Baby Talk (5 page)

“That baby is responsible,” Neal said
firmly, though now he was beginning to question his grasp of
reality. He groped for some sort of proof. “Look, how do you
explain that blood on her forehead? You saw it. You wiped it
away.”

Annie motioned to the wall. “There’s blood
all over everything. Your foot slung it all over the room.” She
sadly shook her head again. “I can’t believe I’m even having this
conversation. I think after we take you to a regular hospital, we
should take you to another kind of hosp—”

“Screw you,” Neal spat. He looked away.

Neither Neal or Annie spoke for a couple of
minutes.

Annie finally broke the silence. “You have
to wash out your foot.”

Neal didn’t respond. He stared at the
makeshift bandage—the towel made his foot look like it had swollen
up as big as a cantaloupe.

“You could get an infection,” Annie went on.
“That trophy’s not clean, and—”

“Shut up, Annie,” Neal said flatly.

Annie was quiet only for a few seconds. “I’m
sorry your hurt yourself, Neal, but I don’t see why you’re acting
like such a baby about it.”

“I’m not acting like a baby.”

Natasha started to cry.

Annie gave another weary sigh and went over
to the crib. She picked up Natasha and patted her on the back,
rocking her from side to side. “There, there thweetie. Go back to
sleep.”

Neal glared at both of them. Natasha
continued to cry, her eyes squeezed shut. It wasn’t a hungry
cry—even Neal had learned to recognize that particular sound. It
was a cry of irritation, of disturbance. At that moment, Neal
realized how much a baby—all babies—could affect what went on
around them. Their crying almost always caused some kind of
reaction in the environment, even if their mothers weren’t
around.

As Natasha started to quiet down, Annie
said, “Neal, you
have
to wash out your foot. Then I’ll take
you to the emergency room.”

Neal watched her for a moment, then pushed
himself up off the floor and limped into the bathroom.

* * *

“Well, Mr. Becker, I have some good news. No
foreign matter appears to be left in the wound.”

The young doctor was holding some x-rays in
his hand. He had just come back into the curtained-off section of
the emergency room where Neal had been sitting the past two hours,
mostly alone. The nurses had made Annie and the baby stay in the
waiting room, which was just fine with Neal.

“Let’s have another look at it,” the doctor
said. He gingerly took hold of Neal’s ankle and raised it,
inspecting the hole again. The man was no more than thirty years
old, probably an intern. But he seemed to know what he was
doing.

“All things considered,” the doctor said,
after a moment of peering and gentle squeezing, “it’s a pretty
clean wound. No need for any stitches—you’ll just have to keep it
bandaged up for a while.” He let Neal’s foot back down. “What do
you do? Work or go to school?”

Neal hesitated. “I’m in the flower
business.”

“Uh-huh. But what do you do, exactly?”

“Well...I’m the delivery manager. I schedule
all the, you know, deliveries that have to be made.”

“Uh-huh,” the doctor said again. His facial
expression told Neal that he knew it was a lie, but that he didn’t
really care. “The reason I’m asking is that you’ll need to stay off
your foot for a few days. There’s already considerable swelling,
and I have a feeling it’ll get worse before it gets better.”

Neal only nodded, sorry that he had lied.
But the thought of telling this young and successful doctor that he
was nothing but a lowly flower delivery boy was too much for his
ego to bear. Some day he would be a doctor—or something equally
impressive—too.

“So, it won’t be a problem?” the doctor
said.

Neal was so lost in his own thoughts he had
forgotten the flow of the conversation. “What won’t be a
problem?”

“Staying off your foot.”

A typical day of driving the Snell delivery
van flashed through Neal’s mind—all the trips in and out of high
rise apartment buildings, up and down stairs, across huge parking
lots...

“It won’t be a problem,” Neal lied.

“Good.” The doctor began to explain how to
clean the wound, change the bandage, and so on, but Neal only
half-listened. He was worrying about how he would get through the
next few days without the Snells discovering that he was
practically disabled. If they knew, they wouldn’t let him drive the
van—he would have to take time off without pay. If he tried to take
sick time so soon after being hired, he would probably lose his
job. Of course, losing the job at Snell’s wouldn’t be anything to
cry over, but at least he got paid. And God knew he and Annie
needed the money.

“Also,” the doctor said, after he had
finished explaining the procedures, “I should warn you, there is a
good chance you could develop an infection.”

“Infection?” Neal said, suddenly attentive
again.

