The Cradle Robbers (16 page)

Sadie began her pre-wailing murmuring and I dropped the lid of the bin. The next half hour was spent in a progressively more frantic search for a café in which to wash my hands and nurse the baby. By the time we had accomplished that and I had hauled Sadie back up the unbelievably steep hill to the Arguello house, it was clear to me that the family was gone. Heavy curtains had been drawn across the loggias, giving the house a shuttered and shut-down look.

I wandered around the periphery of the mansion for a few minutes, hoping to catch a glimpse of something—a mobile hanging in a window, a stroller handle peeping from the garage—but no such luck. Finally, I called a cab and took myself and Sadie back to the airport, somewhat the wiser for my excursion, but no less confused.

W
HEN
the cab finally pulled into our narrow winding street in the Hollywood Hills, after being stuck in a mysterious Saturday afternoon traffic jam on the 101, we found ourselves trapped behind a truck that had worked itself halfway into a ditch. Despite the fact that the truck was clearly jammed tight and going nowhere, its driver had decided to unload from the trailer the largest mattress I had ever seen in my life. It took four men to lift the thing, one of them my elated husband. He had managed to work his way under the mattress, deciding for some reason that he could best assist the movers by balancing the thing on his back. He was calling useless
directions at the three laborers, all of whom were assiduously ignoring him.

“And, heave it to the right!” Peter shouted. “Up and over.”

“Honey?” I said, bending down so that I could see him.

“Surprise!” he said.

“No kidding.”

“I ordered a mattress for our bed.”

“I see. When?”

“Six weeks ago. Aren’t you surprised?”

“Totally.”

“Aren’t you happy?”

“You bet. How are you guys going to get it up the stairs?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

When I greeted the movers in my semi-fluent Spanish, the foreman asked me, very politely, if I would consider asking my well-intentioned husband to allow them to do their job unassisted. I assured them that as soon as they hauled the mattress off of him, I would pin him to the ground and prevent him from aiding them any further, and that is more or less what I did. The three men managed, I
have no idea how, to wrestle the monstrosity up the stairs and remove its bug- and mold-filled predecessor. By the time I had made the bed with the extra long flat sheets (fitted sheets were a pipe dream, I’m afraid) and piles of pillows and comforters from our old bed, Peter had put the baby down for a nap and settled Ruby and Isaac in front of
The Lion King 1
¹
⁄
₂
.

“We have eighty-eight minutes,” he said as he bounced into the bedroom. “Come here, wife.”

I love him. I really do. I wish I had been in the mood. But I wasn’t. “Peter, I just got off a plane. I woke up at the crack of dawn, and I’ve been sifting through garbage cans all day. I’m exhausted and I want to take a shower.” I felt awful the moment I said it, even before I saw his face collapse and his mood turn from delighted expectation to crushed disappointment and then anger.

“Wait,” I said, but he was already out the door. “Peter, wait. I’m sorry.” I ran after him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” I stood in the hall trying to drag him back into the bedroom. “Let’s break in the new bed. Come on!”

“Never mind,” he said. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Oh, don’t be such a prima donna!” I said. “I said I’m sorry.”

“
I’m
a prima donna?
I
am?” He jerked his arm out of my hands and stomped away down the hall. I stood there, listening to his footsteps as he walked down the stairs to the first floor, and then all the way to his office in the dungeon.

By Monday morning things were back to normal. We were no longer arguing, although we hadn’t talked about what happened, and we hadn’t done anything to welcome the new mattress into the family, unless Sadie spitting up what appeared to be at least eight ounces of breast milk on it counts. We set off for Isaac’s Parent Appreciation Breakfast a fairly content—or at least not visibly discontented—family unit.

The “Bet,” or B class, had gone all out decorating their room in honor of the visiting parents. The walls were hung with painted self-portraits, and I had to remind myself sternly not to compare Isaac’s to those of his classmates. It wasn’t my kid’s fault that his hand-eye coordination skills weren’t on a par with those of some of his classmates. Who would even want a child like that Rebecca Fineman, I told myself as I stared wistfully at the little girl’s
beautifully rendered drawing. It was an almost perfect likeness, down to the little bump on her nose and the amblyopia. Isaac had drawn one of his usual bubble-people and for some reason had given himself blue skin.

