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Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 98 Angie stood over the crib holding her breath. She wanted to hear if Cleo so much as exhaled. The baby didn't move. Carefully Angie lowered the guardrail and placed her ear next to Cleo's mouth. She couldn't tell, cursed herself again, and pinched the baby's thigh. She had to pinch twice more, and hard the second time, to get the wail she wanted. Relief washed through her, and she picked Cleo up to comfort them both. "Anybody home?" her mother sang from the livingroom. Angie had given her a key, and for some reason that made her mother think she didn't have to knock anymore. "Where's that granddaughter?" she called, and Angie came back up the hall to meet her. Her mother wore a sharp lavender pantsuit and too much perfume. She liked to dress as though she had somewhere important to be, but she never did. She had just come from her hairdresser's with a new short style. Her fifty years showed only in the broad gray streaks, which she refused to dye. Her mother thought older women who dyed their hair advertised poor self esteem, which she considered to be a very graceless behavior. Angie forced a smile, but saw there was no need; her mother looked only at Cleo. She scooped the baby out of Angie's arms, twirled, and bounced the baby about the room. She cleaned the forgotten tears from Cleo's cheeks, careful to keep her long thumbnail away from Cleo's eye, and said, "She's been crying." "Babies cry." "Babies cry because they need something. She's dirty or hungry or scared." "Sometimes they just cry," Angie huffed, and threw herself down on the antique couch her parents had given her when she'd moved out. She'd hoped, for no deserved reason, her mother wouldn't be like this today. |