Ralph slept like a log, if logs sleep. Mostly they just lay there, blank and dumb, waiting to be chopped. Not so far from Ralph, Jessie thought, only logs didn’t snore. Ralph buzz-sawed on, lips flop-slopping. Once, driving his ice wagon, Ralph had seemed like the coolest cucumber in town; now he sweated through the collars Jessie took such pains to starch. You always think the man you can’t have is better than the one you’ve got, Jessie’s older sister told her. Poor Mabel, widowed at thirty-two. But at least her husband was a railroad man and had taken her a few places before he fell onto the tracks. At least Mabel’s husband hadn’t snored.
Ralph snored the night Emery died, New Year’s, red-faced after the party, so loud Jessie crept downstairs to sleep on the couch. Every night since, Jessie thought: what if she hadn’t. If she’d been upstairs, in the bedroom next to the nursery. Tired as she was, Ralph snoring or not. She would have heard something. Next morning, the slant of the sun all wrong, so late, no baby crying, Jessie flying upstairs, seeing Emery’s face mashed into the cot. When she reached for him she knew. Small body like stone, and the sound that came from her! Like some wild lioness seeing her cub torn away. Even that sound didn’t wake Ralph, though the older children came running.
Crib death, the doctor said. Sometimes God has his reasons. Jessie wanted to slap him with a wet diaper. Like she wanted to slap Ralph now, but instead she was packing her clothes. Soft folds, no creases, the way her mother taught her. Jessie’s mother would know. She’d packed all her life in one trunk once, a trunk Jessie still had, together with a tiny book, The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, inscribed in scratchy brown ink. To our dearest Jennie. 3 December 1870, Old Machar. A parting gift. Jessie’s mother had sailed away, left her parents and her home. Started over. Like Jessie was starting over. Not for the first time.
But Ralph is such a good provider, Mabel always said, coming in on his side every time, and Jessie replied: You take him, then.
And Mabel—the practical one, while Jessie was the pretty one—Mabel took him.
