Microcosmic God (17 page)

On the way to the city, I sat through this unnerving conversation:

Butch said, “Fathead! Drive more carefully!”

“He’s doing all right,” said Mike. “Really. It surprises me. He’s usually an Indian.” She was looking very lovely in a pea-green linen jacket and a very simple white skirt and a buff straw hat that looked like a halo.

Butch was wearing a lace-edged bonnet and an evil gleam in his eye to offset the angelic combination of a pale-blue sweater with white rabbits appliquéd on the sides, and fuzzy Angora booties on which he had insisted because I was a wearing a navy-blue and he knew it
would come off all over me. He was, I think, a little uncomfortable due to my rather unskilled handling of his diapering. And the reason for my doing that job was to cause us more trouble than a little bit. Butch’s ideas of privacy and the proprieties were advanced. He would no more think of letting Mike bathe or change him than I would think of letting Garbo change me. Thinking about this, I said:

“Butch, that prudishness of yours is going to be tough to keep up at Aunt Jonquil’s.”

“You’ll keep it up, son,” said the infant, “or I’ll quit working. I ain’t going to have no women messin’ around me that way. What d’ye think I am—an exhibitionist?”

“I think you’re a liar,” I said. “And I’ll tell you why. You said you made a life’s work of substituting for children. How could you with ideas like that? Who you trying to horse up?”

“Oh,” said Butch, “that. Well, I might’s well confess to you that I ain’t done that kind of work in years. I got sick of it. I was gettin’ along in life and … well, you can imagine. Well, about thutty years ago I was out on a job an’ the woman was changin’ my drawers when a half-dozen babes arrived from her sewin’ circle. She left off workin’ right where she was and sang out for them all to come in and see how pretty I looked the way I was. I jumped out o’ th’ bassinet, grabbed a diaper off th’ bed an’ held it in front of me while I called the whole bunch of ’em what they were and told them to get out of there. I got fired for it. I thought they’d put me to work hauntin’ houses or cleanin’ dishes for sick people or somethin’, but no—they cracked down on me. Told me I’d have to stay this way until I was repentant.”

“Are you?” giggled Mike.

Butch snorted. “Not so you’d notice it,” he growled. “Repentant because I believe in common decency? Heh?”

We waited a long time after we rang the bell before Jonquil opened the door. That was to give her time to peep out at us from the tumorous bay window and compose her features to meet the niece by marriage her unfastidious nephew had acquired.

“Jonquil!” I said heartily, dashing forward and delivering the required peck on her cheek. Jonquil expected her relatives to use her leathery cheek precisely as she herself used a napkin. Pat. Dry surface
on dry surface. Moisture is vulgar.

“And this is Michaele,” I said, stepping aside.

Mike said, “How do you do?” demurely, and smiled.

Aunt Jonquil stepped back a pace and held her head as if she were sighting at Mike through her nostrils. “Oh, yes,” she said without moving her lips. The smile disappeared from Mike’s face and came back with an effort of will that hurt. “Come in,” said Jonquil at last, and with some reluctance.

We trailed through a foyer and entered the parlor. It wasn’t a living room, it was an honest-to-goodness front parlor with antimacassars and sea shells. The tone of the room was sepia—light from the background of the heavily flowered wallpaper, dark for the furniture. The chairs and a hard-looking divan were covered with a material that looked as if it had been bleeding badly some months ago. When Butch’s eye caught the glassed-in monstrosity of hay and dead flowers over the mantelpiece, he retched audibly.

“What a lovely place you have here,” said Mike.

“Glad you like it,” acknowledged Jonquil woodenly. “Let’s have a look at the child.” She walked over and peered at Butch. He scowled at her. “Good heavens!” she said.

“Isn’t he lovely?” said Mike.

“Of course,” said Jonquil without enthusiasm, and added, after searching her store of ready-made expressions, “the little wudgums!” She kitchy-cooed his chin with her sharp forefinger. He immediately began to wail, with the hoarse, high-pitched howl of a genuine baby.

“The poor darling’s tired after his trip,” said Mike.

Jonquil, frightened by Butch’s vocal explosion, took the hint and led the way upstairs.

“Is the whole damn house like this?” whispered Butch hoarsely.

“No. I don’t know. Shut up,” said Mike. My sharp-eared aunt swiveled on the steps. “And go to sleepy-bye,” she crooned aloud. She bent her head over his and hissed, “And keep on crying, you little wretch!”

Butch snorted and then complied.