Sue and Bracha, the preternaturally even-tempered preschool teachers, called the milling parents to order, just in the nick of time, before we began tearing each other’s throats out in an excess of competitive zeal. I was not the only parent unable to prevent herself from comparing her child to the others. Quite frankly, I think I was one of the only ones who bothered even to feel lousy about engaging in the fierce Olympiad of Parental Expectation. Which was a lucky thing, since my son was about to make me feel like I deserved to be given a spot in the Maternal Hall of Fame right between Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother and Joseph Stalin’s.

The other parents, conversely, felt just grand when the centerpiece of the Parent Appreciation Breakfast began. After we ate our booger scones and drank our tepid coffee, the children stepped to the head of the room, one at a time. Each one recited a poem written especially for his or her parents. The poems weren’t long; the children were
only four years old or even, like Isaac, hadn’t quite reached that birthday. Each poem began, “I love my parents because . . .” and then listed three special things that the child’s parents did. It was a veritable waterworks in the Bet class, as you can imagine. Every mother burst into tears as her child’s piping voice recounted her delicious chocolate chip cookies or the way she kissed his boo-boos. The fathers grew too misty-eyed to work the digital camcorders when their sons talked about playing catch and reading good-night stories.

And then it was Isaac’s turn. Peter and I squeezed each other’s hands in delighted anticipation. Isaac stood up, sighed deeply, and then, prodded gently by Bracha, began to recite, “I love my parents because they play with me. My mom plays gin with me. It’s fun because I win. My dad plays poker with me and takes my money. I love my mom because she makes really good fried chicken. I love to eat the crispy skin.”

Peter and I sat holding hands, our smiles frozen on our faces. One of the mothers leaned over to me and whispered, “I must get your fried chicken recipe.”

I said, “I’ve never made fried chicken in my life.”

*   *   *

After the last child recited her poem, the last mother wept with joy, and the last father chuckled with pride, Peter and I sent Isaac out to play on the tricycles and cornered Bracha and Sue.

“So, here’s the thing,” I said. “None of that was true.”

“Pardon?” Bracha said, in her thick Israeli accent.

“Isaac’s poem. Nothing in it was true. I’ve never made fried chicken. I don’t play gin with him, and Peter does not play poker with him. Peter does all the cooking in our house, and we play lots of other games. Uno, for example. And Legos.” I was so worried that the teachers would be convinced that Isaac had invented the things in his poem because there was nothing at home he could come up with, no games we played or food we made. And that just wasn’t true! We played with the kid all the time.

“No,” Bracha said. “That’s not possible. I went over the poems with each child, individually. We talked all about it. Isaac told me all about your games of cards. And the poker. He said you give
him allowance but you take it away when he loses.” She clearly didn’t approve of that.

“Okay, that’s just nonsense,” Peter said. “Did you really believe that?”

This was definitely the wrong tack to take. “We’re just sort of wondering what you recommend we do under these circumstances,” I said. “We’re sort of knocked for a loop here.”

The two teachers exchanged glances. Bracha said, “This has never happened before, and we’ve been doing these poems for six years.”

“He’s an original, my kid,” Peter said.

Did I detect a note of
pride
? I resisted the urge to kick my husband in the shins.

“Do you think this is a cry for help or something? Should we take him to a therapist?” I asked.

Bracha gave me a pitying, sorrowful smile, the kind of smile you give an insane street person who shouts a greeting as you walk past. “Perhaps you might just talk to him about it, and see why he lied. And we’ll do the same.”

“Right,” I said. “Of course. Talk to him. That’s exactly what we’ll do.”

We did, of course, that very evening after supper. Not that it was a particularly satisfying conversation.
Isaac offered no explanation for why he had lied in his poem. Neither did he seem to care that his parents felt decidedly unappreciated.

“Do you want to write a new poem, Isaac?” I said.

“Why?”

“You could write a poem about stuff we really do with you.”

Isaac shrugged.

“Or you could write a poem about why you’re mad at Mama and Daddy.”

