The Leftovers

stopped her from lactating, and since then she had been more than happy to let Tom handle all the feeding, changing, and bathing duties.
    He couldn’t blame her for feeling a little shell-shocked; he was still a little shell-shocked himself. Everything had fallen apart so quickly after Mr. Gilchrest’s guilty plea and humiliating confession, in which he publicly outed himself as a serial rapist of teenage girls and begged for forgiveness from his “real wife,” who he claimed was the only woman he’d ever loved. Furious at his betrayal, Christine had gone into labor the very next day, shrieking in agony at the first contraction, demanding that she be taken to the hospital and given the strongest drugs available. The Falks were too demoralized to object; even they seemed to understand that they’d reached the end of the road, that the prophecies that had sustained them were nothing but pipe dreams.
    Tom stayed with Christine throughout the nine-hour labor, holding her hand while she drifted in and out of a drug-induced delirium, cursing the father of her child so bitterly that even the delivery room nurses were impressed. He watched in amazement as the baby squirted into the world, fists clenched, puffy eyes glued shut, her jet-black hair plastered with blood and other murky fluids. The doctor let Tom cut the cord, then placed the child in his arms, as if she belonged to him.
    “This is your daughter,” he told Christine, offering the naked, squirmy bundle like a gift. “Say hi to your little girl.”
    “Go away,” she told him, turning her head to keep from looking at the Miracle Child who no longer seemed like such a miracle. “Get it away from me.”
    They returned to the Falks’ the following afternoon, only to find Terrence and Marcella gone. There was a note on the kitchen table— Hope it went okay. We’re out of town until Monday. Please be gone when we return! —along with an envelope containing a thousand dollars in cash.
    “What are we gonna do?” he asked.
    Christine didn’t have to think for long.
    “I should go home,” she said. “Back to Ohio.”
    “Really?”
    “Where else can I go?”
    “We’ll figure something out.”
    “No,” she said. “I need to go home.”
    They stayed at the Falks’ for four more days, during which Christine did almost nothing but sleep. That whole time, while he was changing diapers and mixing formula and stumbling around the dark house in the middle of the night, Tom kept waiting for her to wake up and tell him what he already knew, which was that it was all okay, that everything had actually worked out for the best. They were a little family now, free to love one another and do as they pleased. They could go barefoot together, a band of happy nomads, drifting with the wind. But it hadn’t happened yet, and there weren’t that many miles between here and Ohio.
    *   *   *
    TOM WAS aware of the fact that he wasn’t thinking clearly. He was too exhausted for sober reflection, too focused on the baby’s bottomless needs, and his fear of losing Christine. But he knew he needed to prepare himself for the ordeal of going back home, the questions that would arise when he pulled up in front of his father’s house in a German luxury sedan he didn’t own, with a bullseye on his forehead, accompanied by a severely depressed girl he’d never mentioned and a baby that wasn’t his. There was going to be a lot of explaining to do.
    “Listen,” he said, slowing down as they approached the entrance to the rest area. “I hate to keep bugging you about this, but you really need to give the baby a name.”
    She nodded vaguely, not really agreeing, just letting him know she was listening. They headed up the access ramp to the main parking lot.
    “It’s weird, you know? She’s almost a week old. What am I supposed to say to my dad? This is my friend, Christine, and this is her nameless baby? ”
    Traffic had been light on the highway, but the rest area was packed, as if the whole world had decided to pee at the same time. They got stuck in a slow parade, no one pulling in unless someone else pulled out.
    “It’s not that big a deal,” he went on. “Just think of a flower or a bird or a month. Call her Rose or Robin or Iris or April or whatever. Anything is better than nothing.”
    He waited for a Camry to back out, then slipped into the space it had vacated. He put the car into park but didn’t shut off the engine. Christine turned to look at