29.

I was bending Ian’s ears when the pediatrician arrived the next morning. She woke him up and pulled at his legs, uncurling him.

“He looks great,” she said. “You’re nursing?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How’s it going?”

“I’m a little sore.”

“That will pass in a few days, just stick with it,” she said, passing him from the rolling cot to me. “I don’t need to tell you how good it is for him. Is he latching on?”

I nodded.

“Great,” she said, watching as he started his butting, squirming, sucking routine. “Looks like you’re both doing just fine.” She scribbled on her board. “Things you want to look out for—projectile vomiting. Spitting up, even in large quantities, is normal, but projectile vomiting, or vomit that looks greenish in color, is cause for concern. Are you circumcising?”

“No,” I said. I blurted it out without thinking about it, but after I did, I realized I’d blurted out the right answer.

She grinned, her thin, lipsticked lips reminding me of Glenda the good witch. “I have my own opinions about circumcision for nonreligious reasons,” she said. “I’m glad we’ll both be spared that little chat this morning.” She glanced at me and looked around the room, and the bluster left her voice. “Who’s picking you up?”

“My boyfriend. He’ll be here any minute,” I said. I would have liked to stay longer. It was safe and orderly there, the nurses with their thermometers and paper cups of Percocet pills and Jell-O.

“Here’s my card,” she said, brushing my arm with her smooth cotton coat. “Call me anytime, day or night. No question too dumb, and I’ll be happy to do the follow-up with you in two weeks’ time.”

She and Will passed each other in the doorway without saying anything.

“When can you leave?” He stood over me, patting Ian’s sleeping, furry, black-haired head.

“Not sure,” I said. “I think she has to give the okay and then we sign out.” My phone buzzed.

“I’ll go see about signing out,” Will said, walking out purposefully.

“I just have to finish up something,” Dad said. “I can be there soon.”

“Okay, but I think we’re leaving,” I said.

“Call me if I’m not there when you need to go,” he said. “But I’ll be there.”

I hung up, annoyed that I’d have to manage him again. Will didn’t come back for a long time and I thought for sure Dad would get there first. I pictured Will hitching a ride to Montana on a Mr. Softee truck, getting a job on a dude ranch. When he finally showed up, he looked sweaty and I wondered if it was too hot outside for Ian. “There was a shitload of paperwork at the desk,” he said, setting his jacket on the swinging bed table. “I’ve been out there forever. This kid is like a minute old. Unbelievable.”

I passed Ian to Will and he tensed up a little, the crook of his arm almost swallowing Ian’s head. Will looked up at me and for a moment it was like someone had zapped an unbreakable blue force field around the three of us. I collected stuff at the sink and threw them into my bag.

“You think he’s eating enough?” Will asked anxiously. “He’s sleeping so much.”

“The doc said every three hours,” I said. “I don’t think they eat much the first few days. They said my milk won’t come in for a while anyway. Whatever that means.”

“What does it mean?” he asked. “What does it mean, ‘come in’? Why don’t you have it yet?”

“I read in the book that I’ll know when it comes in because my boobs will get ‘engorged.’ ”

“Sounds scary,” he murmured, his face turned back to Ian.

“I know. Engorged. So sexual,” I said, untying my gown in the corner so Will wouldn’t see my deflated pooch of a stomach. “But the doc said they sleep eighteen hours a day in the beginning.”

“You’d think he’d be a little curious, after being cooped up in there for so long,” he said. “Can you imagine how boring it must have been? Just sitting there, endlessly in the dark?”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

We pushed out of the revolving doors toward the street, and everything outside—the low roof of the atrium, the blowing trees—felt menacing. I saw Dad at the end of the driveway and my heart sank: How were we all supposed to fit in that tiny car? How were we going to get the car seat in? I realized I’d forgotten to call him, and couldn’t believe he was actually there. He was pointing a video camera at us through the driver’s-side window.

“Glad I caught you.”

We walked to the car and Will tried to hoist the car seat up a little higher so Dad could get a look at Ian. It was a weird scene: us standing frozen in front of the car while Dad filmed Ian asleep in the seat. It was like he couldn’t take the camera away from his face and just look at him.

“Hey there, little man,” Dad finally said, getting out of the car. He paused the camera and turned to study me. “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” I said. “Glad we’re going home. How are we going to do this?”

“Well …” Dad opened his door again and pushed the tan bucket seat as far forward as it would go. I crouched into the back, snagging a hole in the cellophane of the Westons’ Zabar’s bag, and waited for someone to hand me the car seat. Will was the first to try, angling the square plastic base away from the top of Dad’s headrest, but it was too wide for the car seat to get through.

“Easy!” Dad said, pushing the seat-back down, clearly worried about tearing. As I leaned forward, a jar of Bonne Maman jam somehow rolled out of the car and smashed on the curb. Ian’s head was dangling in a way I did not like at all.

“Watch his head!” I said.

“He’s okay, Thee,” Will said, huffing, kicking the jam glass out of their way. The car seat was now completely stuck between the ceiling and the seat.

“Let me have at it,” Dad said. He reached in and now there were men’s arms and hands groping and grabbing in front of me. I was surprised at how similarly tanned and hairy they were. Eventually Dad nudged Will aside and extracted the car seat back out into the blazing sun, Ian still sound asleep.

They wound up squeezing the car seat, with Ian still in it, through the space between the two front seats.

