A Cry In The Night

30

She dreamed of a pigeon. Somehow it seemed terribly ominous. It was flying through the house and she had to catch it. It mustn’t be allowed in the house. It sailed into the girls’ room and she followed it. It flew frantically round and round the room. It escaped her hands and fluttered past her into the baby’s room. It settled on the bassinette. She began to cry, no, no, no.

She woke up with tears drenching her face and rushed in to the baby. He was sleeping contentedly.

Erich had left a note on the kitchen table. “Taking your advice. Will be at cabin painting for a few days.”

At breakfast, Tina paused over her cereal and said, “Mommy, why didn’t you talk to me when you came into my room last night?”

That afternoon Rooney stopped in to visit and it was she who first realized that the baby had a fever.

She and Clyde had had Christmas dinner with Maude and Joe. “Joe’s doing fine,” Rooney informed Jenny. “Going down to Florida right from the hospital did wonders for him and for Maude too. Both of them that tanned and healthy. Joe gets rid of the brace next month.”

“I’m so glad.”

“Course Maude says she’s happy to be home now. She told me Erich was real generous to them. But I guess you know that. He paid every cent of the medical bills and gave them a check for five thousand dollars beside. He wrote Maude that he felt responsible.”

Jenny was stitching the last of her quilt together. She looked up. “Responsible?”

“I don’t know what he means. But Maude told me she feels real bad that the baby hasn’t been well. Says she remembers saying awful things to you.”

Jenny remembered the awful things Maude had said.

“Guess Joe admitted that he’d had a pretty good hangover that morning; insists it was likely he’d mixed up the poison and oats.”

“Joe said that?”

“He did. Anyhow I think Maude wanted me to give you her apologies. I know when they got back last week Joe went down and spoke to the sheriff himself. Joe’s real upset about all the rumors flying around his accident. You know, because of the wild thing he said about seeing you. He said he don’t know why he ever said anything like that.”

Poor Joe, Jenny thought. Trying to undo irreparable harm and then making it worse by stirring it up again.

“My, Jenny, do you realize that your quilt is just about finished? Real lovely too. That took patience.”

“I was glad to have it to do,” she said.

“Will you hang it in the dining room near Caroline’s?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

She hadn’t thought about very much today except the possibility that she was sleepwalking. In her dream she’d been trying to chase a pigeon out of the girls’ room. But had she actually been in the room?

There were too many episodes like this now over the past few months. The next time she went in to see Dr. Elmendorf, she’d talk to him about them. Maybe she did need some counseling.

I am so afraid, she thought.

She had begun to doubt whether Erich would ever forgive her for the notoriety that she had caused. No matter how hard they both tried, it would never be right again. And no matter what Erich said, she believed that subconsciously he was not sure that the baby was his son. She couldn’t live her life out with that between them.

But the baby was a Krueger and deserved the best medical attention Erich’s wealth could obtain for him. After the baby had the operation and was well, if things hadn’t gotten much better, she’d leave. She tried to visualize living in New York, working in the gallery, the day-care center, picking up the children, hurrying home to start dinner. It wouldn’t be easy. But nothing was easy and many women managed it. And anything would be better than this terrible feeling of isolation, this sense of losing touch with reality.

Nightmares. Sleepwalking. Amnesia. Was even amnesia possible? She’d never had any trouble in the apartment in New York. She’d be bone-tired at the end of the day but always slept. She might not have had nearly enough time for the girls but now it seemed she had no time. She was so worried about the baby and Erich kept whisking Tina and Beth off on outings that she couldn’t or wouldn’t attend.

I want to go home, she thought. Home wasn’t a place, maybe not even a house or apartment. Home was where you could close your door and be at peace.

This land. Even now. The snow falling, the wind blowing. She liked the savageness of the winter. She imagined the house as she had started to arrange it. The heavy curtains down, this table at the window, the friends she’d expected to make, the parties she would have given over the holidays.

“Jenny, you look so sad,” Rooney said suddenly.

She tried to smile. “It’s just…” Her voice trailed off.

“This is the best Christmas I’ve had since Arden went. Just watching the children so happy and being able to help you with the baby…”

Jenny realized that Rooney never called the baby by name.

She held up the quilt. “Here it is, Rooney, complete.”

