Striking the Balance

“World won’t end,” Yeager said. “This isn’t one of your big spit and polish places.” The smell of sour milk didn’t bother him any more. It was in the room most of the time, along with the reek that came with the diaper pail even when it was closed-that reminded him of the barnyard on his parents’ farm, not that he ever said so to Barbara. He held his little son out at arm’s length. “There you go, kiddo. You had that hiding in there where Mommy couldn’t find it, didn’t you?”

Barbara reached for the baby. “I’ll take him back now. If you want.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “I don’t get to hold him all that much, and you look like you could use a breather.”

“Well, now that you mention it, yes.” Barbara slumped into the only chair in the room. She wasn’t the pert girl Sam had got to know; she looked beat, as she did most of the time. If you didn’t look beat most of the time with a new kid around, either something was wrong with you or you had servants to look beat for you. There were dark circles under her green eyes; her blond hair-several shades darker than Sam’s-hung limp, as if it were tired, too. She let out a weary sigh. “What I wouldn’t give for a cigarette and especially a cup of coffee.”

“Oh, Lord-coffee,” Yeager said wistfully. “The worst cup of joe I ever drank in the greasiest greasy spoon in the lousiest little town I ever went through-and I went through a lot of ’em… Jeez, it’d go good right now.”

“If we had any coffee to ration, we ought to share it between soldiers in the front lines and parents with babies less than a year old. No one else could possibly need it so badly,” Barbara said. Frazzled as she was, she still spoke with a precision Sam admired: she’d done graduate work at Berkeley in medieval English literature before the war. The kind of English you heard in ballparks didn’t measure up alongside that.

Jonathan wiggled and twisted and started to cry. He was beginning to make different kinds of racket to show he had different things in mind. Sam recognized this one. “He’s hungry, hon.”

“By the schedule, it’s not time to feed him yet,” Barbara answered. “But do you know what? As far as I’m concerned, the schedule can go to the devil. I can’t stand listening to him yell until the clock says it’s okay for him to eat. If nursing makes him happy enough to keep still for a while, that suits me fine.” She wriggled her right arm out of the sleeve of the dark blue wool dress she was wearing, tugged the dress down to bare that breast. “Here, give him to me.”

Yeager did. The baby’s mouth fastened onto her nipple. Jonathan sucked avidly. Yeager could hear him gulping down the milk. He’d felt funny at first, having to share Barbara’s breasts with his son. But you couldn’t bottle-feed these days-no formula, no easy way to keep things as clean as they needed to be. And after you got used to breast-feeding, it didn’t seem like such a big thing any more, anyhow.

“I think he may be going to sleep,” Barbara said. The radio newsman who’d announced Jimmy Doolittle’s bomber raid over Tokyo hadn’t sounded more excited about a victory. She went on, “He’s going to want to nurse on the other side too, though. Help me out of that sleeve, would you, Sam? I can’t get it down by myself, not while I’m holding him.”

“Sure thing.” He hurried over to her, stretched the sleeve out, and helped her get her arm back through past the elbow. After that, she managed on her own. The dress fell limply to her waist. A couple of minutes went by before she shifted Jonathan to her left breast.

“He’d better fall asleep pretty soon,” Barbara said. “I’m cold.”

“He looks as if he’s going to,” Sam answered. He draped a folded towel over her left shoulder, not so much to help warm her as to keep the baby from drooling or spitting up on her when she burped him.

One of her eyebrows rose. “ ‘As if he’s going to’?” she echoed.

He knew what she meant. He wouldn’t have said it that way when they first met; he’d made it through high school, then gone off to play ball. “Must be the company I keep,” he replied with a smile, and then went on more seriously: “I like learning things from the people I’m around-from the Lizards, too, it’s turned out. Is it any wonder I’ve picked things up from you?”

“Oh, in a way it’s a wonder,” Barbara said. “A lot of people seem to hate the idea of ever learning anything new. I’m glad you’re not like that; it would make life boring.” She glanced down at Jonathan. “Yes, he is falling asleep. Good.”

Sure enough, before long her nipple slipped out of the baby’s mouth. She held him a little longer, then gently raised him to her shoulder and patted his back. He burped without waking up, and didn’t spit up, either. She slid him back down to the crook of her elbow, waited a few minutes more, and got up to put him in the wooden crib that took up a large part of the small room. Jonathan sighed as she laid him down. She stood there for a moment, afraid he would wake. But when his breathing steadied, she straightened and reached down to fix her dress.