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?
She leaned her head back against the couch and closed her eyes. She could hear Len in the kitchen, running water and making coffee, and she even envied him that quotidian task: that he could just saunter on in there, no baby on his hip or at his breast, and make himself whatever the hell he pleased.
She opened her eyes when the sounds ceased, and there he was in the doorway, a mug in each hand.
He glanced at the clock that hung above the bookcase. “Do you want me to make you some breakfast?”
She could tell that he was rushing. “No, it’s fine.”
He set one of the mugs on the end table beside her, but somehow the gesture only made her feel more irritable, as if that little bit of gallantry could make up for the next two hours, when she would be alone with their children, with all of Jessie’s morning demands and the baby to attend to.
“Have a good day,” he said, putting his lips against Emma’s silky hair. He planted another quick kiss on the top of Laurel’s head.
She nodded, knowing that if she spoke, whatever she said would be laced with sarcasm. When the front door closed behind him, tears came inexplicably to her eyes. Just once she would like to know what it felt like to leave the house like him, to slip out the door while the baby was nursing peacefully and Jessie still slept. No wonder he loved them so much. She knew she should be gratified by Len’s devotion to their children, but she didn’t feel gratified. She felt affronted, challenged, as if his love were the gold standard against which her own would never measure up.
And no wonder. He wasn’t saturated with them like she was. He left in the morning, closing the door behind him on a quiet house. He saw the girls only for a couple of hours before bedtime, when it was all sweetness: bath time and footy pajamas, books and good-night hugs. He didn’t understand how they wore her down so that she fantasized about two things only. One was walking out the door unencumbered, without a baby on her hip or a tugging hand in hers, without a diaper bag or stroller, a sippy cup or snack. The other was the drink she would allow herself to make when it was finally five o’clock.
The second fantasy she never spoke of; she saw the way Len glanced at her hand as he came in the door, checking for a glass. The first, though, she hadn’t been able to keep to herself.
“You get to do it every day,” she had said to Len once. “And you don’t even appreciate what a luxury it is.”
He’d regarded her seriously, surprised by her vehemence. But, she did get to leave the house unencumbered, didn’t she? Len had asked. She had her little job at the lab. Was that how he had put it? Her “little job”? If not, she could practically read the thought in his brain: At least Laurel has her little job. And it was true, it was not much: a few hours every morning during the week, her meager wage barely covering what they paid Sarah to watch the girls. Oh, but it was worth it. As soon as Sarah put down her bag, always in the same spot by the front door, Laurel would rush to the bedroom to get ready.
What a relief it was to pull off her shapeless T-shirt and floppy nursing bra. She loved getting dressed for work, while Sarah played with Jessie in the other room. The anticipation of walking out the door, with only her handbag over her shoulder: that was the best part, really. The work itself was tedious and fiddly, worse now that she and Alice had fallen out. Before, only their conversations had made the work bearable, the time pass quickly. Now, they worked in stony silence.
Laurel had tried to speak of it once. “I’m sorry about how it worked out,” she had said. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”
But Alice had only glared at her, so that Laurel still wasn’t sure if it bothered Alice more that Laurel had slept with Michael, or that Len had walked out on the whole affair, leaving Alice out entirely. Laurel knew that they all blamed her—Len and Alice, probably Michael, too, although she had neither seen nor spoken to him after that weekend.
Laurel leaned her head against the back of the couch and sighed. She reached for the coffee Len had left her, but it was lukewarm now and bitter. She drank it anyway, thirst flaring up in her. It was a vivid thirst: she could almost feel the fluid seeping from her shriveled cells and rushing to the breast where her daughter suckled it away. She wanted not coffee, but water: a huge cool glass of it. She wished there were someone there to bring it to her. And that wish, absurd as she knew it to be, only made her feel lonelier. She wiped fiercely at her eyes, wondering that she had any liquid left in her for tears.
Alice hated her. Her mother had forsaken her. Len, she felt sure, no longer loved her as he once had. She couldn’t bear to think of her Berkeley friends, whom she imagined not with their own husbands and babies, which surely some of them must have by now, but as the single women they had been when she had known them.
She looked up at the clock; only ten minutes had passed since Len had left. The day seemed to stretch before her endlessly. There was still an hour and a half to get through before Sarah came at nine. Then the hours at the lab, with the cover slips fragile as blown sugar between her fingers, and Alice always waiting, she was sure, for her to break one.
At least it would be quiet. At least there were no little hands tugging at her clothes, no cries or whines or whimpers. But, God, it was boring; she couldn’t help watching the clock. And then, when her time was up, she always had to hurry home. Sarah needed to leave by one-thirty; she had a class at two, she said.
Inevitably the baby would start crying as soon as Laurel walked in the door.
