It was Doctor Crumb who spoke first. “Mister Eide, meet your son.”
Odd stood where he was, looking now on the child. “My son,” he said or thought, he didn’t know which.
“He’s big as a bear, Mister Eide. I’ve never seen one bigger.”
Odd took a pair of unsteady steps toward the surgery table, toward Rebekah and the big boy. A boy.
“He’s well?” Odd finally managed.
“I’m surprised the lad didn’t come out with teeth. Or hair on his chest. He’s nine even pounds according to my scale. And he’s fine, way ahead in the race and only just in it.”
Odd walked to Rebekah. “And you?” he asked, knowing with unwelcome certainty the answer to his question.
Rebekah, confirming all, said nothing, only lifted the baby to Odd’s hands.
He’d never held a child before, never suspected that something that had weighed so heavily in his mind could be so light in his hands. But as he looked down on the boy, on his puckered lips and pale skin, Odd felt a preternatural strength rising in him. He felt as though someone could have handed him a bowl with all the water of Lake Superior in it and he would still have been able to bear it.
“I’ve a few details to attend to,” Doctor Crumb said. “If you’ve a name for this one, the time to tell me is now.”
Odd kept his eyes on the boy, said to Rebekah, “Any ideas?”
“He’s your son. You name him.”
Her words felt like a punch, but he’d been sure of the boy’s name for months. “We’ll call him Harald Einar Eide.”
Doctor Crumb said, “He’ll live up to his stature with a name like that.”
“I hope so,” Odd said.
Odd walked the boy to the window. It was late afternoon and the summer sky was squally. Odd knew surely there was a thunderstorm up there, might have been able to say the exact hour at which it would begin to rain. He whispered to the boy, “Look up there, son. You see? That’s a thunderhead. Means rain.”
Together they stood at the window looking at the weather. Odd pictured his own mother, recalling that photograph on the windowsill in the brownstone. The picture of him in his mother’s arms. He saw that beatific look in her eyes and knew the same look came now from him. From his good and his bad eye both. After a few minutes Odd returned to Rebekah’s bedside and looked down on her with all the courage he had to spare.
Five days later Rebekah and little Harald came home from the hospital. It was a hot and low-down day, the first heavy weather of summer. The humidity stuck for a week, and whether it was because of the atmosphere or Rebekah’s disposition, the first few days of having the baby home were some of the unhappiest of Odd’s life. The only sounds that made their way around the flat were the hungry yowls of the boy and Rebekah’s sullen sighs. She seemed to have a complaint for everything. Her sincerest and most regular grievance came whenever it was time for the boy to eat. Her breasts were sore and engorged, her nipples cracked, and Harry, unnaturally big as he was, demanded regular suck.
The looks she cast on that boy. His hunger, his fear and vulnerability, all of it like a badge he wore. And still she looked at him as though he were a cancer. He’d spit her nipple, grab at her breast, wail. And Rebekah with that poisonous and unforgiving stare would scold him. Odd wanted to help, would have done anything, but was always in the way, making Rebekah more agitated.
On the occasions Rebekah could slake the boy’s hunger, he’d fall into a heavy infant slumber. Rebekah would call Odd, hand Harry to him, and lie down on the davenport, shielding her eyes from everything with her arm.
“My breasts feel like they’re going to catch right on fire,” she said one June evening after Harry had eaten and was sleeping in his papa’s arms.
“I sure am sorry, Rebekah.”
She looked up at him from under her arm. “What are you sorry for?”
“Sorry you’re not feeling well. Sorry you’re so tired. All that stuff.”
“All that stuff…”
Odd had walked Harry to the window. Together they stood looking at the Norway pines on the side of the house.
“It was so easy for your mother. When you were a baby. To feed you. You latched right on and ate like there was no tomorrow.” She might have groaned, Odd couldn’t tell. “I can’t stop thinking what a twisted-up thing this is.”
“Haven’t we about covered that?” Odd asked from the window, not even turning to look at her.
“Oh, sure, we’ve covered it. Or you have. Mister Everything Will Be All Right. Mister We Don’t Need No One. You’ve covered it, all right.”
“What the hell do you want me to say, Rebekah? What in fuck’s name is going to get the sulk out of you?”
She didn’t say anything, only lay there on the davenport with her arm over her eyes. Odd and Harry still stood at the window, Odd whispering to Harry an account of a gray squirrel husking a pinecone on the bough of a tree.
“That first day her milk came in, and you ate and then filled your diaper and slept for six straight hours, she held you the whole time. She always held you. Sang those fool songs.” Her words trailed off. Odd turned to look at her.
“I want to understand, Rebekah. I do. But I don’t see your unhappiness. It doesn’t make sense.”
She looked at him for a long time. Eyes as vacant as two stones. She might have been dead for all the life in her.
Odd kept at it. “He’s a hundred percent perfect, this one. Sure, he’s hard to get fed. I know that. And I know it’s you suffering his temper tantrums when he’s at the teat. But he’s brand-new to this business. Might you give him an inch of rope?”
If it was possible, the look on her face went even more expressionless. Still she would not look away from him.
“Some things just aren’t meant to be understood,” she said. “Some things are just invisible and out of reach.”
Odd crossed the room, offered her Harry. “He ain’t out of reach. He’s right goddamn here. Take him.”
She put her arm back over her eyes. “Your mother,” Rebekah began before Odd could say more, “she was real sad after you were born. Melancholy’s what Hosea called it. Said she had the sadness disease. But still she wouldn’t set you down. She wouldn’t stop ogling you. She was more in love with you than she could even imagine.”
Odd had cradled Harry back in his arm. Now he sat on the end of the davenport.
Rebekah tucked her feet up beneath her to make room for him. “Hosea had a way to get the sadness out of her,” she continued. “Cut it right out of her, that’s how he described it.” She shook her head under her arm.
“What are you talking about, cut it right out of her?”
“He did an operation. An ovariotomy, he called it. He cut the sadness out of her.”
“Maybe there’s a way to cut the sadness out of you.” He couldn’t help feeling hopeful, still clung to some thought they could all three of them be a happy family.
She looked at him under her arm. “Sadness has no hold on me, Odd. It’s something else. Besides, when Hosea got the sadness out of her, he got everything else, too. The whole life of her.”
Odd sat up. “What do you mean the whole life of her? What are you talking about?”
“After the operation. She got sick.”
“You always told me it was a fever she died of.”
“She did. A fever he conjured up, I suppose.”
Now Odd stood. “What’s that mean?”
“Your mother didn’t have any sadness in her, Odd. That’s what I was telling you. She was the happiest person I ever saw in those days after you were born. She needed that operation like the lake needs more water.”