Baby Love (18 page)

Then he thought maybe they could just get rid of the baby. He tried that, with a piece of wire he bought, but even before she began to bleed he knew it would never be the same. In the end she knew it too. She was begging him to do it.

She was just asking for it. That’s what he means. Dr. Poster would never understand.

T
ARA IS STANDING IN
front of her mirror. She’s naked. Tomorrow, she thinks, a man will see my body. She is happy with the way she looks. There’s nothing she would change.

Jill sits in the third row at the Merrimack Cinema, watching
Lady and the Tramp.
It was the only movie her mother could find that didn’t have any sex. “We’d be footloose and collar-free,” says Tramp, who has just asked Lady to run away with him. “It sounds wonderful,” says Lady. “But who’d watch over the baby?”

Reg leans toward Jill. Doris has just reminded him that they’ve got to put some meat on those bones. He is about to say, “How about another box of buttered popcorn?” but then he sees the look on her face.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ve seen this before. Everything turns out fine in the end.”

Tonight Sandy’s mother has prepared Luau Chicken with pineapple chunks, Rice-A-Roni, Chinese Style, and Stouffer’s egg rolls. She tries to make it so their weekly family dinners with the kids have some kind of theme. (Everything tinted with green food coloring—even the mashed potatoes—on Saint Patrick’s Day. Red, white and blue gelatin salad for patriotic holidays. A salute to some foreign country when it’s no special occasion.)

“Aloha,” says Sandy’s father, George, when he greets them at the door. He gives his daughter a hug, shakes his son-in-law’s hand. Sandy’s mother, Sylvia, is already rearranging Mark Junior’s hair, commenting (though she saw him only yesterday) on how big he’s getting.

Mark’s mother, Annette, is also here. Since Mark’s father was shot down in Vietnam in ’69, Sandy’s folks have tried to include Annette in most of their family activities, and especially now that their kids have got together. Sylvia had the notion at one time that they might fix Annette up with George’s brother Glenn, whose wife left him the week before their silver wedding anniversary, but Annette wasn’t interested, said there could never be anyone else after Gerald. Annette often reminds her son of the ways in which he differs from his father, who was two inches taller, had a B.S. degree from the University of Maine, never so much as dented his car. The truth is, Mark can hardly remember his father now; he had been overseas eighteen months when he was killed, and Mark was only seven then. Mark knows his father chiefly from his mother’s accounts, and from them he knows that unless there’s another war, and he dies in it, he will never have a hope of catching up with the guy.

“Some Red Sox game the other night,” says George. “That was a real bazooka Remy fired off to second, eh?”

“Sure was,” says Mark. He missed that play, on account of Sandy’s underpants landing on the TV set, hanging down over the screen.

“Stanley might get us to the Series yet,” says George. “That was the best velocity I’ve seen on him all season.” George has not yet fully recovered from the Sox’s loss of Luis Tiant to New York.

“Do you believe this men-talk, girls?” says Sandy’s mother. “Now, who’s going to try using chopsticks?”

They have moved to the living room now, and Sylvia is carrying out the tray of Sanka. Mark Junior has finally fallen asleep in the crib his grandparents set up for him in the spare bedroom. George has turned on the hi-fi. Annette is just finishing a story about how, when Mark was a baby, his father built him a cradle, not from a kit or anything. Entirely by hand. “If only I hadn’t given that cradle away,” she says. “When you’re young, you never realize how precious these things are going to be.”

“So how’s everything going at the plant?” says George. Once before, after Annette finished the cradle story, she began to cry. He’s anxious to get onto another subject.

“Fine,” says Mark. Sandy says she thinks Mark will get a promotion by Christmas, he’s got such a good mechanical mind. And she can tell that Mark Junior has inherited some of his father’s talent that way. He’s already trying to unscrew the nipple on his bottle. How do you like that?

“I hear your friend Virgil twisted up his ankle down at the falls this morning,” says Sylvia. One of the nurses at the medical center is a friend of hers. Word travels fast in this town.

“Bad luck,” says George. “Still, I’m glad to see you kids getting out in the fresh air. It makes me sick to see some of these young fellows spending all their time leaning on those darned pinball machines at Rocky’s.”

