Perfect Little World(40)

Cap woke from his nap, wailing in a pitch that Izzy instantly recognized as being that of her own son, even over the sound of the other babies. Nina went to his crib, wrote down when he had awakened, consulted the chart once more, and then lifted him into her arms, where he burrowed into her, his sobs so aggrieved that Izzy unknowingly squeezed Ally until the child began to wriggle against Izzy’s grip. Nina then walked over to Izzy and offered to switch. “It’s time for him to eat,” Nina said, and Izzy handed Ally over and then took Cap into her arms. Cap’s tiny fists were clenched so tightly, shaking to enumerate what Izzy could not help but perceive to be his many complaints with The Infinite Family. Izzy sat in one of the rockers and hurriedly, awkwardly, unclipped the strap of her tank top, her face burning with the anxiety that everyone in the room was watching her, taking notes on her abilities; she began to feed Cap, who finally quieted, not happy but at least appeased, while Nina calmly sat beside her and rocked Ally. The jazz music stopped and then Neko Case came over the speakers, which made Ally start to bounce with excitement. Nina stood up and carried Ally to a playmat, where several other babies were lying on their backs or sitting up.

Cap ate with great intensity, and Izzy felt the familiar tugging sensation in her breast, strangely pleasant. In the feeding position that worked best, Cap was looking directly at Izzy, his eyes always wide open as he ate, which had initially disconcerted her, though now she liked these moments, when it felt like it was only the two of them in the room. If she stared at him long enough, she could signal to him, without words, that she indeed was his true mother. When he had finished, his anger a ghost that Izzy now believed she had never actually seen, and she had coaxed a burp out of him, she let him recline against her chest, facing the activity of the other babies and caregivers. He reached out for the other babies and said, “Ba-ba-ba,” so far his only word or sound, and Izzy eased him onto the floor, where he lay on his belly for a few seconds and then tried to crawl toward Gilberto, who was laughing loudly as Marcus kept placing a pair of plastic sunglasses over his eyes, each time Gilberto shaking his head quickly to shed the glasses. Cap inched his bottom forward, as if trying to propel his entire body toward what he wanted, but he was still not quite ready to crawl, and Izzy helped him back to a sitting position, closer to Gilberto. The two babies observed each other and then Gilberto offered the sunglasses to Cap, who took them and then shook them with great vigor before they flew out of his hands and landed back in Gilberto’s lap, which made both of them erupt in rumbly laughter. Marcus held out his hands, palms up, for Gilberto and Cap and said, “Boom, boom, boom,” and the two babies slapped at his hands. Izzy held out her hand for Cap and the baby regarded it, then grabbed Izzy’s thumb and squeezed it, which, as the babies did on a daily basis, sent shivers up her spine and flooded her heart. This was the way of things for Izzy at the complex, her heart seizing up with fear and then resuming its beat, even stronger than before. She kissed Cap on the head and then, as Gilberto regarded them, she leaned over and kissed Gilberto, who smiled and shook his head, as if the sunglasses had again been placed on his face.

Switching to other babies, always a different activity, a different way of interacting, often simply the mind-numbing act of holding an inconsolable baby; her shift ended and she filled out reports on her interactions with the children, noting anything of interest for Dr. Grind, who checked all the babies’ reports at the end of the day. She wandered through the nursery and kissed each baby and then walked with Nina and Jeremy out of the room. It felt like she had ended a shift in a factory that had been imagined by Walt Disney, the bright colors and happy music overriding the weird fact that you were working on an assembly line that created superbabies.


At 5 P.M., the caregivers and staff headed home to their own families and Izzy and the rest of the parents met up on the second floor of Main 1, in the largest room, which functioned as both a dining hall and an indoor playground. All ten babies would now, until the next morning, be cared for by the parents, the postdocs, Dr. Grind, and three overnight nurses who helped in the sleep room. It was Izzy’s favorite part of the day, all the parents sharing the space with their children, the open space of the room filled with the sounds of the adults’ conversation and the babies’ occasional crying. They passed the babies around, and it amazed Izzy to see how quickly the babies, when passed into a new set of arms, instantly resettled and adjusted to their new situation. She did this often, an informal anthropological study of how the babies were dealing with their (unknown-to-them) strange circumstances. And she was heartened, always, to find that they seemed either too dulled by their infancy to notice or, more hopefully, that they thrived, that Dr. Grind knew just what he was doing.

Izzy worked with Kenny to prepare dinner while Jeffrey and Nikisha portioned out the baby food that the complex’s chef, who handled breakfast and lunch, had left to supplement the babies’ breast-feeding. Chef Nicole, prior to the complex, had been the executive chef for the day care center at a start-up company in San Francisco before it went belly-up, probably because it had devoted quite a bit of money toward things like executive chefs for the day care center.

While salsa music played loudly through the speakers, Kenny grilled burgers and Izzy quickly chopped sweet potatoes into perfect fries before seasoning them and sliding them into the oven. Izzy had become one of the best cooks in the family, and Chef Nicole often commented on her natural skill in the kitchen. Izzy owed this to her work, of course, at the Whole Hog, but she was now working beyond pork and the occasional fried food. She had learned sous-vide, pickling, and coddling eggs, each time figuring out the process with almost no help from anyone else. It was thrilling, as if acquiring through gamma radiation a new superpower. If the fanciness of the food made her uncomfortable, she would master the means of preparing it, until it no longer had any power over her. She had done this often in her life to deal with uncertainty, to become so adept and so skilled that people assumed it must not be that difficult and left her alone. Now she delicately sliced a bowl of beets into thin circles, before topping them with some fresh herbs and goat cheese. Kenny leaned over from his work at the grill and placed a beet in his mouth before making a face of pure happiness. He nodded in appreciation and Izzy smiled.