Let him lose himself in his online trading.
'How was your day?' she asked.
'Somewhere between suicide and murder,' he said. 'The tech stocks fell off this afternoon. Had clients reaming out my ear over the phone.'
'They can't blame you for things that are out of your control,' she said. She didn't understand how the whole system worked, people trading bits of paper and hope, all of it seeming remote from the real world and money.
'Yeah, but they pay me to know,' Peter said, the martini already two-thirds vanished, his fingers going from keyboard to mouse and back again. 'Any idiot can guess or play a hunch. But I'm supposed to outperform the market.'
'I'm going to paint the nursery.'
'Damn. SofTech dropped another three points.'
Peter used to bring Amanda down in the mornings, have her at his feet while he caught up on the overnight trading in Japan. He would let Katie have an extra half-hour's sleep. But the moment Amanda started crying, Peter would hustle her up the stairs, drop her between Katie's breasts, and head back to the computer. 'Can't concentrate with her making that racket,' was one of his favorite sayings.
Katie suddenly pictured one of those 'dial-and-say' toys, where you pulled the string and the little arrow spun around. If Peter had made the toy, it would stop on a square and give one of his half-dozen patented lines: 'You shouldn't be doing this to yourself' or 'Just put it behind you and move on' or 'We can always try again later, when you're over it.'
'I was reading an article today,' she said. 'It said SIDS could be caused by-'
'I told you to stop with those damned parenting magazines.'
SIDS could be caused by several things. Linked to smoking, bottle feeding, stomach-sleeping, overheating. Or nothing at all. There were reports of mothers whose babies had simply stopped breathing while being held.
Sometimes babies died for no apparent reason, through nobody's fault. The doctors had told her so a dozen times.
Then why couldn't she put it behind her?
Because Amanda had Katie's eyes. Even dead, even swaddled under six feet of dirt, even with eyelids butterfly-stitched in eternal slumber, those eyes stared through the earth and sky and walls to pierce Katie. They peeked in dreams and they blinked in those long black stretches of insomnia and they peered in from the windows of the house.
Those begging, silent eyes.
The eyes that, on dark nights when Peter was sound asleep, watched from the nursery.
No, Katie, that's no way to think. Babies don't come back, not when they're gone. Just think of her as SLEEPING.
Katie changed channels. Wheel of Fortune. Suitably vapid. Peter's fingers clicked over some keys, another fast-breaking deal.
She glanced at him, his face bright from the glow of the computer screen. He didn't look like a millionaire. Neither did she. But they were, or soon would be. As soon as the insurance money came in.
She almost hated Peter for that. Always insuring everything to the max. House, cars, people. They each had million-dollar life policies, and he'd insisted on taking one out for Amanda.
'It's not morbid,' he'd said. 'Think of it as life's little lottery tickets.'
And even with the million due any day now, since the medical examiner had determined that the death was natural, Peter still had to toy with those stocks. As addicted as any slot-machine junkie. He'd scarcely had time for sorrow. He hadn't even cried since the funeral.
But then, Peter knew how to get over it, how to put it behind him.
'I'm going up,' she said. 'I'm tired.'
'Good, honey. You should get some rest.' Not looking away from the screen.
Katie went past him, not stooping for a kiss. He'd hardly even mentioned the million.
She went up the stairs, looked at the door to the nursery. She shuddered, went into the bedroom, and turned off the radio. A faint hissing filled the sonic void, like air leaking from a tire. The monitor.
She could have sworn she'd turned it off. Peter would be angry if he knew she'd been listening in on the nursery again. But Peter was downstairs. The silence from the empty room couldn't bother him.
Only her. She sat on the bed and listened for the cries that didn't come, for the tiny coos that melted a mother's heart, for the squeals that could mean either delight or hunger. Amanda. A month old. So innocent.
And Katie, so guilty. The doctors said it wasn't her fault, but what did they know? All they saw were blood tests, autopsy reports, charts, the evidence after the fact. They'd never held the living, breathing Amanda in their arms.
The medical examiner had admitted that crib death was a 'diagnosis of exclusion.' A label they stuck on the corpse of a baby when no other cause was found. She tried not to think of the ME in the autopsy room, running his scalpel down the line of Amanda's tiny chest.
Katie stood, her heart pounding. Had that been a cry? She strained to hear, but the monitor only vomited its soft static. Its accusing silence.
She switched off the monitor, fingers trembling.
If she started hearing sounds now, little baby squeaks, the rustle of small blankets, then she might start screaming and never stop. She might go utterly, beyond the reach of those brightly colored pills the doctors had prescribed. She got under the blankets and buried her head beneath the pillows.
Peter came up after an hour or so. He undressed without speaking, slid in next to her, his body cold. He put an arm around her.
'Honey?' he whispered. 'You awake?'
She nodded in the darkness.
'SofTech closed with a gain.' His breath reeked of alcohol, though his speech wasn't slurred.
'Good for you, honey,' she whispered.
'I know you've been putting off talking about it, but we really need to.'
Could she? Could she finally describe the dead hollow in her heart, the horror of a blue-skinned baby, the monstrous memory of watching emergency responders trying to resuscitate Amanda?
'Do we have to?' she asked. She choked on tears that wouldn't seep from her eyes.
'Nothing will bring her back.' He paused, the wait made larger by the silence. 'But we still need to do something about the money.'
Money. A million dollars against the life of her child.
He hurried on before she could get mad or break down. 'We really should invest it, you know. Tech stocks are a little uneven right now, but I think they're going to skyrocket in the next six months. We might be able to afford to move out of the city.'
She stiffened and turned away from him.
'Christ, Katie. You really should put it behind you.'
'That article on SIDS,' she said. 'There's a link between smog levels and sudden infant death.'
'You're going to make yourself crazy if you keep reading that stuff,' he said. 'Sometimes, things just happen.' He caressed her shoulder. 'We can always try again later, you know.'
She responded with silence, a ten-ton nothingness that could crush even the strongest flutters of hope. Peter eventually gave up, his hand sliding from her shoulder, and was soon snoring.
Katie awoke at three, in the dead stillness of night. A mother couldn't sleep through the crying of her baby. As she had so many nights after the birth, she dragged herself out of bed and went to the nursery. They should have put the crib in their bedroom, but Peter said they'd be okay with the monitor on.
Katie's breasts had quit leaking over a week ago, but now they ached with longing. She closed her robe over them and went into the hall, quietly so that Peter could get his sleep. She opened the door and saw the eyes. The small eyes burned bright with hunger, need, love, loss. Questions.
Katie went to them in the dark, and leaned over the crib. The small mouth opened, wanting air. The light flared on, stealing her own breath.
'What are you doing in here?' Peter said.
