When Moths Fall Asleep

0.5 - the warmth

For young people, life tends to be the container of all things awe-inspiring.

Skipp's parents didn't care much for the baby. Angelina couldn't imagine that hers would either, if they knew. But the two young people, so giddy with joy after the stuffiness of the delivery room, could find nothing more shocking in the world than the little life that slept just yards away, silent yet so present.

"He has your nose."

"No, he has yours."

He had Angelina's nose, but they didn't really mean any of it anyway. Angelina spoke because if she didn't, she was going to fall away deep into her own thoughts and then, who knew what? She would cry or laugh or throw something, and Skipp didn't need to deal with that right now.

Skipp looked like a little boy again with his moony, exhausted eyes. Angelina hooked her foot under his heel, bouncing both of their legs up and down like she used to do in middle school underneath the desks.

In those days, they would stare straight ahead still and pretend the other didn't exist. But now, Skipp turned to her and grinned. "This is the greatest day of my life."

What a strange thing to say, really. Why that day in their grayish apartment in Cincinnati, sun looking bleakly over a boxy skyline? Why that day, and not and of those long, lazy ventures during all his summers in the Bahamas with cousins, water so blue that it seemed to dare him to believe it could be real? Why not their wedding night, soft candlelight illuminating Angelina's face as she guided his hands with shy, quiet strokes down the zipper of her dress?

But the baby casted a certain spell over him where now, there could be no better day than this one right here.

Angelina didn't disagree. She leaned away a little, the pressure of his shoulder on her sensitive chest becoming palpable. "We're going to be good parents," she said. To Skipp, it sounded something like a question although, in Angelina's own mind, she was fairly certain it would be true.

"Don't worry about it," he said to her. "We don't have to be perfect. We just have to do our best."

She wanted to tell him that she'd never heard something so ridiculous in her life, but why ignite an argument when he only meant to extinguish her anxieties? Instead, she leaned her head against his shoulder and said, "I'm going to do better than my best."

"Okay," Skipp said. There was a little sigh in his voice. He kissed her forehead, lingering a moment. "Just, leave a little love for me, alright?"

Angelina couldn't tell whether or not he was joking, so she gave a little chuckle. "I will," she promised. Across the room, the mobile over the crib shook with the wind. "I just . . . don't want him to be like me. I want . . . well, I don't know. I want him to be something, at least. Not like me."

"You're something." His head, as if suddenly heavy, rested on Angelina's, his cheekbone hard and warm on her temple. "You're my Angel."

"Yeah, but that's it," she said. "I'm just your wife and his mother and their daughter. What am I on my own? Not a damn thing, that's what."

"Well, neither is anyone."

"That's just a lie." Angelina frowned, the dimple in her chin admonishing Skipp as it peeked through the skin. "Without anybody, you're still a contractor, aren't you? You're still something that people value."

"You're still a seamstress, aren't you?"

"But there's other seamstresses."

"There's other contractors."

The night outside reigned silent, tired cicadas in the distance. Bowie dozed near the crib, his hair splayed around the floor like a shaggy rug. His legs spasmed as he dreamed his Golden-Retriever dreams, catching tennis balls in an imaginary park. Angelina and Skipp surrendered to the quiet for a moment, hearing the place to which they had just added a tiny burst of noise. The baby slept on, so oblivious to the ways that, as it seemed to Angelina, the world could not stand him.

There were fast cars on every road and gun ammunition at Walmart. Almost worse, there was heavy furniture left unbolted from the walls. There was salmonella in unpasteurized milk and wood pulp in parmesan cheese. There were plastic bags that were to be kept "out of reach of children".

"How are we going to keep him safe?" she sighed, more to herself than to her husband. It seemed like an impossible conundrum. In fact, their own existence here in adulthood, having been delivered safely through the harrows of childhood seemed to be nothing short of miraculous.

Skipp hummed softly, the buzz in his vocal chords carrying through Angelina's whole body. "He's gonna be okay, Angel," he assured her. "He's got good people to take care of him."

She nodded because he was right. The baby was not going to be like she was. He was going to grow up with two people saying "I love you" every night before he went to bed, someone to run to whenever he wanted to cry. He was going to have a loving father who would teach him the ways of the world and an attentive mother who would patch him up when the ways of the world proved difficult.

When she thought about it too hard, the years slipped away and 1974 would be back, a dirty apartment in Queens, not a familiar face to be seen. Angelina could see her own crumpling face, hands shaking. An unknown aunt leaning down to say, "Everything's going to be okay." It wasn't, was it?

"I wonder what he's going to be like," Angelina said. Her voice turned up at the end, vivid imaginings coloring her thoughts. "He could be anything, isn't that amazing? Maybe he'll be famous. Or he'll be a teacher or a lawyer."

Skipp smirked. "Or a contractor."

"I wouldn't mind that."

They fell quiet again, and this time, the conversation didn't relapse. Angelina could feel herself being weighted down on the edges by a leaching tiredness that seemed to drain her strength through her pores. She knew that soon, before the sun rose, the baby would awake and screech for her and she would startle into consciousness, becoming aware slowly, as always, of Skipp's sweaty cheek against her neck, his weight solid on her side, and she would push him away to go to where her new life was.