Ghost Stations

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THE BABY HAD BEEN HER HUSBAND'S IDEA. She had known she wasn't ready, but because he owned the condo and had the job and she had dropped out of school with no further ideas, she went along with it.

It wasn't that she didn't love the baby: It was sweet and pink and squeezed her fingers with surprising strength. It rarely cried. But she was only 26. Her friends kept her on their e-mail lists, inviting her to concerts and parties that she could never attend.

Her husband had offered to get a nanny. They were rich; they could afford it. But she always refused. She didn't think she was a very good mother, but she had too much pride to give the job to someone else. So she spent her days with the baby, studying it. The baby studied her back.

They lived in a penthouse overlooking Lincoln Park. The building was old and the walls were so thick that more noise came in through the windows than traveled from room to room. She heard buses groaning on Stockton Drive. She heard lions roaring in the zoo. But sometimes, as she rushed into the nursery, she wondered how long the baby had been crying.

Her husband's job meant that he was often traveling. This month he was in Dubai, something to do with an investors' group and a Montana-themed hotel. She could never remember what he had said the time difference was. But he often turned his cell phone off anyway. Sometimes he called her back.

The baby shower had been held only weeks before the baby was born. It was large and lavish. There had been a presidential candidate there, a friend of her husband's who she hadn't heard of. Shopping bags full of unopened gifts still lined the wall of the fourth bedroom. When she needed something, she dug through the bags and often found it: a burp rag, a bib, a pacifier. On one trip she found a baby monitor sealed in a gleaming plastic clamshell.

She cut the package open and plugged in the base unit next to the baby's crib. She carried the receiver into the living room and turned it on. Static. She looked and saw that there were two channels. She changed the channel and heard her baby's breathing, loud, as if they were in the room together.

She turned up the TV and sat back on the couch. A little while later the baby cried, its loud wail distorted, a row of LEDs going off like runway lights. She turned down the volume and went into the nursery.

At night the baby monitor kept her company, a single green LED letting her know it was working. She breathed in unison with her baby. She wondered why hearing the baby made her feel better than holding it. Then she drifted off to sleep.

She slept less soundly than before. When the baby stirred, the red lights would flash and she would start awake, listening until the baby settled. The baby's fussing sounded clipped and strange, like an animal, like a machine. A tiny fist bumping against the crib rail sounded like hammer blows.

Then there were the times when, for no apparent reason, static grew in waves until she could no longer hear the baby. Or when voices or music drifted in like ghost radio stations.

She tried turning it off. But then she couldn't sleep at all. The baby could be choking and she wouldn't hear it. She entertained brief fantasies where the baby died and she became a bereaved mother. Her friends consoled her and then, reluctantly, she allowed them to take her out on the town.

She dug her fingernails into her palms until her eyes watered.

She did everything she could to prolong the baby's naps, giving it extra formula, drawing the curtains tight. Soon the baby was sleeping nearly 16 hours a day. But always there was the baby monitor.

When she turned it up louder she was certain she could hear things hidden in the noise. It was as if the microphone were amplifying the invisible. Or as if the baby were doing something secret.

She would creep to the nursery and ease the door open, but the baby was always sleeping. And when she went back to her own room, the noises were still there. One night she heard a series of tiny grunts and echoey thumps, as if the baby had climbed out of the crib and was walking around. The baby was only two months old. It couldn't even sit up yet.

Slowly, she walked down the hall in bare feet. She put her hand on the doorknob and listened. Then she heard it: a creak, creak, creak. She froze. Creak, creak, creak. As if the baby were dangling from the crib rail, the way a toddler might. She pictured the baby dangling and smiling at her.

Taking her hand off the doorknob, she walked back to the bedroom. She got back in bed and lay there, staring at the baby monitor, one red LED pulsing on and off. She turned the volume all the way up. It sounded like an untuned radio. She thought her way into the noise. She heard it: The baby was up. The baby was walking around.

She lay there awake all night. She didn't go into the baby's room.

In the morning, with the sun burning in through her curtains, she finally got out of bed. The baby monitor hissed blankly. She turned it off and went into the nursery. The baby was asleep on its stomach, its blanket pushed to one side. She had put the baby to sleep on its back. She hadn't seen it roll over before.

Stroking the baby's back, she cooed and baby-talked until it woke. The sweet words made her feel like a liar. The baby came awake in an instant and rolled over onto its back, making her jump. The baby regarded her blankly.

She gave the baby its bottle, then diapered it and dressed it in overalls and a sun hat. She microwaved a cup of yesterday's coffee and scalded her tongue. She made a piece of toast but left it, buttered and glistening with jam, on the cutting board. She put the baby in the stroller and went outside.

It was a crisp fall morning and she was sweating. She knew she needed help. Mothers weren't afraid to go check on their babies. And yet the night before she had been absolutely certain the baby had climbed out of its crib.

But whom would she call? And what would she say?

She took the baby to the zoo. It sat alert in its stroller, watching the animals. Almost like another animal.

Stop it, she told herself. Just stop it.

After the zoo, they went shopping on Clark Street. She bought some clothes she would be able to fit into just as soon as her tummy went down a little bit more. And she bought a bag full of brightly colored wooden toys for the baby, willing it to be just a normal child.

They ate lunch at a sidewalk café. They went to the park. She wanted to stay outside in the sunlight. But it was October and soon the streetlights blinked on.

She tried to keep the baby up late but it fell asleep in her arms. She carried it into the nursery and put it in the crib. She closed the door and tiptoed out.

She turned on the baby monitor.

For hours there was nothing, just the baby's steady breathing. She watched TV with the sound turned down to a murmur, watched talk-show hosts teasing their willing celebrity guests. It was visual white noise that kept her from thinking straight. What would she do? Was she one of those people who would start hearing voices—voices that would tell her to kill her baby? How would she know which voices to trust?

After midnight the noises started again. At first they were just ripples in the static. Then the baby's breathing became labored and there were sounds like electronic coughs. She listened so hard that she became sure she was creating patterns in the noise where there were none. And then she heard it distinctly: creaking. As if the baby were sitting up.

There was a hitch in the baby's breathing, as if it were struggling, and then another creak, and then a light thump, as if it had landed on the floor. Then, little steps. Her scalp prickled. She felt a cold shiver of adrenaline. Then the baby cried, a plaintive, questioning cry.

The sounds were obscured by a burst of static. And then the baby's breathing grew louder, closer. As if it had picked up the base and was examining it.

When the cry came again she pulled her feet up on the couch, a stupid, instinctive retreat, pathetic, as if the baby were a rat on the floor. The footsteps grew louder, as if the baby were pacing the floor, confused. Or angry.

She stood. She willed herself to take deep, slow breaths. Maybe she was a bad mother, maybe she was going crazy, but she was not going to be afraid of her own baby.

She turned on lights until the living room blazed bright as day. She turned on the lights as she went down the hall. Quickly, before she had time to become afraid again, she turned the handle and pushed the door open.

Light slanted into the nursery, illuminating the fuzzy white sheepskin rug in the middle of the room. The baby wasn't standing there. But the baby wasn't in the crib, either.

It took her a moment to realize that the baby was right in front of her, climbing the bookcase, looking at her over its shoulder, the light from the hall flashing red in its eyes. Like an animal.