Manhattan Lullaby (24 page)

Emmiline Crumm cleared her throat before she began her onslaught, and the sound of her rasping voice grated like sandpaper on their strained nerves. “It is very obvious to me that you two are not married,” she began and then corrected herself in the interest of accuracy. “At least not to each other. And whatever your reasons for perpetrating this fraud, I do not intend to go into that now. My primary concern is the welfare of the child. And I want to know, Mr. Kraft, right now, where is Maxine Kraft, the mother of your baby?”

Bradley ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth to pry his teeth off of his lips and considered the possibilities of his answer. “Well … you see …” he began, but before he could go any further there was a knock at the door.

Grateful for the interruption, Bradley jumped to his feet. “The door,” he cried, although it was obvious, and raced out into the hall hoping against hope that somehow the answer to his problems would be waiting just beyond the threshold. And to a certain extent his wish was granted.

After a few moments of scuffling and murmuring, which both Janie and Ms. Crumm strained their ears to decipher, he reappeared, followed by Maxine, Dr. Vincent Taylor and the tiny, pink Amanda.

Emmiline Crumm looked this trio up and down, trying to place them somewhere in the family structure of the child named Rogue. They didn't fit. And yet they were obviously a part of whatever was going on here. This she could tell because two of the three of them were trying hard not to look as if anything out of the ordinary was going on, which meant that they knew just the opposite to be the case.

Bradley made the introductions. “This is, ah, my mother,” he said, purposely leaving out her name. “And this is Dr. Taylor and this is Amanda,” he said in an effort to explain as little as possible and still give the appearance of having said a lot because he certainly didn't want to give the social worker any more ammunition.

Ms. Crumm gave a perfunctory nod at the new arrivals. She would deal with them in due time. For now she turned her attention back to the matter at hand. “Now, about your wife, Mr. Kraft.”

“My wife. Yes. My wife.” His mind drew a blank. Janie had obviously been discounted on that level and he didn't have any backups waiting in the wings. So what was left but the truth? He would simply have to throw himself on the thorny Ms. Crumm—only in the verbal sense, of course—and hope she understood that just because there was a baby didn't mean there had to be a wife. He threw his hands up in the air in a gesture of helpless surrender. “I don't have a wife.”

“Ah-hah!” cried Crumm, fixing him with one pointed finger. “You don't have a wife? But you do have a baby. Is that correct?”

Bradley thought that Crumm, who had the uncanny knack of reducing weeks of upheaval to two simple sentences, should have been a politician or one of those people who abridges books for
Reader's Digest
. But he nodded.

“Then who is Maxine Kraft?”

“I am Maxine Kraft,” replied Maxine. If her son was going to confront this dragon with the truth then she would help him.

Emmiline Crumm focused her attention on Maxine. “And what is your relationship to the child, if any?”

“I am the mother of the father,” replied Maxine, calmly.

Crumm wrote that down and turned her attention to Vincent Taylor. “And are you also related to the father?”

“No,” replied Vincent in all honesty as he cuddled Amanda. “Actually, I am the father of the mother.”

He had come up against women like this before, both professionally and personally. Anal retentive personalities combined with feminist ideology—a loaded combination and a sign of the times. They were totally incapable of accepting the viability of even the smallest deviation from the traditional nuclear family, especially when fathers somehow acquired custody, a plot they assumed was directed at making women, that is mothers, totally obsolete and therefore removing the final source of their power over men. He did not appreciate either their attitude or their point of view.

So when Maxine had filled him in on the particular deviations of her own nuclear family on the way back from the drugstore, and since his own fractured family was also far from the norm, he had determined therefore to resist facilitating the social worker's job if possible, though without actually reconstruing the facts, because that would be a violation of his professional ethics.

The social worker dutifully wrote down what he had said, although she had no idea whether the mother he purported to be the father of was related to the baby he was holding or the one she was investigating. “And is that your baby?” She pointed at Amanda.

