The Stork Club (29 page)

"Maybe you should dip it in some honey," he heard the girl say. She was standing naked, naked and perfect in the doorway of the baby's room. "That's what my parents used to do for me," she told him. "Why don't I go and see if I can find some for you?"

You know you're about to make it with a very young girl when she still remembers what her parents put on her pacifier, Rick thought as he stood by the crib patting the wailing baby's back. She returned in a minute with the honey jar. Rick opened it, dipped the pacifier into the honey, then leaned over the crib and placed the pacifier in the baby's mouth.

"Mmmmm-mmmm-mmm," David said, sucking away. "Mmmm," and within minutes he was asleep.

The naked girl was against Rick now. "Let's dip this in some honey too," she said, and slowly moved down onto the floor of the baby's room, taking Rick along with her.

"I'm worried about his little BMs," Annie told Rick one morning at breakfast.

"His what?" He was gulping down some coffee, rushing to catch an early flight to Monterey to meet with Clint in Carmel.

"Little David. He's not having any."

"Not having any what, Annie?"

"Bowel movements."

"Not any?"

"Nope."

"Since when?"

"A few days."

"The pediatrician. Let's call Dr. Weil right now," he said, looking at his watch. It was seven-thirty in the morning. No doctors were in at seven-thirty in the morning, but surely the answering service would track the doctor down, call him at home.

"He's out of town," the answering-service operator said, "but Dr. Solway's on call."

"Then get
him
on the line for me," Rick ordered.

"I'll have to call you back, sir," the operator told
him. He gave her the number. David, who usually waved his arms and made gurgling noises, lay listless in Annie's arms.

"The first couple of days, I figured he was just constipated like we all get sometimes, only now, he's not right in himself, and I started to think there's more to it than that." She looked worried.

"Ever seen this kind of thing before?" Rick asked her.

"Not that I can remember right off," Annie answered. "Constipation, yes. But not this bad." The phone rang.

"Mr. Reisman." Must be the woman from the answering service.

"Don't tell me you can't reach the doctor," he snapped.

"This
is
the doctor, Mr. Reisman," the woman's voice said. "I'm Dr. Solway, Dr. Weil's associate. How can I help you?"

A woman. "My son, he's nine months old. He's been constipated for . . . how long?" he asked Annie.

"At least five days," she said.

"Five days," he told the doctor. "And he seems to have no energy. Very quiet. Weak."

"Bring him right in," the doctor said. "I'll meet you at our offices as soon as you can get there."

Good-bye, eight-fifteen flight. Good-bye, Clint Eastwood.

"We're on our way," Rick told her.

Annie sat in the backseat, holding David's tiny hand in hers. From the car phone Rick called Andrea at home and told her to call Clint Eastwood and cancel the meeting.

"You'll be okay, little honey. You'll be all right," Annie crooned to the silent baby.

In the elevator in the doctor's building, Rick looked at the limp baby dozing on Annie's shoulder, and panic filled him. What
was
this? What if it was serious, crippling, a terrible disease that would last forever? A lifetime of taking him to doctors and specialists, and him not being okay? No. It was nothing.

The tall, black-haired, blue-eyed woman, Lee Solway, took the baby in her arms and carefully undressed him. She had quickly sized up Rick and Annie, and knew right away it was Annie she should ask all the questions about the baby's habits and schedule and food intake. Annie answered the questions carefully and thoughtfully. Rick sat nervously, watching the doctor examine and probe the baby, who now lay passively and all too quietly.

"Have you noticed any decrease in the strength with which he's been sucking on the bottle?"

"Come to think of it, I have," Annie said. "But I just put it down to his not being hungry."

"Are you giving him solids?"

"Yes. Dr. Weil started him on rice cereal last month."

"Does he have the rice cereal plain?"

"I mix in some formula."

"Do you only introduce the foods Dr. Weil tells you he's permitted to eat?"

"That's all I give him. And Cora, too. She's the woman who takes over on the day and a half when I take off."

"So there would have been no reason for you to have ever given this baby honey?" The doctor held on to David's tiny body with her right hand, and turned to look at Annie.

"No, ma'am."

