Give, a novel

by Erica Carpenter Witsell

  “Will you shhhh?” Len whispered harshly. “She’s sleeping.”

  “Do you think I can’t see that?”

  Carefully, he extracted his arm from around his daughter and eased himself from the bed. He took Laurel by the upper arm and steered her from the room, closing the door quietly behind them.

  “I can’t believe it, Len. I must have told you a hundred times. She has to nap in her own bed. Otherwise, she’ll never—”

  “Are you kidding me?” Len interrupted her, his voice cold.

  “No. Every time you let her nap with you, the next time she puts up more of a fuss.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Len could barely contain his rage.

  “What? What are you so pissed off about? I’m the one who’ll have to—”

  “Laurel, you are unbelievable. You march in here after what happened last night, after what you did, and have the nerve to bitch at me about where Jessie naps? You have got to be kidding me.”

  “After what I did? What about what you did? You just left me there. I’m your wife.”

  “Oh really? Forgive me if sometimes it’s hard to tell.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jesus, Laurel, what do you think I’m talking about?”

  “What’s the big deal, Len? So I wanted to have some fun. And it turns out you got the long end of the stick, anyway.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Laurel laughed derisively. “You figure it out.”

  “Damn it, Laurel,” Len slammed the side of his fist against the wall. “You went too far.”

  “Len!” Laurel cried out. They both watched as the single framed print they had on the wall jiggled off its nail and crashed to the floor.

  A second later, Jessie began to cry. “Da-da!” she called.

  “Great,” said Laurel. “That’s all we need right now.”

  “I’ve got her,” Len said.

  “Don’t expect me to clean that up,” Laurel called after him.

  Len paused at the doorway to the bedroom and turned to face her. “Just for the record, Laurel, I did not get the ‘long end of the stick.’ I did not go to Alice’s room. I came home. That’s all.”

  He did not pause to watch this register on Laurel’s face. He turned away, opened the door, and went to his daughter.

  That night, and for the rest of the week, Len slept on the couch. On Friday, Laurel appeared in the doorway of the living room. She leaned against the frame, pulling her light robe around her and retying it at her waist.

  “How long are you going to keep this up, Len?”

  Len glanced at her, then let his eyes fall back to the article he was reading. “I don’t know.”

  “I miss you.”

  Len snorted, but he did not look up.

  “Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t think you’d get so bent out of shape about it.”

  He met her eyes at last. “Laurel, I don’t think you thought at all.”

  Laurel looked away. “Maybe not.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment. “Please, Len. I said I’m sorry. Can’t we put this behind us?”

  Len shook his head. “I don’t know, Laurel. I don’t think this is working anymore.”

  “Len, it was one night. And I said I was sorry.”

  “It’s not just that, Laurel— although maybe that clinched it.” He paused, his eyes scanning the room as if looking for something. Finally, they met Laurel’s. “We’re not happy together, Laurel.”

  “I’m happy.”

  “No, you’re not. You complain all the time. You cry.”

  “But I could be. We can make it better. I can—”

  Len sighed. “I don’t think I can be.”

  “What? You don’t think you can be what?”

  “Happy.” He said it with such sad finality that Laurel’s chin began to tremble.

  “Oh, Len. I’m sorry.”

  “I know. And I forgive you, I suppose. But I don’t think I want to live like this.”

  “You can’t mean that. What about Jessie?”

  “You think I haven’t thought of that? That’s all I’ve thought about. All week she’s all I’ve thought about.”

  “Just Jessie,” Laurel said, and the bitterness in her voice was unmistakable. Then, with an effort, she changed her tone. “So how can you leave?”

  “I’ll stay close. I’ve worked it out. It doesn’t have to change much, for her. I can still come over in the evenings, feed her, put her to bed . . . Just like I do now.”

  “But Len—”

  “Well why not?” he interrupted her. “She’ll hardly know the difference. I almost never see her in the mornings anyway. It’ll be almost exactly the—”

  “Leonard.”