“No,” replied Vincent, offering no further explanation and slipping the toothless Amanda a knuckle to rub against her burgeoning gums.

“I see,” replied Emmiline Crumm, although she didn't. She felt she was getting more and more confused. And again she wrote something down on her notepad. It was in fact a sort of player's guide that she could refer to as her interview progressed and thereby keep everything and everyone in order. “One doctor, two babies, one father, one grandmother, and no mothers. And two women both espousing some claim to being a Mrs. Kraft.” Now at least she knew who she was dealing with.

Before she could proceed any further with her interrogation, however, there was another knock at the door. Once more Bradley leaped to his feet. “Door,” he cried again with just a hint of hysteria and returned to the hallway.

He was back a few seconds later, herding his father and the obviously pregnant Joyce into the living room, which was by this point getting pretty crowded. He went to introduce them, but Emmiline Crumm cut him off. “I'll do it, if you don't mind,” she said and turned her lizardlike lips in the direction of the newcomers.

“And you are?”

Harry, who was a little taken aback by the crowded state of his former living room and the presence of a strange man and a baby he had never laid eyes on before plus Lucy the Lizard Lady, who in no way resembled his idea of a woman bound by empathy and social concern to ease the lot of those over whom she had power, decided to answer anyway. “I am Harry Kraft.”

“And what is your relationship to this man and his child?” She waved a clawlike hand at Bradley.

“Uh … I am the father of the father,” replied Harry, looking around the room for confirmation that he had given the
right
answer, even though he had only uttered the truth. Maxine gave him a barely perceptible nod. Emmiline Crumm was going to find out that she was not the only one who could make things difficult.

Satisfied, Crumm then turned to Joyce, but before she could ask the question, Joyce volunteered. “I am the wife of the father,” she replied, falling easily into the parlance of the evening and wondering if perhaps this was some sort of familial version of “What's My Line?”

The social worker looked from one to the other and, muttering something under her breath, she amended her list. “
Three
Mrs. Krafts, two fathers, two-and-a-half babies, one grandmother and one doctor.” Something fishy was going on here. No doubt about it.

“Before we go any further, would anyone like some coffee?” It was Maxine, who had not yet seen the state of the kitchen, who made the offer in an attempt to give everyone a chance to think about what they were going to say before they said it.

“I'll have a Scotch, double,” replied Harry before anyone else could get a word in.

“Milk for me,” said Joyce, running a soothing hand around the perimeter of her stomach, which now that she was sitting down made it look as though she was hiding a basketball under her dress.

“Vincent?” asked Maxine.

“A glass of wine would be nice. And do you have somewhere I could heat the bottle? It's almost time for her last feeding.”

Maxine raised her eyebrows in the direction of the wing chair, but Emmiline Crumm shook her head. Beverage-wise, she was determined to quit while she was ahead.

“I'll help you clean up the mess,” said Janie, glad of something productive to do now that her role as wife had been cut to a mere guest appearance.

“What mess?” asked Maxine, following her into the kitchen.

When they had gone, the social worker stood up. “I would like to see the baby
now
, Mr. Kraft.”

Both Bradley and Harry stood up, and then Harry, realizing his mistake, sat down again with a sheepish grin.

“I'll go and get him,” said Bradley quietly, and he disappeared down the hall. Rogue, unaware that his future was hanging in the balance, was still asleep. And even as Bradley picked him up out of the laundry basket and wrapped him in a blanket, he slept on. Bradley stood holding him for a few minutes, listening to the beat of his tiny heart and vowing silently that whatever happened he was not going to give up this baby to that woman. Then he returned to the living room.

Emmiline Crumm immediately reached out and took Rogue in the thin tubes of her arms. She moved aside the blanket and looked down into his face. To her practiced eye he seemed clean and well cared for. But that was not the point. She now had to find out just who among this gathering—if any—were his parents. Otherwise she was duty-bound to take the child into the custody of the State of New York for its own protection until his parentage could be established.