Beth and Tina were playing with their new picture puzzles. Beth looked up. “That is very pretty, Mommy. You’re a very good sewer.”

Tina volunteered, “I like it better than the one on the wall. Daddy said that yours won’t be as nice as the one on the wall and I thought that was mean.”

She bent her head over her book. Every line of her body suggested injury.

Jenny could not help smiling. “Oh, Tinker, you’re such an actress.” She went over, knelt down and hugged her.

Tina returned the hug fiercely. “Oh, Mommy.” I’ve given them so little time since the baby came, Jenny thought. “Tell you what,” she said, “we’re going to bring Pumpkin down in a few minutes. If you two wash your hands you can have a chance to hold him.”

Rooney interrupted their squeals of delight. “Jenny, may I get him?”

“Of course. I’ll fix his cereal.”

Rooney was back downstairs in a few minutes, carefully holding the blanketed baby. She looked concerned. “I think he has a fever.”

At five o’clock Dr. Bovitch came. “We’d better take him to the hospital.”

“No, please.” Jenny tried not to have her voice quiver.

The pediatrician hesitated. “We could give it till morning,” he said. “Trouble is-with infants the fever can go high pretty fast. On the other hand, I’m not crazy about taking him out in the cold. All right. Let’s see how he is in the morning.”

Rooney stayed and prepared supper for them. Jenny gave the baby aspirin. She was chilled herself. Was she catching cold or was she simply numb with anxiety? “Rooney, hand me my shawl, please.”

She wrapped it around her shoulders, sheltered the baby in it as she held him.

“Oh, dear.” Rooney’s face was ashen.

“What is it, Rooney?”

“It’s just that the shawl, I didn’t realize when I made it that the color… with your dark hair… for just a minute it was like watching that painting of Caroline. Made me feel kind of queer.”

Clyde was coming at seven-thirty to walk Rooney home. “He won’t have me out of the house alone at night,” Rooney confided. “Says he doesn’t like my wild talk after I’ve been out alone.”

“What kind of wild talk?” Jenny asked absently. The baby was sleeping. His breathing sounded heavy.

“You know,” Rooney said, her tone lowered to a whisper. “Once in one of my spells, when I just spill out words, I told Clyde I’ve been seeing Caroline around an awful lot. Clyde got real mad.”

Jenny shivered. Rooney had seemed so well. She hadn’t talked about seeing Caroline since before the baby was born.

There was a sharp knock at the door and Clyde stepped into the kitchen foyer. “Come on, Rooney,” he said, “let’s get started. I want my dinner.”

Rooney brought her lips up to Jenny’s ear. “Oh, Jenny, you have to believe me, she’s here. Caroline’s come back. I can understand, can’t you? She just wants to see her grandchild.”

For the next four nights Jenny kept the bassinette by the side of her bed. A vaporizer circulated warm, moist air, a dim nightlight made it possible for her, between snatches of sleep, to see that the baby was covered, that he was breathing easily.

The doctor came every morning. “Just have to watch for any signs of pneumonia,” he said. “In an infant a cold can go into the lungs in a few hours.”

Erich did not come back from the cabin. During the day, Jenny brought the baby down and put him in the cradle near the stove. That way she could watch him all the time and still be with Beth and Tina.

The possibility that she was sleepwalking haunted Jenny. Dear God, could she be wandering outside at night? From a distance she would look like Caroline, especially if she had the shawl wrapped around her.

If she were sleepwalking, it would explain Rooney’s claims of seeing Caroline, Tina’s, “Why didn’t you talk to me when you came into my room,” Joe’s absolute certainty that he had watched her get in Kevin’s car.

On New Year’s Eve, the doctor’s smile was genuine. “I think he’s just about over it. You’re a good nurse, Jenny. Now you’ve got to get some rest yourself. Put him back in his own room. If he doesn’t look for a feeding during the night, don’t wake him up.”

After she nursed the baby at ten o’clock, Jenny rolled the bassinette back. “I’m going to miss you as my bunky, Pumpkin,” she said. “But it’s awfully nice to have you over that cold.”

The baby’s eyes, deep midnight blue, looked solemnly up at her from under long sooty lashes. The incoming blond fuzz sent silky gold lights through his dark strands of birth hair. “Do you know you’re eight weeks old?” she asked. “What a great big boy.”

