Hadley & Grace(6)

“Okay, dear,” Mrs. McCreedy says hesitantly, clearly not believing Grace is even close to fine. Miles howls and flails, clearly not believing it either. “I’m here if you need me.”

No wonder parenting is supposed to be a two-person job. Jimmy worried about it when they talked about him reenlisting, but Grace brushed it off. At the time, she believed she would be fine. Plus, there was really no choice. Reenlisting got Jimmy away from the trouble that was chasing him and kept him away from the temptation that had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

Or so they thought.

She shakes her head, trying to clear away the thought of his betrayal and to keep the tears she’s been holding from spilling out. It won’t do to have both her and Miles crying.

Swallowing back the emotions, she pushes open the door, drops the diaper bag to the floor, and pulls Miles against her. “Shhh,” she says, holding him tight. “You’re okay. Hang in there. We’re home now.”

He continues to scream, and she grits her teeth against it.

“Colic,” the pediatrician explained when Grace brought him in at three weeks old, distraught that her baby would not stop crying. “Nothing to do but weather the storm.” The woman said it with a smile, as if having a screeching, inconsolable child were no big deal, a delightful rite of parenthood to be embraced and celebrated like first steps or learning to ride a bike. Grace left the appointment more distressed than when she’d arrived.

She’s wanted so badly to love motherhood, to cherish each moment and relish her time with her son. But she can’t. Since Miles came into the world, it’s been such a struggle, so overwhelming and exhausting, that it’s all she can do to survive one moment to the next.

And she feels like Miles knows it, and that is why he cries. He realizes she is going through the motions with no real joy, that when she comes for him at the end of the day, she is so done in she has no energy left to play or read or sing, and that he knows that what she wants most is for him to fall asleep so she can fall asleep beside him.

“That’s it, buddy, let it all out,” she says, pacing back and forth as she pats his back and as he continues to howl, screaming at the top of his wee little lungs and working himself into a lather until they are both damp with sweat.

This is his pattern. The moment she lifts him from the car, it starts—a whimper, like he is uncomfortable, making her believe he is hungry, has gas, or needs his diaper changed. So, she sets about trying to remedy all those things, only to discover his misery has nothing to do with any of them. And by the time she is done, her nerves are frayed and he is wailing—uncontrollable sobbing that no amount of cuddling, cooing, or pacing can soothe.

The doctor assured her that’s what colic is, a frustrating condition where healthy babies cry for no reason, and she told Grace many times that she wasn’t doing anything wrong. But knowing this doesn’t help. Grace just wants her baby to be happy, and each time he cries, it rips her heart anew.

Her neighbor pounds on the wall. “Shut that damn kid up.”

The three-hundred-pound tub of wasted carbon moved in a week after Jimmy returned to Afghanistan, and Grace knows, when Jimmy gets home, there’s going to be hell to pay. Jimmy might be a hundred pounds lighter than their neighbor, but he’s also at least two hundred pounds tougher, and he doesn’t take to people not treating his family right.

But at the moment, Jimmy is seven thousand miles away. So each night, in addition to dealing with Miles’s inconsolable crying, she needs to put up with her jerk of a neighbor screaming at her through the walls.

Ignoring him, she continues to soothe Miles as best she can, stroking his back, rocking him, and telling him it will be okay.

She can’t believe it was her idea to have a baby. What was she thinking? She remembers the thought process, dreaming how wonderful it would be to bring something wholly hers and Jimmy’s into the world. They’d been married five years, and Jimmy was doing well. He had made it through sniper school and hadn’t gambled since enlisting. So, she figured it was time and that they were ready.

“Damn it!” the neighbor screams. “I’m calling the landlord. Every goddamn night. Shut that damn kid up.”

What a horrible miscalculation. She wasn’t ready. She might never have been ready. And now, here he is, this little human, totally dependent on her, and she is completely screwing it up.

She kisses his flaming scalp. “You’re okay. You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.”

She carries him to the kitchen and rummages through the cabinets, so hungry she feels like she might pass out. She opens door after door—salt, pepper, vanilla extract, two cans of expired tomato paste. She considers the tomato paste, looks down at Miles screaming, and decides against it.

With a sigh, she returns to the living room and pulls out her phone. It’s nearly seven, and Jimmy hasn’t called. He always calls on Fridays.

She imagines him in his barracks trying to work up the courage and trying to figure out what he is going to say. He is hungover; she is sure. His slipups always involve alcohol. It was probably a friend’s birthday, and he lost sight of his promise not to drink. Then he got drunk and was suckered into a bet. His downfall is always the same: he drinks, he gambles, he loses—a pattern that destroys him and destroys them, but that he seems powerless to stop.

She looks around their apartment, at the stained ceiling and chipped counters, at the threadbare futon that serves as their couch, at the crate that holds the old television Jimmy’s brother gave them. She’s been poorer, but never has she been so broke, crushed by her disappointment in Jimmy and in herself.