Chapter 1: The First Week

You are not the kind of person who knows what to do with a seven-pound human at four in the morning. But here you are, and the screaming makes it clear that ignorance is not an excuse.

The apartment is on the third floor of a brownstone in Park Slope. You moved here six months ago because Amanda said it had good schools. You thought she was joking. She was not joking.

The baby is a girl. Her name is Claire. She has been alive for five days and you have not slept for more than ninety minutes at a stretch since she arrived. Your brain feels like something left in the sun too long.

You lift her from the bassinet. She weighs nothing and everything. Her face is red and furious and you understand this completely. You would also be furious if you had been evicted from the only home you knew into this loud, bright place with insufficient padding.

Amanda is asleep in the bedroom. You insisted she sleep. You have insisted this every night because you read somewhere that the first weeks are the hardest and someone needs to remain functional. You did not read what happens to the person who does not sleep.

The formula is in the kitchen. You carry Claire through the dark apartment, one hand supporting her head the way the nurse showed you. You remember the nurse had three kids of her own. You remember thinking that seemed impossible.

The formula requires exact measurements. You fuck it up twice before getting it right. Claire screams the entire time. Your hands shake as you test the temperature on your wrist. You once opened a bottle of Château Margaux from 1982 without trembling. That was in your previous life, the one that ended five days ago.

She latches onto the bottle and the apartment falls silent. This is what heroin must feel like. Pure relief flooding your nervous system. You sink into the kitchen chair and watch her drink.

Outside, Park Slope is dark except for the streetlights on Seventh Avenue. A cab rolls past. You wonder where it is going and who is inside and whether they understand how good they have it.

Claire finishes the bottle. You burp her. She spits up on your Williams College t-shirt. You do not care about the t-shirt. You care that she might still be hungry. You care that you have no idea what you are doing.

Amanda appears in the doorway. Her hair is everywhere and she is wearing your old Joy Division shirt and she has never looked more beautiful or more exhausted.

How is she, Amanda asks.

Fed, you say.

How are you.

You want to tell her that you are terrified. That every moment feels like an exam you did not study for. That you keep checking to make sure Claire is breathing because you cannot believe anything this small can sustain life.

Fine, you say.

Neither of you believes this. Amanda crosses to where you sit and kisses the top of your head. Claire makes a small sound. Not crying. Something else. Almost like satisfaction.

You will figure this out, Amanda says.

She takes the baby from your arms and you feel the absence immediately. Amanda walks back toward the bedroom and you sit alone in the kitchen at four in the morning on the third floor of a brownstone in Park Slope and you think about all the bars you used to know and all the mornings you woke up in strange beds and you realize that none of that prepared you for this.

The sun will come up in two hours. Claire will need to eat again in three. You should sleep but you cannot stop watching the doorway where they disappeared.

You are someone's father now. The knowledge sits in your chest like something broken.

Or something being built.