The Cradle Read online

  “Okay,” he said. “It was nice meeting you. Good-bye.”

  She finally let the hand that held the envelope drop down. She looked at him, nodded, and said, “You have to go.”

  Joe turned and walked down the sidewalk toward the car.

  “Joe?”

  He turned.

  “It’s just that—will he know? When you get home, will you tell him that you were here?”

  “I think my mom’s telling him,” Joe said. “Now. So.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Yes. That makes sense.” She raised her eyebrows. “Does that make sense?”

  Joe looked down the sidewalk toward the car. He looked back at her. “Do you want me to tell him something for you?” he asked. “I can.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Oh, no. No. That’s okay. No. That’s not necessary.”

  “Are you sure? Because I can.”

  Renee again shook her head. “I will,” she said. “I mean I will do it.”

  Joe got in the car and started the engine and watched her in the rearview mirror. He thought that maybe she would open it now and read it right here, which would make things easier. He’d thought that she might even read it right in front of him on the sidewalk. But she hadn’t. He leaned forward and pulled a copy of the letter from his other pocket, unfolded it, laid it out on the steering wheel, flattened it, and again looked back at her through the mirror. She hadn’t moved. She was staring at the Dunkin’ Donuts. He waited. She didn’t open the envelope. Instead she stuffed it into her coat pocket, turned, and walked back the way they had come. Some bushes blocked his view, and he cut the engine and got out of the car.

  He felt bad about copying the letter, as though he’d somehow betrayed his father. But it was important. There had to be a copy of it. Who knew what she would end up doing with hers? For all he knew, she was on her way back to her house to burn it in the fireplace. He took a few slow steps down the sidewalk, and at the corner, he leaned forward just enough to see around the bushes. There had to be a copy, that’s all. She was walking back toward the house.

  He waited for just another minute, until she was a speck, a good distance away, before he started after her. Maybe he’d be able to see through a window.

  This was his own plan. His mother had hers, and he had his. This had nothing to do with what his mother had told him to do. This was only him. And he didn’t really understand what it was that he needed to see or why he needed to see it, exactly. He knew only that it seemed to matter, collecting all the things—the images of people he saw, what they looked like when they said certain words, how they were at certain times and what he guessed they were feeling. He wanted to remember every single thing that happened. Not just here, with her. He did it all the time. His mother couldn’t stand it, the way he asked questions, the way he probed, and she would absolutely for sure lose her mind if she could see what he was doing now. But he couldn’t help himself. He made a copy of the letter, and he would keep it, and now he was going to watch her read it, if he could, and try to see what she looked like, and if he saw that, he would keep that, too. In this case he had not been able to stop thinking of the moment when she would open it and see his father’s writing and read what he said, and for the first time would have an actual thing, there, in her hand, that would show her he had grown into a person.

  Joe crossed to the other side of the road, hands in his sweatshirt pockets, and tried to keep pace. He doubted she would look back. He was surprised when she turned on a road they hadn’t been on—she wasn’t going back to her house.

  The snow was picking up a bit. He took a few jogging, hustled steps, and at the corner he again paused and leaned to see. There was the tan speck of her coat. She was still going. He followed her down a long winding street of small homes, keeping the same distance, and he followed her as she made two more turns.

  When he made the second turn, he wasn’t as careful, though, and he had to jump back behind a hedge. She had stopped. She was across the street, a hundred feet away, in a park. She was sitting on a bench. Joe squatted down a little and was glad that he could see her—he felt certain this was where she’d read it. He watched her sitting with excellent posture, both feet on the ground, both hands on her knees. She looked like a painting, there in the snow. It was coming down at an angle, slowly, but the flakes were big and wet. He reached into his pocket and took the letter out. He held it in his hand, then looked up at her. He waited. If he could read it just as she did, that would be perfect. That would be as close as you could get. He had already read it, but he could do it again, or just skim it as she read it.

  She reached into her pocket and took the envelope out.

  Joe looked down at his copy, looked back at her. She had it out of the envelope now. She brushed her hair back. Joe looked down and started reading his copy.

  July 7, 1997

  Dear __________,

  If you are getting this letter it means I have finally found you, or maybe just found your mailing address. My name is Matthew J. Bishop. I am the son you gave up for adoption in June 1969. I am sorry to intrude if you aren’t able to know me.

  I am writing this letter because my son was born this morning. I don’t have your address yet, not today, as I write, but I’m going to find it, I’ve decided.

  On the one hand maybe you don’t care about me or where I am or who I am or that I had a son today. If that’s so then please disregard this letter. I apologize for taking your time.

  If that is not the case, you’ve probably lived for a long time wondering about things, just as I have. If you’re that kind of person then I’m writing to say I’m here, and I’m okay, and it’s okay, what you did, I have lived an okay life.

  My wife’s name is Marissa. Our new boy’s name is Chris. He is seven pounds, nine ounces, and he is seven hours old. He has expressed an interest in knowing you in the future.

  Sincerely,

  Matthew J. Bishop

  Joe looked up. He couldn’t tell if he had read it faster than she or if she was just not reacting. She was sitting perfectly still on the bench.

  The snow kept coming. He felt as though he could crouch here and watch forever and she might never move. The big wet flakes dropped down into his eyelashes, and he blinked them away.

  She moved a little. She lowered the hand that held the letter.

  Then all at once she tilted some, there on the bench, and her face went down to her other hand and stayed there.

  Joe didn’t know what to do. He thought the wiser way of watching would be to stay here, crouched and hidden, but some force compelled him to stand up. You shouldn’t always only watch, some voice said. He put his hands in his sweatshirt front pocket. Do more than only watch. He looked around. There was no one anywhere, it seemed. Renee Owen was still hunched over but moving now. Her maroon hat had fallen off and was in the snow at her feet. He watched her reach down and brush it off and look at it, then look at the trees at the other end of the park.

