by Lisa Tucker
When David’s sabbatical was over and he went back to the university, Kyra spent all her time with her baby, using his naps to finish work for her textbook company. The manager wanted her to come back full-time in the next few months, and she planned to. But then she and David started looking into the alternatives for daycare. They visited several places, and he took notes like a good academic. For example:
1.Home Daycare with Cindy
Cindy lived in Erdenheim, which wasn’t that far.
Cindy only took care of four children, only one of which could be under a year old like Michael.
Cindy’s house was thoroughly childproof. (Imagine David on his knees at the house of a woman he just met, deep into “toddler vision,” while Kyra walked back and forth with the baby against her chest, hoping to soothe his colic.)
Cindy had a degree in early childhood education.
Cindy was opposed to using “time outs.” She felt, as David and Kyra did, that it was too cruel to isolate a misbehaving child.
Cindy didn’t even own a television.
−Cindy let a toddler cry for too long. It was exactly forty-nine intolerable seconds—Kyra counted—before Cindy picked up a little girl, though the toddler was grabbing at her leg and sounded hysterical. (That this crying had also led to Michael starting to wail didn’t help.)
Conclusion: Michael would not be staying at Cindy’s Home Daycare.
And so it went, twelve daycare places in all, each with a fatal flaw from David and Kyra’s point of view. Some of the flaws were arguably serious—the vague smell of cigarette smoke in the kitchen, the children rewarded with junk food for staying quiet—but most were like hearing the crying toddler at Cindy’s, or watching a daycare worker at the local college center hold one of the preschool children with no visible affection, like the poor child was a sack of potatoes, David said. They just couldn’t bring themselves to let their baby be taken care of by any of these strangers. They would have to arrange something else.
Kyra told her boss she wanted to work at home for the foreseeable future. This was five years ago, when the economy was still going strong, and the manager agreed. She had to take a pay cut and change her status to “contractor,” but she didn’t object. It was doable, if not financially ideal. They were lucky they had this option.
They were lucky in a lot of ways, and Kyra never forgot it for a second. Sometimes after she put Michael in his crib for a nap, she would walk around her house, making a mental inventory of all the wonderful things in her life. Her husband’s office obviously reminded her of her fabulous husband. The guest bedroom made her think of her mother-in-law, who had come to stay with them when Kyra had the flu and had taken such great care of both Kyra and the baby. (Oh, how she wished David would let Sandra be a bigger part of their lives!) Her own office made her think of writing the tests, which she still enjoyed. The playroom made her think of her baby, of course, and his wide, toothless grin whenever he saw all those colorful toys. And her bedroom, which made her think of—having sex, which surely she and David would get back to having at some point. Parents have sex, after all; they must. How else could any family have more than one child?
By the time Michael was a year old, David and Kyra were having regular sex again, once a week anyway, yet they never seriously considered having another child. David would smile at Michael and say, “He deserves all our attention.” David was an only child, so he probably didn’t know how important a sibling could be. Kyra did, and it hurt her to think of the brother or sister Michael would never have—and especially the daughter she would never have—but she was not about to tempt fate by wishing for more when everything was going so well.
It really was going well, despite how tiring it was to deal with all of David’s worries and her own. The first time they’d taken Michael to Sandra’s apartment, when the baby could barely crawl, he’d managed to get his hand stuck in Sandra’s old VCR. The hand was extracted with only the barest of scratches across Michael’s little knuckles, but David and Kyra were mystified. How could this have happened with three adults in the room, all three paying attention? David said that his mother’s house was obviously too dangerous. Sandra winced, but she only said, “I guess this is a sign that it’s time for me to throw away the VCR and move to using a DVD player like the rest of the world.” Later, David called his mom to apologize, but they begged off going to Sandra’s again for a long, long time. Her house wasn’t childproof. It was unfortunate but undeniable.
They felt safer at their own house, until Michael was fifteen months old, and he ate the little white silica packet that Kyra had casually left in the shoebox of her new black loafers. Both she and David were horrified when their baby stumbled out of the closet with white powder on his lips. Even after they called poison control and discovered that the Do Not Eat on the packet did not mean eating it would cause any harm, they couldn’t relax for days. What if it had been poison and Michael had died or gotten brain damage? They’d thought they were being vigilant, but obviously they weren’t being vigilant enough. They would just have to work harder. They would have to imagine the dangers before they were confronted with them.
Since David had a better imagination, he came up with many more potential dangers than Kyra did. He decided that one of the lawn chairs on their patio, for instance, had to be tossed out. The chair had an adjustable back, and if Michael ever got his hand caught in the metal adjustment device, he could lose a finger. The drawers of their bedroom dresser, which Michael liked to pull open—just like Hurricane Baby—had to be latched, because if Michael pulled a drawer out all the way, it might fall on him and break his foot.
Kyra wondered why Quon and Li hadn’t thought of this. She’d gone over to hang out with Li twice since Michael was a toddler, and both times she’d been surprised by how dangerous their house was. The gate on their stairs was wobbly and easy to knock over, and their oven didn’t have a safety lock. Still, she might have gone over again if Ping hadn’t knocked Michael down while the two of them were “playing.” Kyra had babysat enough to know this was normal, but she didn’t care. Four-year-old Ping looked like a giant compared to her sweet sixteen-month-old.
