Morgan's Passing - Anne Tyler [41]
“He’s … very busy at home,” Emily said.
“Would you believe he was once the size of this little tyke?” he asked, jutting his chin at Gina. “I could carry him in the palm of my hand. Now we’re not on speaking terms.”
“Burt,” said Mrs. Meredith.
“He was always quick to throw things away.”
Later, when it was time to go, he asked Emily if she had all her equipment.
“Equipment?” Emily said.
“Equipment. You know.”
Maybe he was asking if she were sane, marrying his son.
But then he said, “Crib, playpen, high chair, carriage …”
“Oh. We don’t need all that,” Emily said. “She sleeps in a cardboard box. It’s perfectly comfortable.”
“I’ll send her a crib,” Mr. Meredith said.
“No, Mr. Meredith, please don’t do that.”
“I’ll send her one tomorrow. Imagine! A cardboard box!” he said, and he went away shaking his head and looking pleased, as if his expectations, at least, had every one been fulfilled.
The crib arrived: white, spooled, with an eyelet canopy. She’d never heard of such nonsense. Two delivery men came puffing up the stairs with it and leaned it, unassembled, against the wall in the hallway. She reached a finger inside a plastic bag and touched an eyelet ruffle. Then Leon walked in, tossing from hand to hand the cabbage she’d asked him to get at the market. “What’s all this?” he asked.
“Your parents sent it,” she said.
He took a step backward from the crib.
“Leon,” she said. “While we’re on the subject, I ought to tell you something.”
He said, “I don’t want to hear, I don’t want to know, and I want this monstrosity gone by the time I get back.”
Then he turned and left, still carrying the cabbage.
Emily thought it over. She mashed a banana for Gina’s supper and fed it to her, absently taking a few bites herself. She looked out the kitchen doorway and into the hall, where the crib stood slanting elegantly. At that time Gina was six months old, and outgrowing her cardboard box. She slept more often with her parents, still munching drowsily on Emily’s breast. It would be nice to have a safe container to keep her in, Emily thought. She scraped banana off Gina’s chin and stuffed it back into her mouth. She looked at the crib again.
When Leon came back, the crib was still there, but he didn’t mention it. Maybe he’d been doing some thinking himself. The following day Emily started assembling it. She would join two pieces and then leave it a while, as if it were only something to fiddle with—a crossword puzzle, a hoop of needlework. Then she’d come back and tighten a bolt; then she’d leaf through the paper. In a few days she had a completed crib. It seemed silly to leave it obstructing the hall, so she wheeled it into their bedroom. The effect was dazzling. All that white made the rest of the room seem drab. Their mattress on the floor had a lumpy, beaten look.
She went back to the hall for Gina and carried her into the bedroom and set her in the crib. Gina stared all around her at the eyelet ruffles, the decals, the bars. What a shock, she seemed to be saying. How did this imprisonment come about?
It came about inch by inch. These things just wear you down.
5
This child had changed their lives past recognition, more than they had dreamed possible. You would think that someone so small could simply be fitted into a few spare crannies and the world could go on as usual, but it wasn’t like that at all. From the start, she seemed to consume them. Even as a tiny infant she was aggressively sociable and noisy and enthusiastic, an insomniac who seldom took naps and struggled continually toward a vertical position. They would lay her down on her stomach for the night and instantly her head would bob up again, weaving and unsteady, her eyes so wide that her forehead seemed corrugated. She loved to be talked to, sung to, tossed in the air. As she grew older, she fell in love with Red Riding Hood’s wolf and they had to give him up to her. If she slept at all, she slept with the wolf against her cheek and she dreamily twisted his red felt tongue. Periodically the tongue fell off and then she would go to pieces—crying