Part 21 (1/2)

”I should be asking you,” Charlie said. ”Come to think of it, you should be sitting down. Come to think of it, I I should be sitting down. Henry, make yourself useful. Finish unpacking,” Charlie said. ”You should be taking care of us.” should be sitting down. Henry, make yourself useful. Finish unpacking,” Charlie said. ”You should be taking care of us.”

”You're so right,” Henry said. He lifted the cake from the counter and placed it before them on the kitchen table.

”Henry!” they both exclaimed, but at the exact moment they did, Mabel let out a cry. It was full-throated, and Karen sprang up automatically, looking both happy and panicked, a combination Henry recognized from the many practice mothers he'd seen.

”It's all right,” he heard himself say. ”You can't pick a baby up every time he cries.”

Karen laughed, and Charlie smiled, and Henry felt rage.

”I'm serious,” Henry said.

Small circles of darkness had appeared on Karen's s.h.i.+rt. She looked down and grinned, embarra.s.sed but pleased.

”Thanks for the cake, sweetie,” she said to Henry, and slipped out of the room.

Charlie managed, with apparent difficulty, not to follow her.

”Great cake,” he said, and the artist in Henry suddenly wondered what it was about Charlie's face that gave away his insincerity. Something about the eyes, Henry thought: The look had been too fast to capture, but Henry sensed that Charlie's eyes had narrowed, and his whole face had jutted forward as if to compensate for an actual lack of interest.

”Listen,” Henry said. ”This may be the only thing I actually have had more experience with than you, and if you don't train the baby now, you can't train her later.”

Charlie stopped smiling. ”Are you kidding?” he asked.

”No.”

”Train her? What would we train her to do?”

”Everything,” Henry said. ”Anything.”

”Listen to me, pal,” Charlie said. ”I'm going to go in there now, so this probably isn't the time to talk. But it seems to me that when a doorbell rings, you answer it, and when a baby cries, you pick her up.”

”Then that's what she'll always expect,” Henry said, marveling at the realization that his saying this would be, if Martha could only hear it, the best gift he'd ever given her.

”Then that's what she'll always get,” Charlie said.

AT FIRST, BEING ALONE WITH MABEL was an extraordinarily heady experience. For all his time in the practice house helping out with the practice babies, Henry could count on only one hand the times he had been left completely in charge of an infant, without Martha or a practice mother nearby. Mabel, in any case, was smaller than any baby Henry had ever held-smaller than any baby he had ever imagined. When Henry held her, even with his hand behind her neck for support, he could feel the s.h.i.+fting fragility of her, the fragmented mobility, of a body that seemed still to be in the process of being formed, not yet knit together.

Despite what Henry had told the Falks, he picked her up every time she cried. It was not out of sympathy, empathy, or respect for the Falks' views but rather because experience quickly taught him that the girls in Reynolds West would descend from all corners at even the faintest hint of the baby's distress. He didn't want interruptions. He wanted to be the one in charge.

In a moment, Mabel's face could turn primal, wrathful, purple, murderous-her tiny mouth stretched into an ageless anguish. A moment later, the comfort of Henry's arms or the rhythm of his walk or the chant of his voice could wipe all traces of pain away. Mabel looked up at him, her eyelids as pink as the inside of a sh.e.l.l, her tiny lashes like an insect's legs. He had never in his whole life been more aware or more afraid of the harm that he could do.

THE FALKS CAME BACK FROM a staff meeting at eleven o'clock on a morning in February, shaking the snow from their hats and boots, laughing at something, happy and eager.

”Where's that little girl?” Charlie said. Even his cheeks-usually so pale-were tipped red with the cold. The shoulders of his winter coat were mottled with melting snow, and he held at least five logs in his arms.

”What's the wood for?” Henry asked.

”I'm building a boat,” Charlie said. ”What do you think the wood's for?”

Karen, smiling, took off her coat, and Charlie carried the wood into the living room, where he dropped it before the fireplace. At the sound, Mabel woke and started to cry. Without apparent hesitation, fatigue, or even annoyance-with an expression that instead suggested eagerness-Karen strode into the bedroom to pick the baby up.

Charlie, meanwhile, took off his coat, and Henry stared into the fireplace, where the bricks he had painted with logs and flames had long since been taken for granted as a quirky fixture in a quirky place.

”Why don't you get us some kindling?” Charlie asked.

”Kindling?”

”Kindling. You know. Small sticks that make the bigger sticks burn?”

Henry said nothing.

”Tell me that, in the vast expanse of your home economics training, you were never taught how to build a fire.”

Henry knew that Charlie had meant this to sound affectionate, but to Henry it just sounded mean.

Outside, he walked around to the back of the dorm. The snow was already melting, and his feet were wet within minutes. What was the point of gathering sticks if they were soft and wet?

Nevertheless he found a few fallen branches on the path that were not entirely soaked, and a dozen more by the apple trees. He brought them back inside.

Charlie was kneeling by the fireplace, his mustard-colored corduroys perfectly matching the background in the Matisse. He had already used some bricks to form makes.h.i.+ft andirons, and he was rolling up newspapers and wedging them between and around the logs.

Henry dropped his armful of kindling, then sat in the armchair beside the growing fire.

AN HOUR Pa.s.sED IN SILENCE, an hour in which Karen nursed the baby and Charlie and Henry stared into the fire. No one asked Henry a question. No one acknowledged that he was there.

A s.p.a.ce had formed between the bottom log and the ashes below it, a s.p.a.ce that was a long, down-turning arc filled in by embers, an orange frown. Flames rose between that log and the two or three in back, drawn upward by the draft from the flue-yellow with brown and blue licks.

While Mabel dozed, the Falks sat by the fire, alternately entranced by it and by her. Henry stood up and took a step back from the tableau, then another, then another-daring the Falks to notice that he'd left their charmed circle. But it was not until he opened the door, and the cold wind blew onto Charlie's and Karen's backs, that they noticed where Henry was standing.

”What the h.e.l.l are you doing?” Charlie asked.

”Henry! The baby!” Karen said, holding Mabel closer, as if the wind was a weapon.

”I'm leaving,” Henry said, in answer to Charlie's question.

”Well, you might consider putting your coat and scarf on first,” Charlie said.

”No, I mean I'm leaving,” Henry said.

”To go where?” Karen asked.

”To New York. To be with my mother.”

For a moment, they both looked at him, their warm threesome temporarily frozen.

”You are not,” Karen said.