Butterfly Soup. Nancy Pinard
then lowers his pitch to match it, just missing. The interval is awful. Valley switches it off, heads to the living room rocker and sits down. He arches his back and flails his arms, toothless gums spread wide around his bawling. His legs pedal at her stomach and thighs. He is hard to restrain, but she rocks anyway. How can a four-month-old baby be so strong? With the chair still moving, she doubles over him and shhs in his ear, but Joey can’t hear. His blue romper is damp with sweat. Tears streak down his cheeks.
Valley sings “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain” at the top of her lungs, clapping his hands and adding a “wheeha!” at the end of each line. The Johnson twins love that. Joey wails.
Facedown at her feet is a fluffy teddy bear. Valley seizes its behind and snuggles it up to Joey. “Look, here’s your bear, Joey. Let’s name your bear.” Joey bats the bear away, arms flailing. “How about Sebastian?” Valley has a bear named Sebastian. But Joey hates the name. He arches his back and howls. She tosses Sebastian on the couch.
Panic flits at the edge of her consciousness. What is wrong with him? With her? How hard should it be to rock a baby? The TV commercials with the mother smiling at her sleeping baby play lullabies in the background. It looks so serene. Chalk up another way television romanticizes everything. She should have known.
What if her mother is right? What if she can’t manage an infant? Valley’s arms feel numb, as if her blood is too thick for her veins. Her heart thuds, trying to push it around. Joey’s voice rises and falls like a siren, its overtones playing tag around the edges of her mind. She can hardly hear the voice in her own head. He’s too young to bribe with a Popsicle as she does when Mary Jane Walker has a temper tantrum. “Man, you’re really on a roll.” She tries to calm herself by laughing at him. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.” She bobs her head up and down as if he has her doubled over. He out-yowls her laughter. What should she do? Weddings go on and on. He’s showing no signs of fatigue. What had her teacher said about this in Home Ec? She can’t think. If Joey would shut up, maybe she could remember.
Valley gets up and tromps around the living room, jostling Joey with every step. Snot is smeared down his romper. His face has turned an ugly red-purple, and she wonders that a mere fifteen minutes ago she thought he was cute. Her toes curl with every shriek. She holds him away from her ear. He looks like a slimy beet. “Stop it!” she hollers. She’s instantly ashamed.
She lays Joey on the couch next to Sebastian and watches Joey thrash while she takes several deep breaths and decides to try a bottle. His mother said he just ate, but anything is worth a try, and with all the hollering, he might have worked up an appetite. She runs to the kitchen, finds the bottle in the fridge and sticks it in the microwave. “Never mind. I’m coming back,” she yells, though she doesn’t know why it matters. Joey doesn’t care. He cries whether she’s there or not.
While the microwave ticks off the slowest minute on record, she goes to the living room door to check on him. Joey has scooted to the corner of the couch, his noise muffled slightly by Sebastian’s fur. “Good job, Sebastian.” It’s mean to say it, but it’s how she feels. Joey can’t hear her.
In the kitchen the microwave is counting down from twenty-seven seconds. Joey’s cranking isn’t as loud with the microwave humming in her ear. Twenty seconds to go. His squalls are intermittent now. Maybe she’s the problem, and he’s better off alone. Maybe she should stay in the kitchen and let him work it out. The seconds count down. The turn-table rotates, and Valley watches, mesmerized, as the bottle circles round and round. When the microwave clicks off, the house is quiet. Valley waits while the overtones of the humming die away, then inhales deeply, as if silence has become a component of air. She’s done it. Joey has finally quit howling. The silence is more than a reward. It’s heavenly bliss. She collapses into the counter. It’s been a long morning, but Joey has finally, finally gone to sleep.
She tiptoes to the living room and peeks around the doorway at him. He is a different child. Her mother always talks about how she liked to watch Valley sleep. She pulls Sebastian away from his face gently so as not to wake him. She’ll go upstairs and get his blanket. Let him nap right here. But as she’s about to leave, something about him strikes her as not quite right. For a baby that was flailing two minutes back, he is awfully still. She watches his back. Surely his back should be moving.
Holy Mother of God.
Valley runs to the phone. Dials home. Hangs up before it rings. Dials the hospital. “Middleton Community Hospital.” It’s an older woman. Valley can’t force words out. “Hello? Hello? Can I help you?” Valley hangs up. Runs to the window. Looks up and down the street. Old Mr. Carmichael is on his porch. He can’t help. He can hardly get out of the rocker.
Images of Joey in a casket rise in her mind’s eye. The room is closing in, but she refuses to faint. She snatches Joey up. His head lops to one side. She lifts him higher, his chest to her cheek, but can hear nothing but the ringing in her ears. His body is so heavy. “Oh, God,” she shrieks, thumping his back. “Someone help me!”
Joey shudders. One leg pedals.
At least she thinks so. She may have jostled him. She thumps his back again. Rubs in a circle.
He sputters. Coughs.
Tears pop to Valley’s eyes.
Joey takes a deep breath. A year passes while Valley waits. He exhales.
“Good boy, Joey. You are such a good boy.” The tears break from her eyes and disappear in the nap of his sleeper. Joey inhales again. Exhales. Double shudders. Inhales.
He is breathing. In, out. In, out. He opens his eyes. Looks into her face. Screws up his face and mewls at her. She runs to the phone. Dials home. “Mom. I need you to come. Joey’s having a bad time.”
The familiar thrum of the Galaxy engine out on the Harpers’ driveway comforts Valley—like the pendulum of the cuckoo clock over the couch at home. Joey is still sobbing when her mother bursts through the door. “It’s awful hot in here, Valley,” she says. “Take your vest off, lamb. You’ll die of the heat.” She takes Joey and cuddles him to her bosom, crooning lulling nonsense into his ear. He nuzzles into her like a favorite pillow, wiping snot all over her dress. Valley retreats to the couch, stuffing the guilty Sebastian behind her.
“Don’t smother him, Ma.”
“He’s just rooting around, goosie. You don’t have to worry.” Her mother stands in the middle of the room, swaying gently. Joey’s sobs, muffled by her breast, change to rhythmic whimpering, then slow to occasional gasps.
“Has he been doing this long?” Her mother looks straight at her for the first time.
Valley nods and looks away. She takes a Good Housekeeping from the end table as an excuse. There’s a picture of Princess Diana on the cover, in a green maternity dress with huge white polka dots and a white sailor collar. Motherhood is everywhere.
“You should have called me sooner,” her mother says. “A baby always knows inexperienced arms.” She looks at Joey. “Hasa been ’creamin’ and hollerin’, lambkin? Whatsa matter widda big boy? Huh? Whatsa matter?” she croons into the top of his head, punctuating each question with kisses on top of his head. “I think he wants a bottle, Valley. Did Mrs. Harper make one up?”
Valley gets the bottle from the microwave. Her mother settles into the rocker and tickles his cheek with the nipple. He turns and takes it into his mouth, sucking eagerly. She sings “Rock-a-bye Baby” in her thin soprano as he sucks.
Valley pictures Joey dumped from the cradle and lying limp on the ground, blue as a Smurf. “Mom, don’t sing that. It’s awful.”
“It’s just a song, silly. He doesn’t understand the words.”
“Well, I do. Don’t sing it.”
“He got you real upset, didn’t he, lamb? I don’t know who needs the rocking more—Joey or you.”
Valley folds her hands, clenching her muscles around the knot in her stomach so it won’t unravel and give