She tied the drawstring on the long nightgown. “Now kick all you want,” she smiled. “You’re going to be covered in spite of yourself.”

For a long minute she held him against her, sniffing the faint scent of talcum. “You smell so good,” she whispered. “Good night, Pumpkin.”

She left the sliding panel open only a crack and got into bed. The new year would begin in a few hours. A year ago tonight, Fran and some of the other people in the brownstone had stopped in. They’d known that she was bound to be feeling low; the first New Year that Nana hadn’t been with her.

Fran had joked about Nana. “She’s probably up in heaven, leaning out the window rattling a noisemaker.”

They’d laughed together. “It’s going to be a good year for you, Jen,” Fran had said. “I feel it in my bones.”

Good year! When she finally got back to New York she’d tell Fran to get her bones checked. They were sending out the wrong vibes.

But the baby! He made everything else that had happened this year unimportant. I take it back, she thought quickly. It was a good year.

When she awakened, the sun was streaming in, a clear, cold light that warned of a frigid day outside. The small porcelain clock on the night table said five minutes of eight.

The baby had slept through the night, slept through his six o’clock feeding. She bolted out of bed, shoved the panel aside and rushed to the bassinette.

The long lashes cast tranquil shadows on the pale cheeks. A blue vein on the side of the tiny nose was dark against the translucent skin. The baby’s arms were flung over his head; his tiny hands were open, the fingers spread so they resembled stars.

The baby was not breathing.

Afterward she remembered screaming, remembered running with the baby in her arms; running out in her nightgown, barefoot, across the snow to the office. Erich, Clyde, Luke and Mark were there. Mark grabbed the baby from her, putting his mouth down to the tiny lips.

“Crib death, Mrs. Krueger,” Dr. Bovitch said. “He was a very sick infant. I don’t know how he could have survived the operation. This is so much easier for him.”

Rooney intoned over and over again, “Oh, no, oh, no!”

“Our little boy,” Erich wailed. My little boy, she thought fiercely. You denied him your name.

“Why did God take our baby to heaven?” Tina and Beth asked.

Why indeed.

“I’d like to bury him with your mother, Erich,” Jenny said. “Somehow it would be less lonesome leaving him there.” Her arms ached and felt empty.

“I’m sorry, Jenny,” Erich said firmly. “I can’t disturb Caroline’s grave.”

After a Mass of the Angels, Kevin MacPartland Krueger was placed next to the three babies who had been lost in other generations. Dry-eyed, Jenny watched as the small casket was lowered. That first morning on this farm she’d looked at those tombstones and wondered how anyone could bear the grief of losing a child.

Now that grief was hers.

She began to weep. Erich put his arm around her. She shook it off.

They filed back to the house, Mark, Luke, Clyde, Emily, Rooney, Erich, herself. It was so cold. Elsa was inside. She had made sandwiches. Her eyes were red and swollen. So Elsa has feelings, Jenny thought bitterly, and then was ashamed.

Erich led them into the front parlor. Mark was beside her. “Jenny, drink this. It will warm you up.” The brandy burned her throat. She hadn’t touched liquor from the moment she knew she was pregnant. Now it didn’t matter.

Numbly she sat down, sipped the brandy. It was so hard to swallow.

“You’re trembling,” Mark said.

Rooney heard him. “I’ll get your shawl.”

Not the green one, Jenny thought, not the one I wrapped the baby in. But Rooney was laying it over her shoulders, tucking it around her.

Luke’s eyes were riveted on her. She knew why. She tried to shrug off the shawl.

Erich had allowed Tina and Beth to bring their bassinettes into the parlor so they could be with everyone. They looked frightened.

Beth said, “Look, Mommy, this is the way God will cover our baby in heaven.” Lovingly she tucked the blanket under her doll’s chin.

There was absolute silence in the room.

Then Tina’s voice, sweet and clear: “And this is the way that lady”-she pointed to the painting- “covered the baby the night God took him to heaven.”

Slowly, deliberately, she opened her palms and pressed them over her doll’s face.

Jenny heard a harsh, drawn-out gasp. Had it come from her own lips? Everyone was staring at the painting now, and then in a single gesture, every head turned and eyes that burned and questioned stared at her.