Tears in the Nursery
Roxanne had been in labor for forty-two hours: forty-two hours of pains that gripped her, squeezed her, then slipped away for what seemed only a moment before they clutched at her again. In a delirium of pain and fatigue, she feared the child inside her was being crushed, that it would die before it was born, and all her years of waiting—thirteen childless years—would be for nothing. The drought on the farm, the Great Depression, the rumors of war in Europe, were small concerns beside that one dread thought: that this long-awaited child might never see the light of day.
But Sylvia was born with a wail on her lips to compete with her mother’s screams, and Doc Simonson pronounced her a fine, healthy girl. Roxanne wept with relief, her pain irrelevant, lost in the joy of holding her daughter. Then Curt’s mother took the child away—off to the nursery at the end of the upstairs hall—and placed her in the waiting cradle.
Roxanne begged to have the baby left in her room, but the doctor wouldn’t hear of it.
“After what you’ve been through, you need to rest,” he said. “Molly will take care of the baby tonight—no need for her cries to waken you. And if they should, don’t you move from that bed. Do you hear?” Then he drew Curt from the room, and Roxanne heard them speaking in covered tones as they went downstairs to sit by the coal stove in the farmhouse kitchen.
Molly helped dress her in a clean flannel nightgown: white with dainty blue flowers, trimmed in blue ribbons and eyelet lace. Moonlight sifted softly through crocheted curtains, dappling the patchwork quilt, and Roxanne fell into an exhausted sleep.
At midnight she awoke to the chiming of the clock in the parlor below. Had the doctor been back in to see her? Yes, more than once, she thought. Was he still here? His laughter from the parlor below answered her question.
“Four pounds at least!” he boasted. “What a fish!” But his voice had an odd quality: distant, almost strained. Everything seemed odd just now, removed and slightly out of focus. Beneath the heavy quilt her left leg felt hot, and it ached abysmally. Why did it ache so? A person might think she’d walked all fifteen miles into town and back using only that left leg. And her foot felt numb and tingly, as though she’d sat on it—
What was that? Was it—Yes, yes, the baby was crying. Her beautiful baby, her Sylvia.
Hush, Sylvia, Mother’s coming.
Roxanne tried to roll onto her side, but her left leg would not respond. The covers felt as if they were quilted with lead weights instead of cotton batting. Why couldn’t she move— Oh, but the doctor had said not to move, hadn’t he? Her mother-in-law would see to the baby.
Molly, Molly, the baby’s crying—
Molly’s voice drifted up from the parlor. “… when Curt was about six, he brought home a gopher….”
Molly, Molly, stop talking, the baby’s crying! Curt, tell your mother to stop talking and see to the baby. Hush, Sylvia, Grandma will come.…
Such soft, unhappy sounds from the nursery, plaintive and forlorn.
Hush, Sylvia, don’t cry, Grandma will come. Molly, be quiet, how can you hear the baby if you’re talking? And why aren’t you upstairs where you can hear her? Sylvia, hush, Grandma will come—.
“And then he wanted me to cook the puny thing. I said I’d have to be a lot hungrier before I cooked a gopher.…”
Molly, please, the baby’s crying—Oh, bother the doctor!
Roxanne clawed back the covers and tried to fling her legs over the edge of the bed, but all strength had been sucked out of her, like the water out of the dusty farmlands.
Hush, Sylvia, Mother’s coming.
She tried again, and her head throbbed with the effort.
Move, legs! This is no time to be laggard.
If she dragged her left leg off the bed with her hands, if she pushed herself up with her arms—
Yes, Sylvia, I hear you! Oh, please don’t cry, baby, Mother’s coming—I’m coming—I’m coming—
Pain exploded in Roxanne’s chest as a blood clot smacked into her weakened heart and lodged there, impeding the flow of oxygen. The tissue began to die, the muscle to fibrillate; and then it stopped. Cold seized Roxanne, but only for a moment. Desperate to reach her child, she burst free of the pain, free of the bed. Her leaden legs became feather-light, and she floated out of the room, down the hallway to the nursery.