But it was fine really—exhausting but wonderful, too—until Michael was two and a half years old. David had been invited to give a paper at a conference in London in November. Kyra hadn’t even thought of going with him, because she knew he would be busy most of the time. Though the conference was in England, the subject was American history, his field, and his paper was on a hot topic, the rise and fall of labor unions. He was thrilled that he was finally going overseas, and Kyra was thrilled for him, if a bit jealous. They’d gotten their passports together, before they had Michael, but neither of them had had a chance to use them yet.
David had a lot of work to do before the conference. They didn’t really discuss it, and then, a week before he was set to leave, he came home and surprised her with three tickets. “I got us a little row on the plane all to ourselves,” he said, putting the tickets on the kitchen counter. “Both to London and back.” Kyra hugged him and Michael giggled and answered, “Yes!” when David asked him if he was ready to see Big Ben. “He probably thinks you mean Big Bird,” whispered Kyra. As if to confirm her hunch, a moment later, the toddler had retrieved his Elmo doll from the bottom of his toy chest.
The flight to London wasn’t as bad as Kyra had feared. It was eight and a half hours, and Michael didn’t sleep more than three, but he seemed thrilled to be allowed to watch video after video on the computer and never be told it was time for bed. Poor David had to get up the next morning to be at the conference at nine, four Philly time, but luckily Kyra was able to sleep in, with Michael snoring softly next to her.
The conference lasted five days, and each day, despite the rain, Kyra bundled up her little boy and took him to see the sights: Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the London aquarium on the R
iver Thames, Trafalgar Square, and St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Most of the time they didn’t stay nearly as long as Kyra would have liked, and even so, she had to buy a lot of toys as bribes. Michael’s favorite was the red double-decker bus like the ones he’d seen on Piccadilly. Kyra liked this toy, too, because it was made of wood by an ecologically friendly company that promised no splinters and no lead paint.
At night, they would have dinner with David: sometimes in a restaurant, but more often in the hotel, so Michael could play on the floor while David and Kyra relaxed and ate and drank a little wine. Their son didn’t like restaurants, primarily because he didn’t really like eating, but the doctor said it was normal for his age. As long as they gave him healthy foods, they didn’t need to worry. He would eat when he was hungry.
The entire time they were in London, Michael probably ate six bites of chicken, a third of a slice of bread, a half of a very small salad with everything but the lettuce removed, and two grapes. He also drank his orange juice, some of it anyway, but he refused to even sip his milk; he said it smelled “funny.” He didn’t look any thinner when they left, but Kyra thought he had to be. She also thought he seemed “off” in the cab to Heathrow airport, but she couldn’t put her finger on what was different. He was talking and pointing at the buses and other cabs. When David showed him one of the red phone booths, he laughed like he’d been told a seriously hilarious joke.
They were in the security line at Heathrow when Kyra suddenly felt sure Michael was getting sick. He wasn’t rubbing his ear or complaining about his tummy; he was just holding her hand, but that was strange enough as he never held her hand for more than a few minutes without being told to do so. And his eyes looked a little glassy. Or something. She kept looking at her son, wondering what was going on.
Her husband had a stack of articles to read before he got back to Philadelphia. They were through security and sitting near the terminal, and he was in the middle of a paper written by a woman from Harvard who disagreed with his thesis about the labor movement, when Kyra told him she was worried about Michael.
He looked up at Michael, who was sitting on her lap, holding his double-decker bus, spinning the wheels against his leg.
David said, “He seems all right to me.”
“I don’t know,” Kyra said slowly. “Maybe we should delay our flight. That way, we could see if—”
“Honey, even if he is getting a cold, flying won’t make it any worse, will it?”
“What if it’s not a cold? I asked him if his throat hurt and he said no.”
“That’s good, then.” He squeezed her hand in an absent-minded way. “Don’t worry.”
Before she could say anything else, he’d gone back to the article. He was scheduled to give a report on the conference to his department the next morning. He also had two classes to teach tomorrow. Of course he wanted to get back.
She turned Michael around in her lap so she could look at his eyes again. They weren’t watering or red, but they looked, well, glassy. It was the only word that described her little boy’s weird, faraway stare. It was almost as if he couldn’t focus his eyes. She wondered if this was the first sign that he needed glasses. Maybe it was something simple like that.
When they boarded the plane, Michael insisted on walking himself to his seat. Kyra was relieved, though he still kept his hand clutched in hers. The first hour of the flight was notable only for how quiet her little boy was. He was watching a Sesame Street video, but he didn’t try to sing along or point at Elmo the way he usually did. His whole face seemed to have that faraway look. By the time the video was over, he was shivering.
“Are you cold, sweetie?” Kyra said. He nodded and she got out his favorite blanket from the diaper bag. She put it on his legs, but her hand went to his forehead. Normally, she went straight to the thermometer without bothering with the forehead test because Michael’s fevers were always relatively low: 99.5, 100.3. But he wasn’t usually shivering like this, either.
