Killer, Come Back to Me

d tolerant with her if she says anything about—well—about wishing the child had been born dead. And if things don’t go well, the three of you drop in on me. I’m always glad to see old friends, eh? Here, take another cigar along for—ah—for the baby.”

* * *

It was a bright spring afternoon. Their car hummed along wide, tree-lined boulevards. Blue sky, flowers, a warm wind. David talked a lot, lit his cigar, talked some more. Alice answered directly, softly, relaxing a bit more as the trip progressed. But she held the baby not tightly or warmly or motherly enough to satisfy the queer ache in Dave’s mind. She seemed to be merely carrying a porcelain figurine.

“Well,” he said, at last, smiling. “What’ll we name him?”

Alice Leiber watched green trees slide by. “Let’s not decide yet. I’d rather wait until we get an exceptional name for him. Don’t blow smoke in his face.” Her sentences ran together with no change of tone. The last statement held no motherly reproof, no interest, no irritation. She just mouthed it and it was said.

The husband, disquieted, dropped the cigar from the window. “Sorry,” he said.

The baby rested in the crook of his mother’s arm, shadows of sun and tree changing his face. His blue eyes opened like fresh blue spring flowers. Moist noises came from the tiny, pink, elastic mouth.

Alice gave her baby a quick glance. Her husband felt her shiver against him.

“Cold?” he asked.

“A chill. Better raise the window, David.”

It was more than a chill. He rolled the window slowly up.

* * *

Suppertime.

Dave had brought the child from the nursery, propped him at a tiny, bewildered angle, supported by many pillows, in a newly purchased high chair.

Alice watched her knife and fork move. “He’s not high-chair size,” she said.

“Fun having him here, anyway,” said Dave, feeling fine. “Everything’s fun. At the office, too. Orders up to my nose. If I don’t watch myself I’ll make another fifteen thousand this year. Hey, look at Junior, will you? Drooling all down his chin!” He reached over to wipe the baby’s mouth with his napkin. From the corner of his eye he realized that Alice wasn’t even watching. He finished the job.

“I guess it wasn’t very interesting,” he said, back again at his food. “But one would think a mother’d take some interest in her own child!”

Alice jerked her chin up. “Don’t speak that way! Not in front of him! Later, if you must.”

“Later?” he cried. “In front of, in back of, what’s the difference?” He quieted suddenly, swallowed, was sorry. “All right. Okay. I know how it is.”

After dinner she let him carry the baby upstairs. She didn’t tell him to; she let him.

Coming down, he found her standing by the radio, listening to music she didn’t hear. Her eyes were closed, her whole attitude one of wondering, self-questioning. She started when he appeared.

Suddenly, she was at him, against him, soft, quick; the same. Her lips found him, kept him. He was stunned. Now that the baby was gone, upstairs, out of the room, she began to breathe again, live again. She was free. She was whispering, rapidly, endlessly.

“Thank you, thank you, darling. For being yourself, always. Dependable, so very dependable!”

He had to laugh. “My father told me, ‘Son, provide for your family!’”

Wearily, she rested her dark, shining hair against his neck. “You’ve overdone it. Sometimes I wish we were just the way we were when we were first married. No responsibilities, nothing but ourselves. No—no babies.”

She crushed his hand in hers, a supernatural whiteness in her face.

“Oh, Dave, once it was just you and me. We protected each other, and now we protect the baby, but get no protection from it. Do you understand? Lying in the hospital I had time to think a lot of things. The world is evil—”

“Is it?”

“Yes. It is. But laws protect us from it. And when there aren’t laws, then love does the protecting. You’re protected from my hurting you, by my love. You’re vulnerable to me, of all people, but love shields you. I feel no fear of you, because love cushions all your irritations, unnatural instincts, hatreds and immaturities. But—what about the baby? It’s too young to know love, or a law of love, or anything, until we teach it. And in the meantime be vulnerable to it.”

“Vulnerable to a baby?” He held her away and laughed gently.