  “Laurel, I just can’t do—”

  “Len, I’m pregnant.”

  Len felt the room begin to spin. Then a face materialized: Michael’s, flushed with anticipation, his eyes bright. Len swallowed deliberately. “With Michael’s.”

  Laurel laughed shrilly. “Jesus, Len. That was a week ago.”

  Len took a slow breath, let his eyelids close. It couldn’t be. He felt the weight of his head fall back against the rough canvas of the couch. Last Saturday, as he drove home alone in the dark, he felt as if he had stumbled into a lewd movie which would, eventually, come to a distasteful but welcome end. The feeling had persisted most of the week. Every morning as he walked to his office at the university, he could feel himself waiting for the plot to resolve. But on Thursday evening, when he had opened the front door and found Jessie in tears on a carpet littered with Cheerios, and Laurel stony-eyed at the kitchen table, a vodka and tonic already in hand, something had shifted in him. A thought seemed to materialize in his mind, the words clicking together like the terms of an equation: I can leave.

  Now, the bad-movie feeling returned in a rush. Without opening his eyes, he imagined striding into the nursery, lifting Jessie from her crib, hoisting her onto his shoulder, and leaving the house. He felt the impulse to do it in his whole body, a need as real as hunger.

  With an effort, he opened his eyes. He didn’t look at Laurel.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know last weekend, when you—”

  Laurel cut him off. “Of course not.”

  “How pregnant?”

  “Nine weeks.”

  “Jesus, Laurel! How could you not have known?”

  “Don’t you yell at me,” Laurel said bitterly. “How was I supposed to know?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Len said sarcastically. “Because you hadn’t had a period in what . . . nine weeks?”

  Laurel glared at him. “You think I have time to count? I barely have time to—”

  “Oh, spare me. It’s pretty convenient, isn’t it? If I don’t know, I can keep drinking. I can fuck my friend’s husband—”

  “Len, that’s not fair.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No, it isn’t. My periods haven’t been regular—I was nursing, remember? Okay, sure, maybe in retrospect I should have wondered, but I just didn’t think . . .” She trailed off, and silence fell between them.

  “Plus, it’s not like there have been a plethora of occasions when I could have gotten pregnant.”

  Len heard the note of accusation in her voice and let out his breath audibly. It was almost a laugh, but bitter and hard.

  “And you’re . . . you’re sure it’s mine?”

  “Jesus, Len. Is that what you think of me?”

  Len scoffed. “I don’t know. After last weekend I’m not sure what I think.”

  Laurel began to cry then, and Len looked away.

  “I said I was sorry, Len. Please.”

  He said nothing.

  “Len, we’re going to have another baby.”

  He met her eyes at last. “Laurel. Are we sure we want to—”

  Laurel’s body stiffened. Her shoulders went back, and she put one hand acro
ss her belly defensively. “Len. I’m nine weeks. The baby—-”

  “I know,” Len said quickly. “You’re right.”

  Len drew in a deep breath and let it out in a short burst, like an athlete preparing himself for a sprint.

  “Well then. I guess we’re going to have a baby.”

  And with that, he felt his resignation settle over him like a new skin. The bad-movie feeling was gone, and so, incredibly, was his urge to escape, to pick up the one thing he loved purely in this world and be gone. How this had become his life, he didn’t know, but it was his, undeniably. Another thought ordered itself in his mind like math: We are not meant to be happy. And there was some satisfaction in it, to have figured out this small, pure nugget of truth at last.

  He looked up at Laurel, and she gave him an uncertain smile.

  He patted the couch beside him, and she crossed the room in quick little steps and sat down heavily at his side. With an effort, he put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned her head awkwardly against his chest.

  “Well, I guess Jessie will have to learn to sleep in a big-girl bed.” The thought of his daughter was like a light turned on inside of him. A brother or sister for Jessie—she would be delighted, he thought. Len felt his mood begin to lift. Somehow, he had arrived here. He would just have to make the most of it. He gave Laurel’s shoulder a little squeeze.

