The Nearest Heart

Fiona Marsh calls on a Tuesday and Emmy answers and for approximately four minutes she performs the very specific kind of competence that is not lying but is definitely presenting her best estimates as established facts. Yes, they've done this before. Well — Emmy has, separately, as a teenager. Juliet has training. Emmy does not specify what kind of training. They both are college educated women who are working (or going to be working) on their doctorates in their respective fields. The impression she gives is that they are a reliable unit with applicable experience, which is true in every way that matters and slightly optimistic in a few ways that don't. If Mags felt that they were qualified, then who were they to disagree?

Juliet, at the kitchen table, listens to Emmy's half of the call with the expression of someone watching a negotiation and choosing not to intervene. A negotiation that one side wouldn't mind losing, but also wouldn't mind winning.

"Saturday," Emmy says, hanging up. "Seven o'clock. We have until ten."

"How old is our charge?"

"Eleven weeks."

Juliet is quiet for a moment. "I have some formal training," she says, "from a course I took some years ago. I should mention that."

"I told her you had training."

"Yes." A pause. "What did you say I was trained in?"

"I was vague," Emmy says. "It landed well."

Juliet picks up her pen and returns to her work with the expression of someone who has decided to trust that everything will be fine, on the grounds that all the evidence supports it.

#

The Marsh house is a terraced house two streets from the park, on the other side of Marlowe — the kind of home that has the specific quality of people who are capable and busy and have recently had their first child and have not yet reached the equilibrium between those three things. There are board books stacked by the sofa in a way that suggests someone put them there with organization in mind and then left them. A baby monitor on the coffee table. A packet of diapers open on the floor near the stairs. The walls are warm and the sofa has a blanket on it that Harriet has clearly been swaddled in, going by the particular fold. The house has the same quality of loyalty that apparently is associated with Crestfield.

Fiona is warm and practical in the way of nurses — which is to say, completely warm and completely practical in exactly equal measure, and able to toggle between them without thinking. This can be slightly unnerving to others, if they think too deeply about it. She hands over the instructions with the thorough specificity of someone who has written them down and cross-references the written copy against what she's saying. Juliet recognizes a kindred spirit. She fed Harriet at six. The formula is in the kitchen, she shouldn't need it but just in case. The schedule is on the fridge. She is in a phase of not particularly enjoying being put down, so she may want to be held. Emmy understands that phase, she's still in it. Juliet provides the holding.

"It's just a phase," says Evan, who is putting on his coat and doing the specific thing that fathers do when their wives have just given very thorough instructions: looking helpful near the door.

"She's eleven weeks old," Fiona says.

"Right," says Evan. "Harriet's fine. She'll be fine."

Fiona looks at Emmy and Juliet and communicates, entirely without words, something about Evan. Emmy receives it. Juliet also receives it, which she will mention to Emmy later.

"Hattie," Fiona says, picking her up one more time — the specific goodbye of a parent who knows they have to go and is saying so with their whole body — "these are Emmy and Juliet, and they're going to take care of you for a few hours."

Harriet, eleven weeks old and unbothered by introductions, looks at the middle distance with the philosophical calm of the very young.

#

For the first hour, Emmy is in charge in the comfortable way of someone who has done this before. Not with this baby, not in these exact circumstances — but the specific competence of teenage babysitting does not entirely disappear, and she moves through the early part of the evening with the instinct of someone who has been assessed as trustworthy by enough small people to have developed a feel for the work. While Emmy had never been put in charge of Rob, since they were only 2 years apart, she had sat for a few families in her hometown. She'd had a good reputation, mostly because parents never came home to find random "friends" who were definitely not "boyfriends" in their homes along with their sitter.

She holds Harriet. Harriet looks at her. Emmy talks to her in the particular voice — not the exaggerated sing-song but something warmer and more direct — and Harriet's expression is the one that small babies have when they are paying attention to a face: slightly incredulous, slightly fascinated, completely committed to the project.

Juliet sits on the sofa and watches, intrigued by Emmy's adult yet approachable communication style. Juliet does not perform ease in this moment. She is simply present, in the specific Juliet way that is not standoffish but is not performing either, and at some point Emmy puts Harriet in her arms with the casual confidence of someone redistributing an agreed-upon resource, and Juliet takes her with both hands in the careful way of someone who has thought about how to hold an infant and is doing it as described. Doing it well, with a loving warmth, but obviously not doing it from muscle memory.

Harriet looks up at Juliet.

Juliet looks back at her.

"Hello," Juliet says, in her standard register.

"You can use a slightly softer voice," Emmy says.

"I'm aware," Juliet says, and does.

#

Sometime past eight o'clock, Harriet becomes unhappy.

It is not the hunger cry — Emmy can identify that one, has identified it before in other small people, and this is not it; she fed twenty minutes ago. It is not the tired cry exactly — she has been drowsing and waking in cycles and this is sharper than the tired signal. It is, Emmy determines from experience, the uncomfortable cry. Something internal. Gas, probably. We've all been there, kid.

She takes Harriet and does the things she knows. Over the shoulder, the gentle pat between the shoulder blades, the slow walk around the living room. This works for the gas cry. It has worked before. Harriet is not settling. Emmy adjusts the angle, tries the rocking walk, tries the bouncing-in-arms, and Harriet is emphatic about her displeasure in the way that eleven-week-olds are emphatic, which is to say entirely and without nuance.

Emmy tries the things she knows and runs through all of them and reaches the end of her inventory and looks at Juliet over Harriet's unhappy head. Juliet has an odd way of calming Emmy, maybe it extends to women of all ages?

"I've tried everything in my toolkit," Emmy says, with the specific transparency of someone who respects the situation too much to pretend otherwise.

"May I try something?" Juliet says.

Emmy hands her over.

