this was the day wilder started crying at two in the afternoon. at six he was still crying, sitting on the kitchen floorand looking through the oven window, and we ate dinner quickly, moving around him or stepping over him to reachthe stove and refrigerator. babette watched him as she ate. she had a class to teach in sitting, standing and walking.
it would start in an hour and a half. she looked at me in a drained and supplicating way. she'd spoken soothingly tohim, hefted and caressed him, checked his teeth, given him a bath, examined him, tickled him, fed him, tried to gethim to crawl into his vinyl play tunnel. her old people would be waiting in the church basement.
it was rhythmic crying, a measured statement of short urgent pulses. at times it seemed he would break off into awhimper, an animal complaint, irregular and exhausted, but the rhythm held, the heightened beat, the washed pinksorrow in his face.
"we'll take him to the doctor," i said. "then i'll drop you at the church.""would the doctor see a crying child? besides, his doctor doesn't have hours now.""what about your doctor?""i think he does. but a crying child, jack. what can i say to the man? 'my child is crying.'""is there a condition more basic?"there'd been no sense of crisis until now. just exasperation and despair. but once we decided to visit the doctor, webegan to hurry, to fret. we looked for wilder's jacket and shoes, tried to remember what he'd eaten in the lasttwenty-four hours, anticipated questions the doctor would ask and rehearsed our answers carefully. it seemed vital toagree on the answers even if we weren't sure they were correct. doctors lose interest in people who contradict eachother. this fear has long informed my relationship with doctors, that they would lose interest in me, instruct theirreceptionists to call other names before mine, take my dying for granted.
i waited in the car while babette and wilder went into the medical building at the end of elm. doctors' officesdepress me even more than hospitals do because of their air of negative expectancy and because of the occasionalpatient who leaves with good news, shaking the doctor's antiseptic hand and laughing loudly, laughing at everythingthe doctor says, booming with laughter, with crude power, making a point of ignoring the other patients as he walkspast the waiting room still laughing provocatively— he is already clear of them, no longer associated with theirweekly gloom, their anxious inferior dying. i would rather visit an emergency ward, some urban well of trembling,where people come in gut-shot, slashed, sleepy-eyed with opium compounds, broken needles in their arms. thesethings have nothing to do with my own eventual death, nonviolent, small-town, thoughtful.
they came out of the small bright lobby onto the street. it was cold, empty and dark. the boy walked next to hismother, holding her hand, still crying, and they seemed a picture of such amateurish sadness and calamity that inearly started laughing—laughing not at the sadness but at the picture they made of it, at the disparity between theirgrief and its appearances. my feelings of tenderness and pity were undermined by the sight of them crossing thesidewalk in their bundled clothing, the child determinedly weeping, his mother drooping as she walked, wild-haired,a wretched and pathetic pair. they were inadequate to the spoken grief, the great single-minded anguish. does thisexplain the existence of professional mourners? they keep a wake from lapsing into comic pathos.
"what did the doctor say?""give him an aspirin and put him to bed.""that's what denise said.""i told him that. he said, 'well, why didn't you do it?'""why didn't we?""she's a child, not a doctor—that's why.""did you tell him that?""i don't know what i told him," she said, "i'm never in control of what i say to doctors, much less what they say to me.
there's some kind of disturbance in the air.""i know exactly what you mean.""it's like having a conversation during a spacewalk, dangling in those heavy suits.""everything drifts and floats.""i lie to doctors all the time.""so do i.""but why?" she said.
as i started the car i realized his crying had changed in pitch and quality. the rhythmic urgency had given way to asustained, inarticulate and mournful sound. he was keening now. these were expressions of mideastern lament, ofan anguish so accessible that it rushes to overwhelm whatever immediately caused it. there was somethingpermanent and soul-struck in this crying. it was a sound of inbred desolation.
"what do we do?""think of something," she said.
'there's still fifteen minutes before your class is due to start. let's take him to the hospital, to the emergency entrance.
just to see what they say.""you can't take a child to an emergency ward because he's crying. if anything is not an emergency, this would be it.""i'll wait in the car," i said.