* * *
Sylvia was raised by her grandmother, but all around her were traces of the woman who had passed from life struggling to answer her daughter’s cries. Curt liked to say that Roxanne lingered on the air, and if he breathed deeply enough, the warmth and the color of her came back to him. Molly liked to say that was nonsense, and what her son needed was to take a new wife and quit brooding about the past.
But he never did.
In the nursery, prepared with such love and such hope, the walls continued to beam their sunshine yellow, and printed brown bears climbed the curtains long after Sylvia had outgrown her cradle. Sitting directly above the kitchen, the nursery was the warmest room in the house, and Sylvia was always happiest in it.
“Why, when you were just a baby,” Molly told her, “you’d start to cry up there, and I’d climb those stairs just to find you rocking your own cradle.”
“How could I do that?” Sylvia asked.
“Oh, you just squirmed around in there and made it rock,” Molly said.
Sylvia wasn’t sure that was true. At age four, she looked up one day from where she had carefully arranged her toy dishes on the floor of the nursery, using an old baby blanket as a tablecloth. Her grandmother stood in the doorway.
“Gracious me!” Molly said. “Who are you talking to, all by yourself in here?”
Two places faced each other on the blanket, and Sylvia had been about to pour imaginary tea for her guest.
“Oh, I was sad,” she said, “but Mommy came to have tea with me, and now I feel better.”
Molly’s wrinkled face softened. “Why don’t you come downstairs,” she said, “and we’ll have real tea and cookies.”
It was years before Sylvia realized the tea was not the only thing her grandmother thought was pretend.
When she started school, she was startled to learn her classmates found ghosts frightening. Their stories of hanged women and headless men disturbed her, and she refused to listen.
One evening, as her father dozed in his chair beside the radio, she tugged his sleeve to wake him. “Daddy, why are people afraid of ghosts?”
Curt stirred in his chair, rubbed one eye with a calloused finger. “Because they don’t know any better,” he said. “There are no such things as ghosts.”
Sylvia was stunned. “But what about angels?”
“Angels are not ghosts,” he said, taking her onto his lap. “Angels stay with God. That’s where your mother is—she’s with God.”
That was the moment Sylvia realized she had a secret she could not share. Not with her father, who didn’t believe in ghosts. Not with her grandmother, who worried she spent too much time playing make-believe. Certainly not with the children at school.
As her intellect grew, as she embraced the science and reason of her culture, Sylvia began to wonder if she had ever actually seen a woman wearing a white flannel gown speckled with dainty blue flowers, trimmed with eyelet lace and blue ribbons. Yet she looked at every photograph in her father’s possession and found not one that showed her mother dressed so. Where had she gotten the image? And there was no denying the presence that persisted in her bedroom, the feeling of someone there with her whenever adolescent trauma brought her to tears. It was there when her dog Trixie died; it was there when Alvin Halvorson asked someone else to the prom. And it was there the night she wept with joy, showing off the sparkling solitaire Private Sam Schumacher had given her.
Sylvia followed her soldier husband from base to base across the county, presenting him with four children along the way. In 1973, when the youngest was less than a month old, Sam shipped out as part of the ceasefire enforcement in Vietnam, and she went back to the farmhouse with her brood. Her grandmother had passed away not long before, and Sylvia told people she was going to help her dad, who was living alone for the first time. But it was for herself that she went. She feared for Sam on his peacekeeping mission, fears exacerbated by being depleted after her recent pregnancy and worn to a wafer by three energetic boys.
They had no less energy at the farm, of course: they were rowdy in their play and cranky in their father’s absence. Trying to get them all to sleep became an exercise in futility, with pillow fights and wrestling matches being standard operating procedure. When at last she got them down, however, she escaped to the nursery she shared with baby Meg, and there she slept remarkably well.
Sometimes in the small hours of the night, after she had fed the baby and crawled back into bed, she could hear the nearby cradle creaking as it rocked gently.
“Mother?” she always whispered into the darkness. “Tell me Sam will come home. Even if you don’t know, even if it’s not true, tell me he’ll be all right.” In the dark room, she let the soothing creak of the cradle coax Meg and her both to sleep.
