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THE CHILD WAS BORN at the end of a turbulent March, while the wind outside Mary Kate&039;s hospital rooh flurries She heard the scream of the storm both before and after labor, even as she heeled down linoleum corridors into Recovery
The child was not beautiful It was a boy with tight flat features and piercing, inquisitive blue eyes that she kneould diratefully took the child from the nurse&039;s arms and held him close to her breast to feed The child was very quiet, barely rab the flesh of her swollen teat with his tiny fists
She didn&039;t care for Joe&039;s choice of a nalish poets Instead, she wanted a name that had been in her family for years So on the records of birth ritten Jeffrey Harper Raines, over Joe&039;s ed to one of his least favorite of her cousins
When they brought him home from the hospital they lowered him into a crib he would share with red-lipped rubber aniplastic fish She would ht circle and Jeffrey always sat in silence, watching They arranged the crib so the child could see the television It disturbed Mary Kate in the first feeeks that Jeffrey was home, that the child so seldo tears as a healthy response in children, and he replied, "So? Maybe he&039;s satisfied"
But Jeffrey never laughed either Even on Saturdaycat-and-mouse cartoons and Howdy Doody reruns, Jeffrey&039;s eyes roaripped at a pacifier The lack of emotion in the child&039;s eyes worried her, they were like the eyes of a fish or a snake, desiring either the cold sea or the depths of a den
Soht it didn&039;t seerasp and, when she pulled him closer, he would reach out to pinch her flesh between his fingers Looking at Jeffrey, actually exa his features, unsettled her more and more as time went on He didn&039;t seem to reseined this to be the case He would comment dryly on how the baby would eventually look just like him but she kneas far from the truth And as the truth? Was it perhaps locked away in her subconscious, lurking there where she reainst e?
Despite her disappointment, she never allowed herself to cry She always stopped thinking about the child before the rush of tears, of ures fra a double shift three days a week at the cab co hours, ready to drink a can or two of beer and fall into bed, so Some days he went to work in the same clothes he had worn the day before and slept in; so for days at a tiy to even consider a return to college, and always his sharp accusing eyes cut her to the quick He barely spoke to her anymore unless he found it necessary, and she learned to turn her back on hian to become cluttered with rubber toys and diapers and s walks, often not returning until Mary Kate had been asleep for so door, she would hear his she couldn&039;t quite hear The bastard, she would say to herself The stupid drunken bastard And then she would say sharply, without looking at him, "Take your clothes off before you co ht Then she would hear hilass of water in the bathroom and, oddly, rattle the door chain to make certain it held securely But she never moved to show him she had awakened, and when he returned to bed she felt sure he lay for a very long while with his eyes open in the dark, just staring at her back
More than once she awakened to see hi down into the crib at the sleeping child He would stand rigid with his fists white-knuckled, staring down at the little quiet fors she would find Jeffrey already awake, his hands curled around the safety bars as if he wanted to escape the prison of infancy pre through her at her sleeping husband Once when Joe held the child in his arms in a rare show of fatherly affection, his eye was aler at the fish mobile Joe said, "Shit!" and eased the child back down into the crib, rubbing his injured eye
She becaly short-tempered toward the child, as the hot su anirew darker They becaleaence; his hair becathened and Mary Kate saith a rush of alar to be a cleft in the chin There were no cleft chins in her family, as far as she knew, nor in Joe&039;s She traced the beginnings of the cleft with her finger, hearing somewhere the faint wail of a siren across the roof of the city And Joe had noticed it as well He would pop open a beer and watch the child as Jeffrey played on the floor Mary Kate was certain that, if he could, Joe would lean forward and kick the child in the face
As Jeffrey played with blocks strewn across the carpet one evening in late summer, she sat before him on the floor and examined his face The black eye slits watched her incuriously, daring her to aze, as he built towers of ers moved not with the clurace
"Jeffrey," Mary Kate whispered
The child slowly looked up froaze fro into those eyes made her feel breathless and dizzy, as if she had been drinking His eyes were as i
Mary Kate reached out to s mass of black hair "My Jeffrey," she said
With one ar blocks They scattered across the room, and one of them struck Mary Kate in the mouth She cried out, startled
Jeffrey leaned forward, his eyes wide and entranced, and Mary Kate shivered She took his hand and slapped it, saying, "Bad baby! Bad baby!" but Jeffrey paid no attention Instead, with his free hand, he touched his le drop of blood
Horrified and hypnotized by his black, unwavering stare, she watched hiue dart froleaht She recovered herself and said, "Bad for baby!" trying to slap his hand again, but he turned his back on her and began gathering up the building blocks
Autuly shrill, day after day Leaves clattered along the gutters Ice and snow caked the lids of garbage cans Throughout the winter bleakness Mary Kate grew iven up; now he ceased even to try to cootten that she shared a bed with him and now she kneas only a ht for "a walk" and never coone for a day at a ti to make up excuses for the cab dispatcher, he would sih the doorway And then, finally, he would co of beer and sweat, stu about the child "You fool," she would tell hiht less than a week before the child&039;s first birthday, after leaving Jeffrey with Joe for a few roceries, she returned ho the child over a tub of stearipped around his shoulders; the eyes were narrowed and cunning Across Joe&039;s unshaven face were red marks that looked like scratches An empty wine bottle lay broken on the yellow bathroolass broke "What do you think you&039;re doing?" she screa child over the hot water He looked around, his eyes bleary and frightened, and she twisted Jeffrey away fro the child to her breast
"My God!" she said, her shrill voice echoing from the tiles "You&039;re crazy! My God!"