So the three of them have been in bed for a while, the woman in the middle squeezing her breast from underneath to position the nipple maybe, the infant on the far side of the bed snorting quietly. He woke you up, she murmurs. We’re both talkers, he says, on his elbow, as if he could stay disturbed and awake for good or slip back into shallow sleep. You woke me before you woke up yourself, you said his name, she says, but then you said “uh”—I believe it was “uh”—you said it a couple of times, you were asleep, as if you were thinking something, getting ready to say it.
The man obviously wants to speak, and he covers her breast with his hand. What did you mean, “I tried”? she asks, I thought you were speaking to me.
That it could wait, he says. Oh, good, she sighs. I said his name? he asks. She breathes. Maybe she isn’t answering. Who on earth cares except the man? The child seems done.
The man might be angry, or talking to himself. Drop everything. Drop everything when he needs you, when he calls. And in return he grows up strong. If he needs you or speaks, if he does anything new, drop everything. It was what you were equal to. What did you get out of being equal to it? Well, you got the name of one of those men by a campfire. You’re not really a night person, his wife goes on as if she’s only half asleep, as if this answers what he asked.
Ask him, he replies. And with that he is out of bed and around to the far side and slides an arm and an elbow under the child and the other arm under the head so that his wife lifts her arm which was above the child’s head and he takes the child from her while she turns to face the other way, her husband’s side.
The desert bricks bring some later cold like a harbinger of daybreak against the soles of his feet, and beyond the window screen a scratching on the ground, a jackrabbit’s claw, a neighbor dog remembering, is unanswered by the earth. You have to lower the child, you have to make it seem like there’s no difference between your hands and arms and bones and the crib mattress, almost no motion from one to the other, these are the things that are necessary.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JOSEPH McELROY was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1930. He is the author of eight novels and has written dozens of stories, essays, and reviews. He has received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Ingram Merrill Foundations, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts.