Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

Mrs. Chow was watching Velvet.

“Quit that!” Remora Cass slapped the girl’s hand away from the baby’s face.

“Times like this I’d say it’s a blessing my Aunt Eleanor’s deaf,” said Remora Cass. “I’ve gotten pretty good with sign language.” From her overstuffed chair she repeated in pantomime what she had said about the baby.

Velvet mimicked her mother’s generous, sweeping movements. When Remora Cass caught sight of her she added a left jab to the girl’s head to her repertoire of gestures. Velvet slipped the punch with practiced ease. But the blow struck the swing set. Everyone tensed. Ed flapped his arms and went on sleeping. “Leave us alone,” said Remora Cass, “before I really get mad.”

The girl chased down the cat and skipped toward the door. “I’m bored anyway,” she said.

Remora Cass asked the Chows questions, first about jobs and pets. Then she moved on to matters of politics and patriotism. “What’s your feeling about the Red Chinese in Korea?”

A standard question. “Terrible,” said Chow, giving his standard answer. “I’m sorry. Too much trouble.”

Mrs. Chow sat by quietly. She admired Chow’s effort. She had studied the language, but he did the talking; she wanted to move, but he had to plead their case; it was his kin back home who benefited from the new regime, but he had to badmouth it.

Remora Cass asked about children.

“No, no, no,” Chow said, answering as his friend Bok had coached him. His face was slightly flushed from the question. Chow wanted children, many children. But whenever he discussed the matter with his wife, she answered that she already had one, meaning the old woman, of course, and that she was enough.

“Tell your wife later,” the manager said, “what I’m about to tell you now. I don’t care what jobs you do, just so long as you have them. What I say goes for the landlady. I’m willing to take a risk on you. Be nice to have nice quiet folks up there like Rikki and Bok. Rent paid up, I can live with anyone. Besides, I’m real partial to Chinese takeout. I know we’ll do just right.”

The baby moaned, rolling its head from side to side. His mother stared at him as if in all the world there were just the two of them.

Velvet came in holding a beach ball. She returned to her place beside the swing and started to hop, alternating legs, with the beach ball held to her head. “She must be in some kind of pain,” Mrs. Chow said to her husband.

The girl mimicked the Chinese she heard. Mrs. Chow glared at Velvet, as if she were the widow during one of her spells. The look froze the girl, standing on one leg. Then she said, “Can Ed come out to play?”

Chow took hold of his wife’s hand and squeezed it, as he did to brace himself before the roller coaster’s forward plunge. Then in a single, well-rehearsed motion Remora Cass swept off her slipper and punched at the girl. Velvet masterfully side-stepped the slipper and let the beach ball fly. The slipper caught the swing set; the beach ball bounced off Ed’s lap.

The collisions released charged particles into the air that seemed to hold everyone in a momentary state of paralysis. The baby’s eyes peeled open, and he blinked at the ceiling. Soon his distended belly started rippling. He cried until he turned purple, then devoted his energy to maintaining that hue. Mrs. Chow had never heard anything as harrowing. She visualized his cry as large cubes forcing their way into her ears.

Remora Cass picked Ed up and bounced on the balls of her feet. “You better start running,” she said to Velvet, who was already on her way out the door.

Remora Cass half smiled at the Chows over the baby’s shoulder. “He’ll quiet down sooner or later,” she said.

Growing up, Mrs. Chow was the youngest of five girls. She had to endure the mothering of her sisters, who, at an early age, were already in training for their future roles. Each married in her teens, plucked in turn by a Portuguese, a German, a Brit, and a New Yorker. They had many babies. But Mrs. Chow thought little of her sisters’ example. Even when her parents made life unbearable she never indulged in the hope that a man — foreign or domestic — or a child could save her from her unhappiness.

From the kitchen Remora Cass called Mrs. Chow. The big woman was busy with her baking. The baby was slung over her shoulder. “Let’s try something,” she said as she transferred the screaming Ed into Mrs. Chow’s arms.

Ed was a difficult package. Not only was he heavy and hot and sweaty but he spat and squirmed like a sack of kittens. She tried to think of how it was done. She tried to think of how a baby was held. She remembered Romanesque Madonnas cradling their gentlemanly babies in art history textbooks. If she could get his head up by hers, that would be a start.

Remora Cass told Mrs. Chow to try bouncing and showed her what she meant. “Makes him think he’s still inside,” she said. Ed emitted a long, sustained wail, then settled into a bout of hiccups. “You have a nice touch with him. He won’t do that for just anyone.”

As the baby quieted, a pain rolled from the heel of Mrs. Chow’s brain, down through her pelvis, to a southern terminus at the backs of her knees. She couldn’t blame the baby entirely for her discomfort. He wanted only to escape; animal instinct told him to leap from danger.

She was the one better equipped to escape. She imagined invading soldiers murdering livestock and planting flags in the soil of her ancestral estate, as if it were itself a little nation; they make history by the slaughter of generations of her family; they discover her in the wardrobe, striking matches; they ask where she has hidden her children, and she tells them there are none; they say, good, they’ll save ammunition, but also too bad, so young and never to know the pleasure of children (even if they’d have to murder them). Perhaps this would be the subject of her painting, a nonrepresentational canvas that hinted at a world without light. Perhaps—

Ed interrupted her thought. He had developed a new trick. “Woop, woop, woop,” he went, thrusting his pelvis against her sternum in the manner of an adult male in the act of mating. She called for Chow.

Remora Cass slid a cookie sheet into the oven and then stuck a bottle of baby formula into Ed’s mouth. He drained it instantly. “You do have a way with him,” said Remora Cass.

They walked into the front room. The baby was sleepy and dripping curds on his mother’s shoulder. Under the swing High Noon, the cat, was licking the nipple of an abandoned bottle. “Scat!” she said. “Now where’s my wash gone to?” she asked the room. “What’s she up to now?” She scanned the little room, big feet planted in the deep brown shag carpet, hands on her beefy hips, baby slung over her shoulder like a pelt. “Velvet—” she started. That was all. Her jaw locked, her gums gleamed, her eyes rolled into her skull. Her head flopped backward, as if at the back of her neck there was a great hinge. Then she yawned, and the walls seemed to shake.

Remora Cass rubbed her eyes. “I’m bushed,” she said.

Mrs. Chow went over to the screen door. Chow and the girl were at the clothesline. Except for their hands and legs, they were hidden behind a bed sheet. The girl’s feet were in constant motion. From the basket her hands picked up pieces of laundry which Chow’s hands then clipped to the line.

“Her daddy’s hardly ever here,” Remora Cass said. “Works all hours, he does. He has to.” She patted Ed on the back, then rubbed her eyes again. “Looks like Velvet’s found a friend. She won’t do that with anyone. You two are naturals with my two. You should get some of your own.” She looked over at Mrs. Chow and laughed. “Maybe it’s best you didn’t get that. Here.” She set the baby on Mrs. Chow’s shoulder. “This is what it’s like when they’re sleeping.”