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By Root 1099 0

6, while Caroline was picking out cans of tomato soup, Phoebe stirred, her small hands jerking wildly, and began to cry. Caroline vacillated for a moment, then picked up the baby and the bulky bag and went to the restroom in the back of the store. She sat on an orange plastic chair in the corner, listening to water drip from the faucet, while she balanced the infant on her lap and poured formula from the thermos into a bottle. It took several minutes for the baby to settle down, because she was so agitated and because her sucking reflex was poor. Eventually, however, she caught on, and then Phoebe drank as she had slept: fiercely, intently, her hands in fists by her chin. By the time she relaxed, sated, they were announcing that the store was about to close. Caroline hurried to the checkout counter, where a single cashier waited, bored and impatient. She paid quickly, cradling the paper sack in one arm, Phoebe in the other. When she left, they locked the doors behind her.

The parking lot was nearly empty, the last few cars idling or pulling slowly out into the street. Caroline rested her paper sack of groceries on the hood and settled Phoebe in her box in the backseat. The faint voices of employees echoed across the lot. Scattered flakes swirled in the cones from the streetlights, no more or less than before. The forecasters so often got it wrong. The snow that had started before Phoebe was born—just last night, she reminded herself, though it seemed ages past—had not even been predicted. She reached into the paper sack and ripped open a loaf of bread, taking out a slice, for she had not eaten all day and was ravenous. She chewed as she shut the door, thinking with weary longing of her apartment, so spare and tidy, of her twin bed with its white chenille spread, everything in order and in place. She was halfway around the back of the car before she realized that her taillights were glowing weakly red.

She stopped where she was, staring. All that time, while she had dithered in the grocery aisles, while she had sat in the unfamiliar restroom quietly feeding Phoebe, this light had been spilling out across the snow.

When she tried the ignition it merely clicked, the battery so dead the engine wouldn’t even groan.

She got out of the car and stood by the open door. The parking lot was empty now; the last car had driven away. She began to laugh. It wasn’t a normal laugh; even Caroline could hear that: her voice too loud, halfway to a sob. “I have a baby,” she said out loud, astonished. “I have a baby in this car.” But the parking lot stretched quietly before her, the lights from the grocery store windows making large rectangles in the slush. “I have a baby here,” Caroline repeated, her voice thinning quickly in the air. “A baby!” she shouted then, into the stillness.

III

NORAH OPENED HER EYES. OUTSIDE, THE SKY WAS FADING into dawn, but the moon was still caught in the trees, shedding pale light into the room. She had been dreaming, searching on frozen ground for something she had lost. Blades of grass, sharp and brittle, shattered at her touch, leaving tiny cuts on her flesh. Waking, she held her hands up, momentarily confused, but her hands were unmarked, her nails carefully filed and polished.

Beside her, in his cradle, her son was crying. In one smooth motion, more instinct than intention, Norah lifted him into the bed. The sheets beside her were cool, arctic white. David was gone then, called to the clinic while she slept. Norah pulled her son into the warm curve of her body, opened her nightgown. His small hands fluttered against her swollen breasts like moth wings; he latched on. A sharp pain, which subsided in a wave as the milk came. She stroked his thin hair, his fragile scalp. Yes, astonishing, the powers of the body. His hands stilled, resting like small stars against her aureolas.

She closed her eyes, drifting slowly between sleep and waking. A well deep within her was tapped, released. Her milk flowed and, mysteriously, Norah felt herself becoming a river or a wind, encompassing everything: the daffodils