Baby’s screaming wouldn’t stop. It echoed through the whole house from upstairs in its crib, threatening to lift the roof off in one long cataclysmic wail: “I neeeeed yeeww! Where are yeeeeewww! I knooow you’re down theeeerrre!”
Downstairs, Daddy sat on the couch facing Mommy by the front window coated in frost. They locked eyes, their faces creased like two paper bags. They held their breath as tight as two divers. A faint smell hung in the air like sour milk.
Daddy glanced up at the living room clock, its spiky minute hand dragging across a pale face. It was a 12:23 on a Saturday afternoon. Nearby, the wallpaper had buckled a little. Baby’s onslaught began a half hour ago, after Mommy plopped it in the crib for its nap, surrounded by piles of picture books and stuffed bunnies and kitties.
He could picture Baby standing up on its toes, hands gripping the bars, red-faced, gasping for breath between sobs. A galaxy of radioactive-green stars swirled on the ceiling. From a small cube white noise gushed.
He held up both palms to Mommy, fingers spread as if in surrender, and mouthed the words, “Ten more minutes.”
Mommy felt she was on the verge of tears. She clamped her hands over her hears and collapsed sideways onto a cushion. It killed her to hear Baby in despair.
“Why won’t you comme up heeeeeerrre? I don’t want to sleeeeeep! I’m not tiiiirr-red! Puh-leeeease!”
Daddy remembered from Sociology seeing the slow-motion footage of a mother’s face when its infant cried, a micro-seconds shift from murderous rage to wide-eyed compassion.
Mommy didn’t know how much longer she could stand it. She shoved herself up and hurried into the kitchen to do dishes, where the rush of water from the faucet helped smother Baby’s howling.
Daddy sat stone-faced on the couch. The house was chilly, but he refused to put on a sweater. They both knew Baby needed its nap, that without its nap it would turn into Bad Baby, flinging toys and food on the floor, screeching like a wild animal, its eyes bleary and unfocused.
“I luuuuuvve you! Why won’t yeeww help meeeeeee?”
Mommy reappeared wringing her hands in a towel. She nodded at the clock with fierce determination. The minute hand ticked into place. Ten minutes. They both knew this couldn’t go on. Daddy hung his head. Mommy went to the foot of the stairs and prepared to climb them quietly, the carpet soft under her sneakers, waiting for the creak at the top to give her away.
Daddy watched Mommy start to glide upstairs like an ascending angel in a church pageant. He caught his breath and listened for the moment that Baby’s shrieking ceased, when an enormous silence would settle over the house like a big soft blanket and they would all crawl under it, and Daddy would tell stories about a hairy monster with jagged teeth who was really friendly, the terrible interlude all but forgotten as sleet pinged the windows and tree branches brushed the sides of the house like an impatient creature seeking warmth.
Based in Boston, Gary Duehr has taught creative writing for institutions including Boston University, Lesley University, and Tufts University. His MFA is from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. In 2001 he received an NEA Fellowship, and he has also received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the LEF Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Journals in which his writing has appeared include Agni, American Literary Review, Chiron Review, Cottonwood, Hawaii Review, Hotel Amerika, Iowa Review, and North American Review.
His books include Point Blank (In Case of Emergency Press), Winter Light (Four Way Books) and Where Everyone Is Going To (St. Andrews College Press).