Saving Elijah

you?"
    He turned to me, then looked down at Elijah. "It'll be all right. He'll be all right."
    But we didn't really know that.
    "Your mother is a piece of work," he said, changing the subject.
    "The meat loaf issue?" I said, letting him.
    He nodded.
    "Ah. Did you start out with how happy we were that they were helping?"
    He laughed. "What do you think, I've got a death wish? I told her how much we appreciated their coming. I said the kids were upset because you aren't there and that maybe it would be better if I cooked dinner, because I can fix things they're used to."
    "My husband," I said, "you are a genius." Charlotte would never have let him cook; if you don't want to cook you pay someone to do it, you don't let a man do it, for God's sake.
    "I know." He gave me a smug, self-satisfied look.
    "So Charlotte said ..." I went into my famous Charlotte-giving-guilt imitation: "'Oh, no, no, don't be silly. Just tell me what Dinah makes and I'll try to follow it.'"
    "She tries, you know."
    "Hey, whose side are you on? So Nelda's making hot dogs tonight?"
    "Not a meat loaf or green bean in sight."
    We moved on to talking about more important things, like how many cc's of formula Elijah had taken that day.
    Finally, after three weeks, they let us take him home. Kate hovered over him like a little mother, and Alex seemed almost afraid to go near him at first, as if he would break. And Elijah cried. Most nights either Sammy or I had to walk our tiny bawling baby around the house until, gradually, his screams subsided and his red, angry face relaxed.
    One night Kate appeared in the doorway of the dining room, where I was circling the table for what seemed the fiftieth time. Standing there in her lavender pajamas, pale, thin arms poking out of short sleeves, auburn hair sleep-matted, she looked younger than ten.
    "What are you doing, Mom?" She rubbed her eyes.
    I put my finger to my lips and kept walking. Elijah had just closed his eyes. "Sometimes I have to walk Elijah around to help him go to sleep," I whispered.
    "You do? What time is it?"
    "About three."
    She stood watching me for a moment, then said, "You said you'd take me to get ballet slippers tomorrow. For the play."
    "I will, Kate," I whispered. Then, "I would have walked you around, too, if you'd needed it."
    She looked at me. "But I didn't need it. I was a good baby, right?"
    "Elijah's a good baby, honey. You and Alex were just calmer babies."
    "It's not Elijah's fault he isn't."
    Still walking. I could feel his heart beating, smell his baby smell in his hair. "No, of course not."
    "I love you, Mom."
    "Love you back."
    "You should make Daddy walk him around sometimes."
    "Daddy does his share," I told my budding feminist. "Let's all go to bed."

    *    *    *

    Charlotte knew what to do about all of this, of course. Just let him cry. Eventually she realized I was not going to take her advice and insisted I needed a baby nurse. But I wanted Elijah to be my own. I was planning to return to my practice, pared down and part-time, in three months. Until then, no helpers.
    "My God, Dinah, that doesn't mean you have to turn yourself into a zombie. What kind of a mother can you be if you're always exhausted?"
    I managed to resist telling her that I was a better mother than she had been, whether I had a baby nurse or not.
    My mother and I eventually compromised. A nanny came in three nights a week for two months. Charlotte insisted on paying, I ended up grateful for the help, because it became apparent very quickly that Elijah needed an extraordinary amount of care and attention. Wrestling my guilt to the ground, I went back to work when Elijah was four months old. I had to or I'd lose my entire practice and have to start over. I did hire a woman to help, a friend of a friend of Sam's mother. Her name was Bridey and she was lovely and patient. At ten months Elijah was still not crawling, and the testing started in earnest: brain scans and EEGs and blood tests and hearing tests. There was something wrong but they had no idea what.
    At twelve months old, he started in a special pre-nursery class designed for kids with issues like his, and I let Bridey go. I could handle it myself from here on out.

    *    *    *

    When Elijah was seventeen months old I joined a weekly playgroup, just as I'd done with Alex and Kate, even though I was older than the other mothers. Elijah wouldn't even look at the other children, and nestled into my lap with Tuddy, the turtle my father had