She often watches him while he sleeps. On nights like this when the air is too still and the house far too silent, she drapes her nightgown over her shoulders and walks across the hall to the nursery. The door is always left ajar and she is thankful that it doesn't creak. The only light in the room comes from the candle in her hand, and it casts strange shadows on his soft and ever changing features. Before they had held him together, they spent their nights in bed wondering which one of them he would resemble. He wanted the baby to have her shade of brown hair. "Like burnt coffee", he had said once, strands of her hair sliding through his fingers. She had laughed and said she hoped the baby had a better sense for poetry. Now that he is here, no one ever talks about which parent he looks like most. If any mentions of resemblance are made, it is always a distant relative. An uncle in New York. Granny's cousin who owned three Spanish Andalusians and insisted on polishing his own saddles.
It is easier to be in his presence when he is asleep. When he is asleep, he wants nothing from her. When he is asleep, she is not his mother. She owes him nothing. She is like a stranger. She is not expected to welcome him into her arms and anxiously inspect him from head to toe as if to look for a crack or a blemish. She is not expected to hold him and coo adoringly at him, something she knows with certainty that Sybil would have done with great talent.
She envies the boy his ignorance, his blissful and thoughtless sleep. She – she has gone back to dreaming of the war. Mud staining the hem of her skirts. Throat hoarse from shouting his name over the crack and whistle of gunshots. She always finds William in these dreams, slouched on a pile of rubble and dismembered limbs. His own legs are blown off – sometimes one, sometimes both. He takes his helmet off when he sees her, and wordlessly points a bloodied hand into the distance. She continues in the direction he points to, and as she trudges forward, she knows he has dropped lifeless behind her. She always wakes up before she can find him. She always wakes up with his name like rusted barbed wire on her tongue. She wishes she could wake up once more to the dread of uncertainty. She would rather that than this dread of staggering finality.
He shifts in his sleep. His hands ball into tiny fists and he shakes his head before curling his legs into himself. She stands up soundlessly, readying herself to retreat back to the emptiness of her room if he should cry out. He kicks his legs back out, turns his head away from her, and settles back into slumber. She realizes with a pang that she had been hoping to hear him cry. They don't really let her hear him cry. When they are all gathered in the drawing room, she has not failed to notice how they hurriedly remove him from her vicinity when he fusses and cries, as if they fear that his wails would set off some sleeping monster inside of her. They don't know that a part of her relishes in that sound. When he cries, she can pretend it is out of conscious misery - a desperate and sudden grief for the father who will never sit him on his knee. When he is blue in the face from crying, she can pretend it is because he somehow feels the pain of her wasted heart. She has held that child inside of her for almost three quarters of a year after all, how can he not feel what she feels. For a few moments, she can pretend that he shares her burden, that this senseless infant inexplicably understands.
She kneels again before his crib, her eyes following the swirl of hair around the crown of his head, and she finds herself willing him to wake up.
"Wake up. Wake up baby Bunting, and cry for your mama."
She wants him to cry until his nightdress is soaked with his tears. She is like a well that has run dry. Her heart is parched and now he must cry for her. She will never ask him for anything else.