Manhattan Lullaby (23 page)

Maxine felt so embarrassed that she wished the floor would open and swallow her right there in the drugstore. Here she was for the first time in her whole life contemplating the purchase of condoms, even though she never planned to use them—at least not for sex—and here was this man, a “nice” man, a man who under any other circumstances she would have been glad to meet, offering her some as though she did it all the time. As though she were a professional!

He held out the box to her and she stood there, one arm hanging limply at her side, the other clutching the wire basket as though it were a life preserver.

After an awkward moment, Vincent suddenly seemed to realize the position he had put her in. “I'm sorry. This embarrasses you, doesn't it?” And he quickly put the box back on the shelf.

His sensitivity to her emotional turmoil snapped her out of it. After all, it wasn't his fault she felt uncomfortable. “No, it's not that … it's just that I don't know you and—” Maxine caught herself making up excuses for something she didn't need any excuses for. “Look, the truth is that I've never bought these before and I just had to give myself a huge pep talk to get up the nerve to come over here and get some. And then here you were and …”

“Recently divorced?” asked Vincent.

“A little over a year.”

“Me too.” He nodded his understanding.

“What!” That was something she hadn't expected to hear. “But what about the baby?”

“My granddaughter. I'm babysitting while my daughter and her husband are at the Met.”

“Oh.” This put a whole different perspective on things. She wasn't talking to a married man about condoms. She was talking to an
un
married man about condoms. Which was worse. She looked around for an escape route, since the floor seemed unlikely to oblige. In her wildest imaginings she never dreamed she would be standing in front of the condom counter chatting with a single man about her divorce and listening to him pitch his favorite brand of prophylactic. This just wasn't the way you were supposed to meet men!

Vincent, who could sense her discomfort and incipient flight, tried to relax her. There was something sweet and vaguely naive about this woman. They were qualities you didn't meet up with every day, especially in women who were divorced, and he wanted to get to know this one better. “What about you? What are you doing out at this time of the night?”

“It's not what you think,” said Maxine, nodding at the display of condoms. “It's just that I had to get out of my apartment.”

“Had to?”

“It's a long story.”

“I'm not in any hurry.” If he asked her now it might scare her off. On the other hand, if he didn't, he might not get another chance. “Would you let me buy you a cup of coffee?” He half expected her to bolt for the exit.

Maxine thought for a moment. He was a nice-looking man. He wasn't a widower. He had a baby with him. And she couldn't honestly hold the location of their meeting against him. “That would be very nice,” she said with as much casual aplomb as she could manage. “But would you mind having coffee at my place? There's something I have to check on.”

He shook his head. “Not at all. Actually, I've got to heat up Amanda's bottle soon, so if you don't mind my coming back to your place …”

“No problem,” replied Maxine, who was feeling quite relaxed now. And she turned and started to walk down the shampoo aisle to give him room to maneuver the stroller around the corner.

“Wait!” he called after her. “Don't you want these?” He picked up the box he had put back on the shelf.

Maxine paused next to the L'Oreal. It was one of those moments of truth that happen now and then in life. One of those moments when you know that whatever you say a corner will have been turned and that afterward things will be irrevocably and forever different.

“Yes,” she said firmly. “I do.”

Chapter Seventeen

Janie and Bradley were sitting side by side on the couch, holding hands and looking the epitome of marital bliss. Across from them, in the leather wing chair, sat Emmiline Crumm, looking the epitome of a vulture in a tree. She had a notepad balanced on her scrawny lap and her pen was poised above the page as she asked her next in a long line of intimate and interfering questions.

“How long have you been married?” She read the question out loud and then looked up, penetrating each one in turn with her gaze.

“Six months,” replied Bradley.

“Two years,” answered Janie at the same time.

Bradley threw a panicked look at Janie, who picked up the ball. “Uh … well, you see, we've actually been living together for two years but we got married about six months ago.” She thought it sounded like a simple enough explanation. She also thought it sounded like she was lying.

