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Show Motherlunge a novel 146 Of course, just as the closing of a door signals the opening of a window, the end of one chapter is also the beginning of another. And as forecast, things were different once we brought X. home. For one thing, the lighting was different: Pavia couldn't take having the overhead lights on, and she kept all the curtains drawn. Only a few small lamps lit the apartment. In transit between sleep and wakefulness, between feedings, diaper changes, and X.'s surprisingly forceful eruptions of spitup, my sister padded around in the new, picturesque murk. In the circle of Flemish light below each table lamp there was a still-life of apple cores, folded sections of last week's newspaper, and baby bottles with curdled breastmilk clinging to the sides. My sister's thinning face was half in shadow, Pavia the Elder... Outside, excluded, spring continued to develop. "This time is going so fast," Jack would insist to Pavia. He was coming over after work each day and staying the night so he could help with the middle-of-the-night feedings. Each evening the supposedly estranged couple would share a beer sitting side by side on the couch, X. balanced on Jack's wide thighs. Pavia and Jack wrapped and unwrapped X.'s blankets around him with all the attention and tenderness of a bomb squad, cataloguing his components. For example, the new co-parents noted that X.'s eyes were large and gray and were likely to turn hazel like his mother's; he had his mother's sidelong, appraising gaze, too. His thin arms were like Jack's, already lumped with shoulder muscles. X.'s hair was self-contradictory, curly in the back but straight on top, black over the fontanel but pale white-almost fiber-optical-at his ears and neck. Most amazing of all to Jack was that their baby knew them! When Jack called his name-XavierU- their baby lurched from |