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Show Motherlunge a novel 163 the Bud Light sign topographically, plus my hair was lank and two loops of sweat hung in the armpits of my blue cotton blouse. I was, in a word, premenstrual, which is to say once again and I was still unpregnant, a loser in love. The first night that Pavia left me alone with her son I woke up in the middle of the night. The sound and the understanding came slowly to me, then tore through me. Crying. X. was crying, had been crying. I hadn't heard. I went to him of course, as quickly as I could. I pulled him from his crib, held him-took him downstairs and fed him a bottle of Pavia's milk from the freezer. But when he had finished he started to cry again and though I offered him another bottle I couldn't make him stop. I walked him in circles in the front room. The streetlights forced shadows over us-the hand-like shapes of the leaves outside-in grey and green, anemic. I had been told that babies always cry for a reason-they're hungry, they're wet, their foot is jammed in the space between the couch and the floor-and that I could discover it. On the other hand, I had also read that babies cry for no reason at all; they sometimes can't be fixed. X. cried and cried, and I didn't know if he had a reason. I wondered if Pavia would have known. Once as a kid, Pavia asked Walter-our father-what he wanted for his birthday. He answered her, "A gun. One that would fit inside my mouth." Pavia, eleven years old at the time, had shaken her head no. No. |