“Yes. Puncture wounds like this are
particularly infection-prone. We don’t know what kind of foreign
matter might have been on the end of that trophy you stepped on,
bacteria or whatever. You’ve had a recent tetanus shot, so I’m not
worried about that. But you could develop some other infection. If
your foot really starts to swell or turns red or feels hot to the
touch, you need to come back and we’ll put you on some antibiotics.
Also, if you see any red streaks moving up your leg, you need to
come back here immediately. That would indicate a very serious
infection.”

Neal nodded, feeling a little uneasy, and
looked down at his foot. It was already so swollen if felt like he
had a golf ball sown into the bottom of it.

“Can’t you just give me some antibiotics
right now, so an infection won’t even have a chance to get
started?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I can give you
something for the pain, though.” The doctor pulled a prescription
pad out of his white jacket and started writing. “Take a couple of
these every four hours, as long as you need them.”

“Thanks,” Neal said, taking the slip of
paper. “But...”

“But what?”

In Neal’s mind, he could still clearly see
the sharp, rusty metal that had punctured his foot. “I still think
I better take some antibiotics right now, before any infection even
has a chance to start. Don’t you?”

The young physician smiled. “Sorry, but
that’s not how we practice medicine these days. We don’t give
antibiotics until the symptoms of the infection appear and are
diagnosed. Unless, of course, the patient is particularly
susceptible to infection, for some reason.” He picked up Neal’s
chart and looked it over. “You didn’t list anything of that
nature.”

“No,” Neal said. “I’m healthy. As far as I
know, anyway.” He remembered snide remark Annie had started to make
about taking him to “another” kind of hospital.

“Good,” the doctor said. “Then I’m sure you
won’t have a problem.”

C
HAPTER 5

It was almost dawn when the fledgling Family
Becker got home from the hospital. Annie went to sleep almost as
soon as her head hit the pillow. Natasha had been asleep when Neal
came out of the emergency room and (to his relief) had stayed that
way ever since. Now, she was in her crib, and Neal could hear her
breathing little, hoarse baby-breaths.

He lay there on his back until just before
six a.m., his throbbing foot propped up on a pillow to minimize
swelling, as the doctor had instructed. Neal thought it was all in
vain, however. He was convinced that the wound was teeming with
bacteria and it was only a matter of time before symptoms of
infection appeared and he returned to the emergency room. A part of
him told him that he was being a hypochondriac, but another part of
him seemed certain about it.

As he lay there, a phrase the doctor had
said popped into his mind:

We don’t know what kind of foreign matter
may have been on the end of that trophy you stepped on...

Neal sat up in the bed and gazed at the
tennis trophy. He could see it clearly now in the dawn light,
sitting on the top shelf of his trophy case, where he had put it
before Annie had taken him to the hospital. Before they had left,
he had glanced at the end of it to see if anything more had broken
off, but he hadn’t really paid that much attention to its
cleanliness.

Neal quietly got up and, with considerable
difficulty, limped across the room to the trophy case. When he
passed the crib, he fought the urge to look at Natasha, afraid he
would see those black eyes again. But he could not help
himself.

He was relieved to see that she was still
fast asleep, her eyes shut, but her tiny hands clenched to her
chest, in the fetal position. Just a little, harmless baby. It was
hard to believe that he—a grown, 21 year old man— was actually
afraid of her.

Careful not to make a sound, Neal picked up
the tennis trophy and limped into the kitchen, using various pieces
of the rental furniture to support himself. His left shoulder ached
almost as much as his foot—every time he moved his left arm, he
winced. Neal hadn’t even mentioned this to anyone at the hospital.
But he was certain it was nothing but a bad bruise.

His foot, however, was another matter.

When he finally reached the kitchen, he went
over to the sink and turned on the florescent light fixture mounted
directly above it. He held the trophy under the bright white light
and examined the broken tennis shaft very closely. It was caked
with dried blood now, so it was hard to tell how clean it was
before it had ripped through the bottom of his foot.

He scraped off a little bit of the blood. It
was a deep maroon color and chipped off the metal in tiny little
chunks. Neal turned the trophy one way, then another, to try and
get a better look at it. As he did this, he noticed something new.
The racket shaft was hollow—this he had noticed before, when he had
tried to glue it back together. But now, something was plugging up
the end. Some kind of “foreign matter.” He thought it was probably
a piece of himself, a bit of tendon or gristle or maybe just skin.
But it didn’t look like skin or gristle. It looked like dirt, like
dried mud.

