tia, worked in his house as a maid. They had a thing going on the side,
his wife never knew. Still doesn’t, according to him. But he’d been out of the country much of the year. Tia’s sister got in touch with him when he got back and she told him about Tia’s death. And about Sylvie.”
“Haiti,” Ruth says. “Could be why this Tia gave her baby a French name.”
Eleanor stares at her. “That’s not helping.” Sylvie points at the remote control on the coffee table. “Ma ma ma.”
Ruth sets the squirming child down so she can stand at the table’s edge. Sylvie lunges for the control, holds it up to impress Eleanor and Ruth with the intricacy of it. “Listen, a wealthy man with a wife and kids is not about to destroy all that by bringing a baby born to his housemaid-lover into the picture. I’m sure it’ll blow over.”
“Ma ma ma.”
“That’s what my caseworker said. But still.”
True to her word, Ruth had hopped on a flight and checked herself into the Four Seasons. Eleanor offered her mother the master bedroom, perfectly willing to camp on the sofa for the benefit of having an extra set of hands, experienced hands, during the night, but Ruth wouldn’t hear of ousting Eleanor from her own room. The plan was, she’d come back to Eleanor’s for bedtime, then cab back to her hotel once they settled Sylvie for the night.
Sylvie takes Boston Nights magazine, squeezes that and the converter to her chest, and moves along the room in search of more possessions.
“I used to give your sisters a drop of scotch in their formula on the bad nights. Did a great job of calming them down and I dare anyone to judge me.”
“I mean, imagine if he decides to fight for her? I would die.”
In her collecting spree, Sylvie strings Ruth’s purse over a forearm and continues with her load toward the minibar. “She walks well for eleven months,” Ruth says.
Eleanor leans forward to take the purse, “No, sweetie, that’s Ruth’s …”
“Nonsense. What’s mine is hers.” She looks at Eleanor. “And I hope it’ll be Nana. Like Robbie calls me.”
Eleanor smiles. Nods. Nana it is.
Ruth takes off her reading glasses and they watch as Sylvie picks them up and tries to put them on. One arm takes purchase on an ear, and the other lists to her shoulder. She blinks at Eleanor with magnified fly-eyes and clutches her loot tighter.
Eleanor pulls out her camera and tries to snap a photo, but the glasses fall to the carpet. The moment has passed. “I can’t lose her.”
“You’re not going to lose her. It won’t happen.”
“Nancy said we’d know more end of day today. But it’s already 3:25. I’m thinking that’s not good.”
The TV control drops, striking Sylvie’s foot. When she wails, Ruth picks her up and soothes her, singing to her and bouncing her against her shoulder. When the crying quiets to soft whimpers, Ruth spins around sideways to show that Sylvie has fallen asleep. Eleanor moves the toys out of the way in the stroller and helps her mother settle the child inside.
“It’s not going to help to get worked up before anything happens. Let’s just keep calm and wait.”
Ruth’s phone rings from the sofa. She grabs for it and shields her voice while saying hello. Listens for a moment, then says, louder, “Well, hello to you too! So nice to hear your voice …” With an apologetic glance back to Eleanor, she mouths “my cousin” and takes the phone into her bedroom.
“Yes, of course,” Ruth says softly from the next room. “It’s been ages.”
Sylvie sighs in her sleep and starts to suckle, the tip of her pink tongue darting out against her upper lip. Eleanor can’t even enjoy this. What if her father takes her away? What if she never sees her daughter again?
“The wedding was beautiful,” Ruth is saying. “Just the way Roxie wanted it. No, it’s fine. It was a long way with your hip.”
The thing is, Domenique did contact the agency in California. And they contacted Nancy’s people here in Boston. That didn’t happen for nothing. If he wasn’t interested in Sylvie, he’d have shrugged his shoulders and carried on with his life. That he was sniffing around could not be a good sign.
“Oh, they’ll travel for a bit first. I don’t expect to be a grandmother again for another few years. One is plenty for now.”
Eleanor stops rocking the stroller. One. The conversation continues, but her head is roaring. She can’t comprehend anything else that is said. This is no wedding ceremony during which one must remain selflessly devoted to the bride’s experience. This is everyday life. She’s going to be Ruth’s dirty little secret. Somehow if it was just her, Eleanor could handle it, but the secret is going to extend to Sylvie.
That, she will not allow.
Eleanor’s eyes dart from her mother’s bedroom to the front door.
Slowly, she gets up, gathers Sylvie’s things, and stows them in the diaper bag. Without a sound, Eleanor pushes the stroller out of the room.
She steps onto the elevator and, just as the doors close, Ruth calls, “Eleanor? Wherever are you going?”