  He took a few steps forward, out into the middle of the street, and she turned her head and saw him then, standing there, watching her, and she sat up straight and looked back at him.

  He was too far away to see her face clearly, and now there was too much snow. He waited. So did she.

  Then he felt the force again, this time at his shoulder and his elbow. Slowly, the boy’s hand went up into the air, and he waved.

  14

  Darren the Human’s promise was fulfilled five weeks later when the papers came back from Minnesota with his signature on them. By that time the baby was born. Marissa’s labor came in the middle of the night, and she screamed for the last ten minutes in the car on the way to the hospital, saying, “I can’t even sit!” Joe stayed back at the house with Glen, and four hours later, another child came into the world.

  It was healthy. Matt stood in his scrubs and felt like an idiot as he watched the whole unveiling and watched his sweating wife yell out from the pain, but then the red and wet and pink
baby was suddenly there, arrived and human, crying, upside down in the doctor’s arms, and not long after that it was in Marissa’s arms, and she was smiling and crying at the same time, her face shining and her body spent. She said, “Come on,” to Matt, who was still at the other side of the room, and he walked over to his new son and touched him on the forehead as Marissa stroked his face. “You’re lucky,” Marissa said. “At least this one looks like you.”

  Matt took a longer time looking at the baby later, when Marissa was asleep. He stared down through the glass. He didn’t think it looked like him. It was a pile of flesh. It barely had a face. How could it look like him? Maybe in the eyes. Maybe a little bit. But beyond that he couldn’t tell.

  “Matt.”

  Matt turned. There was Glen. Standing beside him was Joe. The two were holding hands.

  Glen smiled just a little and said, “Thank God everyone is safe. Is this him here?” He nodded at the glass.

  “It is.”

  Glen came up and looked down through the glass at all the babies, several straight lines of moving, defenseless life. Here they were. And what would happen to them? Matt tried to push his mind to make them each grow, one by one, right before his eyes. He imagined men and women expanding. He looked from one child to the next, wondered which would suffer most. Which would die youngest. Which would cause the most grief for someone else. And he knew that amid all the children, one would love the most, too, and one would sacrifice the most and be the most dignified, and so on. There were no answers to the riddle, but what Matt did see, staring through that glass, was the hidden cradle, invisible, nevertheless trenchant. In it one could place all manner of life and hurt, and still, no matter what, the human could grow with fresh eyes and enter into new realms almost as if by choice. Do anything to it and the human could grow.

  “Which one?” Glen asked, and Matt realized Glen had no idea.

  “That’s him there,” Matt said, and pointed, and he stepped back.

  Behind him he could see, just barely, that Glen’s shoulders shuddered as he looked down.

  Matt stepped farther away to let him look at his new grandson, and then he put his hand down on Joe’s shoulder and said, “Hey there, little man. Wanna see too?” Joe nodded. Matt squatted and picked him up and brought him forward, and all three of them looked at the sleepy little thing.

  “Did you name him?” Glen asked.

  “I’m still pushing for Tyrone,” Matt said. “I don’t think I’m going to get my way.”

  “No?” Glen asked, smiling. “You never know. Sometimes my daughter will surprise you.”

  “Yes,” Matt said. “Agreed.”

  In this case, she didn’t. Matt didn’t really care about what his name ended up being. They named him Chris, after a boy Marissa had known in high school who’d died in a car accident. She said she had remembered him out of the blue. So this new Chris was a healthy, robust young baby, and when they brought him home, they had a whole setup for him, a whole white, sparkling new crib that Matt had found on sale at Target. They had blankets everywhere and toys above the bed, and they had electronic noise monitors. They spared no expense. They turned the little storage room and office into a room for the baby, and they turned the guest bedroom, for the time being, into Joe’s room. It was possible that Matt would have to do a little building, as they were running out of space, but for now, and the fall, and the winter, what they had would be fine.

  As for the actual cradle, Matt never had a clue. Where it had gone or what had become of it. He figured it had probably been sold to some antique store for fifty dollars. Maybe one day it would end up at someone else’s yard sale.

  The simple truth was that the cradle was gone. It didn’t seem to matter. Not to Glen, not to Matt, not to Marissa. Especially not to Marissa. All that time he’d been away looking, all those things he’d done, all those thoughts he’d had in the meantime, and he’d driven back home after telling her he had it when he did not. He’d found it and lost it. But it was the strangest thing. Matt came home with no cradle at all, with Joe instead, and Marissa never once asked him where it was. In fact, she never brought it up again.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks, in no particular order, to Bridget Delaney, Tom and Sarah Grimm, Sara Prohaska, Lee Somerville, Steve Somerville, Mark Rader, Maggie Vandermeer, Oliver Haslegrave, Brettne Bloom, Benjamin Warner, Jenny Jackson, Lucille Collin, and Ben and Sarah Weyenberg. Thanks as well to my beautiful new wife (and shrewdest reader of character psychology), Alexis Jaeger. Special thanks to Ann Buechner, true author of Renee’s poem and a wonderful poet herself. A warm hello and thanks to all my friends, mentors, and colleagues from the Cornell writing program, who gave me many years of community and encouragement as a writer. Such things are rare. And finally, thanks to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where most of this book was written. The horses helped.

  About the Author

  Patrick Somerville grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and later earned his MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. He is the author of the story collection Trouble (Vintage, 2006), and his writing has appeared in One Story, Epoch, and The Best American Non-required Reading 2007. He lives with his wife in Chicago and is currently the Simon Blattner Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Northwestern University. This is his first novel.