Vanish

baby was fussing again, and no matter how closely Jane cuddled her, rocked her, her daughter would not stop squirming. What am I doing wrong, she wondered, staring down at her frustrated infant. Why am I so clumsy at this? Seldom had Jane felt so inadequate, yet this three-day-old baby had reduced her to such helplessness that, at four in the morning, she felt the sudden, desperate urge to call her mother and plead for some maternal wisdom. The sort of wisdom that was supposed to be instinctual, but had somehow skipped Jane by. Stop crying, baby, please stop crying, she thought. I’m so tired. All I want to do is go back to bed, but you won’t let me. And I don’t know how to make you go to sleep.

She rose from the chair and paced the room, rocking the baby as she walked. What did she want? Why was she still crying? She walked her into the kitchen and stood jiggling the baby as she stared, dazed by exhaustion, at the cluttered countertop. She thought of her life before motherhood, before Gabriel, when she would come home from work and pop open a bottle of beer and put her feet up on the couch. She loved her daughter, and she loved her husband, but she was so very tired, and she did not know when she’d be able to crawl back into bed. The night stretched ahead of her, an ordeal without end.

I can’t keep this up. I need help.

She opened the kitchen cabinet and gazed at the cans of infant formula, free samples from the hospital. The baby screamed louder. She didn’t know what else to do. Demoralized, she reached for a can. She poured formula into a feeding bottle and set it in a pot of hot tap water, where it sat warming, a monument to her defeat. A symbol of her utter failure as a mother.

The instant she offered the bottle, pink lips clamped down on the rubber nipple and the baby began to suck with noisy gusto. No more wailing or squirming, just happy-baby noises.

Wow. Magic from a can.

Exhausted, Jane sank into a chair. I surrender, she thought, as the bottle rapidly emptied. The can wins. Her gaze drifted down to the Name Your Baby book lying on the kitchen table. It was still open to the L’s, where she’d last left off skimming the names for girls. Their daughter had come home from the hospital still nameless, and Jane now felt a sense of desperation as she reached for the book.

Who are you, baby? Tell me your name.

But her daughter wasn’t giving away any secrets; she was too busy sucking down formula.

Laura? Laurel? Laurelia? Too soft, too sweet. This kid was none of those. She was going to be a hell-raiser.

The bottle was already half empty.

Piglet. Now there was an appropriate name.

Jane flipped to the M’s. Through bleary eyes she surveyed the list, considering each possibility, then glancing down at her ferocious infant.

Mercy? Meryl? Mignon? None of the above. She turned the page, her eyes so tired now that she could barely focus. Why is this so hard? The girl needs a name, so just choose one! Her gaze slid down the page and stopped.

Mila.

She went stock-still, staring at the name. A chill snaked up her spine. She realized that she had said the name aloud.

Mila.

The room suddenly went cold, as though a ghost had just slipped through the doorway and was now hovering right behind her. She could not help a glance over her shoulder. Shivering, she rose and carried her now-sleeping daughter back to the crib. But that icy sense of dread would not leave her, and she lingered in her daughter’s room, hugging herself as she rocked in the chair, trying to understand why she was shaking. Why seeing the name Mila had so disturbed her. As her baby slept, as the minutes ticked toward dawn, she rocked and rocked.

“Jane?”

Startled, she looked up to see Gabriel standing in the doorway. “Why don’t you come to bed?” he asked.

“I can’t sleep.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“I think you’re just tired.” He came into the room and pressed a kiss to her head. “You need to go back to bed.”

“God, I’m so bad at this.”

“What are you talking about?”

“No one told me how hard it would be, this mommy thing. I can’t even breast- feed her. Every dumb cat knows how to feed her kittens, but I’m hopeless. She just fusses and fusses.”

“She seems to be sleeping fine now.”

“That’s because I gave her formula. From a bottle.” She gave a snort. “I couldn’t fight it anymore. She was hungry and screaming, and there’s that can sitting right there. Hell, who needs a mommy when you’ve got Similac?”

“Oh, Jane. Is that what you’re upset about?”

“It’s not funny.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“But you’ve got that tone of voice. This is too stupid to be believed.”

“I think you’re exhausted, that’s all. How many times have you been up?”

“Twice. No, three times. Jesus, I can’t even remember.”

“You should have given me a kick. I didn’t know you were up.”

“It’s not just the baby. It’s also…” Jane paused. Said, quietly: “It’s the dreams.”

He pulled a chair close to hers and sat down. “What dreams are you talking about?”

“The same one over and over. About that night, in the hospital. In my dream, I know something terrible has happened, but I can’t move, I can’t talk. I can feel blood on my face, I can taste it. And I’m so scared that…” She took a deep breath. “I’m scared to death that it’s your blood.”

“It’s only been three days, Jane. You’re still processing what happened.”

“I just want it to go away.”

“You need time to get past the nightmares.” He added, quietly: “We both do.”

She looked up at his tired eyes, his unshaven face. “You’re having them, too?”

He nodded. “Aftershocks.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“It would be surprising if we weren’t having nightmares.”

“What are yours about?”

“You. The baby…” He stopped, and his gaze slid away. “It’s not something I really want to talk about.”

They were silent for a moment, neither one looking at the other. A few feet away, their daughter slept soundly in her crib, the only one in the family untroubled by nightmares. This is what love does to you, Jane thought. It makes you afraid, not brave. It gives the world carnivorous teeth that are poised at any moment to rip away chunks of your life.

Gabriel reached out and took both her hands in his. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Let’s go back to bed.”

They turned off the light in the nursery and slipped into the shadows of their own bedroom. Under cool sheets he held her. Darkness lightened to gray outside their window, and the sounds of dawn drifted in. To a city girl, the roar of a garbage truck, the thump of car radios, were as familiar as a lullaby. As Boston roused itself to meet the day, Jane finally slept.