“She knows you’re back,” Sarah would say, smiling, as if Laurel might be glad of this. And perhaps she was, in a way. Emma always wanted to nurse as soon as Laurel arrived, even when Sarah insisted she had just been fed. And even though Laurel was always starving by then herself, still it was nice to sink down onto the couch with her baby, to catch Jessie’s eye and pat the space beside her. Jessie would climb up next to her and watch, playing with the baby’s tiny toes as she nursed, talking and talking in an endless stream of two-word sentences: “Momma home. Baby hungry. Mama milk. Baby toes . . .”
It was only afterwards, when Sarah had gone and the baby was asleep, that Laurel would unravel. She just wanted to eat her lunch in silence. Was that too much to ask? But Jessie never left her alone. She wanted to crawl into Laurel’s lap. She wanted a bite of her sandwich. She wanted her own sandwich. She wanted juice. She wanted a book. She wanted. She wanted. She wanted. Until, at last, Laurel would lose her temper.
“Goddamn it. I don’t care what you want. Just leave me alone for a minute, would you?”
And once she had lost her patience, it was impossible to regain it. Every little thing—a spilled drink or a tripped-over toy—was a new irritant. And as her general annoyance mounted, so did her resentment, so that by the time Len came home in the evening, she was drowning in it.
“How was your day?” he would ask, his voice tired, and even his weariness irritated her. What did he have to be so tired about?
Today, Laurel thought now, summoning her resolve and gently shifting the baby in her arms. Today will be different. She wiped her eyes with her free hand, wishing for a tissue. Looking down, she saw that Emma had stopped nursing and lay quietly, watching her. Laurel listened for Jessie but heard nothing.
“Come on, then, Emma,” she whispered. “Let’s make a picnic. For later. We’ll go to the park.”
She carried Emma into the kitchen and set the baby gingerly in a bouncy seat on the floor. She backed away slowly, expecting her to protest. But Emma made no sound. Laurel found a napkin and blew her nose, then stood at the sink and drank three glasses of water, not bothering to turn the faucet off between them. Her stomach felt bloated, but almost immediately she felt her energy return and her mind clear. She glanced at Emma, kicking contentedly in the bouncy seat, then got out bread, peanut butter, and jam. She was spreading peanut butter on the second sandwich when she heard Jessie crying from the other room.
“Just a second!” she yelled. Quickly, she plunged the peanut-buttery knife into the jam jar. If I could just finish one single thing, she thought.
But the crying continued, louder. She could hear Jessie sobbing her name. “Mama!”
Laurel rested the knife against the half-finished sandwich and started for the bedroom.
She opened the door to find Jessie, still sobbing, in the middle of the room.
“Mama!”
“Jesus, it stinks in here.” Laurel said. “What is it? What’s wrong? I was trying . . .”
“Dessie wet,” Jessie said tearfully, and immediately Laurel saw that it was true. The back of her nightgown clung to her legs.
“Jessie! Where’s your diaper?”
Jessie pulled up her sodden nightgown to reveal the diaper beneath. “All wet,” she said, sadly.
“Jesus.” Laurel looked towards Jessie’s bed. The bedding would be wet, too. “This is just great.”
Breathing through her mouth, she unpinned Jessie’s soaked diaper and pulled the wet nightgown over her head.
“Jessie, you’re a big girl now. You have to pee on the potty.”
Jessie shook her head. “Dessie yittle.”
“No, you’re big now.”
“No. Dessie yittle!” She grabbed at Laurel’s leg, but her mother shook her off.”
“Let go of me. You stink.”
Laurel began to pull the sheets from the bed. This would mean another trip to the laundry, and just when was she supposed to fit that in? She was bundling up the sheets as best she could, trying to avoid the wet parts, when she heard cries coming from the kitchen.
“Goddammit,” she muttered.
She left the wet sheets in a heap on bedroom floor. In the kitchen, Emma was arching her back in the bouncy seat, twisting against the strap that held her in. Her face was red with rage.
“Baby sad,” Jessie observed. She had followed Laurel from the bedroom and now stood beside her, naked, looking on.
“You think?” Laurel said. Jessie nodded solemnly.
Laurel reached down to unbuckle the baby, then slid her hands under Emma’s armpits to lift her from the seat.
“Baby poop!” Jessie said urgently, just as Laurel brought the infant to her chest.
“Ugh!” For Jessie was right: the small of Emma’s back was covered in poop where it had seeped up out of the top of her diaper. At once, Laurel registered the warmth against her arm.
“Jesus.” She held Emma away from her body and glanced down at the bouncy seat. There was a small imprint of feces, almost heart shaped, in the seat. She watched Jessie notice it, too.
“Do not touch!” she ordered.
Quickly she got Emma by the underarms again, and holding the baby out in front of her, she retraced her steps to the girls’ bedroom and lay her down on the changing table.
“Baby stink?” Jessie asked, and Laurel nodded wryly.