Rick stood. He'd been only half listening to the ques
tions because he knew he didn't know the answers to them, but the word
honey
caught him by surprise, and he froze.

"What's wrong with honey?
I
gave him honey last week. A little on the pacifier to get him to take it."

The doctor looked at Rick. "Well, I'm afraid that what's going on with him now may have to do with the honey. I want to put him right into Children's Hospital this morning to be certain, and hope that he's not so constipated that I can't get some stool samples. I think he has infant botulism. The constipation and the decreased muscle strength all make it look like that to me."

"From honey?"

"The
Clostridium botulinum
organism has been isolated in honey specimens that have been fed to infants and make them sick. Babies under a year are susceptible. I don't want to scare you, but there are theories now that undetected cases of infant botulism may be behind sudden infant death syndrome. His breathing is very shallow too. I'm going to call an ambulance."

Rick had a ringing in his ears. This couldn't be happening. The doctor went into her office while Annie dressed David, who cried a faint bleating cry, and Rick could hear the doctor making arrangements for an ambulance to come to the medical building.

"We're off," she said when she emerged, and brushed past them. "They'll meet us downstairs in the parking lot."

Honey. The crushing reason Rick had given the baby honey suddenly slammed him in the face. To get fucked. To shut my son up so I could do it on the floor of his room with that girl who showed up at my door and dropped her dress. Christ, God is killing my son to punish me for being the lowest, most despicable human
on the face of the earth. Please don't make this baby suffer for my vanity and excess and weakness.

Blindly, guilt-ridden, aching with the horror that tore at him, he got into the ambulance with Annie and the baby and the doctor, and as it lurched out into the street, he put his face in his hands and felt deep shame and despair.

24

F
OR A WHILE Lainie's negative feelings slipped away. Just waking up and knowing there was a new baby in the next room gave every morning the excitement of Christmas. The sweet powdery smell that filled the nursery, the silky feel of baby Rose's fine hair, the luxurious softness of little crevices under that teeny chin elated Lainie. She would lift the warm little cherub out of her bassinet and place her tenderly in the middle of the big bed next to Mitch, who in his sleep would reach over and fondle the baby's foot. And Lainie would overflow with happiness.

Her family. At last. She wouldn't let her insecurities mar her joy. Not even the first several months of walking the floor all night with her scrunch-faced colicky daughter. And when Mitch held the tiny girl in his arms, he was transformed. All the pressures of the business day, the constant worried look he had in his eyes when he was in the store disappeared at home. He became so
relaxed and unwound when he held the baby that more than once when he sat in the rocker to feed her, after she fell asleep he did too.

The joy, the bliss of watching each new developmental step occur seemed to bring Lainie and Mitch even closer every day. Lainie called the store every afternoon to report in about the success of every feeding, every ounce of weight gain, and Mitch listened with rapt attention.

"Hold on, baby," Mitch said to her one afternoon. She heard him click off. He was probably going to pick up the phone in the back office so he could talk to her more freely than he could from the front counter.

"Listen," he said when he picked up again. "I invited my sisters and their families over for dinner next week."

Lainie was silent. She knew there was an estrangement between Mitch and his sisters. That once she came into his life they stopped being as close as they were when he was single. Sometimes she felt as if the reason the breach existed was that she and Mitch didn't have children.

"Maybe now that we have a kid too, things will get better with all of us," Mitch said, expressing Lainie's thoughts out loud.

"Maybe."

"Hey, you know what my mother used to say when I fought with one of them?"

"You told me," Lainie answered. "She always said, 'Blood is thicker than water.' "

"They're dumb sometimes, and so are their husbands, but the truth is that besides you and my little honeybunch of a girl, they're all I've got. I need to make the effort. So I want to make sure you don't mind if they all come for dinner with their kids this Saturday."

"Sure, honey. You know I'm crazy about the kids. And they'll get such a kick out of seeing their new cousin."

"I love you, Lainie," Mitch said. "There'll never be anybody like you." And he hung up.