“Remind me not to get a ride with you again,” I said, pushing the seat belt through the holes in the base like the instructions on the side of the seat said. “I’m sure I’m doing this wrong.”

Dad put his foot on the clutch and the car lurched out of the driveway. He drove his car just like he drove his boat, as though it had a single stop-start button. I immediately thought of waterskiing, or not waterskiing.

“So this is the famous Aston,” Will said, stroking the burled-wood window panel.

“This is it,” Dad said. “Where am I taking you to again?”

“Ninth Street, between Fifth and Sixth,” I said, watching Will push a panel in front of him that revealed an empty slot.

“Don’t tell me, this is where an eight-track player used to live,” he marveled.

Dad glanced at him, unsure of what he meant.

“I read that you’re supposed to walk them around the house and introduce them to everything,” I said.

“I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.” Will smiled, turning back to me.

“You never know how much they can take in,” Dad said, his voice weirdly animated, like he was a game-show host trying to psyche up his contestants. I felt a pang of appreciation that he was being such a good sport. “I always thought you were wise beyond your years when you were a baby.”

We got to Florence’s apartment and hoisted Ian back out the way we got him in. Dad made a big deal of holding open the doors and carrying my bag, looking for things to do. We climbed the three flights, Will gripping the car seat. The stairs were dark except for a bulb with grubby fingerprints on it dangling from the second landing. Dad would be seeing where we lived, where Ian would be living, for the first time. We all watched Ian in his car seat, levitating up the stairs.

Will put the seat down to open the door and Dad picked it up and walked in, looking around for a place to set it down. He finally nestled it into the crook of the couch, and set my bag down next to it.

“Do you want a drink or something?” I asked.

“No, I should run along,” Dad said, fixing his eyes on Florence’s hanging wall-quilt. “How about I run out and get you guys a few things first? Something for dinner? Some fruit? A chicken?”

“That’s okay, thanks,” said Will. “I’ll run out later.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” we both said.

Dad went over to Ian and bent down to kiss his forehead. The kiss seemed to last forever. I made a face at Will from behind him.

“Okay, you guys,” he said, coming up for air. “Call me if you need anything.”

“Thanks for taking us home,” I said, walking him to the door.

“I’m glad everything went well.” He opened the door with one hand and threw his other arm around me in an awkward hug.

I shut the door and turned back down the hallway. “What was with that kiss? It was like he was anointing him or something.”

“Give him a break,” Will said. “It was nice of him. Do you think he was horrified by this place?”

“Of course not,” I said.

“He looked horrified to me,” Will said. “Considering where he lives, I’m sure it was not up to par.”

“You haven’t seen where he lives,” I said, sitting down on the couch next to the car seat.

“Yes, I have, and it’s slightly grander than this.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, trying to undo Ian’s straps. “He doesn’t care about that stuff.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “You don’t have a job like that, you don’t work like that and not care. Anyway, I’m starving.”

Will went out and came back with four slices of pizza stacked in a white paper bag. Ian slept on a blanket next to me on the couch while Will figured out how to straighten all four legs of the Pack ’n Play at the same time. Dad had ordered it online and had it mailed to us, along with a stroller that carried the car seat, and another regular stroller. After we’d unpacked everything, a mountain of cardboard, plastic wrap and Styrofoam engulfed the living room. I couldn’t help but think how lucky we were to have benefactors on our side who had sent us everything we needed. No matter how hard things might get, I thought, we were lucky. I told myself to remember that.

The Pack ’n Play had a plastic U-shaped bar that hung across the basket and shined lights and played music.

“I bet we never turn this thing on,” he said.

“You never know,” I said, inhaling my second slice.

“There’s something very Rosemary’s Baby about it.” He wound it up and moved his eyes from side to side, imitating a marionette. He glanced at Ian from where he was on the floor.

“I have a son,” he murmured.

“You have a son,” I said.

The Pack ’n Play clicked down and Will leaned over to turn the dial in the middle of the base, his boxer shorts puffing out of the top of his jeans. Every part of his body still struck me in the same way that a piece of art or the idea of heaven did: enduring and pure and a little bit out of reach.

He stood up, fists on his hips, proudly assessing his handiwork. I went over to him, feeling all banged up and contorted inside, and put my arms around him. “This is totally freaky,” I said, “but kind of fun.”

He smiled and pressed his forehead to mine. “Yup.”

“I can’t help being a little happy.”

“Me too,” he said.

“Really?”

He nodded slowly, glancing at Ian. “He’s so cool. His tiny little everything. Did you smell him? When he first came out? I’ll never forget that smell.”

I put Ian on Will’s chest and they both fell asleep in Florence’s armchair. After that, Ian woke up every twenty minutes, sometimes to eat or cry. I thought of what Mom had said when I used to stay up late watching old reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show, fixating on the wool furniture and swinging kitchen doors and married life: “Once you lose sleep, you can never get it back.” I remembered my old self, how I used to brush my hair by the radiator and make it stand up. How Vanessa and I would lie in bed and talk in the dark, and it was like our universe hung in the air and we were somehow talking about everything and the night would go on and on. An unbelievably loud motorcycle roared down the street and I waited to hear the sound of someone cursing out their window at it, but it never came and then everything went quiet again, Will on my left side in the creaky, lumpy bed, Ian on my right, where he’d fallen asleep at my boob. It seemed easier to hold him there; he cried when I put him down. I couldn’t move an inch, but I didn’t care: it was warm and still and us.