by Cara Wall
James took the other baby, awkwardly, aware of the length of his adult arms, the clumsiness of his hands. He held him to his chest. The child seemed to weigh less than a newspaper. James found himself overcome. His throat closed and he had to stand very still to hold back the tang of tears.
He had known Nan was lonely. He had known this life of faith, of study, of friends and conversation was not enough for her, that she needed something more. He had known she wanted, so deeply, so simply, to love—to love as many people as she could, to raise them and take care of them. He had not known he felt that way as well.
That night, as Nan read the paper in front of the fire, James sat down next to her and said, “I think we should try harder.”
“What do you mean?” Nan asked, frowning at him.
“I think we should try harder,” James repeated, taking her hands in his. “I think we should go to the doctors.”
Nan went pale. Her shoulders hunched forward, her chest sank back as if he had kicked her. “No,” she said, standing up, going to sit in a chair across the room.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not the way this happens,” Nan said. “Life is a miracle. Something you are given or not given. To force it to happen is like stealing.”
“Why?” James asked, sliding to the end of the couch, as close as he could get to her without standing up. “Why is it like that, how is it like that?”
He looked intently at her, almost desperately, hoping she could provide him an answer. He felt the same way, that to seek beyond what one was offered caused only trouble, only heartache. Given the state of the world, one should ask only to help others have enough. But that was exactly what he wanted to do; he wanted to help Nan have enough.
“Why should you have to be so miserable?” he asked her.
Nan looked at her lap. “I want it to feel like a gift,” she said, “like Christmas morning. I want it to be full of joy.”
James stared at her bent head, wondering how to approach this sympathetically. He understood that, for most of her life, Nan had been given everything she needed without delay: the perfect home, the perfect upbringing, the perfect talent, the perfect education. Before she longed for them, they had appeared, and she had floated along on this current of ease.
“So much of your life has been simple, Nan,” he said. “Maybe this is the one thing for which God wants you to work hard.” He said it gently.
Nan stood up, pulled the chair in front of herself, leaned on its sturdy frame. She shook her head. James knew he was perilously close to making her cry. He wanted her to hold on, to keep the tears at bay. If she cried, he would relent. He would cross the room, hold her, never speak of it again. Then they would never have a baby. He would never see her happy.
“Do you want a baby, Nan?” he asked, still gentle. “Or do you want to feel chosen?”
She looked at him plaintively. “I want to feel like what we have is enough. I want to be thankful for what God has given me—this house, my students, you. They should be enough, James, they should be enough.”
James looked at the fire, the logs growing thinner, crumbling.
“Your father once told me, Nan, that restlessness was my calling. I was ashamed of that for a long time, because it felt like a lie, like something he had made up so he could accept my marrying you. But I understand it now. I understand the feeling that something is not quite right—the feeling that something should be done, changed, fixed—that feeling, Nan, is never wrong. It isn’t something to bury or ignore.
“Those feelings that hound you, Nan—they are God. They are God telling you to do something, to be different in some way. Sometimes it isn’t right to pray for acceptance of the status quo. If God calls you to upend it, then you should upend it.
“You think God rewards, Nan, I think God pursues.”
The twins were not identical. Bip was shorter, stockier, blonder. He moved in a gentle, dreamy sort of way. He was cranky when he got hungry and rubbed his eyes when he needed sleep. Lily thought of him as Charles’s child: easygoing, adaptable, curious about the world. Will was dark, wiry, and malcontent. He never cried, not in the way Bip did, but he whimpered constantly and could not be consoled. He did not want a bottle, a nap, or to be held. He was happiest flat on his back in the wide carriage her aunts had sent her, with the hood pulled up to block the rest of the room.
So that was where Lily left him much of the day, even as she carried Bip with her from room to room, laying him on a quilt close to her as she chopped carrots, washed dishes, rinsed diapers. She did wonder if a different mother would have been more attentive to Will, might have tried harder to coax him into contentment. Would she be treating him differently if he were her only child? She checked on him every twenty minutes, peeking into the carriage, hoping he would be asleep. He never was, and when he caught sight of her, he whined. When she drew back, he settled down.