  “It’ll be okay, Laurel,” he said.

  He felt her let her breath out, as if she’d been holding it.

  She looked at him with doe eyes. “Really?”

  He couldn’t hold her gaze. “Yeah,” he said. “I think so.”

  In the morning, Len was eating cereal when Laurel came in. She was braless beneath her robe and her heavy breasts sagged loosely beneath the fabric. Her eyes were swollen and the skin on one side of her face was creased where it had been pressed into the pillow. He felt a little bubble of despair rise up in him, but he swallowed it down and summoned his resolve. He smiled at her.

  “Good morning.”

  “Morning.”

  He took a last bite of cereal and rose from the table.

  “Can I get you something?”

  “Oh, so now it’s ‘Can I get you something?’ You ignore me all week . . . I should have said I was pregnant sooner.”

  Len gritted his teeth. “Laurel.”

  “What?”

  “I thought we were going to try to make it . . . to be better.”

  “Did we say that?”

  “No, I guess we didn’t. But can we?”

  Laurel sighed. “Yes.”

  “Good.” There was a pause. “So, can I get you something? Tea? Cereal?”

  “Tea, I guess.” She sank heavily into a chair. “Thank you.”

  She thanked him again when he gave it to her, and again when he placed a piece of toast in front of her, already spread with butter and jam.

  “You’re eating for two now.”

  They were polite with each other all morning. It felt like a charade, but it was a pleasant one, at least. Len felt his spirits lift.

  He gathered up his briefcase and his packed lunch, then paused at the door.

  “Give Jessie a hug for me.”

  “I will.”

  He had almost closed the door behind him when a thought occurred to him. He turned back.

  “You won’t drink, now, will you? For the baby?”

  She looked at him dryly, then shook her head. “Of course not.”

  They stayed on their best behavior. For the remaining seven months of Laurel’s pregnancy, Len did his best to dote. He made Laurel breakfast each morning before he left for work. More protein, the OB had said. So Len cooked eggs: fried, scrambled, boiled, poached. The house smelled perpetually of bacon.

  In the evenings after dinner, he played with Jessie, gave her a bath, put her to bed first in her usual crib, and then, as Laurel’s pregnancy progressed, on a twin mattress that he pushed up against the wall in her room. Afterwards, there were the dinner dishes to wash and the toys to tidy up. Laurel watched him from her place on the couch, a science-fiction novel held slackly against the bulge of her growing stomach.

  “Oh, Len,” she sometimes said. “Just leave them.”

  But he shook his head.

  When the house was reasonably tidy, he went to the small office to grade papers or prepare his lectures. Only when he could no longer keep his eyes open did he put down his pen. In the bedroom, Laurel would almost always be asleep. He would stretch out carefully beside her; it seemed he was asleep almost before he closed his eyes.

  The morning came quickly. He rose, with an effort, at the first alarm. Laurel complained if he hit the snooze; she couldn’t go back to sleep instantly like he did. He showered and dressed quickly, made coffee, pulled the eggs from the fridge.

  The months passed quickly. Each day was hazy under a patina of exhaustion. Only when he was with Jessie did the film seem to dissolve. He seldom thought of the baby that would soon be with them, for when he did, he felt uneasy. His love for Jessie was like a cool lake. Deep and clear, he could plunge into it and feel himself renewed, redeemed. It seemed impossible to him that he would love this new baby with the same raw intensity.

  And yet even as he avoided thinking of it, still the baby’s coming lent a bittersweetness to his time with his daughter. He could not take her to the park without thinking that their times there, just the two of them, were numbered. He could not hold her against his chest without being aware of the monumental change that was to come.

  CHAPTER 5

  Eight Months Later

  Len

  “Len. The baby.” Laurel nudged her elbow into his side.

  He couldn’t rouse himself from sleep.

  “Len! The baby!” Laurel said again. Her voice was piqued with annoyance, and, not quite waking, Len heard the tone but not the words.

  “Is she really?” he murmured agreeably, to placate her.