“Mark’s no different from any of them, George,” says Annette. “I’ve seen this son of mine plenty of times, throwing away his paycheck in that place. I remember when Gerald and I were newlyweds, we’d go to the movies maybe twice a year, and that was a big treat. You kids don’t know how easy you have it.”

“Guess who I met today,” says Sandy. She wishes Mark wouldn’t smoke those cigars, knows that her mother will spray the room with air freshener the minute they leave, on account of Mark’s Tiparillos.

“This woman from New York City. She used to be an editor of a magazine. She was wearing those new kind of pants that get narrower at the ankles.”

“How interesting,” says Sylvia.

“I invited her to Mark Junior’s five-month birthday party,” Sandy says. “Also, there was this great sale on Pampers.”

“Smart little wife you’ve got yourself, son,” says Sandy’s father. He does not hear Annette’s comment about the advantages of cloth diapers.

When Greg comes home, Carla is sitting on the front steps, crying. The only words he can make out are that she wants to go back home. She doesn’t like it here. She would feel safer on the worst block in New York City.

Later, after he has looked inside, he points out that all they lost was some grass. Nothing major. It was probably just a bunch of kids.

“We could go back tomorrow,” says Carla. Stay with friends, look for another apartment. (With two bedrooms.)

Tomorrow Greg will see Tara again. He will tell Carla later, when she calms down.

The telephone is ringing when Reg and Doris walk in the door. Jill has gone straight upstairs. The evening was not a success. Jill didn’t even want an ice cream at Hojo’s.

“For you.” Doris hands the phone to Reg, looking puzzled.

It’s Ann. She’s been trying to get him all evening. She sounds hysterical. “All over the house now,” she says. “Can’t even see out the windows. One got stuck in my hair.” It’s a little difficult to understand what she is talking about.

He says he will be right down.

Finally Wanda understands. Mrs. Ramsay wants Melissa. She’s offering to pay eighteen hundred and twenty-six dollars if Wanda will sign this piece of paper.

“I only hit her one time,” Wanda says, starting to cry. She thinks that’s what this is all about. Maybe Mrs. Ramsay is going to tell the police. “The other time didn’t count. She didn’t fall asleep that other time.” And the rest isn’t Wanda’s fault. The way Melissa keeps having the green diarrhea.

“The money was for my friend Jill,” she says. “So she could have an abortion. I don’t want any money for Melissa. I love her. She’s the only thing I have. I’m going to be a good mother.”

“Hitting babies. Killing babies. I have heard enough,” says Mrs. Ramsay. She’s still holding the money in one hand and
Joy of Cooking
in the other. “And I have heard enough of your Negro singers and your dirty boyfriends with just one thing on their minds. Soon you are going to be so fat they won’t even be able to find it. I will tell Susan to pray for your soul; that is all I can do. She will not even remember your birthday. I would not be surprised if that formula you give her has caused brain damage. Ice cream parlors. Why don’t you just charge for spreading your legs? Then there would be no money problems. You could kill all the babies you wanted to.”

Mrs. Ramsay has just remembered the blueberry pie that was in the oven, keeping warm. She takes it out and puts it on a hand-crocheted mat in the middle of the table. Wanda has got up. She’s putting on Melissa’s jacket, packing her toys in the diaper bag as fast as she can.

“I bet you think I am going to give you a piece of this,” says Mrs. Ramsay. “Well, I am not. Not one berry.”

Ann is standing in the driveway when Reg drives up in his truck. She’s wearing a long blue nightgown and a shawl like an old woman. When his high beams hit her nightgown they light a triangle between her legs. She’s holding a fly swatter.

“Show me the scene of the crime,” he says. He would expect to be tongue-tied with her and here he is, talking like a detective on TV.

She leads him into the kitchen. No bats at the moment. There’s an empty yogurt container on the floor by the record player, another one on top of the stove. Photographs of Elizabeth Taylor at her fattest, plus some other pictures of overweight, mostly obese women taped to the refrigerator. Popcorn all over the floor (she must have forgotten to put the top on the electric fry pan). A cat on the counter, licking a stick of butter. A whole lot of magazines. Two small barbells and an exercise mat, one of those rubber belts they advertise in
TV Guide
to take inches off your midriff. Another one of those yellow legal pads covered with writing and cross-outs.

“The worst part is their terrible little faces,” she says. “They have these tiny sharp teeth.”