Neal frowned, his upper lip curling in
repulsion, as he scraped at it with his fingernail. But this
wouldn’t work. He needed something small and sharp to insert into
the hole in the shaft...

He opened the cupboard and retrieved a
toothpick from a little cardboard box, then held the trophy under
the light again and scraped some of the brown stuff out.

That was when he noticed the smell.

Neal held the toothpick up to his nose. His
upper lip curling again, he inhaled. He recoiled, staring at the
little brown-smeared sliver of wood.

It was
shit
.

And not just any shit.

It was
baby
shit.

Neal dropped the toothpick in the sink, his
throat bone-dry. He reeled for a moment, trying to convince himself
that it might have just been blood or something else, but there was
no question about it. He knew that odor very well, that
almost-sweet fragrance a baby’s stool will emit for the first few
months, when the child is consuming almost nothing but milk. Annie
had (not surprisingly) made a special trip to the pediatrician
about it, afraid that the smell signaled some kind of disorder.

“What are you doing?” Annie said, from
behind him.

Neal was so shocked he dropped the trophy
into the stainless-steel sink. When the heavy object made contact
with the metal, it created a reverberating
boom!
that was so
loud it made Neal’s ears ring.

Natasha started crying—she was cradled in
Annie’s arms.

“I was just trying to find a way to fix...”
Neal’s voice faded before he had finished his lie. He stared at the
crying baby, fear rising in him like a rudely awakened animal. His
daughter, that little...
creature
...wanted him hurt. Maybe
even dead.

He remembered a documentary he had seen on
TV about some natives in Africa who smeared human feces on the end
of their spears and arrows to ensure that their victims—in this
case, enemy tribes—developed serious infections if they were not
mortally wounded. Natasha had undoubtedly employed the same
principle here.

“What’s the matter with you?” Annie said.
She was still staring at him, her eyes filled with fear. “You
look...strange.”

Neal realized that he probably looked
insane, his back pressed against the sink, staring at his baby
daughter as if she were the Antichrist. But he couldn’t help
himself.

He was terrified.

Neal pointed a shaking finger at Natasha.
“That...that
thing
is trying to kill me!”

“What?” Annie said. She let out a short
laugh, but then her eyes became wide with fear. She took a step
backwards, through the doorway, and held the baby defensively.
“You’re losing your mind.”

“Oh, am I?” Neal picked up the trophy and
thrust it towards her. “She smeared her shit all over the end of
this thing to make sure I got an infection!”

Annie’s eyes became even wider.

“Smell it, if you don’t believe me!
Smell
it, Annie!”

She stared at Neal for a second, then turned
and carried Natasha into the bedroom, and shut the door. Neal heard
the lock click.

She was afraid of him…

Neal stumbled over to the dinette table and
fell into one of the chairs. “Holy Christ,” he said in a hush.
“What am I doing? What am I
thinking
?” Suddenly, he felt
cold and started shivering. He really was losing his grip on
reality.

She’s your daughter Neal, your own flesh and
blood. You’re imagining this whole thing because you feel so guilty
about wanting her aborted. You have a mental complex that’s so huge
and twisted you actually believe Natasha wants to get even with
you, wants to make you pay for almost ending her embryonic life and
keeping her out of this world.

Annie’s absolutely right. You need to see a
shrink, buddy. And fast.

Neal swallowed hard. He wasn’t sure of which
he was more afraid—going stir crazy or that his baby daughter was
actually trying to do him in.

He remained slumped in his chair for another
half hour, as the early-morning light gradually filled the room. He
could hear Natasha’s muffled crying for a few minutes, but then the
sound stopped in an abrupt way, accompanied by some coughing, which
told Neal that Annie was nursing her. Finally, the alarm clock went
off. He decided he had no choice but to try and pull himself
together and get ready for work.

* * *

By noon that day, Neal was certain that he
had taken a wrong turn somewhere on the Interstate. “TRAFFIC BOUND
FOR HELL—EXIT ONLY,” the sign must have said.

He sat outside a hi-rise office building in
Sandy Springs, trying to work up enough courage to struggle his way
out of the van and carry the order of roses he was supposed to
deliver into the lobby. He had stopped at a drugstore on his way to
work and picked up his pain killers, but they didn’t seem to help
much. He had taken six already, two more than he should have, but
they only dulled the throbbing in his foot. The pills also seemed
to have the unpleasant side-effect of making him nauseous. And the
doctor had been right about the swelling getting worse before it
got better. Now, the skin on the sole of his foot was stretched so
tightly it felt like the whole appendage was about to burst. The
only positive thing was that his shoulder was staring to feel
better—at least the pain killers seemed to work on that part of his
body.