We walked into the bedroom, austerely furnished, the kind of room they used in the last century for sleeping purposes only, and
therefore designed so that it was quite unattractive to anyone with anything but sleep on his mind. It was all gray and white; the only spot of color in the room was the bedstead, which was a highly polished pipe organ. Mike lay the baby down on the bed and stripped off his booties, his shirt and his sweater. Butch put his fist in his mouth and waited tensely.

“Oh—I almost forgot. I have the very same bassinet you used, up in the attic,” said Jonquil. “I should have had it ready. Your telegram was rather abrupt, Horace. You should have let me know sooner that you’d come today.” She angled out of the room.

“Horace! I’ll be—Is your name Horace?” asked Butch in delight.

“Yes,” I said gruffly. “But it’s Shorty to you, see, little man?”

“And I was worried about you callin’ me Percival!”

I helped set up the bassinet and we tucked Butch in for his nap. I managed to be fooling around with his bedclothes when Mike bent over dutifully to give him a kiss. I grabbed Butch’s chin and held it down so the kiss landed on his forehead. He was mightily wroth, and bit my finger till it bled. I stuck it in my pocket and told him, “I’ll see you later, bummy-wummy!” He made a noise, and Jonquil fled, blushing.

We convened in the kitchen, which was far and away the pleasantest room in the house. “Where on earth did you get that child?” Jonquil asked, peering into a nice-smelling saucepan on the old-fashioned range.

“Neighbor’s child,” I said. “They were very poor and were glad to have him off their hands for a few weeks.”

“He’s a foundling,” Mike ingeniously supplemented. “Left on their doorstep. He’s never been adopted or anything.”

“What’s his name?”

“We call him Butch.”

“How completely vulgar!” said Jonquil. “I will have no child named Butch in my house. We shall have to give him something more refined.”

I had a brain wave. “How about Percival?” I said.

“Percival. Percy,” murmured Jonquil, testing it out. “That is much better. That will do. I knew somebody called Percival once.”

“Oh—you better not call him Percival,” said Mike, giving me her no-good-can-come-of-this look.

“Why not?” I said blandly. “Lovely name.”

“Yeah,” said Mike. “Lovely.”

“What time does Percival get his dinner?” asked Jonquil.

“Six o’clock.”

“Good,” said Jonquil. “I’ll feed him!”

“Oh no, Aunt J—I mean, Miss Timmins. That’s our job.”

I think Jonquil actually smiled. “I think I’d like to do it,” she said. “You’re not making an inescapable duty out of this, are you?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Mike, a little coldly. “We
like
that child.”

Jonquil peered intently at her. “I believe you do,” she said in a surprised tone, and started out of the room. At the door she called back, “You needn’t call me Miss Timmins,” and she was gone.

“Well!” said Mike.

“Looks like you won the war, babe.”

“Only the first battle, honey, and don’t think I don’t know it. What a peculiar old duck she is!” She busied herself at the stove, warming up some strained carrots she had taken out of a jar, sterilizing a bottle and filling it with pineapple juice. We had read a lot of baby manuals in the last few days!

Suddenly, “Where’s your aunt?” Mike asked.

“I dunno. I guess she’s—Good grief!”

There was a dry-boned shriek from upstairs and then the sound of hard heels pounding along the upper hallway toward the front stairs. We went up the back stairs two at time, and saw the flash of Jonquil’s dimity skirts as she disappeared downstairs. We slung into the bedroom. Butch was lying in his bassinet doubled up in some kind of spasm.

“Now what?” I groaned.

“He’s choking,” said Mike. “What are we going to do, Shorty?”

I didn’t know. Mike ran and turned him over. His face was all twisted up and he was pouring sweat and gasping. “Butch! Butch—What’s the matter?”

And just then he got his wind back. “
Ho ho ho!”
he roared in
his bullfrog voice, and lost it again.

“He’s laughing,” Mike whispered.

“That’s the funniest way I ever saw anyone commit sideways,” I said glumly. I reached out and smacked him across the puss. “Butch! Snap out of it!”

“Ooh!” said Butch. “You lousy heel. I’ll get you for that.”

“Sorry, Butch. But I thought you were strangling.”

“Guess I was at that,” he said, and started to laugh again. “Shorty, I couldn’t help it. See, that ol’ vinegar visage come in here and started staring at me. I stared right back. She bends over the bassinet. I grin. She grins. I open my mouth. She opens her mouth. I reach in and pull out her bridgework and pitch it out the windy. Her face sags down in the middle like a city street in Scranton. She does the steam-siren act and hauls on out o’ here. But Shorty—Mike”—and he went off into another helpless spasm—“you shoulda seen her
face!”

