“Your One-Year-Old, Your Two-Year-Old” by Mary Jean Babic (Fiction ’02)

Your One-Year-Old, Your Two-Year-Old

They were driving into the setting sun, so when Sarah tapped the window and said, “Oh my God,” Leif saw only glare.

“What?” he asked, his voice low because Lily was asleep in the back of the minivan. Normally they didn’t let her nap this late, but Leif had decided to gamble on a wakeless transfer from car seat to crib once they got home. Long odds, but they desperately needed an easy evening. Maybe Lily would even sleep through to morning, though this seemed too much to hope. A night could hold only so many miracles.

“That kid,” Sarah said. They were passing the football stadium so Leif knew “kid” meant a college student. All the students were kids to them, though they were barely ten years older than the upperclassmen. Being new parents only intensified the gulf.

Leif followed his wife’s white-tipped fingernails–he had just picked her up from lunch and manicures with friends, one of her first baby-free outings since having Lily–and landed on a solitary figure clumping toward them down the long, wide sidewalk. The figure was locked in battle with an unseen enemy, jabbing at the air and shouting words they couldn’t hear, face scrunched into a combative rictus.