He was burning up.
“David,” she said. “He needs Tylenol.”
He dropped his article and reached for the diaper bag. In the meantime, she unhooked Michael’s seat belt and leaned over to pick up her sick baby. He felt like a dead weight in her arms. His breaths were coming twice as quickly as usual and he was whimpering.
They managed to get the Tylenol drops down the little boy’s throat, and Kyra held him and waited for the drug to work to bring his fever down. After a half hour or so, it had helped; he no longer felt warm when she touched him. But he wouldn’t smile; he didn’t even look at the pages as David read his favorite book about trains and trucks. He kept his eyes shut and his face burrowed into her shoulder, as if the cabin lights were bothering him.
When he finally fell asleep, Kyra closed her eyes, too. She wanted to rest just for a minute, but almost an hour and a half went by before she woke up when Michael vomited down the front of both of their shirts.
David handed her a wet wipe, but she didn’t have time to wipe herself off before Michael vomited again. He hadn’t eaten much all morning, but now that he’d started vomiting, he couldn’t seem to stop dry-heaving. The people in the row next to them gave concerned looks, but no one knew what to do for the little boy, including the flight attendant who came by to see if they needed anything. The first time they told her no, but the second time, about fifteen minutes later, David said, “I think he needs a doctor.”
“Sir,” she said, “I know it’s rough being on a long flight with a sick little guy, but it’s going to be all right.” She smiled sympathetically.
Kyra tried to move Michael over a little, to take the pressure off her left arm, and he let out an awful scream. “I’m so sorry, baby,” she whispered. Her eyes were burning with tears.
“He needs help,” David said to the flight attendant. When she didn’t move, he said, “Now!”
A moment later, they heard the announcement, “If there is a doctor on board please make yourself known to the cabin staff.” The only doctor on the plane was a psychiatrist in his seventies, but he remembered enough of his medical school training to recognize that Michael was very sick. When the old man lifted up the little boy’s green and white shirt, there was a rash that hadn’t been there before, a rash that had developed in minutes. Kyra felt her body go numb when the doctor said the horrible word: meningitis.
What happened after that would always be a blur. Somehow they got through the next few hours as the aircraft moved over the ocean. When the plane landed, an ambulance was waiting on the tarmac. The next thing Kyra knew, they were at the hospital, and Michael was in the ICU, in a coma. The doctor in charge told them it was unlikely that he would live through the night.
She remembered sitting on a hard plastic chair, sobbing into her hands. But where was David? He was there, of course he was, but she had no memories of him trying to comfort her or letting her comfort him. She didn’t remember them ever holding hands or putting their arms around each other. And he never cried at all; she was certain of this, because it surprised her even at the time.
Michael survived the night, but the next morning, the doctor told them their baby still might die; it was only less likely than before. And even if he didn’t, he might have to have his legs amputated. He might have brain damage. He might have permanent hearing loss. He might be blind. The list of possibilities was terrible, but Kyra focused all her prayers on the only thing that mattered. As long as he was alive, she could keep going.
She had no idea if David prayed. She didn’t remember seeing him in the hospital chapel. She didn’t remember him being there when the priest knelt down with her in Michael’s room to say prayers to the Virgin Mary. Her mother-in-law was kneeling on the other side of the priest. Sandra was always there, bringing her coffee and food and lotion for her hands, which were so dry they were bleeding. The hospital had lotion, but Sandra said hers was be
tter. Kyra remembered sitting in a chair while her mother-in-law patted the lavender-smelling lotion onto her knuckles and palms. Neither of them spoke. Michael had had a seizure that afternoon. The doctors had done a scan and said he did not have brain damage. Yet.
Where was David? Why wasn’t he part of this memory? Even the night when Michael turned a corner, it was Sandra who she remembered being with her, not her husband. Though it was almost three in the morning, after the doctor told them the good news, the two women began to giggle like girls. They didn’t want to wake up Michael—now that he could be woken up like a normal little boy—so they went into the deserted relatives’ lounge, where Kyra finally agreed to let Sandra comb out her long hair. It was a tangled mess after days of living at the hospital, but Sandra was so gentle. At some point, Kyra blurted out, “I wish you were my mom,” but she forced a laugh.
“Your wish is granted.” Sandra laughed, too, and touched Kyra’s forehead with the comb, like it was a magic wand. Then she looked into Kyra’s eyes, which had filled with tears. “Aw, sweetheart.” She put her arms around Kyra. “I am your mom.”
“She is,” David said, smiling. “With all the rights and privileges attaching thereto.”
And just like that, her husband came into focus, sitting on the overstuffed chair on the other side of the lounge. Had he been there all along? That was the part she would never be sure of.
In the months that followed, whenever they talked about the hospital—not often, and always in language so vague that no one who wasn’t with them could have known what they were referring to, calling it “what happened with Michael,” or just “that November”—Kyra listened carefully to what her husband remembered, looking for points of intersection, places where he should have been in her own memories. But she didn’t admit that she couldn’t see him. She was afraid of what it might mean about her marriage, especially as David seemed to have changed so drastically since that flight home from London.