  “Len, for crying out loud, wake up. The baby’s crying. She’ll wake Jessie.” The elbow jabbed into his side.

  At last, Len was awake. “Sorry,” he muttered as he swung his legs off the bed, then shuffled down the hallway to the nursery. The baby—Emma, they had named her—was crying in earnest now, her face red and her eyes scrunched closed. The sound she made was more animal than human; more than once, Len had mistaken her cry for a cat fight out in the yard.

  Incredibly, Jessie never seemed to be disturbed. He glanced at his older daughter, fast asleep on her mattress, with her yellow duck tucked in the crook of her elbow and her bottom in the air. He picked up the wailing baby.

  “Shhh,” he whispered. In his arms, Emma’s cries quieted somewhat, but that almost made it worse. Len hated what came next. Quickly, he lay her down on the changing table to unpin her wet diaper. For a fraction of a second, her cries ceased. Her little mouth worked, searching for the nipple. When it was not to be found, when instead the cool air hit her damp bottom—oh, her rage! How he hated it, to feel all that helpless fury directed at him. Every night it was the same ordeal: he had to torture her, enrage her, when every impulse in him demanded he appease her.

  “Why can’t you just nurse her first?” he suggested to Laurel. He wouldn’t mind getting up again to change her diaper. He felt he would do anything to avoid her desperate cries. But Laurel liked to nurse in bed, lying on her side. She didn’t want the baby’s wet diaper soiling the sheets. He had suggested a towel, but Laurel had scoffed at the idea. Any way you cut it, it would just be more laundry. “How would you like to nurse a wet, stinky baby?” she had said.

  He had shrugged in response, defeated.

  Plus, Laurel had added more kindly, she liked how she and Emma fell asleep together. She wouldn’t want to have to disturb her, afterwards, to change her diaper.

  Len had become practiced at squelching his own bitterness, but the thought had come anyway. Disturb the baby, or you? Still, he had held his tongue.

  Now, he jutted out his chin in concentratio
n as he quickly folded the dry diaper and pinned it into place. Then he slid his large hand under his daughter’s torso and lifted her to his shoulder. She cried frantically until he settled her against Laurel’s side. Laurel helped Emma find her nipple, and, then, oh, the sweet bliss of it. He always had to stand there, just for a moment, watching her suckle.

  How beautiful she was. His second daughter seemed vulnerable to him in a way that Jessie never had. His memory of Jessie from the night he had driven home alone had stayed with him—the perfect innocence of her. Her sleeping form had held the essence of peace exactly when his whole world had felt tainted and in turmoil.

  With Emma, the feeling was not dissimilar. His youngest daughter had come into being at the nadir of his marriage, and yet she had come untouched by all its ugliness. But while Jessie seemed to exude resilience, as if her little toddler self was protected by some force field he could not see but could only sense, his newborn daughter seemed innocently helpless, dangerously vulnerable. He reached out his hand now, to stroke the back of her tiny head, the pink skin of her skull still visible through the fine hair. Laurel, sensing his movement, opened her eyes and looked at him questioningly.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  And because he was so impossibly tired, and because he did not have the right words for all that he felt, and because, even if he could find them, he knew he would not risk handing them over to Laurel’s derision, he said only, “Nothing. I just like watching her nurse.” He moved his hand purposefully from Emma’s head to Laurel’s shoulder, just for a moment, and then he returned to his spot in bed, the sheets already cool against his skin.

  CHAPTER 6

  Laurel

  In the morning, Laurel was nursing on the couch in the living room when Len appeared. He smiled at them both.

  “Emma’s up? I didn’t hear her.”

  “I know.” She couldn’t help the bitterness that seeped into her voice, and he paused on his way to the kitchen.

  “I would have gotten her if—”

  “It’s fine.” She stroked the baby’s cheek with the back of her index finger, feeling her resentment rise. He would have gotten Emma if he’d heard her—that was what he meant. But he never did hear her. Every time she had to roust him; it was like waking the dead. And wasn’t she just as tired?