She was exhausted. Her body felt soft and alien, yet she was required to lift and carry and nurse. Her skin felt raw, and yet there was always someone touching her. There was no silence and no uninterrupted length of time in which to read a book. It was a state of being fraught with anxiety and self-doubt.
On top of that, Charles seemed to revel in fatherhood. He came home for lunch every day, hale and full of cheer, lifting Bip as high as possible, putting his whole face into Will’s buggy and kissing him on the cheek, impervious to the way Will closed his eyes, curled into a ball. While he was home, Lily showered, standing under the hot water as long as possible, leaning her head against the tile. When she came down, dressed and dry, Charles kissed her and went back to work, abandoning her for the church.
Months passed. The brownstone became cluttered with silver rattles, plastic animals, wooden blocks, and rubber balls. Lily’s days were marathons of watching babies sleep and eat and having no one to talk to. The boys clawed at her, and she was filled with the desire to lie in bed alone, or to leave the boys and walk into the garden, stand there for an hour.
“I didn’t think it would be this hard,” Lily said to Charles in bed one night after the boys were asleep. “I knew I wouldn’t like it, but I never imagined I wouldn’t be able to do it.”
Charles took her hand. “Of course you can do it.”
She had not eaten dinner; she had not washed her hair. Her eyes and throat felt like kindling. She was utterly impaired. “But I don’t want to,” she said, quietly. “I want to read books.” Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes and slid to the lobes of her ears.
Charles sat up concerned. “What can I do?”
Lily shook her head. “You can’t be here all day,” she said. He had to work, and she needed to be able to leave the house, drink coffee on a bench in the park, take the bus uptown and walk back home. Miriam would come, if she asked, but Lily had not spoken to her since the boys were born and didn’t want to be a burden to her, yet again. Beyond that, there was no one. Lily had succeeded so spectacularly in her quest to be unattached that everyone who might have helped had circled away.
“I can ask someone at church to come by,” Charles said. “I can find somebody to help.”
“No,” Lily said. “I can’t meet a new person. I can’t make chitchat. I can’t be expected to pretend. I just need someone to sit with me and hold a twin.” She hesitated. It was an insane idea, what she was about to propose, but she already felt like a lunatic.
“Do you think you could ask Nan?”
Astonished by the depth of her need, Charles did.
“Lily wants me to help?” Nan asked him, startled.
“Yes,” Charles said, looking at Nan carefully. “She doesn’t have anyone else.” His voice was full of compassion. “Would that be okay?”
Nan stared at him wide-eyed, stuck in a prolonged shrug. Every fiber of her being wanted to say no. Every fiber of her being wanted to give Lily her comeuppance.
“You don’t have to go,” James said, when he heard about the request.
“Ye
s I do,” Nan said. It was an impossible question with only one answer. Nan wanted babies, and here were two. Nan wanted to be a mother, and Lily was a mother in need. So, in the morning, Nan took a breath, put on her stockings, dress, coat, and hat and went to Lily’s brownstone.
Lily opened the door. There were shadows under her eyes. She was holding Bip, who was clutching the hair behind her ear, pulling it hard toward him. Nan could hear Will crying in the living room. She saw instantly that Lily’s need was genuine, and was relieved to know that she could still recognize the depths of someone’s suffering.
She took Bip from Lily’s arms. He had grown so quickly, could now hold his head up, touch Nan’s nose. Without him, Lily looked small and weak. Nan felt sturdy in comparison.
“Thank you,” Lily said. “I know we haven’t been friends.”
“No,” Nan said, taking off her coat by shifting Bip from arm to arm. “We haven’t. But it’s all right. We know each other well enough. You won’t expect too much of me and I won’t expect too much of you. If I need to leave, you will understand. If you seem distant—well, I know why.”
“I’m not used to people being around,” Lily said. “And you’ve been around. I didn’t know what to do with it earlier. Now I need it. I’m too tired to not need it.”
Nan walked past her to the living room, where Will was sitting in his buggy, red-eyed from crying. Nan sat Bip down next to him.
“Go to sleep, Lily,” she said. “Everything will be fine.” For one strange moment, she thought Lily was going to hug her, instead she turned up the stairs to her bedroom and closed the door.
Nan rolled the buggy into the kitchen, sat on one of Lily’s white chairs, and pushed the boys back and forth until they fell asleep with their arms crossed loosely over each other. While they slept, Nan washed the dishes that had been piled in the sink, dried them, and put them away. She rinsed out the dishrags, hung them on the cabinet knobs to air out, checked the dates on the newspapers, and threw out the oldest. When Bip stirred first, she carried him upstairs to Lily’s room and knocked on the door. Lily answered, sleep-heavy and dazed, and Nan said, “Take him to bed with you; he’ll nurse while you sleep.”
And so began a rhythm of days. Nan arrived at ten in the morning and stayed until three, holding a twin, cleaning the kitchen, wiping the counters, pushing in chairs. Lily often napped while she was there, and Nan took the twins for walks, let them sleep in their stroller. She was not foolish enough to pretend they were her own, and she felt lonely when she walked with them, knowing they belonged to someone else. But she had to admit, it was easier to be included. It would have been so much harder to watch from afar.
After a few weeks, when the boys were on a schedule and Lily was rested, Nan made lunch, chicken salad and pickles, and they ate together at the long table, now stacked with the boys’ clean, folded shirts and bundled socks.
After some moments of silence, Lily said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Nan answered, wiping her mouth with a napkin.
Lily took a drink of water. “I don’t think I would have done the same for you.”
Nan thought for a moment and then said, “No, you wouldn’t have.”
Lily smiled. “I would now,” she said.
Nan felt the lesson like a sudden rain. Lily would, now; of course she would. Every right action begets another; every extension of a hand forms a rope and then a ladder. How many times had her father told her that? How willfully had she forgotten?
“I’m sorry about the baby shower,” Lily said. “It was kind, and I was selfish.”
Nan shook her head, but Lily continued. “Please don’t say it’s all right. I know it wasn’t.”
It was a strange feeling, Nan thought, to sit with someone in total honesty. “It really wasn’t,” she said, the relief of it making her light-headed enough to smile. Lily smiled back.
“This is what it was like in my family,” Lily said. “Women in the kitchen, sharing chores and children. I used to think it was frivolous, but now I know it was necessity.”
Nan was suddenly embarrassed; a piece of her was pulled like an iron filing to the magnet of shame. How had she never understood what grief had done to Lily? Why had she never even tried? She leaned forward. Lily rolled her eyes.
“Please don’t ask about my parents,” Lily said. “Not when I’m actually succeeding at being nice.”
Nan sat back. This, she thought, is trying harder. This was the way in which God was pursuing her. She was charged, yet again, to put her own needs aside and serve others. She had fought against it, but now she was doing the difficult work. This is my contribution, she thought to herself. This is my doing more.
At one year, Bip began to talk with gusto, shouting his first words—da, mo—with great hand gestures to go along with them. Charles fawned over him after each word, so that he talked more and more, waited expectantly for accolades after every syllable.
Will, though, didn’t begin to talk. It was clear he understood. He did as they told him to and followed his brother’s progress with watchful eyes. Lily assumed he was waiting to see what happened next—how this new phenomenon affected Bip before he tried it on for size.
But the months went by. The comparison was bare and bright. Bip played. He pushed trucks around the floor and carried teddy bears. He held out his arms to be picked up and squealed with laughter when Charles held him upside down. Will held on to things—bears, trucks, dishtowels, socks—and would not give them up. When Lily tried to take them, he howled and turned away, hunched over. He squirmed when she tried to hold him, and held his breath, whimpering, until she let him go. He screamed when Charles tried to pick him up, and did not stop screaming after he put him down.
“Please calm down,” Lily said to him calmly. “Please calm down,” she said to him urgently. “Please, please, please calm down,” she said, holding her hair back to keep it from touching him, sunk on her knees like a pilgrim.
Will sat in his high chair and looked at the tray, moved his finger along the grain of the wood. He did not notice the food she put in front of him, could go for hours without eating. When hunger overcame him, he would fuss and cry, drop to his belly on the ground and whine angrily. Lily would bring him something with a straw. He liked straws, as long as they were not striped and the paper had been taken off. He would eat almost anything through them, and so his diet consisted mainly of yogurt thinned with milk, blended juice, vegetable purees. The pediatrician did not discourage this.
“He’ll grow out of it,” he said, “and he’s getting enough vitamins. Just keep it up.” So she did, blending everything she made for Bip into a soup for Will. She felt he needed something more—bread, spaghetti, potatoes—and she put them on his tray each meal, but he did not notice them except to push them out of the way.
He liked to play with dominoes, holding them close to his face and touching each dot on each tile over and over again. Sometimes he would pick up a tile and press it to his cheek with his palm, resting it there for a long, long time. When he learned to crawl, he made his way to the front hallway and tapped each black tile on the floor.
This behavior was the easiest for Lily to bear. It was calm; it was silent. She couldn’t bear Will at bath time. As soon as she began to run the water, he began to moan, twisting his hands and whimpering. When she turned the water off and sought him out to pick him up, he began to howl. As she lifted him off the floor, he went stiff as a board, kicked his legs violently.
“Shhh,” she said. “Shhh.”
She tried the water hot, cold, tepid—it didn’t matter. As soon as his feet touched the slick bottom of the tub, the struggle began in earnest, her kneeling, one arm wrapped like a vise around his upper body, locking his arms to his chest, forcing him to remain sitting, as he bucked and rocked and howled. One night he hit his head. One night he bit her. She gave up the bath and, instead, washed his neck, bottom, hands, face, feet with a soft, warm washcloth. Twice a week, she and Charles wrestle
d to hold him bent over the sink so they could wash his hair. They cut it short, short, short, so shampooing only took a minute. Still, he howled and fought. After these episodes, they let him rock himself back and forth for an hour, until he quieted enough so they could lead him to bed, where he slept with his head underneath the covers.
He began to lose coordination. Things he could do the month before—pick up a ball, shake his head, run without falling down—now seemed hard for him. He started to hold his left arm at an odd angle, and then they noticed he did not stop twisting his left hand.
“What’s that, Will?” Charles asked one night at dinner. “Is it a new dance?” He twisted his hand in the same way.
“Don’t,” Lily said. She put her hand on Will’s, holding it to the table. “He’s been doing it all day. He won’t stop,” she said. She took a deep, labored breath. “Will,” she rasped. “Stop.”
Charles often came home from church on Sunday to find Bip napping upstairs and Lily sitting on the kitchen floor, staring at Will while Will stared at the wall. One Sunday, though, Charles came home and Will was standing at the kitchen door, unscrewing the doorknob.
“I thought he might like to play with something real,” Lily whispered. “I thought maybe he just doesn’t like toys.” She took a shaky breath. “He’s taken them all off. Every one in the house. They’re all lying on the floor.” She looked up at Charles. “Please help me,” she said. “I don’t want to find him so disturbing.”
“Something’s wrong with Will,” Nan told James over breakfast.
James looked up from the newspaper. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t see him anymore. Lily keeps him upstairs when I’m there. I take Bip for walks; she and I eat lunch while the boys sleep, but she doesn’t talk to me, and as soon as Will starts moving upstairs, she’s gone.”
Nan enjoyed spending more time with Bip, who was as sunny as a child could be. He loved fire trucks and big dogs, ice cream and fountains. They whiled away long afternoons in Washington Square Park together, listening to musicians playing their instruments, playing hide-and-seek behind the trees. But it felt false to Nan. She knew Lily was suffering; she had lost weight and stopped dressing well. She was distant and grey, like a piano with slack, damp chords. And still, she did not tell Nan anything. She simply gave Bip a kiss, transferred his hand from hers to Nan’s, and said thank you. Soon, there were no more lunches, no afternoons folding laundry. Nan was a babysitter, nothing more.