Eli was besotted with his daughter. He could have spent hours staring into her fathomless dark-blue eyes, tracing, with one fingertip, the lines of her tiny nose, her plump cheeks, her silky soft eyebrows, her pink gums, with her baby teeth waiting to erupt beneath them. Everything about her, each fingernail, each curl of her hair, enchanted him, everything she did—her little mewling yawn, the first time she rolled over, or successfully grasped her own foot, and shouted in triumph—delighted him.
Annette did not have the same interest in their baby. She kept Ruby clean and changed and fed, but she had a hard time recovering from the delivery. Even after she’d healed, it was abundantly clear that she wasn’t finding any joy in marriage and motherhood.
She complained to Eli that she was bored, home alone all day with the baby. When he encouraged her to make friends, she told him that the other mothers, the ones she met in the park, or at Little People’s Music, were also boring. “All they want to talk about is their babies,” she said. Which made sense, because Ruby was all Eli wanted to talk about, too, but Annette couldn’t tolerate even a few minutes of conversation about whether rice cereal was really the best first food or exactly how early you needed to get on the wait list for the YMCA preschool.
“So get a job,” Eli suggested. “Go back to school!”
“And what happens to her?” Annette asked, gesturing at the baby.
Eli promised he’d find a way to make it work. His mom could take the train in from Long Island, or he’d hire a nanny. He’d do whatever it took to keep his wife happy, and his little family together.
One Friday afternoon when Ruby was six months old, Eli came home from school to find Annette packing her bags. He assumed she was going to her sister’s, where she’d retreated once before, when she was pregnant and they’d had a terrible fight. Eli was all for it. “You’ll take a break, you’ll get some sleep, and you’ll feel better when you come home.”
“I’m not coming back,” Annette said. She told him that she wasn’t doing him or Ruby any good; that she had never wanted to be a mother or a wife.
Eli was astonished. Yes, Annette had talked about leaving, and yes, he’d told her, while she was pregnant, that if she truly hated motherhood she could walk away, but he’d never, ever expected that she’d actually be capable of doing it. “Ruby,” Eli said. “How can you do this to Ruby?”
Annette told him she had tried. She told him she felt exhausted and lost, each day a plodding repetition through gray, despairing hours. She reminded him that she’d said that this might happen. And, even though he’d cried, and promised to do whatever she needed, even though he’d begged her to stay, Annette had been resolute. When he’d said that Ruby needed a mother, she’d replied that she was sure he would find her a great one. He’d cried, and she’d kissed him, and walked out the door, down the hallway to the elevator, without once looking back.
Eli had watched her go, numb with disbelief. She’ll be back, he told himself. No mother could walk away from her child. When Ruby had woken up from her nap, he’d collected her from her crib, changed her, and held her against his shoulder. Ruby had just cut her first tooth. Eli caught flashes of it as Ruby shoved first one wet fist, then the other, into her mouth, chomping down vigorously.
“That,” he said, “is your incisor. You’re going to get eight of those bad boys, four on top and four on the bottom. Then you’ll get your canines. Those are the sharpest teeth in your mouth. Oh, yes, they are!” he said, as Ruby swatted at him and burbled laughter. “Oh, yes, they are!”
That night, he’d given Ruby a bottle, then a bath, taking care to wash behind her ears, gently sponging the folds of her thighs, the backs of her knees, and between her toes. He’d toweled her off, dressed her in clean pajamas, and brushed her single tooth, telling her that it was never too early to start a good oral hygiene routine. He read Hippos Go Berserk three times and soothed her until she’d finally fallen asleep, a warm, boneless weight in his lap. Sitting there, imagining his wife buying a ticket and boarding a plane to somewhere, he could admit that he’d lied to her. Or, rather, he’d told her what she’d wanted to hear, about travel and adventure and seeing the world. He’d assumed that she wouldn’t want it forever. He hadn’t listened when she’d told him that, indeed, she had. “I never wanted to be a mother!” she’d shout, and he’d yell back, “Well, I never wanted to be a periodontist!” But it wasn’t true. He had played at being a free spirit, a modern-day hippie, rootless and untethered, and he’d enjoyed that life, knowing it wasn’t permanent, knowing that, deep down, he’d always wanted conventionality; a life like his own parents had, only, of course, not miserable. He’d wanted a suburb, a family, a house with a swimming pool. Just as Annette had foretold.