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Show 7 Motherlunge a novel 138 aftermath of a long day that was bad and itself a sort of aftermath, deserved, of all my selfishness. Thus it was late, well past X.'s bedtime, when I finally pointed the stroller's grimy wheels toward home. And when I arrived at the apartment-having dragged the stroller backwards up the steps with X. still in it, him holding onto the bar in front with two knob-like fists and shuddering at each banging vertical increment-and as I opened the door with the wet key I 'd held in my mouth, I was surprised that the red light of the answering machine wasn't on. I thought Pavia would have called by then. I even thought she might be home already. Nevertheless onward I went into baby care: bottle, diaper change, pajamas. I rocked X. in the chair that Jack, red-faced with embarrassed pride and the strain of carrying forty pounds of crafted pinewood up from the car, had bought the week before his son was bom. X., bless him, fell asleep quickly as I rocked him. Like his mother, he slept with his eyes slightly open, two slivers of blue-white sclera gleaming beneath his black eyelashes. I laid my nephew in his crib, and crept backwards out of the bedroom, a reverse thief. Downstairs, all the lights were off. The streetlights extruded perfect rectangles of light through the front windows and onto the floor, catching the poles and sails of the stroller parked in the hallway as with a storied shipwreck. General got up unsteadily from his bed by the fireplace, did a lap around the couch, and thudded back down again. I sat down on the couch and grabbed the remote, and when I turned the TV on, the note taped to its front glowed supernaturally, This is what my sister had written: |
