The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald Page A

restraining a baby physically only frustrates him.”
    “Of course it frustrates him,” Martha said sharply. “How can any habit be broken without it causing some frustration?”
    Spock nodded his agreement and then, as if offering a perfectly made, neatly trimmed tea sandwich, laid out his belief: that thumb sucking, like so much else in infant behavior, was the reflection not of habit or will but rather of simple need.
    “A baby sucks because it needs to suck,” Dr. Spock said.
    “I wasn’t suggesting, Dr. Spock,” Martha said archly, “that a baby sucks because it is one of Satan’s minions.”
    That brought a much-needed laugh from around the table.
    “I don’t have much patience for people who soften at the slightest sign of resistance,” Martha continued. “Of course it’s disturbing to upset an infant, but I always tell my students that if they think about the long-term benefits, they’ll be able to withstand the feelings of the moment.”
    “And do you have children of your own?” Dr. Spock asked.
    “That’s not the point,” Martha answered, perhaps a bit too sharply.
    “I wasn’t trying to make a point,” the doctor said. “I was just curious.”
    “I have helped raise ten babies over twenty years in the home economics program at Wilton College,” Martha said, finally adjusting the scarf around her neck, fingering the Omicron Nu pin beneath it.
    “I just wondered whether you yourself had ever experienced these kinds of emotions,” Spock said.
    “What emotions are those?”
    “The emotions of being a mother.”
    “Have you?” Martha said. And apart from whatever facts and figures they took away from the conference, the impertinence of this moment was what most of the participants would long remember, and what Martha, in her fervor, would think about with pride.
    But the liberation inherent in Spock’s message, which in essence was love over law, was for Martha as inescapable as it was secretly welcome.

  7  
The Center of the World
    All the way back from Matson on the bus, Martha savored her moment. Martha Gaines and Benjamin Spock. She had told him what she thought. She had stood up for the program she was going back to reclaim. The summer world slipped by, alive with flowering bushes and flowered hats, children playing on swing sets and running through the rainbow spray of sprinklers. There was something cool and comforting in the act of passing these lives by: not at all unlike the role she had played for all those practice house children. They existed, in her memories, as if on a series of front lawns, waving at Martha as she rode by. There had been many. There would be more.
    But the clear, impartial, professional path became instantly muddied, and nearly obscured, as soon as Martha walked back into the practice house that afternoon. Ethel was lying, fully prone, on the living room rug, a camera in her hands as usual. Henry, wearing only a diaper, was standing against the couch: beautiful, hopeful, and irresistible. He was looking at Ethel, wobbling a bit, and seemingly unsure about what to do.
    “Come on, Hanky-Panky,” Ethel was saying, oblivious to Martha’s presence. “Come on, Hanky-Panky. You can do it. Walk to Mama Ethel’s camera. Walk the way you just did.”
    “Eh-oh!” Henry shouted, which was as close as he could get to Ethel.
    “Yes, Hanky-Panky. Eh-oh.”
    “Eh-oh!”
    “You can do it, Hanky-Panky. I know you can. Let Eh-oh take your picture.” She lifted her head from the viewfinder and smiled at him. “Then we’ll show all the others.” At this, Henry grinned extravagantly.
    “Ethel!” Martha shouted.
    They both turned, startled, toward Martha. Then Henry plopped to his backside, hard.
    “Boom!” Ethel said—no doubt intending to keep the wailing from Henry to a minimum. Intending to suggest that every boo-boo could be a source of joy.
    “Really!” Martha said, and Henry, somehow, decided not to cry and got up onto his hands and knees and