"what do i tell them? 'my child is crying.' do they even have an emergency ward?""don't you remember? we took the stovers this past summer.""why?""their car was being repaired.""never mind.""they inhaled the spray mist from some kind of stain remover.""take me to my class," she said.
posture. when i pulled up in front of the church, some of her students were walking down the steps to the basemententrance. babette looked at her son—a searching, pleading and desperate look. he was in the sixth hour of his crying.
she ran along the sidewalk and into the building.
i thought of taking him to the hospital. but if a doctor who examined the boy thoroughly in his cozy office withpaintings on the wall in elaborate gilded frames could find nothing wrong, then what could emergency techniciansdo, people trained to leap on chests and pound at static hearts?
i picked him up and set him against the steering wheel, facing me, his feet on my thighs. the huge lament continued,wave on wave. it was a sound so large and pure i could almost listen to it, try consciously to apprehend it, as one setsup a mental register in a concert hall or theater. he was not sniveling or blubbering. he was crying out, sayingnameless things in a way that touched me with its depth and richness. this was an ancient dirge all the moreimpressive for its resolute monotony. ululation. i held him upright with a hand under each arm. as the cryingcontinued, a curious shift developed in my thinking. i found that i did not necessarily wish him to stop. it might notbe so terrible, i thought, to have to sit and listen to this a while longer. we looked at each other. behind that dopeycountenance, a complex intelligence operated. i held him with one hand, using the other to count his fingers insidethe mittens, aloud, in german. the inconsolable crying went on. i let it wash over me, like rain in sheets. i entered it,in a sense. i let it fall and tumble across my face and chest. i began to think he had disappeared inside this wailingnoise and if i could join him in his lost and suspended place we might together perform some reckless wonder ofintelligibility. i let it break across my body. it might not be so terrible, i thought, to have to sit here for four morehours, with the motor running and the heater on, listening to this uniform lament. it might be good, it might bestrangely soothing. i entered it, fell into it, letting it enfold and cover me. he cried with his eyes open, his eyes closed,his hands in his pockets, his mittens on and off. i sat there nodding sagely.
on an impulse i turned him around, sat him on my lap and started up the car, letting wilder steer. we'd done thisonce before, for a distance of twenty yards, at sunday dusk, in august, our street deep in drowsy shadow. again heresponded, crying as he steered, as we turned corners, as i brought the car to a halt back at the congregational church.
i set him on my left leg, an arm around him, drawing him toward me, and let my mind drift toward near sleep. thesound moved into a fitful distance. now and then a car went by. i leaned against the door, faintly aware of his breathon my thumb. some time later babette was knocking on the window and wilder was crawling across the seat to liftthe latch for her. she got in, adjusted his hat, picked a crumpled tissue off the floor.
we were halfway home when the crying stopped. it stopped suddenly, without a change in tone and intensity.
babette said nothing, i kept my eyes on the road. he sat between us, looking into the radio. i waited for babette toglance at me behind his back, over his head, to show relief, happiness, hopeful suspense. i didn't know how i felt andwanted a clue. but she looked straight ahead as if fearful that any change in the sensitive texture of sound, movement,expression would cause the crying to break out again.
at the house no one spoke. they all moved quietly from room to room, watching him distantly, with sneaky andrespectful looks. when he asked for some milk, denise ran softly to the kitchen, barefoot, in her pajamas, sensingthat by economy of movement and lightness of step she might keep from disturbing the grave and dramatic air he hadbrought with him into the house. he drank the milk down in a single powerful swallow, still fully dressed, a mittenpinned to his sleeve.
they watched him with something like awe. nearly seven straight hours of serious crying. it was as though he'd justreturned from a period of wandering in some remote and holy place, in sand barrens or snowy ranges—a place wherethings are said, sights are seen, distances reached which we in our ordinary toil can only regard with the mingledreverence and wonder we hold in reserve for feats of the most sublime and difficult dimensions.