Chapter 48
The thing about using the car as an infant sleep aid is, sometimes you’re too damned tired to navigate the streets safely. The second night passed much in the same way as the first. Sylvie slept for about an hour and a half—time Eleanor stupidly wasted showering and cooking up penne noodles because she realized she hadn’t eaten all day—then woke up to scream triple murder.
There’s been no further contact from Sylvie’s father. With any luck, he’s satisfied with Sylvie having been successfully placed and has gone back to his wife, children, and money.
After lining up the usual suspects—bottle, bath, diaper change, burping, etcetera—and failing with each, at about six in the morning, Eleanor makes peace with the situation. She turns on a movie, My Cousin Vinnie, and settles down with Sylvie on a duvet spread on the living room floor. Angus watches, a huge sloppy grin on his face. At least Sylvie can feel loved while she bawls. And at least she’ll be safe should her fledgling mother pass out.
They both must have drifted off sometime around six thirty. When the phone rings just after eight, Eleanor, in a scratchy-eyed stupor, knows enough to grab it quickly but has no idea what to say. She goes with nothing.
“Eleanor? Is that you?” It’s Ruth.
She can’t speak to the woman. Maybe just for now, maybe forever. It’s a decision she can make when she has had a full night’s sleep. Should such a night ever arrive. Eleanor reaches out a hand, finds the receiver button, and ends the call.
Chapter 49
It’s just before eight on night three when Eleanor bundles a weeping Sylvie into fleecy jacket and sheepskin booties, and carries her and the stroller down to the darkened street. Cold rain is starting to fall and their breath puffs are quickly blown away by wind. The car is out of the question; Eleanor can barely keep her eyes open. She tucks Sylvie into the Guzzie + Guss, quilt across her legs, and covers the entire stroller with a clear vinyl rain shield. That her girl is warm and dry is all that matters.
The odd person out on the street is well bundled. A few doors up, a woman cloaked in a charcoal cape and with a tam pulled over her ears ambles out of the variety store eating a candy bar. Farther up, a man in a plaid car coat unloads crates from the back of an old truck.
Eleanor considers, for a moment, going back upstairs for a thicker jacket and her trademark scarf, but the logistics—removing the quilt, pulling the somewhat settled Sylvie out of the stroller, hauling the expensive Guzzie + Guss into the lobby lest it “wheel itself away,” and climbing all those stairs—clear the idea from her head.
There is something about November in Boston that has always enchanted Eleanor. Something about seeing the city in its bare bones, stripped of the greenery that dresses things up in the warmer months. The gnarled architecture of a tree’s naked branches when seen in the foreground of a beautiful historic building is the very essence of the city. There’s a certain intimacy in seeing the streets undressed like that—before December’s snow and the tiny white lights and streets full o
f Christmas shoppers, after the flashy romance of the autumn leaves—it reminds her of Angus’s collar being off. When he isn’t Angus out for a walk, or Angus with proof he’s been vaccinated against rabies. When he’s just had a bath in the tiny tub that only comes up to his ankles and is drying off, collar-free, on the rug by the window. Himself. Raw.
Rain spatters down Eleanor’s neck as they cut through the park. She shivers. Surely it’s cold enough to snow. She’ll walk brisker is all. She’ll warm up.
Only she doesn’t. Maybe the combination of not enough sleep and no jacket lining blocks the rush of warm blood to muscles. By the time they she realizes where she’s taking them, they’re nearing Battersea Road. Eleanor’s teeth are chattering, and she can barely feel her toes. Of course maybe this is what a heart attack feels like. Her left arm is a bit numb.
As cars rush past on Beacon Street and a taxi honks its horn, Sylvie calms. She points up at the flickering gas lights with a drool-soaked finger.
“Pretty lights?” Eleanor says. “Aren’t they pretty?”
Sylvie’s mouth attempts the word in silence, her index finger still in the air.
Eleanor did not expect the sidewalk in front of Isabelle’s house to be scattered with evergreen boughs and red dogwood branches. Nor did she expect the woman herself to be outside after dark. But in the feeble light from the gas lamps and her own porch light, Isabelle teeters atop a ladder, wearing baggy jeans tucked into yellow Hunter rain boots. She hacks violently at the earth in her flower box with what appears to be a pair of silver salad tongs.
“That couldn’t wait until tomorrow?” Eleanor says over the crying that resumed once they hit the bumpity-bump of Beacon Hill’s brick sidewalks. “You’re going to fall to your death up there in the dark.”
“Just trying to give the place a bit of evergreen cheer in all this gray gloom. That’s what people do outside of the slums, Eleanor Sweet. They pretty up their environs.” She looks down. “Now what have you done to that child to have her cry like that?”
