Living Together

It's Going to be all Right

I T ’ S G O I N G T O B E A L L R I G H T When I was seventeen I started feeding babies at night. For three or four months at a time I’d stay in someone’s home. While the mother slept I’d prepare the formula, hold the baby, fill the bottle, and pop the nipple in the baby’s mouth, and the mother would sleep. My presence in the home was minimal: a toothbrush, my nightgown, and the robe my dad gave me for my birthday, picked out I was sure by his girlfriend. I had to sneak into the family’s pattern, and it always took a while. Some families said everything, their lives spilling out. I’d know what they were thinking , and they’d encourage me to speak up. They had nothing to hide, and they believed I didn’t either. The Raychers were my third family. At first they hardly noticed me. Their computers were always alive, the house quiet but for the little ping indicating a new e-mail or the ring of a cell, hers “Can’t Cry Any More” and his “Something’s Always Wrong.” Sheryl Crow was about all they seemed to have in common. They didn’t have much to say to each other. I sensed words stockpiled in all the rooms like ammunition awaiting a great war. It could have been my own home two years ago. By ten the Raychers were on their way to their bedroom, and I was in the nursery with Nicki. The first time Mrs. Raycher handed over the baby, she told me, “I really didn’t want someone else car7 7 ing for her,” as if it were all my idea. “My husband says babies don’t mind who feeds them.” Which wasn’t very flattering to me. Even early in the mornings Sophie Raycher was always perfectly put together, as if she used hair spray all over. The sad thing was she never seemed pleased with the result. When I asked how long she would need me, she was vague: “I can’t say. You know how things can happen.” It was said in an expectant voice, as if she saw something good might come from a hurricane or an earthquake. Each night before taking off for the Raychers’ I’d have dinner with my mother. Since the divorce, Mom had more or less stopped cooking, as though the preparation of meals was part of a contract that had expired. She’d pick up something on her way home from work, pizza or an ethnic thing, Middle East, Chinese, or sushi. Sometimes she’d wander into the past and happier days, and serve me SpaghettiOs and carrot sticks. I hated the nights she had wine with dinner. By the time we got to dessert she was insisting that although Dad had done unforgiveable things she would never say a word against him to me because he was my father and it was important to preserve my relationship with him, as if I could have a relationship with someone who wasn’t there. After supper I’d leave for the Raychers’. It was late April, but the leftover winds of winter whipped around the corners, taking you by surprise. Walking along the dark streets I’d check the houses, where often the only sign of life would be the glow of a television screen connecting the world to the house but no one in the house to one another. I wanted to think that inside those homes everyone who was supposed to be there was there. 7 8 I went from the more modest part of the suburb, where Mom and I now lived, to the Raychers’ upscale neighborhood, where instead of numerals the addresses over the front door were spelled out as if the more expensive houses were entitled to words. We had once lived down the street from the Raychers, but Mom and Dad sold that house during the divorce proceedings. Dad moved into the city with his girlfriend, and Mom bought a house a mile and a half away, but still near my high school where I was a senior. Every time I opened the door into our small home, I expected more—more space and more people. I knew who the Raychers were before I took the job. One...