| The sound of sobbing woke her, punching tiny fist-holes through the fabric of her dream. It was not Elizabeth, she thought. The muffled sobs were coming from the living room. She stretched out her hand to wake Sammy but stopped before she touched him. Instead, she rose, trembling slightly with tension, and went quietly to the living room. She didn't expect to find anything. He was in the corner farthest from the window, huddled into a smooth white wall that did not belong to her living room, curled into a shallow alcove in that wall. The boy was small and very blond, his face squeezed and anguished with crying. He was naked and shook with the intensity of his sobs. In Leigh there was a lurching, a simultaneous reaching out-in pity-and a drawing back-in frightened disbelief: this boy and his surroundings did not belong. Leigh closed her eyes, but the boy did not go away; he was still there, in her mind, lonely and crying; he was sharply there, whether her eyes were open or closed. Leigh stumbled backward into the big leather chair; she was held there, nailed by the little boy's grief. At last his sobs began fading wearily... and so did he. Leigh fell asleep. She woke disoriented several hours later as the first rays of the sun came through the gap in the heavy brown drapes. She stared at the thin, watery rays: there was time enough to get back to bed without disturbing Sammy, perhaps even to doze another precious half-hour before Elizabeth began to scream for her breakfast. She did not sleep, however, but thought about the boy. She had never seen him before, yet she knew him: part of her recognized him. She thought of the first time she had been wakened by the crying of a child who was not there. As she remembered, her skin tightened with sudden cold. Leigh had been in college, nineteen, and had almost stopped thinking about the abortion seven months earlier. It was hard to relax, to stop the reflective tightening of her stomach whenever her mind cast back, to realize that people couldn't tell by looking at her what she had been through. One night she awoke suddenly, shivering. Somewhere, a baby was crying. She lived in a dormitory, and there should be no babies there, but there could be a simple explanation for the presence of one-yet she lay awake a long time, listening, and she was terrified, twisting the sheet in trembling, sweating hands, and she did not know why. She heard the baby often after that. There were dark half-moons under her eyes, her mouth was drawn in a grimace of fear, she fell asleep during art history lectures and skipped meals to take naps. She sat in the huge communal bathroom at two and three in the morning, smoking cigarette after cigarette, grinding them underfoot, forced to listen to a crying she could neither escape nor identify. But somewhere, deep inside herself, she knew. Finally, because she knew it was the rational thing to do, she went to the school psychologist. The psychologist told Leigh she was experiencing a guilt-reaction to the abortion: delayed, understandable, unimportant. He smiled at her and spoke softly. The crying finally went away after regular sessions with the psychologist, although it recurred long after she had cheerfully told him it had ended. It had stopped frightening her, and she could not quite accept the doctor's explanation: the crying was far too real--it couldn't be imaginary. Somewhere a baby was crying; perhaps a telepathic baby, projecting his loneliness to a receptive listener. Why not? But she'd had the experience with psychologists before; she knew better than to offer him counter explanations, to cling to something he had declared fantasy. After she married Sammy the crying stopped--she thought forever--as if some pain had finally been paid for, set in balance, cancelled out. The thin wail of Elizabeth--her own, real baby--pulled Leigh out of her thoughts, and she rose, hearing Sammy stir restlessly behind her. A memory struggled to be born as Leigh fed Elizabeth. Staring at the spoonful of yellow mush she had just rescued from her daughter's chin, Leigh tried to help it along. Faces... something... something about... doctors? ...was it in the hospital, having Elizabeth? Faces, illuminated by a strange, sourceless light, looming above her. And she had been... sleeping? drugged? ...when she looked up and... no, when she opened her eyes, and saw them, standing above her, masks on their faces--silver masks?--and one of them held something. Behind her, Leigh heard Sammy cracking his usual two eggs against the side of the skillet. He shouldn't eat so many eggs. True, he was still young, but all that cholesterol... Elizabeth shrieked, and Leigh hastily shoved the spoon into her mouth. A baby? Something about a baby? --Thin, silver-masked, they held something too small to be a baby-too small to live. It must be a foetus, but how perfectly it was formed! She waited for it to be brought closer, so she could see it better, but, no, they were turning away from her, taking it away-- Elizabeth shrieked again. "Damn!" Leigh said loudly, dropping the spoon into the dish and spattering herself with mush. Her daughter was still shrieking, one fierce, stabbing note after another, like a maddened bird. Leigh managed to get another spoonful of food into Elizabeth's mouth and to shut her up, at least for the moment. "Sammy," she said urgently, and this time she did not slow the spoon's dish-to-mouth movement. "What is it, hon?" "This may sound... but I have to know. When I had Elizabeth, was she all? I mean, did I have another baby? Maybe underdeveloped, maybe born dead? A little boy?" He left the eggs frying, walked to her side, looked at her face. She didn't falter. Spoon to mush to mouth, catching it so it doesn't all dribble down the chin, back in the mouth... "No, Leigh," he said quietly. "There was only Elizabeth." "Are you sure? Are you telling me the truth? I realize that the hospital might have wanted to keep me from knowing, from getting upset, but surely they would tell you? Sammy, I need to know. Does Elizabeth--did Elizabeth--have a brother?" "Leigh, honey, what is this? Did you have a dream?" She let the spoon drop, deliberately, to the ground, and looked up into his kind, concerned face. "Goddam it," she said. "What does that have to do with anything? I'm not a child anymore--I don't confuse my dreams with real life--I'm just asking you a question, goddam it, a perfectly logical question, and you don't need to go implying that I'm--" "Leigh," he said pleadingly. Elizabeth began to shriek again. "You're always going to be throwing that up to me, aren't you? That I was little... a little overimaginative as a kid, I can't even ask a simple question, without..." "Leigh." He took her shoulders in his hands, but she shook them off and stood, scarcely aware of the noise Elizabeth was making. "I'm going back to bed," she said. "I had a bad night." "That's fine, honey. I'll feed the baby. You just get all the rest you need." |
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