Astonish Me. Maggie Shipstead

wants her to say that both she and her body want him, that she is looking forward to a lifetime of sex with only him. But begging for reassurance is unattractive, unmanly, something he can permit himself only in tiny, rationed bursts. Joan’s father left when she was a baby and never came back, and Jacob thinks, psychoanalytically speaking, she should be the one to worry about him leaving. It’s worrisome that she doesn’t seem to worry. In fact, in all the time he’s known her, he can’t remember her ever seeming as relaxed as she does when she’s home with the baby.

      Harry curls his toes and claps his feet together like two scoops.

      “I like how he gestures with his feet,” Jacob comments, giving up the subject of sex. “I should start doing that. Just wave them around when I want to make a point.”

      Harry pushes out his legs and, rolling sideways, swivels up to a sitting position. He flaps in celebration. Gently, Joan grasps his hands, and Harry pumps his torso and bows his legs and is suddenly, startlingly upright, balanced on those gesticulating feet. His diaper hulas for balance. He has been doing this for a week. Seven months is early for a baby to stand—Jacob knows this even though infancy isn’t his field. His dissertation is on the identification of gifted children, but he is wary of getting attached to the idea of Harry being gifted, of inadvertently pushing the boy or making him feel like a disappointment.

      “Do you want to show Daddy?” Joan asks Harry. “Do you want to show him what you can do?” She releases the baby’s hands, and for a breathless moment he balances on his own, feet spread wide like a surfer’s. Then he flexes at the waist and falls onto his padded butt.

      Jacob picks Harry up under the arms, turns him around, and looks into his face. “You,” he says. “We’re going to have to watch you.” Joan had asked him to name the baby, bestowed complete power on him to do so, and he had chosen Harold after his grandfather who died early in Joan’s pregnancy.

      Joan stands and goes to their tiny kitchen nook to warm up some formula. She is wearing poufy harem pants, thick socks, and that thin, soft shirt he wants to put his hands in. “Is there anything to eat?” he asks.

      “Formula, bananas, and cereal.”

      “You didn’t go to the store?”

      “It was too cold.”

      Jacob eases down on his back, bringing Harry with him to lie on his chest. “Mommy thinks because she can live on bananas, so can everyone else,” he tells the baby. Harry grasps his shirt with both hands and squints drowsily, coming down from the thrill of standing. The old chestnut is true: Jacob has always liked babies, but the love he feels for his own is an epiphany, shocking in its irreversibility. Even so, as he watches Harry’s tiny fingers crab at his shirt, he can’t help but wistfully consider, again, the early end to his bachelorhood. When Joan had come to see him the previous summer and hopped so briskly into his bed, it had seemed to vindicate his long-held conviction that his stock would rise steadily the further he got from high school. Finally holding Joan’s naked body, he had felt tenderness and love, but he had also, distinctly, felt the primal triumph of the sower of wild oats.

      “Guess who I ran into?” Jacob says in a low voice, not wanting to interfere with Harry’s wind-down.

      “Who?”

      “Liesel.”

      Joan appears from the kitchen, dribbling formula from a baby bottle onto the inside of her wrist and licking it off. “Really?”

      “Yeah.”

      She picks Harry up, uncovering a baby-sized patch of sweat on Jacob’s shirt. “It’s a thousand degrees in here,” he says.

      “Mmm.” She settles cross-legged on the couch with a towel over her shoulder and the baby reclining against her arm. Idly, Jacob turns a rattle over in his fingers, watching her, wanting her to look at him. Her contentment is wrapped so tightly around Harry that he can never be certain it extends to him, too.

      He gets up and goes, without much optimism, to search for dinner. As he does most nights, he pours out a bowl of cornflakes. The last of the milk is not quite enough to cover them. “Do you think you’d be able to make a grocery run tomorrow?” he says, sitting beside her on the couch and wiping a dirty spoon on his shirt. “I’m not asking for a steak dinner. Just soup or something. Something I can heat up.”

      “Sure.” She raises her eyebrows at Harry and makes her lips into an O, mirroring his face as he suckles the bottle.

      “You know, never mind. I’ll go myself.”

      “Suit yourself.”

      He wants to pinch her, to hide Harry behind his back, to say something that will amaze her. Instead, he says, casually, “I think Liesel still has a thing for me.”

      “Really? Why?”

      “Is it such a mystery? I’m a catch. Was a catch.”

      “No, I meant why do you think that?”

      “Oh. I don’t know—I could just tell.”

      Finally she looks at him, perplexed. “Jacob, are you trying to make me jealous?”

      He watches Harry work at the bottle, his small hands coming up to caress it as Joan holds it. “Yes. I am. I’m sorry. It’s stupid.”

      “It’s not stupid,” she says. “It’s just not necessary.”

      “Here, give him to me.”

      She passes Harry and the bottle to him without disconnecting one from the other and drapes the towel over his shoulder. He wants her to watch the two of them at the same time, to see that they are part of the same picture. “Maybe,” he says, “it’s just that when you want someone for so long, and then you get that person magically out of nowhere, you have trouble believing it’s for real.”

      She smiles at him, brightly, the way she does when she is nervous, and the creeping in of her old skittishness reassures him more than anything she could say. “I think you miss the crush,” she says. “I’m probably a letdown because life is still life. Just with less suspense, and a baby.”

      “You’re not a letdown,” he says, brushing Harry’s powdery cheek with a finger. “I’d rather have you than wish for you.”

      The exact mechanism by which Joan became pregnant is something that bothers him from time to time. She had said she was on the pill, and then, later, when he’d asked how this could have happened, she said something about having had a stomach flu right before she came to see him, and maybe the pill doesn’t work when you throw it up. He can’t think of a reason why she would have done it on purpose.

      He says, “But I worry that you’re not happy. Sometimes it feels like you’re a fugitive hiding out here, like you’re in the witness protection program. I keep thinking I’m going to come home and find a note. That’s the new suspense.”

      Her feet burrow under his thigh, always seeking warmth. “I’m happy.”

      He is not sure he believes her. “Good,” he says, patting the tops of her feet. “I’m glad.”

      December 10, 1970

       Dear Joan,

       Well, I’ve been drinking. I should say that right away. I was at a party with the girl I’ve been seeing (yes, I’ve been seeing a girl), and we walked along the river, and then I told her I was feeling sick, which is true but really I wanted to come back here to my room and write you a letter. I wonder if I’ll see you when I’m home for Christmas. Where are you? I’m sending this to your mom’s house, but I don’t even know if you’re there. I hope you’re dancing, wherever you are. If you’re taking a typing class, please quit immediately.

       Joan. About the day at the beach. I’m sorry. I was a jackass. I’m sorry for what I said and for acting like I had earned some sort of right to kiss you. My friendship isn’t contingent on kissing,