The Four Temperaments by Yona Zeldis McDonough Page B

face, which was puffy and rather yellow, and tried to peer into her eyes, which were still swollen and so not fully open. She had a soft coating of dark hair and the most delicately arched eyebrows he had ever seen.
    â€œHello, Isobel,” he said softly.
    â€œYou've just named her,” said Penelope, capitulating in an instant. “I guess we can't change it now.” Isis became her middle name, a compromise that Gabriel at least felt was viable. A middle name was easily dropped or called into service, depending on the mood of its owner. Baby Isobel would have plenty of time to decide what to do.
    Ruth flew
out to San Francisco almost immediately. Although she and Caroline were quite different in style and substance, they became united in the presence of the baby, the princess, the angel, that was Isobel. Isobel herself seemed quite unaware of all the stir she was causing, and Gabriel supposed that was normal for a baby, though what did he know about it? The women kept him at arm's length; they were utterly focused on the baby and always attending to something she needed: diapering, dressing, cleaning, bathing. They did not want his help; they did not seem to need it. He turned to Penelope, but she too was otherwise occupied. Ruth and Caroline hovered around her, waving her back into a chair or bed when she tried to get up—the obstetrician had been required to sew several stitches, the sight of which made Gabriel avert his eyes—and she was still in some pain. Gabriel felt banished and hurt, which was not what he expected, but was what had happened. He went back to work after a couple of days, and he distinctly felt their relief: he had performed his function and he was not wanted there anymore. He imagined it would be different when his mother and mother-in-law returned to their respective homes. Then he would get to know his infant daughter. Then he would become reacquainted with his wife.
    But the mothers left, and still Penelope kept him away. For one thing, she was nursing Isobel, and that was something Gabriel admittedly could not do. When she held the baby to her taut and abundant breasts, a drugged, peaceful look settled on her face, as if she and the child had entered some kind of private trance that excluded him entirely. She would not let him hold the baby for more than a minute before she demanded her back and she insisted on attending to all of Isobel's incessant physical needs herself—the soiled diapers, spit-up cloths that needed replacements, tiny ears and nostrils that required irrigating. She asked him only to do the more peripheral chores: shop for food, tidy the apartment or fold the organic cotton diapers, for she would not allow the disposable kind next to Isobel's skin. Eventually, they hired someone to clean the apartment, since Penelope no longer had the inclination or the time; after that, Gabriel felt he had nothing at all to do in his own home. His sense of exclusion continued to grow, though no one else seemed to notice.
    Still, the baby appeared to thrive. From his second-class position, Gabriel could see her fill out, losing the yellow and puffy look that followed her birth. Her eyes remained a clear, true blue, and her skin was as creamy and fine as Penelope's. She gurgled, she kicked, she reached, she grabbed. But Gabriel watched all of this as if from a distance, as if Penelope and Isobel were someone else's wife and child; lovely, but not his. And before she had turned a year old, she was taken aboard the airplane to New York City, where she spent her first Thanksgiving with her grandparents, Ruth and Oscar, and where her father fell head over heels in love with a skinny young ballet dancer by the name of Ginny Valentine.

OSCAR
    O
scar was
aware that something terrible happened during the Thanksgiving dinner that Ruth had so painstakingly prepared, and to which they had both looked forward—in different ways, for different reasons—for weeks. He didn't