The Baby in the Bedroom

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The baby in the bedroom has veins as thin and fine as strands of hair leading to her heart, each muffled heartbeat a whisper, her blood pressure no more forceful than the drip from a leaky faucet.

The mother and father are out.   They are at the grocer’s.   Food: food is good, is necessary.   Or so they are told.   Eat up, they are told.   This, like everything, is easier said.

They are barely a mother and a father.   The mother and the father have only been a mother and a father for four months.   The baby will not be a baby much longer, which is to say, she will never be a toddler or a teenager because she will die soon, the doctors say sternly and prophetically she.will.be.dead.   But the mother and the father will always be a mother and a father.

The grocer’s is a place of sorrow.   A minefield of nevers.   As in, she will never eat that eggplant, she will never have her first sip of wine, she will never overturn a bowl of that sugary cereal in a fit of pint-sized pique.   The mother and the father would give her all the sugary cereal she could eat, would stuff her full of Choco-Puffs and Honey Ohs and Marshmallow Treasures.   There are too many children in the cereal aisle.

The baby in the bedroom, her veins as thin and fine as strands of hair, is breathing.   Just barely.   Each minute that passes, and she goes on inhaling and exhaling: a miracle!

The mother and father return.   They are never out for long.   They take short breaks while the nurse is there, or family members.   Friends still bring dinners sometimes, stop by to check in; but the baby is still alive, so much longer, months longer, than anyone expected—four months!—and how long can they go on mourning?

The baby’s feeding tube has fallen out, and no one knows how to reinsert it, resulting in frantic calls to the nurse—why bother teaching them when the baby isn’t going to survive?   But the baby survives.   Her veins as thin and fine as strands of hair, and she lives, she lives, she lives, she lives.

The mother and father make quiet, desperate love.   When the baby isn’t alive anymore, they know, even this small comfort, this gift they give each other, will be impossible.   They remember the time before the baby.   No, not exactly.   They know there was a time before the baby, only in a shadowy and vague way, and they cannot remember it.   There is only always the baby.

Eat up, say their parents.   Keep up your strength.   But what is strength?   Is strength going to work every day and staring sightlessly at a computer screen?   Is strength waking up every morning to the same nightmare?   Strength is a baby whose veins are as thin and fine as strands of hair, still alive after four months.   Maybe five months will come—maybe six—maybe nine—maybe a year.   The mother and father think only of tomorrow.

The baby in the bedroom is sleeping.   How she sleeps!   Look at her elfin face.   Her eyelids are transparent.   Her hair is the color of straw, of honey, of sunshine.   Her eyes are the color of the sky at lunchtime.   Her hands are no bigger than quarters.   Her veins are strands of hair.   She stirs, she sighs.   She’s a little heartbreaker, says a stupid person, meaning it as a compliment.

The mother and the father dream the same dream: a river of blood, rushing and gushing, overflowing its banks.   Maybe they have been dreaming for the past four months, and soon they’ll wake, shaken, laugh together, and go rouse their little girl, four months old, glowing, growing, golden, alive, alive, alive.

A mother and a father walk into a bar.   Stop me if you’ve heard this one.   A mother and a father walk into a bar.   No, it’s just the father.   He’s there all night, nursing a glass of dark-colored liquid.   The mother’s at home with a bottle of wine.   The baby’s in the bedroom.   I’ve forgotten the punchline.

In the bedroom, machinery whirs.   The baby breathes.   Watch the rise and fall of her chest, so slight, you must stand perfectly still.   But she breathes.   That’s what’s important.   The only thing that matters.   Breathe, baby, breathe.

The father works.   He is a project manager, which means nothing.   He is painfully aware of how little he matters, of how little anything he does truly matters.

The art of losing is hard to master.   The mother stays busy, alphabetizing the food in the refrigerator and lining up all the shoes in the closet chronologically by date of purchase.   Everything in the house is accounted for.   The beds are made, the DVDs organized by genre and year, the potted plants placed in descending order on the porch.   She wrings her hands and looks for something else to do.

The mother finds the father asleep on their bed with his arm curled up over his head like a child.   She strokes the hair from his forehead.   She is overcome with love for him.

Hello, how are you, yes we’re doing fine, thanks for asking, yes hanging in there, day by day, you know how it is, ha ha, yes I’ve lost quite a bit of weight, who needs a diet anyway, everything happens for a reason.

She has gotten so good; she doesn’t even choke on that last bit anymore.

The baby in the bedroom has veins as thin and fine as strands of hair leading to her heart.   Her heart is a muscle no larger than her tiny fist, and with it she fights, she fights, she fights, she fights.

The mother wakes from a fitful sleep, rises and instinctively goes to the bassinet and peers in the darkness at the baby’s face.   Is she breathing?   The mother can’t tell.   The mother holds her breath, listening, and she holds it and doesn’t let it go.