* * *
Sam finished his time in Vietnam unharmed, to Sylvia’s unbounded relief. Still, she was reluctant to leave the old farmhouse for the next Army base. Each summer she brought her family back for a month, until the boys were old enough to have summer jobs, making long vacations impossible. Then her father suffered a heart attack while loading hay bales into the back of his pickup. When he was released from the hospital, Sylvia took eleven-year-old Meg and stayed with him at the farmhouse while he recuperated. Curt knew he ought to retire, and at Sylvia’s suggestion, he worked out a lease-to-own agreement with the man who had worked for him for the previous ten years. He retained the farmhouse, though, and a few acres of land so he could have a vegetable garden and a few chickens.
His second heart attack put him in a nursing home, and he died in 1991. Sylvia couldn’t bear the thought of selling the farmhouse, but she didn’t quite know what to do with it. She and Sam were living in Vancouver, where Sam had gone into law enforcement after finishing his military career. She gave some thought to fixing the place up for their retirement, but when she suggested it to Sam, he was not inclined to retire to such a remote location.
Their sons were in the military and had no interest in the farm, but Meg—Meg’s new husband Brad was a veterinarian. Sylvia made a couple phone calls and learned the vet who served that region was planning to retire. After a long phone interview, he agreed to take Brad on as a partner, with the understanding that if it worked out, Brad would buy out his practice at the end of two years. When Sylvia told Meg and Brad she was willing to sell them the family farmstead, they talked it over and agreed to take a look.
The old farmhouse looked sad and empty when they pulled into the yard, its windows blank and its paint peeling like a frayed garment. Sylvia had been feeling off all day, and the patina of neglect made her a little queasy. Gazing up at the weathered boards, the cracked windowpanes, she had to ask herself if she had imagined it all: the comforting presence, the creaking cradle, the flower-specked nightgown with blue ribbons and eyelet lace.
“Looks like the barn’s in pretty good shape,” Brad said as he climbed out of the car. “And is that a machine shed?” He headed off to inspect the rusted steel building.
Meg was out of the passenger’s seat before Sylvia got her door open. She was 22, her slender limbs clad in snug denim, her long blond hair held back in a practical clip. “Need a hand?” she asked.
Sylvia reached out and let Meg pull her from the back seat. Once, she had been as slender as Meg, her hair the same straw color. At fifty-something, the blond was mostly gray, and her weight was something she preferred not to discuss, especially with her doctor. She stood huffing and puffing for a moment.
“You okay?” Meg asked.
“Just stiff,” Sylvia said, stretching a little to relieve the ache in her back. “Go on, I’ll open up the house.” Then Meg was off after her husband, trotting across the bare ground like a young filly
Sylvia fumbled the house key from her purse as she trudged across the patchy brown grass, then mounted the crumbling concrete steps to the kitchen door. The key required jiggling and the door, swollen and warped, stuck fast. With a grunt, she shouldered it open and stepped inside where she paused to let her heart slow down.
The kitchen looked tiny and cramped, with boxy white appliances shoehorned in between aging counters. For a moment Sylvia swore she could smell the faint sulfurous odor of the old coal stove. A grate in the ceiling had once let heat rise directly into the nursery overhead, carrying with it the sounds and aromas of her grandmother’s bustling industry. In spite of her sour stomach, Sylvia suddenly craved fresh-baked buns, home-canned peaches, scalloped corn.…
Upstairs a board creaked and she cocked her head, listening.
Are you still there, Mom? Were you ever there?
She inhaled deeply, her chest tight with memories, and started through the door to the parlor. Curt’s old easy chair still faced the console television with the round picture tube in it. The set hadn’t worked since 1969, and he’d had a portable TV on top of it after that, but he wouldn’t give up the old console.
“It’s still a nice piece of furniture,” he’d said. “Good wood.”
In a corner of the room was the door to the stairwell. Sylvia opened it and started up the closet-like space. The narrow, painted steps turned back on themselves to reach the top. Sylvia empathized now with her grandmother, who had grunted and grimaced with every tread.