We all subsided when Jonquil came in again. “Just tending to my petunias,” she said primly. “Why—you have dinner on the table. Thank you, child.”

“Round two,” I said noncommittally.

Around two in the morning I was awakened by a soft thudding in the hallway. I came up on one elbow. Mike was fast asleep. But the bassinet was empty. I breathed an oath and tiptoed out into the hall. Halfway down was Butch, crawling rapidly. In two strides I had him by the scruff of the neck.

“Awk!”

“Shut up! Where do you think you’re going?”

He thumbed at a door down the hall.

“No, Butch. Get on back to bed. You can’t go there.”

He looked at me pleadingly. “I can’t? Not for
nothin’?”

“Not for nothin’.”

“Aw—Shorty. Gimme a break.”

“Break my eyebrow! You belong in that bassinet.”

“Just this once, huh, Shorty?”

I looked worriedly at Jonquil’s bedroom door. “All right, dammit. But make it snappy.”

Butch went on strike the third day. He didn’t like those strained vegetables and soups to begin with, and then one morning he heard the butcher boy downstairs, singing out, “Here’s yer steaks, Miss Timmins!” That was enough for little Percival.

“There’s got to be a new deal around here, chum,” he said the next time he got me in the room alone. “I’m gettin’ robbed.”

“Robbed? Who’s taking what?”

“Youse. You promise me steaks, right? Listen, Shorty, I’m through with that pap you been feedin’ me. I’m starvin’ to death on it.”

“What would you suggest?” I asked calmly. “Shall I have one done to your taste and delivered to your room, sir?”

“You know what, Shorty? You’re kiddin’.” He jabbed a tiny forefinger into the front of my shirt for emphasis. “You’re kiddin’, but I ain’t. An’ what you just said is a pretty good idea. I want a steak once a day—here in this room. I mean it, son.”

I opened my mouth to argue and then looked deep into those baby eyes. I saw an age-old stubbornness, an insurmountable firmness of character there. I shrugged and went out.

In the kitchen I found Mike and Jonquil deeply engaged in some apparently engrossing conversation about rayon taffeta. I broke it up by saying, “I just had an idea. Tonight I’m going to eat my supper upstairs with Bu … Percival. I want you to get to know each other better, and I would commune with another male for a spell. I’m outnumbered down here.”

Jonquil actually did smile this time. Smiles seemed to be coming to her a little more easily these days. “I think that’s a lovely idea,” she said. “We’re having steak tonight, Horace. How do you like yours?”

“Broiled,” said Mike, “and well d—”

“Rare!” I said, sending a glance at Mike. She shut up, wonderingly.

And that night I sat up in the bedroom, watching that miserable infant eat my dinner. He did it with gusto, with much smacking of the lips and grunting in ecstasy.

“What do you expect me to do with this?” I asked, holding up a cupful of lukewarm and sticky strained peas.

“I don’t know,” said Butch with his mouth full. “That’s your problem.”

I went to the window and looked out. Directly below was a spotless concrete walk which would certainly get spattered if I pitched the unappetizing stuff out there. “Butch—won’t you get rid of this stuff for me?”

He sighed, his chin all greasy from my steak. “Thanks, no,” he said luxuriously. “Couldn’t eat another bite.”

I tasted the peas tentatively, held my nose and gulped them down. As I swallowed the last of them I found time to direct a great many highly unpleasant thoughts at Butch. “No remarks,
Percy,”
I growled.

He just grinned. I picked up his plates and the cup and started out. “Haven’t you forgotten something?” he asked sleepily.

“What?” He nodded toward the dresser and the bottle which stood on it. Boiled milk with water and corn syrup added. “Damned if I will!” I snapped.

He grinned, opened his mouth and started to wail.

“Shut up!” I hissed. “You’ll have them women up here claiming I’m twisting your tail or something.”

“That’s the idea,” said Butch. “Now drink your milk like a good little boy and you can go out and play.”

I muttered something impotently, ripped the nipple off the bottle and gulped the contents.

“That’s for telling the old lady to call me Percy,” said Butch. “I want another steak tomorrow. ’Bye now.”

And that’s how it came about that I, a full-grown man in good health, lived for close to two weeks on baby food. I think that the deep respect I have for babies dates from this time, and is founded on my realization of how good-natured they are on the diet they get. What really griped me was having to watch him eat my meals. Brother, I was earning that thirty grand the hard way.