A Cry In the Night (27 page)

T
his time it wasn't false labor. Quietly Jenny lay in bed timing the contractions. From ten minutes apart for two hours, they suddenly accelerated to five-minute intervals. Jenny patted the small mound in her abdomen. We've made it, young Mr. Krueger, she thought. For a while I wasn't sure we would.

Dr. Elmendorf had been cautiously pleased on her last visit. “The baby is about five pounds,” he said. “I'd wish it bigger but that's a comfortable weight. Frankly I was sure you were going to deliver prematurely.” He'd done a scan. “You're right, Mrs. Krueger. You're going to have a boy.”

She went down the hall to call Erich. The door of his bedroom was closed. She never went there. Hesitating she knocked. “Erich,” she called softly.

There was no answer. Could he have gone to the cabin during the night? He'd started painting again but always came home for dinner. Even if he went back to the cabin for the evening he returned to the house at some point.

She'd asked him about the panel that separated his old room from the master bedroom. “My God, Jen, I'd forgotten all about it. Why do you get the idea someone has been opening it? I'll bet Rooney is in and out of this place more than we realize. I warned you against getting so cozy with her.”

She hadn't dared tell him that Rooney talked about seeing Caroline.

Now she pushed open the door to the room he'd been using and reached for the light. The bed was made. Erich wasn't here.

She'd have to get to the hospital. It was only four o'clock. There wouldn't be anyone up until seven. Unless . . .

Padding softly on bare feet down the wide foyer, Jenny passed the closed doors of the other bedrooms. Erich would never use any of those except. . .

Cautiously she opened the door of his old room. The Little League trophy on the dresser glistened in the moonlight. The bassinette, now frothy with a yellow silk skirt overlaid with white net, was next to the bed.

The bedcovers were rumpled. Erich was asleep, his body hunched in his favorite fetal position. His hand was thrown over the bassinette as though he'd fallen asleep holding it. Something Rooney had said came back to her. “I can see Caroline rocking that bassinette by the hour with Erich fussing in it. I used to tell him he was lucky to have had such a patient mother.”

“Erich,” Jenny whispered, touching his shoulder.

His eyes flew open. He jumped up. “Jenny, what's the matter?”

“I think I'd better get to the hospital.” He got out of bed quickly, put his arms around her. “Something told me to come in here tonight, to be near you. I fell
asleep thinking how wonderful it will be when our little boy is in that bassinette.”

It had been weeks since he had touched her. She had not realized how starved she had been for the feeling of arms around her. She reached up her hands to his face.

In the dark her fingers felt the curve of his face, the softness of his eyelids.

She shivered.

“What is it, dear? Are you all right?”

She sighed. “I don't know why but just for a minute I was so frightened. You'd think this was my first baby, wouldn't you?”

•   •   •

The overhead light in the delivery room was very bright. It hurt her eyes. She was slipping in and out of consciousness. Erich, masked and coated like the doctors and nurses, was watching her. Why did Erich watch her all the time?

A last rush of pain. Now, she thought, now. Dr. Elmendorf held up a small, limp body. All of them bending over it. “Oxygen.”

The baby had to be all right. “Give him to me.” But her lips didn't form the words. She couldn't move her lips.

“Let me see him,” Erich said. He sounded anxious, nervous. Then she heard his dismayed whisper. “He has hair like the girls,
dark red hair!”

•   •   •

When she opened her eyes again the room was dark. A nurse was sitting by the bed.

“The baby?”

“He'll be fine,” the nurse said soothingly. “He just gave us a little scare. Try to sleep.”

“My husband?”

“He's gone home.”

What was it Erich had said in the delivery room? She couldn't remember.

She drifted in and out of sleep. In the morning a pediatrician came in. “I'm Dr. Bovitch. The baby's lungs aren't fully developed. He's in trouble but we'll pull him through, Mother. I promise you that. However, since you gave your religion as Roman Catholic we thought it best to have him baptized last night.”

“Is he that sick? I want to see him.”

“You can walk down to the nursery in a little while. We can't take him out of the oxygen yet. Kevin's a beautiful little baby, Mrs. Krueger.”

“Kevin!”

“Yes. Before the priest baptized him he asked your husband what you planned to call him. That is right, isn't it? Kevin MacPartland Krueger?”

•   •   •

Erich came in with an armful of long-stemmed red roses. “Jenny, Jenny, they say he'll make it. The baby will make it. When I went home I spent the night crying. I thought it was hopeless.”

“Why did you tell them his name was Kevin MacPartland?”

“Darling, they said they didn't think he'd survive more than a few hours. I thought we'd save the name Erich for a son who would live. It was the only other name that came to my mind. I thought you'd be pleased.”

“Change it.”

“Of course, darling. He'll be Erich Krueger the fifth on his birth certificate.”

•   •   •

The week she was in the hospital Jenny forced herself to eat, husbanded her strength, pushed back the depression that sapped her energy. After the fourth day they took the baby out of oxygen and let her hold him. He was so frail. Her being ached with
tenderness as his mouth reached for her breast. She had not nursed Beth or Tina. It had been too important to get back to work. But to this child she could give all her time, all her energy.

She was discharged from the hospital when the baby was five days old. For the next three weeks she went back there every four hours during the day to nurse him. Sometimes Erich drove her. Other times he gave her the car. “Anything for the baby, darling.”

The girls got used to her leaving them. At first they fussed, then became resigned. “It's all right,” Beth told Tina. “Daddy will mind us and we have fun with him.”

Erich heard. “Who do you like best, Mommy or me?” He tossed them in the air.

“You, Daddy,” Tina giggled. Jenny realized she'd learned the answers Erich wanted to hear.