And so did Emmiline Crumm, but she wrote it down anyway and then placed a little asterisk in the margin to remind herself later where the largest gaps in their story had appeared. Not for one minute did she believe these two were married. She had interviewed a lot of married people in her time and none of them had sat together holding hands. Added to that was the simple and observable fact that the wife was not wearing a wedding ring. Whatever else these two may have shared with each other, it did not include a wedding licence. It was therefore only a matter of time before she caught them out in their lie.

“So you were pregnant
before
you got married?” asked Crumm the Inquisitor, directing her question at Janie in an attempt to put things in their proper perspective.

Janie did some quick calculations. “I guess so.”

“In other words it was the baby which precipitated the wedding?” Crumm probed.

“Are you kidding?
Interrupted
the wedding was more like it,” replied Janie before she could stop herself. “I – I mean, uh … yes.”

“I see,” said the social worker ominously and scribbled something on her pad. “Now about the baby.”

“He's sleeping,” offered Bradley helpfully.

“To be sure. But he should be awake soon, shouldn't he?” She checked the watch that hung off her skinny, speckled wrist. “It's almost nine. Don't you give him a bottle before you put him down for the night?” She addressed this last to Janie, again because her natural instincts as a meddler told her that the woman was the weak link in this chain.

Janie thought it might be a trick question. She threw a pleading look at Bradley, who gave a slight shrug in response. His brain was suddenly tongue-tied and, in the face of Crumm's interrogation, he was having trouble remembering anything about Rogue's routine.

Some … times,” replied Janie, trying not to sound too indefinite.

And Emmiline Crumm wrote down “irregular feeding schedule” on her sheet of paper. Then she looked up again. “Now, Mrs. Kraft, before we get on with questions about the baby, I should like to ask
you
a few questions.”

Janie nodded, unobtrusively swallowing the lump that was rising in her throat. Here we go, she thought. She wants to know if I'm a fit mother for a child I've never even seen.

“About the name. Don't you feel that Rogue is a little well, let's just say unusual?”

“Unusual? Uh … no. Well, maybe a little,” said Janie, hedging and hoping that some sort of reasonable-sounding answer would present itself before much longer. Fortunately, one popped into her head at the very last moment. “Actually, you see, it's a family name.” She smiled with relief at her response. That was a good answer. No one would question a family name, a name given by one's ancestors, a name carved from the trunk of one's family tree. Even if that name
was
Rogue.

“A family name?” Emmiline Crumm's mouth pursed suspiciously and a dozen little brown lines burst forth from her lips like the trajectory paths of exploding shrapnel.

Janie held fast. She was beginning to catch on to this woman now. It was all a question of not letting her intimidate you. She sat up a little straighter on the couch. “Yes, my great-grandfather, on my mother's side, was Colonel Mathias Rogue. He died at the battle of San Juan Hill.” She decided that an unembellished lie was probably an unbelievable lie, but one that was dressed up in gaudy details might sound just false enough to seem real.

“He did?” asked Bradley, turning to Janie and looking amazed.

“Yes,
darling
.” Janie placed her elbow firmly against his ribs and exerted considerable pressure. “Remember I told you all about it, when we were deciding on a name?” Then she flashed him a look that said
Shut up or die
.

“Oh … ah, yes, I remember,” said Bradley, easing himself off the point of the elbow. Then he settled down to be quiet. Something told him that Janie and the dragon Crumm would be the ones fighting this battle.

“I see,” replied Emmiline Crumm, who was sure now that she was being lied to but wasn't absolutely sure about the details. After all, there
had
been a battle at San Juan Hill. “Now, uh, about your obstetrician?” She glanced down at her list of questions.

“Yes, Dr. Arnold Brewster,” answered Janie without hesitation and looking the woman straight in the eye. She felt she was really getting the hang of this fantasy now. “A wonderful man. Really very, very good. I use him all the time. I mean—I mean I would definitely use him again.”