At the top she stopped to catch her breath, looking left and right in the short, murky hallway. Dust frosted the picture frames, and the smell of mildew hung in the air. She wanted to fling open all the windows and let in the fresh spring air, but the storm windows were up. It would take more than an airing to revive the place, anyway. The wallpaper had buckled, the scuffed hardwood floors needed sealing, or maybe carpeting, and she suspected mousetraps were in order. New curtains, fresh paint or paper, modern furniture—
And when all that was done, would her mother still be here?
Downstairs the kitchen door scraped open “Mom?”
Sylvia drew a deep breath, trying to quiet her still-pounding heart. “Upstairs.”
Meg’s tomboy step sounded on the stairs, quick and sure, and then she stood beside her mother, hands thrust in jacket pockets, barely breathing hard.
She looked around the hallway and shuddered. “Brrr! Same creepy old house it always was.”
Sylvia’s eyes widened in shock. “Creepy?”
Meg winced. “Sorry. I know you grew up here, but I hated this place when I was a kid. So many creaks and sighs, so many shadowy dark corners—it gave me the willies.”
Sylvia could hardly find the breath to force a laugh. “I don’t remember you being afraid here.”
“Well, I didn’t dare let the boys know. They would have tortured me, making weird noises, jumping out of closets. They did a good enough job as it was.”
That part was true. Sylvia had never been able to convince them little sisters were to be coddled and cared for, not harassed and teased. “Well,” she said, “some fresh paint, some new carpeting, and I’m sure the—”
“Mom!” Meg laughed. “I’m not going to live in this creepy old house. Brad’s uncle is a contractor; he’ll give us a really good price to build a new one.”
Sylvia felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. “A new house?”
“With new plumbing and two bathrooms, thank you. A modern kitchen, an office for Brad, and a full basement. And no drafty, creaky second floor.” Meg shivered again. “This place still gives me the willies.”
“The willies! But—” Sylvia tried to smile but couldn’t. “What will you do with this place?”
“We haven’t decided. We want this spot for the new house, with the trees sheltering it, so we might move this one off onto a new foundation and see if we can rent it out as a hunting cottage, or a summer place for fishermen. Or—” She hesitated and would not meet Sylvia’s eyes. “It might be simpler to just tear it down.”
“Tear it down?” Sylvia’s face paled. “Oh, no, you can’t—”
Meg turned to look at her then, nervously tightening her hair clip. “Be reasonable, Mom. The cost to move it and fix it up … The bathroom needs a complete overhaul, so does the kitchen, and there’s no room for a dishwasher. This stairwell is downright dangerous, and—” She had obviously rehearsed these arguments. “I know you grew up here, but isn’t it time? Can’t we just let it go?”
Let it go.
Outside the wind whistled through the eaves, moaned in the rafters, and a bone-deep chill crept through Sylvia. The kitchen door screeched open again and Brad called from downstairs.
“Babe?”
Why a man with two degrees would call his wife “Babe,” Sylvia could never understand. Probably the same reason he wore both a Stetson hat and an earring.
“Coming,” Meg called, escaping with a clatter down the stairs.
Sylvia propped one hand against the wall for support.
Let it go!
Heart beating wildly, she stumbled to the nursery door and stared in. Her old bed with its painted metal frame was still there, the white tufted bedspread gone yellow with age. The dark wood dresser was coated with dust, and the print on the curtains had faded to dull shadows of its original colors. In the corner sat the old wooden cradle.
Let it go?
Sam had said much the same thing. But they didn’t understand, and she couldn’t tell them that her mother …
Still, peering into the unused room, Sylvia had to admit it no longer held the sense of warmth and security that once radiated like the heat coming up from the grate in the floor. She stepped inside but felt nothing of the mystery, the wonder, the welcome she remembered. Instead, it felt empty and lifeless.
She’s gone, Sylvia thought, suffering another wave of nausea. Maybe it was Daddy that kept her here, and now that he’s gone, she can move on.
And maybe … maybe it was time for her to move on, as well. This place that had been her refuge—where she’d always had someone to ease her pain and calm her fears—maybe she didn’t need it anymore. When was the last time she’d even been here? If she were honest, it was the idea of this room she needed, and that she would always have, in her memories. Maybe Meg was right: it was time to let it go.