As she was examining the baby, Vincent returned with a suckling Amanda busily gulping down the warmed contents of her bottle. He sat down and Maxine placed his drink next to him on the end table. The she put down Harry's Scotch and passed Joyce her milk and went back to the kitchen to get a bottle ready for Rogue. Janie returned to her place in exile at the far end of the couch. It was a full house and Bradley, realizing that they were now out of chairs and that this might turn into a long night, went to retrieve one from his room.

It took Emmiline Crumm only a few moments to discover that she could not take notes and hold a baby at the same time. So she looked around for someone with an empty lap. Her natural suspicion of men caused her to pass by both Bradley, who had just returned with his chair, and Harry, who nursed his Scotch while he watched the strange man nurse his strange baby on
his
old couch. And since Maxine was still in the kitchen and Joyce no longer had a lap to speak of, she went to hand the baby to Janie.

Janie, who was sitting stonily at the far end of the couch feeling hard done-by and partly invisible, was surprised by the sudden thrusting of a warm bundle into her arms.

“Hold him until I finish,” ordered Crumm.

“Do I have to?” replied Janie, taking the bundle reluctantly. The last thing she wanted to do was to hold the child of the man she had almost married. To be reminded that this little bundle that stood between her and the man she loved was not just an inconvenience, not just a lump in a shopping bag, not just
the baby
, a faceless noun—but Bradley's baby.

A funny feeling came over her as she took him in her arms. A feeling that she knew if she were not careful it could undermine her decision and cause her to accept a situation that she knew she could not live with. Damn! But in spite of her aversion to holding him and her knowledge of the possible risk involved, she still had an overwhelming urge to open the flap of the blanket and take a look at the tiny face. To follow the natural urge of women everywhere to trace the images of loved ones on the faces of the newly born. But, with the stubborn determination of one who never reneges on a promise or tempers a decision, she fought it off.

Except for the nursing noises of the contented Amanda and the occasional mewing noises from underneath Rogue's blanket, the room was absolutely silent for a few moments as everyone looked at everyone else and tried to determine what the best course of action was. But since none of them knew what had been said prior to their arrivals, all of them were trying to play the game with caution in case they put their foot in somebody else's mouth.

Crumm, meanwhile, was busy scribbling on her pad.

Suddenly the symphonic scratching of her pen was usurped by yet another knock at the front door.

“I'll get it,” cried Bradley, who was getting used to this but who was also running out of family at this point and couldn't fathom for the life of him who it could be.

A few eyebrows threw questions around the room like some sort of silent jungle telegraph. But no one else seemed to have any idea who it could possibly be either. All heads turned slightly toward the doorway in anticipation of the newcomer.

In a few moments a young, striking-looking girl entered the room. She looked fresh-faced and starry-eyed and bore a somewhat remarkable resemblance to Mary Pickford—though in a much more modern cast, of course.

“
This
is Rogue's mother,” exclaimed Bradley, who had managed to ascertain that much at the door, although at first he didn't believe her because she looked nothing like the girl who had dropped his son off at the synagogue. “She came to bring me the birth certificate.” And he held up the prize in his left hand. Somehow his prayers had been answered. The day had been saved. And just in the nick of time.

“Hi, everybody,” cried Luba, waving one hand at the assembled masses and flashing her best 8x10 smile.

Emmiline Crumm growled audibly and amended her notes one more time. “
Four
Mrs. Krafts, two fathers, two-and-a-half babies, one grandmother, one doctor.” Then she looked up from her pad.

“I am going to get to the bottom of what is going on here, if it takes all night,” she warned. “Now, you two.” She pointed to Maxine and Vincent. “Are you married?”

Maxine kept a straight face. “No, we're divorced.”

Vincent barely held back a smile, turning it into a yawn. “Pardon me. Must be getting late.”

But Crumm, who may have been confused but was not stupid, was catching on. She knew she would get no cooperation from this group of urban gypsies. “From each other?” she added cagily.