Lainie put the phone down in its cradle and was reaching for a pencil and paper to start making a grocery list for next Saturday when something made her feel oddly chilled. Maybe it was the sentiment Mitch had just expressed. The way he'd said it sounded awkward, as if someone had walked into the office as he was saying it. His voice sounded strained and forced.

Crazy. Her exhaustion because of the baby's sleeping problems was affecting her moods and making her too sensitive. Just the other day she had snapped at Carin. Dear Carin, who was so gentle that when she came upon a spider in the ladies' room at Panache, she ushered it into a paper cup and set it free outside rather than kill it.

"I'm sure happy you haven't heard from that woman again," she said to Lainie, "because I always had this fear she'd show up one day and want the baby back."

Lainie glared at her. "That was never an issue or a question for Mitch or me, so worry about your own problems, will you?" Carin had apologized repeatedly for the rest of that day.

Lainie would try hard to get herself together for Saturday's dinner and do her best to be good with Mitch's family. She would have to. Aside from her mother, the three De Nardo sisters and their husbands and children were baby Rose's only family. And like Lainie, Rose would be an only child, so whatever the price of giving her a relationship with her cousins, it was worth it.

Mitch loved wearing his Bar-B-Q apron and standing over the hamburgers, turning them gently again and
again until they were perfect. The children chased one another around the tiny garden outside the sliding doors, and Lainie thought about how nice it would be when she and Mitch found a house in the Valley with a big yard. Then the children could play running games outside, and by then Rose Margaret would join them.

"You know what?" Betsy's husband, Hank, asked, looking closely at his new niece. "The weird thing is, she doesn't look one bit like Mitch, and she
does
look like Lainie. Isn't that funny? That's really funny."

Except for the times when they had to get up in order to separate fighting kids, Kitty and Mary Catherine stayed close together, each of them nursing a glass of white wine Lainie had served them. They didn't include her in their conversation until finally she moved over to where they sat, holding baby Rose over her shoulder.

"Is she sleeping any better? Mitch mentioned that she was having some problems," Kitty said.

Infant small talk. Lainie realized that that's what it was, but appreciated that at least something was being addressed to her.

"Not yet," she answered. "She still wakes up once or twice a night. How old were yours before they really were on a schedule?" She hoped that by asking advice from them, she could bridge the gap and warm them up a little bit.

"About nine years," Mary Catherine said, obviously joking.

"I swear, my Chrissy still wakes up at three or four
A.M.,
but some babies start sleeping through by six months," she added. "It'll go by real fast."

"Who wants cheese on their burgers?" Mitch called out.

"Me!" some of the kids hollered.

"Not me," Lainie said, patting baby Rose's tiny bottom, trying to be true to a diet. The irregular schedule
of the baby's life and feedings and the catch-as-catch-can meals she was stuffing in when she had time had put twelve pounds on her in two months. Mitch said he loved it because it gave him "more to grab."

"Don't tell me
you're
on a diet," Betsy said.

"Just being careful," Lainie answered.

"Oh right, you have to because of your sugar problem. Right?"

"Burgers coming up," Mitch hollered. "Lainie, where's the plates?"

"Why don't I hold her while you help Mitch?" Kitty offered.

Lainie's first instinct was to say no, but the whole purpose of the get-together was to be good to one another, so she handed the baby over to her sister-in-law and went to get the table organized. Crazy. Maybe her frustration with the added weight was making everything everyone said sound so awful to her. She would have to be more tolerant.

At the dinner table everyone dug into the food and Rose fell asleep on Mitch's shoulder, and soon everyone was laughing at stories about Grandma Rose and Grandpa Mario De Nardo. Lainie felt glad that she had agreed to have the family come to dinner. For the most part they were harmless, just not too smart. And as long as she didn't let them get to her, Mitch could have what he needed with them.

By dessert, all the adults had consumed a little too much red wine. Except Lainie, who found herself in the position of being the only sober adult at the party, and she noticed that the others were starting to get even more tipsy. She was carrying a platter of cookies to the table when Mitch stood, tapped on his wineglass with a spoon, and still holding the baby, raised the wineglass and said, "I'm going to make a toast now. With all my
gratitude, to the woman I love dearly and passionately. My sweetheart and Rose's mommy."