But her heart clenched in protest and tears sprang to her eyes. A gust of wind caught the house, rattling the windowpanes and sending dust swirling from the sills. The faded curtains fluttered gently, sunlight danced in the corner by the cradle, and Sylvia knew she could not let it go.
Turning on her heel, she struggled down the steep stairs to find Meg and Brad in the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her breath coming in shallow gasps. “I’ll sell you the rest of the property, but not the house, not if you’re going to tear it down. You can build your new house somewhere else on the site—where the vegetable garden was, or south toward the road—but not here. The house stays.”
Then, not wanting to see their reaction to her dictum, she climbed back up to the nursery and left the stunned couple behind.
Panting, she stood in the center of the room drinking in the familiar sights. How many times had she bumped her head on the sloping ceiling in the corner? Rolled up the rag rug and pretended she was dancing with Frank Sinatra? She remembered winding the old clock on the dresser every evening; sliding the enameled chamber pot under the bed; tucking towel-wrapped bricks, heated on the stove, into her covers to warm them. If she opened the closet, she knew she’d find her prom dress from 1959 still hanging there.
Downstairs Meg and her husband spoke in low tones.
Probably trying to decide how to deal with the loony old bat, wondering what finally unhinged me.
And what would they do if she told them? It was 1992, and the science and reason of the day didn’t allow rational people with college educations to believe in ghosts.
That same science and reason had kept Sylvia silent for decades. Even Sam was not privy to this secret. She couldn’t tell Meg. She wouldn’t. But she had been abrupt with her daughter, and she needed to explain. She would say she hadn’t been feeling well all day, which was true—why was it so hard to breathe? She’d say she’d been overcome by nostalgia and a sense of loss— Maybe she should lie down on the bed.
“Mom?” Meg stood in the doorway.
Sylvia swallowed. “Sorry. I didn’t know it would hit me like this.”
Meg hesitated, then ventured into the room and looked around. “I didn’t remember how small this place was. When I was a kid, it seemed so much bigger.…” Her voice trailed off and she crossed to the window to look out. “We hadn’t really talked about building on another location, because of the trees here, but you’re right. Down at the other end of the yard, where Grandpa’s garden was, that might be a good place for a house.”
Guilt niggled at Sylvia, but she forced it away. They could build their new house without tearing down the old. She inhaled carefully. “You could put a driveway in from the east. Plant some more trees down that way, extend the shelter belt.” She looked over at her daughter, at Sam’s brown eyes, at her own freckled nose. “I never knew this place scared you.”
Meg shrugged and turned from the window, hands still stuffed in her jacket pockets.
“A lot of things scared me, but like I said, I wasn’t about to let anyone know.” Her eyes trailed to the old cradle in its corner, dusty and dark. She walked over and touched it with a sneakered toe, setting it rocking. “This was yours, wasn’t it?”
Sylvia nodded. “I was born in this house.”
Back and forth, back and forth, the rockers creaking gently against the floor.
“And your mother died that night.”
“Yes.”
Dust motes danced in the sunlight streaming through the window. Meg crossed her arms as if to ward off a chill.
“Robby used to tell me her ghost haunted this room.”
Sylvia gasped. “You mean he saw—”
Meg cut her off with a wave. “He just said that to scare me. He never saw anything.”
“Oh.” Sylvia studied her daughter’s expressionless face, trying to read the emotions it concealed.
The cradle had stopped; Meg touched it with her toe again.
“She had brown hair, didn’t she? Your mother. I mean, you can’t tell from the old photographs if it was brown or black, but it was brown, wasn’t it?”
Another wave of cold swept over Sylvia.
“Yes.”
“And she—” Meg hesitated. “She had a nightgown, white with little blue flowers on it, and lacy trim.”
Sylvia could hardly breathe. “And blue ribbons,” she whispered.
Meg turned back, tears glinting in her eyes. “She’s not here anymore, Mom. I sent her away. I was eleven, and I was so scared—she was dead. Dead people aren’t supposed to hang around. So I banished her. I told her to get out and not come back. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you saw her, too.”