“Yes. The baby stinks, too.”
She wiped up Emma as best she could, but clearly a bath was in order, for both of them.
“Come on, Jessie. You and your sister are going to take a bath.” The tub in the master bathroom was not the cleanest. Laurel did her best to rinse it out while holding Emma with one arm.
“Let me just get Emma situated before you get in,” she told Jessie. She ran a few inches of warm water, then lowered the infant into it.
“Okay, Jessie. Can you get in now?”
Jessie climbed over the edge of the tub where Laurel pointed. But as soon as her feet were submerged in the warm water, she began to pee, the stream of urine yellowing the water between her legs.
“Jessie! What are you doing? You’re peeing!”
She snatched the baby out of the water. “You just peed in the bathtub. With your sister right there. Get out. Just get out!”
Jessie started, looked down between her legs, and then stared at Laurel incredulously.
“I said, GET OUT.”
At that, the baby started to cry; goose pimples were dimpling her pale skin.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Laurel said.
Laurel drained the bathtub and ran the water again. Jessie sat in it, sniffling, while Laurel bathed the baby.
She left Jessie in the tub while she took Emma back to the bedroom to diaper and dress her. When she had seen to the baby, she lay her down in the crib. Emma started to cry at once.
“How can you be hungry? You just ate.”
But the baby only howled at her, red with indignation.
“You’re just going to have to wait a minute,” Laurel said. She turned away from Emma and went back for Jessie, who, with more room to play now, was swirling the washcloth through the water.
“Okay, Jessie. Time to get out.”
“No.”
“GET. OUT. OF. THE. TUB.”
Without waiting for a response, Laurel reached in, grabbed Jessie under her arms, and lifted her from the bath.
“No!” Jessie screamed.
“Yes,” Laurel said through gritted teeth. She carried the toddler back into the nursery, where she diapered and dressed her without speaking. All the while, the baby cried. Laurel felt her milk let down; two damp circles formed on the front of her shirt. Where did it all come from, she wondered. She felt sucked dry, and yet there it was, still surging out of her, as if her infant daughter had more control over her body than she did.
When Jessie was finally dressed, Laurel picked up the baby and collapsed into the rocker. Once she began to nurse, Emma fell asleep almost immediately, although her mouth continued to suck gently in her sleep.
“See,” she muttered to the sleeping infant. “You didn’t even want it. You just wanted to suck. I’m just a giant pacifier to you.”
Jessie giggled uncertainly. “Baby tired,” she observed.
Laurel leaned her head against the back of the rocker and closed her eyes.
“Mama tired,” she said.
Soon enough, she felt Jessie’s small hands against her leg. She kept her eyes closed.
“Mama? Dessie eat?”
When Laurel finally looked at the clock, she was shocked to see that it was barely eight thirty. The morning had seemed to last for hours. She had, at last, risen from the rocker to get Jessie’s breakfast. While Jessie ate, she crept into the girls’ room and shoved all the laundry—the wet sheets and sodden nightgown, Emma’s feces-stained onesie—into a large garbage bag, which she placed on the stoop outside the front door. She had meant, then, to eat something herself, but when she returned to the kitchen, her eyes fell on the soiled bouncy seat. Making a face, she wiped up what she could with paper towels and then spent several frustrating minutes trying to figure out how to remove the cloth cover from the frame.
She had just added that to the bag of dirty laundry on the stoop when she saw Sarah approaching the house.
“Good morning,” Sarah called cheerfully.
Laurel grimaced. She felt weak with hunger, close to tears. There was no time to shower. She washed her face quickly, brushed her teeth, ran a brush through her hair.
Getting dressed, she tried to summon the same surge of elation she normally felt: in a moment, she would be free. But then she thought of the monotony of the hours ahead of her, and Alice’s hateful eyes, and despair overwhelmed her.
She didn’t go into the kitchen to say goodbye to Jessie. If Jessie clung to her or cried, as she sometimes did when Laurel left, she felt she could not bear it.
“Have a good day,” Sarah called to her.
Fat chance, Laurel thought, but clenched her teeth against the words. Sarah was always so . . . so . . . calm. The children never seemed to rattle her.
“Don’t you ever lose your patience?” Laurel had asked her once. Sarah had considered the question, then shrugged.
“Not much, I guess.”
This morning, Laurel just couldn’t stomach it. She slunk out the door without saying good-bye.
Three blocks away, Laurel was sure she could still smell the rank odor that had been with her all morning. Probably it had fixed itself in her nostrils, she thought. But a minute later, she glanced down at herself doubtfully. And there, on her arm, just above the elbow, was the telltale brown smudge.
“Goddammit.” Her purse lay on the passenger seat, and with her free hand she dug around in it blindly. She found only a used tissue. At the red light, she spit on it and scrubbed, her eyes filling with tears.