The Last Good Night by Emily Listfield Page B

she was okay. When do you get over the fear that your baby will somehow die, simply cease, the moment you turn your back, as if it is your attention alone keeping her alive? Sophie opened her eyes once, stared at me mutely, and then fell back into her motion-drugged slumber.
    The dusky smell of the artificial heat filled the car. Outside, the night suddenly blackened and broadened, pierced only by the headlights of other cars. I looked up at David, his tall tousled head, his broad shoulders. He turned halfway and smiled back, and suddenly the world was only here, in this car, together, driving through the night, away. When we pulled into a rest stop forty minutes later, I climbed into the front seat beside him. I opened the package of gummy bears I had bought in the neon-lit gas station and put one in David’s mouth as we got back on the highway. “Guess which flavor,” I said and watched him roll it about his tongue. It was something we always did in cars, eat gummy bears until our teeth grew matte with sugar. Last summer, I had left an open pack on the dashboard by mistake and they had melted into a glazed plastic river of yellows and greens and reds. I leaned forward now and peeled up remnants of it. “Red,” David said. “Was it red?”
    I leaned across and kissed him.
    Three hours later we followed the signs into Cape May and found the Victorian guest house we had reservations at on a street of other wedding cake houses a block from the Atlantic Ocean. I carried Sophie wrapped in blankets into the reception area crammed with floral rugs, wing chairs, and mahogany tables with yellowing doilies. The woman who ran the hotel stoodbehind the desk in a period floor-length dress, white cap, and apron. “Breakfast is at eight,” she told us as David signed the register “Mr. and Mrs. David Novak.” “And there’s sherry every afternoon at three.” Her husband, standing next to her in nylon jogging shorts, his ginger hair combed and sprayed to cover a bald spot, added, “There are bikes out back, and beach chairs if the weather holds.” We thanked them and walked carefully up a narrow staircase to our room, scented with cinnamon sachets, the four-poster bed covered in a floral duvet, lace and needlepoint pillows, the walls lined with silhouettes and cameos, a cluttered Victorian theme park. David opened the portable crib, and we both stared at its brilliant primary colors, suddenly so garish and synthetic. Sophie whimpered softly when we put her in it.
    I bent over the crib to pick her back up.
    â€œDon’t,” David said. “Let her be. She’ll put herself to sleep.”
    I knew that he was right, but every cell in my body was pushing me to reach for her, hold her, comfort her.
    â€œCome here,” he suggested, patting the bed.
    I lay still beside him, staring up at the ceiling, my stomach in knots, while we waited for the crying to subside. When it finally did, we both exhaled. Slowly, David’s fingers reached for mine, stopping, intermingling, squeezing, before moving up my arm, along the sides of my chest, my stomach. I rolled over to him and we pressed into each other, our outlines new and unfamiliar, the gift that travel brings, while Sophie slept a few feet away, the restriction of silence adding to our excitement. I traced the muscles of his arms, his butt, his long thighs as he kneeled between my legs.
    I remember the exact instant I fell in love with David. One late blustery Saturday afternoon, three months after we started seeing each other, we were sitting at a wood-paneled bar in Soho, drinking port after having made the rounds of galleries. I had left my pocketbook, a Bottega Veneta woven pouch, on thestool next to mine, and when we stood to leave, I noticed for the first time that it was gone. The owner, immediately disavowing any responsibility, told us there had been a rash of such thefts in all the bars and restaurants in the