Beth hesitated, glanced at Jenny. “I like you both the same.”

Finally, the day after Thanksgiving, she was allowed to bring the baby home. Tenderly, she dressed the small body, glad to hand back the coarse hospital shirt and replace it with a new one, washed once to soften the cotton fibers. A long flowered nightgown, the blue woolen sacque and bonnet, a receiving blanket, the brushed wool bunting lined in satin.

It was bitterly cold out. November had brought snow, ice-tipped, constant. Wind whispered through the trees, stirring the naked branches into restless movement. Smoke wisped constantly from the chimneys in the house, from the office, blew over the ridge from Clyde and Rooney's home near the cemetery.

The girls were ecstatic over their little brother, each pleading to hold him. Sitting beside them on the couch, Jenny let them have a turn. “Gently, gently. He's so tiny.”

Mark and Emily dropped by to see him. “He's
beautiful,” Emily declared. “Erich is showing his picture to everyone.”

“Thank you for your flowers,” Jenny murmured, “and your father and mother sent a beautiful arrangement. I phoned to thank your mother but apparently she wasn't home.”

The “apparently” was a deliberate choice of words. She was certain that Mrs. Hanover was home when she called.

“They're so happy for you . . . and for Erich, of course,” Emily said hastily. “I'm just hoping I'm giving someone over here ideas.” She laughed in Mark's direction.

He smiled back at her.

You don't make remarks like that until you're pretty sure of yourself, Jenny thought.

She tried to make conversation. “Well, Dr. Garrett, how do you judge my son? Would he win a prize at the county fair?”

“A thoroughbred, for sure,” Mark replied. What was there in his voice? A worried tone? Pity? Did he see something as fragile in the baby as she did?

She was sure of it.

•   •   •

Rooney was a born nurse. She loved to give the baby the supplemental bottle after Jenny breast-fed him. Or she would read to the girls when the baby was sleeping.

Jenny was grateful for the help. The baby worried her. He slept too much; he was so pale. His eyes began to focus. They would be wide with the hint of almond shaping that Erich's had. They were china blue now. “But I swear I see some green lights in them. I bet they're like your mother's eyes, Erich. You'd like that?”

“I'd like that.”

He moved the four-poster to the south wall of the
master bedroom. She left the partition open between that room and the small one. The bassinette was kept there. She could hear every sound the baby made.

Erich still hadn't moved back into their room. “You need your rest a little longer, Jenny.”

“You can come in with me. I'd like that.”

“Not yet.”

Then she realized she was relieved. The baby consumed her every thought. At the end of the first month he had lost six ounces. The pediatrician looked grave. “We'll increase the formula in the supplemental bottle. I'm afraid your milk isn't rich enough for him. Are you eating properly? Is anything upsetting you? Remember a relaxed mother has a happier baby.”

She forced herself to eat, to nibble, to drink milk shakes. The baby would start to nurse eagerly then tire and fall asleep. She told the doctor that.

“We'd better do some tests.”

The baby was in the hospital three days. She slept in a room near the nursery. “Don't worry about my girls, Jenny. I'll take care of them.”

“I know you will, Erich.”

She lived for the moments she could hold the baby.

One of the valves in the baby's heart was defective. “He'll need an operation later on, but we can't risk it yet.”

She thought of Maude Ekers' curse: “God damn the baby you're carrying.” Her arms tightened around the sleeping infant.

“Is the operation dangerous?”

“Any operation has potential risk. But most babies come through nicely.”

Again she brought the baby home. The tiny birth fuzz started to fall out. Fine golden shades of down began to replace it. “He'll have your hair, Erich.”

“I think he'll stay red like the girls.”

December came. Beth and Tina made up long lists
for Santa Claus. Erich set up a huge tree in the corner near the stove. The girls helped him. Jenny held the baby as she watched. She hated to put him down. “He sleeps better this way,” she told Erich. “He always feels so cold. His circulation is poor.”

“Sometimes I don't think you care about anyone except him,” Erich observed. “I have to tell you, Tina and Beth and I are feeling pretty left out, aren't we?”

He took the girls to see Santa Claus in a nearby shopping mall. “What a list,” he commented indulgently. “I had to write everything down that they were ordering. The big things they seem to want are bassinettes and baby dolls.”

Luke had come back to Minnesota for the holidays. He, Mark and Emily stopped in on Christmas afternoon. Emily looked subdued. She showed an exquisite leather pocketbook. “Mark's present. Isn't it lovely?”

Jenny wondered if she had been expecting an engagement ring.

Luke asked to hold the baby. “He's a little beauty.”

“And he's put on eight ounces,” Jenny announced joyfully. “Didn't you, Pumpkin?”

“Do you always call him Pumpkin?” Emily asked.

“I suppose it sounds silly. It's just that Erich sounds like too much name for such a tiny little scrap. He'll have to grow into it.”

She looked up smiling. Erich looked impassive. Mark, Luke and Emily were exchanging startled glances. Of course. They'd probably seen the birth notice in the paper the day after the baby was born, the notice that listed his name as Kevin. But hadn't Erich explained?

Emily rushed to fill the awkward silence. Bending over the baby again, she said, “I think he'll have the same coloring as the girls.”

“Oh, I'm sure he's going to be blond like Erich.”
Jenny smiled again. “Just give him six months. We'll have a Krueger towhead.” She took him from Luke. “You'll look just like your daddy, won't you, Pumpkin?”

“That's what I've been saying right along,” Erich commented.

Jenny felt the smile freeze on her face. Did he mean what she thought he meant? She looked searchingly from one face to the other. Emily looked acutely embarrassed. Luke stared straight ahead. Mark was stony-faced. She felt the anger in him. Erich was smiling warmly at the baby.