Bradley jumped back into the conversation then to try to cover her slip. He didn't know about anyone else, he said, but he could do with a cup of coffee. Ms. Crumm flicked a dry tongue over her brown lips and agreed that if it wouldn't take too long a cup of coffee, black, would be very welcome.

Relieved to be out of the line of fire, even if only temporarily, Bradley departed for the kitchen. He knew things weren't going well and he had to get up and move around to dispel some of his anxiety. Also, his side was hurting him.

After a minute or two of listening to him banging cups and running water, Janie decided that she too needed a break from Emmiline Crumm and after making some asinine reverse sexist comment about men and kitchens, she joined him.

“How am I doing?” she whispered beneath the sound of the running faucet.

“I think you could have left out the piece about San Juan Hill, but that bit about Dr. Brewster sounded good. Who is he, anyway?”

“Chester's vet,” replied Janie, getting the cream out of the fridge.

“Jesus Christ!” cried Bradley. “What if she checks it out? What if she finds out that your obstetrician is really a parrot pediatrician? Couldn't you come up with a
real
doctor, for Christ's sake?” His nerves were stretched tighter than Nurse McAdams's hair, and he lashed out at the nearest target.

Janie, who felt like the boy scout who gets mugged by the old lady he just helped cross the street, lashed back. “I'm doing the best I can. And you're no help. When I tried to explain about the name you acted like you'd never heard of Colonel Mathias Rogue.”

“I hadn't!” cried Bradley, rapidly losing control.

“Couldn't you just fake it? You seem to be pretty good at faking things.” Like many women, when faced with bald-faced logic, Janie resorted to cold sarcasm.

“What's that supposed to mean?” shouted Bradley, opening up Pandora's box and letting out all the unresolved hurt that had erupted at their wedding.

“It means that all the time you were sleeping with me, pretending you loved
me
, someone else was having your baby. You faked our relationship and now you've got me here faking being your wife!” Janie stood before him now, a trembling quivering figure of suppressed feminine fury.

“Nobody's twisting your arm,
friend
.” Bradley spat out the last word as though it had only four letters, not six. He reached up and retrieved the coffee grinder from the shelf next to the stove.

Janie retaliated with her most effective weapon. Her presence. “Is that right? Well, what was I supposed to do? Let you lose the baby to Our Lady of the Tarantulas out there?”

“What the hell do you care?” parried Bradley, a typical male-painted-in-the-corner response.

“Well, for your information I do care. That baby cost me a marriage. And I'm not going to let something that cost me that much just slip away because you don't have the sense to have a wife!” And she slammed the canister of coffee down on the counter with such force that half of the beans jumped out of the top and scattered across the floor.

At that very moment, Emmiline Crumm, who had come to see what all the shouting was about, took one step forward. The sole of her sensible brown shoe was no match for a floor reduced to a seething mass of bouncing black beans. One support-hose-covered leg slid out in front of her, her arms flailed helplessly above her head, and for a moment she seemed suspended in midair like some sort of large flying insect, before she landed on the mass of beans with a crunching thud.

“Well, at least we won't need to use the grinder,” said Bradley to no one in particular as he put it back in its place on the shelf and bent down to help the social worker to her feet. He knew the game was up now. Unless her brains were in her rear end, Emmiline Crumm could not be expected to have missed Janie's last comment about him not having a wife. No way.

But Emmiline Crumm said nothing. She merely dusted the residue of smashed beans off her skirt and, limping slightly, wobbled back into the living room. Janie and Bradley looked at each other and then, carefully treading over the beans, they followed her like two lambs to the slaughter.

She was sitting in her chair, stiff as a board, staring straight ahead. She said nothing, nor did she give any sign of what she had overheard until Janie and Bradley returned to the couch. This time they sat at opposite ends and not only were they not touching, they were not looking at each other either.
Now
they looked married. But it was too late.