Chapter 34
September 1988
It was two in the morning, and the house was completely silent except for the sound of Lily sucking on her bottle and the slight creaking of the rocking chair. His half of the night was nearly over. Joyce had mostly recovered from the birth, but she still needed to rest at the end of the day more than he did, so she would get some sleep while he took the first feedings. His father and brother would have mocked him if they'd seen him rocking a baby or pacing the floors until she finally shut her eyes, but he didn't care. They were the ones missing out.
Somehow, it had worked. People had had their questions when Joyce first introduced him as her partner, but apparently small-town loyalty to her had trumped reservations about him. A few had threatened to kill him if he hurt her, but he doubted they actually meant it. And even if they did, he had no intention of hurting anyone.
They had actually become rather good friends with the Jacksons, whose own daughter was born about a month before Lily. He'd been shocked, but not unpleasantly, to discover he already knew the other Dr. Jackson – his colleague Darren's wife Gloria had sewn him back together three years earlier. His old injuries had required some delicate explanations – Joyce's insistence on honesty with people didn't go quite that far. Apparently Darren and Gloria had accepted his "white lie," as Joyce called it, and their first dinner had been a success, with Darren promising to teach him how to grill next time they got together.
He'd even managed to reach a sort of – what was the word – détente with Hopper. They'd probably never go out for a beer or enjoy each other's company, but Hopper had at least stopped following him around, waiting for him to make a mistake so he could write a ticket. It had lost its effectiveness as an intimidation technique, anyway, once he realized he wasn't going to be deported as long as he paid the fine. Before Joyce took time off to recover, Hopper would stop by the store from time to time to beg for help managing a teenage girl, and if Alexei happened to be there he'd say something polite, give Joyce a little kiss and be on his way. It required a greater show of confidence than he felt, but it did give him the slight satisfaction of annoying Hopper by refusing to be threatened. And Joyce seemed to appreciate it.
Lily's birth had reordered their relationship, but so far they were managing. They'd had a few months to practice better communication before they were thrown into sleep deprivation, and it was helping. If nothing else, they'd established that either could call a time-out when Joyce's temper was starting to bubble up and his instinct to shut down was kicking in. It made for a decent-enough system. Loving a woman before having a baby and loving one when they'd both been stretched to their limits were different things, but he had no regrets. And from what Joyce said, at least he was more help than Lonny had ever been.
The sucking stopped. He put Lily on his chest and patted her back to burp her. She was so tiny, he'd been sure something was wrong, but the doctors insisted she was within the normal range. He idly wondered how small he and Andrei must have looked, being born in a time of food shortages, if a normal baby could fit so easily in his hands. He wished he could send his mother and brother a picture of this bald, pink little creature, but he wouldn't do anything that would put her in danger, no matter how small the risk.
"Are you ready to sleep, Lilya?" he whispered. Lily gave no indication she was ready. She must nap during the day, because otherwise he didn't know how she was surviving. "No? All right. Ve rock." He worried that she'd grow up incapable of pronouncing her Ws, but the baby books he was pouring over insisted it was important for both parents to talk to their child. Sometimes he'd sing her little songs he remembered his grandmothers using to soothe him when he was sick in bed, though he took out the references to wolves, battles and death in general. Perhaps a Russian child needed to be prepared early for the world's darkness, but Lily was an American girl, who would grow up believing people were kind and that she could have her heart's desire if she just tried hard enough. He had promised he would give her that kind of childhood, but first he needed to get her to sleep.
"Sleep, baby, my dearest,
Hush-a-bye, a-bye.
Quietly the bright moon
Is looking at you in the cradle.
I will start telling a story,
Sing a song;
You dream a dream, closing the eyes,
Hush-a-bye, a-bye."
Author's note: The lyrics are from Wikipedia's translation of the Cossack Lullaby. The second stanza is dark, as are some other Russian lullabies I found, so I thought Alexei would probably censor that a bit.