Isaac gave me the look of disgust my attempt at child psychology deserved.

“Maybe it’s Sadie’s fault,” he said.

“Sadie’s fault?” I said. “How could this be Sadie’s fault? Sadie’s just a little baby. She wasn’t even there when you wrote the poem, and she was sleeping in her car seat during the whole breakfast.”

“I think it is Sadie’s fault,” he repeated, nodding.

“Why?”

“Because Sadie makes you tired, and then you and Daddy have fights. You should send Sadie back to the hospital. Maybe just at night, so you can sleep. Can I go play with my Bionicles and watch TV with Ruby now?”

I nodded and he skipped lightly out of the
kitchen where we had been having our little meeting. I glanced at my husband.

“Out of the mouths of babes,” he said.

“Wow.”

He went to the fridge and pulled out a beer. “Want half?”

“Actually, yes.”

He split the beer between two glasses and handed one to me. We drank in silence for a few minutes.

I turned to Peter. “What do you think we should do?”

Peter looked at me, sadly. “Hell if I know,” he said. “I’ve got to go to work.” And with that he went down the stairs to his dungeon, closing the door behind him.

“I
found Sandra’s aunt and cousins,” Chiki said. His face did not reflect any pleasure at his success. On the contrary. He looked about as glum as I’d ever seen him.

“Give me a second to put the baby down,” I said. I had Sadie draped over one arm, her arms and legs dangling like a rag doll’s. It was her new favorite position.

Chiki reached out his hands, and after a moment’s consideration, I handed her to him. He tucked the baby up under his chin and nuzzled her soft head. She gave him a placid and cross-eyed
glance of contentment and shoved her fist in her mouth.

“She likes you,” I said as I tossed my diaper bag, my purse, and the old tote into which I’d crammed my notes on the case under my desk. “So where does Sandra’s aunt live? Did you talk to her?”

Chiki shook his head. “Not to her, to her daughter-in-law. Her son Jonathan’s wife, Allison. They live in Reno.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Reno’s not too far away. What did you find out? What’s with the long face?”

Chiki had found Bettina Trudeau easily enough. A mortgage default and a couple of bankruptcies make a person easy to track. Once you enter the system with that kind of a bang, the only way out is the witness protection program. And even then, I’ll bet your creditors would find you. Wells Fargo and American Express do not give up so easily. Sandra’s aunt’s financial woes had washed her up on the shores of her son’s largesse, and it was to his wife that Chiki spoke. It was immediately clear to Chiki that Allison Trudeau had long since come to the end of whatever patience she might once have had with the trials and tribulations of her husband’s family. She had greeted the news of Sandra’s incarceration,
her murder, and the missing baby with a bitter laugh. She had then launched into a twenty-minute diatribe.

Was Chiki aware that Allison’s mother-in-law suffered from congestive heart failure complicated by emphysema?

Was he aware that despite this diagnosis, and despite a prognosis that promised her no more than a few more months to live, Bettina persisted in smoking through the tracheotomy hole carved into the center of her throat, befouling the air Allison’s children breathed and the upholstery of her furniture?

Was he aware that Bettina had begun using adult diapers, not because she needed them, but because she didn’t like to wait for the commercials to do her business?

Was he aware what adult diapers cost, even when purchased in bulk at Costco?

Was he aware that Allison and Jonathan had four children, and that these four children might end up on the street because the Indian gaming industry was putting the Reno casinos out of business and Jonathan’s job as an airport safety officer at Reno / Tahoe International Airport depended on a thriving casino economy?

Was he aware that Johnny Jr. had knocked his four front teeth out playing T-ball, the first such accident in the history of the West Reno T-Ball League?

Was he aware what a bridge and false teeth would cost for Johnny Jr., who had unfortunately inherited his grandmother Trudeau’s oversized jaw and thus required dental work sized and priced for a grown man?

Was he aware that there was no chance in hell that Allison and Jonathan would be able to assume responsibility for another child, a child of a convicted drug dealer, a child belonging to a relative so distant that Allison, who had been married to Jonathan for seven years, was not even aware that she existed?