He had worn a pair of old, faded sneakers to
work, the only shoes that were halfway bearable to wear under the
circumstances. This had allowed him to hide his injury from the
Snells, though just barely.

Neal glanced at the office building again,
dreading the seemingly vast distance that separated him from the
lobby. He started to open the door, then shut it again. No, he had
to rest for another couple of minutes. He decided to take another
look at his foot.

He grunted and carefully removed his right
sneaker, then slipped off his sock. The top of his foot looked a
bit red to him, particularly around the bandage. It also felt “hot
to the touch,” as the doctor had said.

He pulled up the bottom of his pants and
inspected his ankle and calf, but he didn’t see any red streaks.
Yet, his instincts told him that his foot was well into the process
of becoming infected. But how could he know for sure? It seemed to
him that it might be hot and red just from walking around on it all
morning. Plus, didn’t it take longer to get an infection?

Neal wished he had asked the doctor how long
it would take for the symptoms to appear. Then again, he would have
sounded like a hypochondriac. But hadn’t the doctor said that it
was “likely” that an infection would develop? Well, no, he didn’t
say “likely.” He said there was a “chance” that an infection could
devel—

“Hey, pal,” somebody said, tapping on his
window.

It was a heavyset black man with a mustache.
A security guard.

Neal rolled down the window.

“You’re gonna have to move. This is a fire
zone. No parking or standing.”

“I have to make a delivery.” Neal realized
that the man was staring at his foot, which he had propped up on
the lower part of the dashboard. He quickly moved it down to the
gas pedal.

“What happened?” the guard asked.

“Nothing,” Neal said. “Just sprained my foot
a little bit yesterday. Playing tennis.”

“Looks pretty bad.”

Neal just shrugged. He hoped the guy would
just leave him alone.

“If you’re gonna make a delivery,” the guard
said, “then get on with it. The police will give you a ticket if
they see you parked here.”

Neal nodded.

The guard eyed Neal for another couple of
seconds, then walked off.

Neal watched him, wondering how the truth—or
what he perceived to be the truth—would have sounded.

What happened to your foot?

Oh, my five-month old daughter set a trap
for me and screwed me up pretty good.

A trap? What the hell are you talking
about?

Well, she’s pissed off because I almost made
my wife abort her, and now she’s trying to get even. She’s pretty
advanced, too, for a five-month old kid. She can already talk, move
things around the room. And she’s shrewd as hell. Left a broken
tennis trophy of mine out in the middle of the floor, so I’d step
on it when I got up to go to the bathroom. Smeared her own feces
all over it, too, just to make sure an infection would develop.

Uh-huh
, the guard would say, glancing
around, wondering if a real policeman was around to take this nut
away and lock him up somewhere, in some nice, quiet place with
soft, padded walls...

Neal closed his eyes and let out a ragged
sigh. Maybe this infection (if he indeed had an infection) was a
good thing—it would keep his mind occupied and off the unpleasant
subject of how it had come about. The rational part of himself
simply could not accept the thoughts he was having about
Natasha—they were obviously the thoughts of a lunatic. Hell, maybe
Annie was right. Maybe it was just some kind of out-of-control
guilt complex that had taken over. Maybe he had completely imagined
that Natasha had spoken to him, and the telephone message (he sure
wished he hadn’t thrown the message slip away). And maybe he had
sleepwalked and put the trophy out in the middle of the floor
himself. Who could say? There were probably lots of other rational
explanations he hadn’t considered.

The guard was standing in front of the
building’s entrance, eyeing him again.

Neal quickly put his sneaker back on,
leaving the laces untied as he had before (not that he could tie
them even if he wanted too—his foot was just too swollen), and got
out of the van. He stepped onto the pavement with the utmost care,
but a twinge of pain shot through his left foot and lurched all the
way up his leg to his testicles. Grimacing, he limped his way
around to the back of the van. As he opened the double doors, a
wave of nausea rolled over him that was so debilitating he thought
he might pass out right there in the parking lot. But after a few
long seconds, it subsided.

He finally got the box of roses out of the
van and headed into the building. Luckily, the office where the
flowers were to be delivered was located on the lobby level, only a
short distance from the front door.

When he came back out to the parking lot,
the guard approached him.

“This is none of my business, pal, but you
don’t look so good.”

“Oh?” Neal made an effort to walk without
limping, even though the pain was almost unbearable. “What do you
mean?”