Douglas Kennedy - A Special Relationship

'Oh, Jesus, Jack', I said, watching regurgitated formula dribble down my teeshirt. At which point, I heard Tony's voice behind me, saying, 'Don't blame him'.

'I'm not blaming him', I said. 'I just don't like being covered in puke'.

'What do you expect, giving him a bottle. He needs your milk, not...'

'Who the hell are you, Dr Spock?'

'Any fool knows that'.

'My tits are blocked again'.

'Then unblock them'.

'And why don't you fuck off back to your eyrie'.

'With pleasure', he said, slamming the door behind him.

Tony had never slammed a door behind him before. And he did it with such force that it not only startled me, but also scared Jack. His crying redoubled in response to the loud bang. I suddenly had this absolute, immediate urge to punch out a window with my fist. Instead, I stripped off my vomit-drenched shirt, pulled up my bra, and - picking up Jack from the crib - attached him to the right nipple. As he sucked and sucked, I felt as if my head was about to implode - the pain from the obstructed breast suddenly feeling minor compared to the amplifying pressure-cooker between my ears. And when - out of nowhere - the breast unclogged and Jack began to greedily feed, my reaction wasn't one of relief. Rather, I entered a strange new terrain... a place I'd never ventured before. A realm called hysteria.

Or, at least, that's what it felt like to me. Incessant sobbing, accentuated by a mounting internal scream. It was a most peculiar sensation, this silent wail. It was as if I had retreated into a corner of my skull, from which I could hear myself - at a distant remove - crying. But gradually, these external tears were overwhelmed by a huge lunatic screech. When this howl reached such a magnitude that it threatened to deafen me, I had no choice but to pull Jack off my breast, lay him down in his crib, and negotiate the corridor towards our bedroom. Whereupon I fell on to the bed, grabbed a pillow, and used it to baffle my ears.

Curiously, this seemed to have a salutary effect. Within seconds, the internal howling stopped. So too did my sobbing. But in its place came silence. Or what, at first, seemed like silence... but then, out of nowhere, turned out to be the absence of sound. It was as if both eardrums had been perforated and now I was hearing nothing which was something of a relief, as I could no longer take the wail between my ears. So I lay there for what seemed to be only a few moments, luxuriating in this newfound deafness. Until the door flew open and Tony came in, looking surprisingly agitated. Initially, I couldn't hear what he was saying (even though I had removed the pillow from around my ears). But then, out of nowhere, my hearing snapped back into life. One moment, Tony was silent pantomime, the next, his voice came crashing into my ears. And underscoring his angry tone was the nearby sound of Jack crying.

' - don't understand how the hell you can just lie there when your son's' - Tony said, this sentence crashing into my ears.

'Sorry, sorry, sorry', I said, jumping to my feet and brushing past him. When I reached the nursery, I retrieved Jack from the crib and had him back on my left nipple within seconds. Fortunately, the milk flowed immediately - and Jack's cries were temporarily silenced. We all stop crying when we get what we want... for a moment or two anyway.

I leaned back in the wicker chair as he fed away. I shut my eyes, I willed myself back into the realm of deafness. Instead, I heard Tony's voice. It was back in his usual modulated range.

'What happened there?'

I opened my eyes. I sounded peculiarly calm.

'What happened where?' I asked.

'You on the bed - with the pillow round your head. Remember?'

'My ears...'

'Your ears?'

'Yeah - earache or something. Couldn't take it... the earache, that is. Just a momentary thing. Just...'

I shut my eyes again, unable to stand the sound of my own jerky train of thought.

'Should I call the doctor?'

My eyes jumped open again.

'No need', I said, suddenly sounding lucid. Anything but some doctor - looking warily at my fragile state, and adding to (what I imagined was) an ever-growing file about my maternal incompetence.

'I really do think...'

'Everything's fine now', I said, cutting him off. 'It was just a little temporary distress'.

Temporary distress. How bloody English of me.

Tony studied me carefully, saying nothing

'You ever get a flash earache?' I asked. 'Hurts like a bastard. And then... bam, it's gone'.

'If you say so', he said, sounding unconvinced.

'Sorry I shouted at you'.

'Comme d'habitude', he said. 'Mind if I go back to work?'

'No problem'.

'I'm upstairs if you need me'.

And he left.

Comme d'habitude. You bastard. Spending a derisory half-hour with me and your new son (on the first day he's home) before retreating to your sanctum sanctorum. And then getting all affronted when I get just a little peeved by your little lecture about Mother's Milk versus Formula. (How the hell did he know that? Some article on the Chronicle's women's pages, no doubt - which Tony probably glanced at for around fifteen seconds.) No doubt, once Jack starts crying again, my husband will plead the need for sleep (because somebody has to earn the money around here) and head for the silent comfort of his office sofa bed, leaving me to walk the floors for the night.

Which is exactly what happened. To make things even more maddening, I encouraged Tony to sleep elsewhere. Because by the time he came downstairs again - it was sometime after one am - Jack was back in bawling mode, the thirty minute feed being his sole respite from a long evening's cry. So when Tony found me in the living room with Jack, occasionally stealing a glance at the television, while simultaneously trying to rock him to sleep, I tried to play nice.

'Poor you', Tony said. 'How long has he been going on like that?'

'Too long'.

'Anything I can do?'

'Get some sleep. You need it'.

'You sure about that?'

'This can't go on all night. He's going to have to pass out eventually'.

Eventually was the operative word here - as Jack did not settle down again until 3.17 am exactly (I was watching BBC News 24 at the time - which always has the precise time in one corner of the screen). By this time, not only were both breasts unblocked, but had been wrung dry by his persistent feeding. After five hours of tears, he burped a milk-saturated burp, and passed right out.

I couldn't believe my luck - and swiftly got him upstairs into his crib, then stripped off my grungy clothes, took a very hot shower, and crawled into bed, expecting sleep to hit me like a sucker punch.

But nothing happened. I stared up at the ceiling, willing myself to pass out. No sale. I reached for a book from the pile of reading matter by the bed. I tried to read a couple of pages of Portrait of a Lady (well, I was an American in Europe, after all). But even Henry James's dense, lugubrious style didn't put me to sleep. So I got up and made myself a cup of camomile tea, and looked in on Jack (still conked out), and washed down two aspirins, and got back into bed, and tried to negotiate the further adventures of Isobel Archer, and waited for sleep to arrive, and...

Suddenly, it was crowding five am, and I was reaching the point in the novel where Isabel was about to ruin her life by marrying that malignant nobody, Gilbert Osmond, and I kept thinking that Edith Wharton did this sort of thing far more smartly in The House of Mirth and, God, didn't James write long sentences, and if he couldn't put me to sleep, nobody could, and...

Jack began to cry again. I put down the book. I went into the nursery. I removed his dirty diaper. I cleaned his dirty bottom. I dressed him in a clean diaper. I picked him up. I sat down in the wicker chair. I lifted up my teeshirt. He attached himself to my left nipple. I winced in anticipation of the forthcoming pain. And...