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beginning a slow script, composing as I wrote:
Mary Amesbury, 425 Willard St., Syracuse, New York
.
    I took the name of Mary; it was my aunt's. But in the forming of that
M,
I thought of other names: Didn't I wish for a name more intriguing than my own? An Alexandra or a Noel? But something sensible—a practical need for anonymity—stopped a possible
A
or an
N
.
    The Amesbury had come without thought. It was from my drive that day, the name of a town at the side of a highway. I didn't know if there was a 425 Willard Street. I'd never been to Syracuse.
    I put the pen down and studied the black script in the ledger. So be it, I was thinking. This is who I am now.
    "What's the baby's name?" asked the obese woman, turning the ledger around and examining it.
    The question startled me. I opened my mouth. I couldn't lie about my baby's name, couldn't call her something she wasn't. "Caroline," I said, burying the word in my baby's neck.
    "Pretty name," said the owner of the motel. "I had a sister named her daughter Caroline. Called her Caro."
    I tried to smile. I shifted the baby to the other arm. I put twelve dollars on the counter.
    "Number Two," said the motel owner. "I've had the heat up in Two for an hour now. Put in extra blankets. But you come get me if you and the baby get too cold. Supposed to be minus sixty with the wind chill tonight."
    ***
    Once inside the room, I locked the door. I sat on one of the beds, opened my coat and my blouse as quickly as I could, and nursed the baby. She drank thirstily, making greedy sucking sounds. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back. No one could get to me now, I thought. The realization filled my chest, expanded.
    I opened my eyes and looked at the baby. Caroline was still in her snowsuit and her woolen hat. It was freezing.
    The motel room felt crowded and dark, even with the single light on overhead. The cloth of the bedspreads and the curtains was a venomous plaid of black and green. The walls were finished with a thin paneling meant to look like knotty pine. I thought the grocer may have been exaggerating when he said the room would be clean.
    When Caroline had finished nursing, I changed her, washed my hands, ate a piece of coffee cake, and drank the milk almost as greedily as she had. Then, leaning against the headboard, I opened one of the beers, drank it quickly down. I thought fleetingly that I ought not to drink while I was nursing, but I couldn't get much beyond the thought. The baby was on her back, content, her arms and legs tickling the air. I removed her hat, stroked her head, enjoyed the feeling of the warm fuzz at the crown. My own hands, I noticed, were still trembling. I opened another beer, drank it more slowly than the first.
    I liked watching Caroline, sometimes was content to do only this. But that night the pleasure had an undertow I could not ignore. This thought, unwanted, caused other images to press against the edge of my consciousness. I shook my head to keep them at bay. I put the beer can down, picked up the baby, wiggled her out of the snowsuit, and laid her next to me, in the crook of my arm. I thought if I could hold the baby like that, the images would go away. The baby would be my talisman, my charm.

    And is it possible that sometime during that night I left the baby safely on the bed and went into the bathroom and took off all my clothes and looked at my body and at my face in the mirror behind the door? I will not bore you with what I observed, or with the feelings I had when I made these observations in that bare frigid bathroom with only a cold metal stall for a shower, except to say that on my body there were flowers—bright bursts of flowers in rainbow hues.

    I woke to see that the baby and I had fallen asleep on the bed with the light on. I rolled Caroline over onto her stomach and made a secure place for her with pillows and my duffel bag. Even if she woke up, she couldn't go very far—she wasn't six months old yet and had