Broadway Baby by Alan Shapiro Page B

table is looking to his left at his beautiful wife, who’s looking out at the photographer. He adores his wife, but he drinks too much. And she’s just about had it. A few years earlier, after some vague business venture went belly-up, he became a hairdresser, a profession associated with homosexuals, with “faygelas.” Th at he is good at cutting hair only increases his sense of having lost his manhood, having failed his family. A faygela with a family he can’t support—what could be worse? His wife has threatened to leave him if he doesn’t quit the boozing. He doesn’t, but before she has the chance to leave him, he drops dead of a heart attack. Th is, too, is his last picture with the family.
    Curly still works for his father and brother in the slaughterhouse, working for peanuts, bubkes, and it drives Miriam crazy how he places loyalty to them over loyalty to her and the family they’re trying to have, a loyalty, she’s quick to add, his brother and father don’t return. Th e old man is practically retired while the older brother spends most of his time in Florida with his wealthy friends, playing golf, relaxing while Curly works like a dog, running the slaughterhouse day in, day out, seven days a week. And yet he doesn’t earn enough to buy a pair of slippers, much less, God forbid, a trip somewhere. What about her plans, or his? What happened to Easy Street?
    None of this, of course, is evident as they pose for the camera. Everyone is smiling out at the photographer. Th e men sport tuxedos; the women, evening gowns. Miriam’s hair is marcelled in a thick wave that gathers without breaking down the right side of her face. Th e other women all have perms. Everyone looks the way they’ve always dreamed of looking. Somewhere in the ballroom a band is playing “ ’S Wonderful” while the happy newlywed couple dances the first dance. But this family, these people, stand here not so much to celebrate the cousin who’s getting married but their enduring faith in the glamorous trappings of success. In the moment of the picture, they are what they pretend to be. And no one more so than Miriam, who smiles the widest, her mouth opening as if to suck in all the happiness around her.

Scene II
    Th e first child was a girl with brown hair and gray eyes. Miriam couldn’t bring herself to settle on a name. It wasn’t because she wanted a unique name, a name unlike anybody else’s, a name as special as she knew the child would be. She couldn’t name the baby because she didn’t think the baby would live. Despite the doctor’s assurances that she was perfectly healthy, she couldn’t believe something that small and helpless could survive. Why name a child that wouldn’t live? A named baby would be a grief magnet; nameless, there’d be less to mourn. Or maybe it was easier to mourn preemptively, to mourn in advance, a nameless baby, so when the loss came she’d be ready for it. Th e grief would already be behind her. Even after she brought the girl home, she would not name her. She would not name her because the baby slept so much. She slept through the night. She slept most of the day. What a good baby, her friends said, so little bother. But it worried her how much the baby slept. Th e doctor said, “Enjoy, get some rest; you’re lucky she isn’t fussy.”
    But she couldn’t rest; she kept going to the girl’s crib to make sure she was breathing. Th e quiet at night was always too quiet; the quiet kept her listening. Th en one night the baby cried. Relieved, Miriam rushed to the crib. But when the baby wouldn’t take the bottle, and wasn’t wet, and wouldn’t calm down, Miriam grew alarmed again. She walked the baby from room to room, patting it on the back, shushing it, sometimes singing “People Will Say We’re in Love” from Oklahoma or “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel. She tried one shoulder then the other. She sat with the baby in her lap, against her breast; she lay down with the