The Love of a Good Woman

which, in a larger quantity—maybe not so much larger, at that—would have really finished me off.
    I T wasn’t the blanket at all. Anybody who took a serious look at that blanket could see that it was so light and loosely woven that it could not prevent my getting all the air I needed. You could breathe through it just as easily as through a fishnet.
    Exhaustion might have played a part. A whole day’s howling,such a furious feat of self-expression, might have worn me out. That, and the white dust that fell on my milk, had knocked me into a deep and steadfast sleep with breathing so slight that Iona had not been able to detect it. You would think she would notice that I was not cold and you would think that all that moaning and crying out and running around would have brought me up to consciousness in a hurry. I don’t know why that didn’t happen. I think she didn’t notice because of her panic and the state she was in even before she found me, but I don’t know why I didn’t cry sooner. Or maybe I did cry and in the commotion nobody heard me. Or maybe Iona did hear me and took a look at me and stuffed me under the sofa because by that time everything had been spoiled.
    Then Jill heard. Jill was the one.
    Iona was carried to that same sofa. Ailsa slipped off her shoes to save the brocade, and Mrs. Shantz went upstairs to get a light quilt to put over her.
    “I know she doesn’t need it for warmth,” she said. “But I think when she wakes up she’ll feel better to have a quilt over her.”
    Before this, of course, everybody had gathered round to take note of my being alive. Ailsa was blaming herself for not having discovered that right away. She hated to admit that she had been afraid to look at a dead baby.
    “Iona’s nerves must be contagious,” she said. “I absolutely should have known.”
    She looked at Jill as if she was going to tell her to go and put a blouse on over her halter. Then she recalled how roughly she had spoken to her, and for no reason as it turned out, so she didn’t say anything. She did not even try to convince her mother that Iona had not had a baby, though she said in an undertone, to Mrs. Shantz, “Well, that could start the rumor of the century.”
    “I’m so glad nothing terrible happened,” Mrs. Kirkham said. “Ithought for a minute Iona had done away with it. Ailsa, you must try not to blame your sister.”
    “No Momma,” said Ailsa. “Let’s go sit down in the kitchen.”
    There was one bottle of formula made up that by rights I should have demanded and drunk earlier that morning. Jill put it on to warm, holding me in the crook of her arm all the time.
    She had looked at once for the knife, when she came into the kitchen, and seen in wonderment that it wasn’t there. But she could make out the faintest dust on the counter—or she thought she could. She wiped it with her free hand before she turned the tap on to get the water to heat the bottle.
    Mrs. Shantz busied herself making coffee. While it was perking she put the sterilizer on the stove and washed out yesterday’s bottles. She was being tactful and competent, just managing to hide the fact that there was something about this whole debacle and disarray of feelings that buoyed her up.
    “I guess Iona did have an obsession about the baby,” she said. “Something like this was bound to happen.”
    Turning from the stove to address the last of these words to her husband and Ailsa, she saw that Dr. Shantz was pulling Ailsa’s hands down from where she held them, on either side of her head. Too speedily and guiltily he took his own hands away. If he had not done that, it would have looked like ordinary comfort he was administering. As a doctor is certainly entitled to do.
    “You know Ailsa, I think your mother ought to lie down too,” said Mrs. Shantz thoughtfully and without a break. “I think I’ll go and persuade her. If she can get to sleep this may all pass right out of her head. Out of Iona’s too, if we’re lucky.”
    Mrs. Kirkham had wandered out of the kitchen almost as soon as she got there. Mrs. Shantz found her in the living room looking at Iona, and fiddling with the quilt to make sure she was well covered. Mrs. Kirkham did not really want to lie down. She wanted tohave things explained to her—she knew that her own explanations were somehow out of kilter. And she wanted to have people talk to her as they used to do, not in the peculiarly gentle and self-satisfied way they did now.