“It’s all right,” Sylvia said, her words choppy as she struggled for air. “Meg, it’s all right. I understand. But now—please call an ambulance, I think I’m having a heart attack.”
* * *
It was sixty-five miles to the nearest hospital. In the back of the ambulance, Meg clutched her mother’s hand and apologized over and over.
“It wasn’t you,” her mother whispered through the oxygen mask. “I was sick all day. Achy. Nauseous.”
“For women, it’s like that,” the EMT said. “They don’t always get chest pain.”
That only caused Meg to berate herself for not noticing the symptoms earlier.
Thirty minutes out, Sylvia felt her consciousness slipping away. Alarms sounded and the EMT pushed Meg aside. Through a fog of pain Sylvia heard her daughter’s voice: “Hang on, Mom! Please hang on! I didn’t—I didn’t want to say anything too soon, but—I’m having a baby.”
A baby!
Sylvia struggled to keep from fading. Still Meg’s voice sounded hollow and distant.
“You have to hang on, Mom! You have to see your grandchild.”
Grandchild.
Something thumped her chest, and Sylvia was vaguely aware the EMT had started CPR.
Oh, yes, a grandchild. And this time …
* * *
Meg was waiting when Sylvia came out of recovery. “Daddy’s on his way, Mom,” she said. “And listen—I’ve been thinking. Maybe we’ll fix up the old farmhouse as a guest house. For you and Dad, when you come to visit. Would you like that?”
Sylvia’s mind was elsewhere. Her mouth curved in a weak smile and she whispered, “Baby.”
* * *
Sylvia struggled through recovery and rehab, determined to succeed. She was going to be a grandmother! Sam rented an apartment near the rehab center to be with her through her therapy. By the end of summer, Meg’s new house was finished, and Sylvia was well enough to move into the guest room with Sam.
He took early retirement and planned to do most of the work on the old farmhouse himself. When she was able, Sylvia walked over and sat in her grandmother’s rocking chair to supervise: new plumbing, fresh wallpaper, carpet, curtains. They finished the nursery first, and Sam carried the rocking chair up there so Sylvia could sit in the refurbished room and read or knit while he worked elsewhere.
Meg’s daughter arrived that autumn, and received the name Roxanne, for her great-grandmother. When the weather allowed, Meg brought her to the farmhouse to nap in the old cradle under Sylvia’s watchful eye. Meg herself seldom stayed long, as though the room with its bright yellow walls and colorful print curtains still made her uneasy. But one December day she paused in the doorway, leaning back against the jam. “Mom?”
Sylvia looked up from her knitting.
“I’m sorry I sent her away. I didn’t know—”
“Honey, it’s all right.”
“It’s just that—”
“You didn’t need her,” Sylvia said. “You had me. And I—” She sighed. “I hadn’t needed her for a long time. No harm done.” She went back to her knitting.
Meg stood silent for a long moment. Finally she asked, “Do you think she’ll come back?”
Sylvia looked up again, a light in her eyes. “If she’s needed.”
Meg nodded, then turned and clattered down the stairs. A moment later the reluctant kitchen door slammed and the whole house shook.
The noise woke Roxanne, who stirred and began to whimper. Sylvia opened her mouth to offer a soothing word, but before she could speak, the cradle began to rock gently.
Sylvia settled back with a sigh.
“I couldn’t tell her,” she said softly. “It would only frighten her again. But I knew you were never really gone. And heaven knows I can use your help. For a while yet, at least.”
Downstairs, the new furnace kicked in and sent a draft skirling across the floor. The nursery curtains fluttered, and in the corner by the cradle, the pale winter sunshine brightened.
Catherine Wells is the author of numerous novels and short stories of speculative fiction, including “Builders of Leaf Houses” and “Invasive Species,” the 2015 and 2020 winners, respectively, of the AnLab Award for Best Novella. Retired from a 20+ year career in corporate libraries, she enjoys hiking, bicycling, playing bass guitar, and singing. For more about Catherine, her books and short stories, visit her on Facebook at catherine.wells.733.
Copyright © 2025 Catherine Wells.