Reg says you’ve got to remember they’re afraid of you too.

She’s heard about these bats they have out West that suck the blood out of cattle. Whole herds wiped out. She couldn’t sleep, thinking one might land on her neck. (Ann is also having her period now, though she does not tell Reg this. Did they smell it, like those grizzly bears that sometimes attack women campers in Glacier Park? She thinks about bat wings flapping between her legs, those little teeth scraping against her thighs, little bat fingers tugging at the string of her Tampax.) “Oh, God,” she says.

Reg has poured a cup of milk into a saucepan. Without needing to ask, he has found where she keeps the honey. Now he’s stirring the honey into the hot milk, putting it in a mug, washing the spoon.

If he kissed her now that would be all right. If he built a fire in her bedroom fireplace (the nights are still cool) and put on a George Jones record, told her he would take care of her. She does not think about making love, though she would do it. What she thinks about are his arms around her. She puts her feet up on the chair.

“My daughter Jill used to have real bad nightmares,” he says. “I’d get up with her and make hot milk. Sit her on my knee and tell her stories about her and me, adventures we’d go on. Never had much imagination. I’d go in my son’s room and look at his Hardy Boys books sometimes when he was at school, write down ideas. One time Timmy heard me telling Jill some story and he came in. ‘Hey, Dad,’ he says, ‘you took that out of Hardy Boys, didn’t you?’ After that I only told Jill true stories. Fish I caught, times I got a strike in bowling, that kind of thing. She’d get so bored she went right back to sleep.”

Ann says her father used to teach her a poem every night before bed. “Little Lamb, who made thee?” “I wandered lonely as a cloud …” She has forgotten most of them now, but there was some line about “nine bean rows will I have there.”

Reg says speaking of that, he was thinking maybe they could put in some asparagus for next year. She’s got the soil for it. He has to keep talking, because he is beginning to get an erection.

“That sounds good,” she says. She’s thinking: I am going to eat only fruits and vegetables from now on, with maybe one muffin for breakfast. I would be embarrassed for anybody to see my body, the way it is now. Uncared for.

Her breasts—though she’s so young—do not tilt up after all. He can see them through the nightgown, though he’s trying not to look. He doesn’t mind that they droop though. It touches him. He wants to take his palms and cup one under each breast, support her.

She would like to lean her head on his chest. She likes it that he is not thin—a little overweight, in fact. She likes to think of him, stripped to the waist, unloading beams off a truck. That strong.

Oh, he could make this house tight as a drum. Jack up the sills, mend the roof, caulk around all the windows. He would make built-in cabinets, a chair swing, window boxes. So many little things—new washers in the faucets, a storm door on the porch, flashing along the eaves. Get rid of these bats, of course.

Winter nights—no TV—under a down quilt and a flannel sheet. He doesn’t think she’d make him gargle and spray on Right Guard first. Does the woman always close her eyes the whole time?

She thinks about the weight of him on her chest. The creak of the bedsprings, warm breath on her face. I don’t want to be alone (Sammi Smith singing). Help me make it through the night.

“Planting time,” Reg tells her, “let me till you, let me sow you.”

Not really, of course.

There’s something about the sight of her son wearing a hat that always makes Sandy want to cry. This morning, because the sun’s so bright and Mark Junior is very fair-skinned, she put him in a little white cotton beanie with a button on top and an elastic chin strap, the kind sailors wear. Not when they’re in port—when they’re swabbing the decks. He is sitting in the front of her shopping cart with a bag of onions on each side of him. Sandy is not going to buy all those onions. They’re just for support. Mark Junior can sit up by himself, of course, but when he gets excited, like in the supermarket (so many other babies, and he loves the inflated plastic bananas hanging overhead), he gets a little wobbly. At the moment his hat has slipped down over his left eye and he’s not sure what to do about it. An older woman studying the steaks a few feet away has noticed this, and smiles at Sandy. Sandy smiles back but when she does this she feels she has sold her baby down the river. Like when Mark and his friends were over at their apartment one time listening to records and Ronnie Spaulding put this pair of red wax lips on Mark Junior’s mouth, so it looked like he was wearing makeup, and Mark said too bad we don’t have a camera. Sandy isn’t sorry they don’t have a picture of that.