What Juliet does is deliberate and specific. She sits forward on the sofa, smooths her dress, and sets Harriet upright on her lap, facing slightly outward, supporting the chin and the chest with one careful hand — not patting, not rocking, but holding Harriet angled slightly forward with a very specific support — and with the other hand begins a firm circular motion on her back, lower than the usual spot, with a steady pressure that is not a pat and not a rub but something between the two, applied in the particular way that someone learned from an actual instructional diagram rather than from instinct.

It takes about three minutes.

Then: a burp, considerable for the size of the person producing it, and Harriet's whole body releases.

She makes a small sound. Not a cry. More of a comment. Maybe a review. Five stars, would sit here again.

"There we go, sweet baby," Juliet says in a soft voice.

"Oh," Emmy says.

She has not managed her face.

What is on it is the specific quality of someone who did not know this capability existed in their wife — not the general competence, which she knew about and expected, but this particular and specific competence in this particular and specific domain — and who has just watched it work in real time, and who is finding that what she is feeling about this is not something she has a clean word for. She is delighted. She is surprised. She is something beyond those two things, something that wants to lean toward the feeling and stay there, but she is also holding three things at once and her face is doing its work before her brain can do anything about it.

Harriet makes another small comment.

Juliet, looking at Harriet, glances up.

She sees exactly what Emmy's face is doing.

She looks back down at Harriet. She adjusts the hold slightly. She says nothing.

Emmy, retrieving her face, says: "Where did you learn that?"

"The course covered winding techniques," Juliet says. "Most people only know the over-the-shoulder method. This one is more effective for certain kinds of discomfort." She holds Harriet up slightly to check. "She's better."

"She is," Emmy agrees.

Harriet has arrived at a place of provisional peace and is looking at the middle distance again with her philosophical air, apparently having concluded that the world is more or less acceptable when being cared for by young philosophers and psychologists.

#

The rest of the evening settles into the particular quality of two people watching a small person together. Harriet dozes on Emmy's chest for a while, which is the most specific kind of trust — the involuntary trust of a sleeping infant who has decided you are safe — and Emmy sits very still in the way that people sit very still when something important is happening and they don't want to disturb it.

Juliet, at the other end of the sofa, is working on something in her notebook and also not working on it. She is, at various points, looking at Emmy in the way she looks at things she has decided to commit to memory — quietly, precisely, without announcement. It is quite possible she's taking notes on the situation. The filing system is definitely running.

Emmy does not notice this. She is watching Harriet breathe.

They talk, at low volume, about various things: the clinical hours, the seminar reading, what Rob said on Wednesday. Ordinary things, said in the particular register of people who are in the presence of something that requires care and have adjusted accordingly. At one point Harriet makes a small interrogative sound and both of them look at her simultaneously, with the specific alertness of people whose attention has been claimed by a small person and is not available for anything else until further notice.

"Still fine," Emmy says.

"Yes," Juliet says.

They return to the conversation.

#

Fiona and Evan come home at twenty past ten, slightly earlier than expected, and Fiona's expression upon finding Harriet asleep and the living room undisturbed is the specific expression of a parent who has been hoping for this and is now seeing it and can release a tension they have been carrying since seven o'clock.

"Hattie," she says softly, taking her.

"Harriet was brilliant," Evan says, which is what fathers say.

Fiona asks how the evening went and Emmy gives the honest and slightly edited version — she was great, there was a bit of fussiness around eight but we sorted it — and Fiona nods with the understanding of a nurse and a mother who knows what eight o'clock fussiness is and is relieved it was sorted. She thanks them properly, the kind of thanks that means it. Evan offers them money and there is the particular awkwardness of two people who want to decline graciously but also don't want to be the kind of guests who make everything complicated, and they end up accepting less than he offered and more than they expected.

"Come again," Fiona says, at the door. "If you're willing."

"Yes," Juliet says, without hesitation, which is slightly faster than Emmy expected.

#

They walk home in the warm dark of a summer evening, the kind where the heat of the day hasn't entirely released and the air still holds some of it. Two streets on the other side of Marlowe, the familiar way, the green door.

Inside: the house in the particular quiet of late evening. Juliet puts the kettle on — not for the Chemex at this hour, something quieter, a simple tea — and Emmy sits at the kitchen table with her arms still carrying the ghost of the hold, the particular muscle memory of having been trusted with a small person for three hours.

"The winding thing," Emmy says, when the kettle has made its consideration known. "The course you took."

Juliet turns. "Yes."

"When was it?"

"When I was thirteen," Juliet says. "I'd started doing some babysitting for families in the neighborhood. I had a reputation as the reliable kid who could cut your grass without destroying your garden. I figured this would expand my repertoire. And I wanted to do it correctly, so I found a course." She pauses. "I only used it twice, as it happened. Before — before things changed."

She says it with the precision of someone who knows what they are and are not saying, and who has decided the not-saying is the right choice. Before things changed. Before David and Marie took their trip. Before everything that followed.

Emmy sits with this. The course taken at thirteen. The careful Julian preparation, the formal learning, the knowledge held for years without occasion. Now, at twenty, in a house two streets from the park: Harriet, and the winding technique, and the small person who is better for it.

"You were good with her," Emmy says.

"You were better," Juliet says. "More natural."

"I had practice. You had—" Emmy looks at her. "You have something else."

Juliet takes the kettle off. She doesn't say anything for a moment.

"I think," she says, finally, measured and careful, "it's easier than the fear predicted."

She puts two mugs down. She sits across from Emmy at the kitchen table, in the house that has been having its summer, and they drink their tea in the warm kitchen and the evening does not require anything more of them than this.

"Gemstone?"

"Yes, my Emerald?"

"I don't always enjoy being put down"

"I know."

"Will you hold me?"

"Always."

* * *