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Show Motherlunge a novel 164 She could tell the difference: crying for a reason, or for nothing. She'd shaken her head no and walked away. Pavia had chosen to end her maternity leave early. X.'s daycare was in the same industrial park where Pavia worked, in the building next to hers. "So that's good," she would say. There was no extra commute to get him there, plus she could see him at lunchtime. And it was convenient for Jack, too, who still worked at Pavia's company, but in another division. "So that's good," she would add. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he picked X. up and brought him back to the house. Jack fed and bathed him, talking softly to him, coaxingly, half-fearfully now as if to a voodoo doll. X.-chubbier, more vigorous, more Jack-like-gurgled back or farted softly through the fabric of his onesie or clutched a small handful of his father's face flesh and was unable to let go, and his father would laugh. Pavia would sometimes ask how these evenings had gone, and I reported them faithfully (see above), and she would nod vaguely at me. "So that's good," she would say reflexively. "What do you do, anyway, when Jack is tending Xavier?" I asked Pavia once while she stood at the kitchen sink washing out parts of the breast pump. Per their agreement, she was staying away from the house on the nights that Jack watched X., coming home in time for one last feeding before bedtime. |