Baby Love (9 page)

She smacks the baby, hard.

M
ARK TOLD
S
ANDY THIS
morning that he had to be at work an hour early, noon. The truth is he just had to get out of there. The baby was crying. His mother-in-law came over, talking about a woman she knows who’s just had a colostomy. She calls Mark “Daddy.”

Mark works at the Norelco plant, second shift. He puts filaments in the light bulbs they use in glove compartments. He has been doing this for almost a year now, since he and Sandy got married. “I give you another five years on this job before you’re wearing bifocals,” his foreman told him the other day.

But right now everything’s cool. He’s leaning against the wall outside Felsen’s News, smoking a ten-cent cigar. He has bought the new issue of
Rolling Stone
, with Linda Ronstadt on the cover. Would he ever like to lay her.

There’s a girl sitting in a red Fiat parked against the curb. She’s looking through a newspaper and eating a doughnut. She looks a little like Linda Ronstadt, in fact. He wonders who she is.

He’s going to think up some things he would like to do to this girl. Fuck her without having to worry about squashing a sleeping baby, for openers. She will take his cock in her mouth—something that Sandy has never done. She says it sounds very unhygienic. But this girl will do it, and he will come in her mouth and she will swallow it.

He tries to think up more things—the kind of stuff Mick Jagger might do. Mark has not even told Sandy this, but she’s the only girl he ever laid, and he wishes he knew more about sex. He has bought some magazines, which he keeps under the carpeting in his Valiant. Virgil owns a copy of
More Joy of Sex
, which Mark looks at sometimes. He has tried, when he and Sandy fuck, getting into some of the positions they show in the pictures, but Sandy is nothing like the woman in the book, who does not shave her underarms or look embarrassed when the man sticks his cock in her asshole. He can’t imagine Sandy in a black lace garter belt. She wears panty hose anyway.

The girl in the red car appears to be a little older than he. She doesn’t look like she comes from around here—the foreign car and all. From the city probably. College girl.

What if her car wouldn’t start? He would come over to her window. She would roll it down, look up at him. He would lay his right arm on the roof of her car, with his left thumb hooked through his belt loop, and lean his head inside. Need help?

She says, “I don’t know anything about cars.” He nods his head in the direction of the passenger seat. She knows that means move over. He slides in, adjusts the choke, presses his foot lightly on the gas, turns the key back and forth like a guitarist making a vibrato. He knows just how to touch a car.

Still no response. “Wait here,” he says. She doesn’t ask why. It’s clear he’s boss. He steps out (patting the hood in that sort of intimate, familiar way he has), crosses the street without checking traffic, because of course cars will stop for him. He ducks into Rocky’s, says, “Give me a Coke,” and ambles back to the Fiat. No need to rush. Sandy’s always telling him, “Hurry up with that bottle,” like it’s the baby who’s in charge. Not here.

He lifts the hood, pops the Coke can open, pours some over the battery terminals, which are all caked up, like he knew they’d be. A girl like this never knows how to take care of a car. She’s standing behind his shoulder watching as the fizz dissolves all the crud and trickles down over the engine. “Fantastic,” she says. He takes a rag from his back pocket (one of his son’s cloth diapers, bought before they switched to Pampers) and wipes the battery dry. He’s always neat like that, takes his time.

“She should be fine now,” he says, clicking the hood shut.

“Let me pay you something.” He shakes his head. “At least for the Coke.”

“No sweat,” he says.

“Still,” she says. “There should be something.”

She’s wearing a strapless dress—white, like the one Linda Ronstadt wears on the cover of
Hasten Down the Wind.
Her nipples show through the fabric. He looks at them like he’s looking into her eyes, makes no effort to pretend he isn’t doing it. Strokes the hood of the car, says nothing. She doesn’t move. About sixty seconds pass like this.

“See that car over there?” he says. He points to the Valiant. “I treat her just like a woman.”

The trout’s a small one—seven inches maybe. Reg leaves it on the porch. Doris hates the smell and can’t stand seeing the eyes. He’ll clean it later.

She has just got off the phone. She’s still wearing her curlers. He tries to remember what the occasions are that she curls her hair for. He can’t picture her with curls, only curlers.

“New people moved in down at the falls,” he says. “From New York City. An artist and his wife.” (Greg did not explain that they aren’t married.)

“It’s getting to be like a commune down our road,” says Doris.

“He seemed like a nice fellow,” says Reg. “Said he wants to learn how to fly cast. Maybe the wife would be interested in some Avon.”

She perks up a little.

“I asked for black coffee,” says the customer. This is Jill’s third mistake today, and she has only been on duty an hour. Sal gives her a funny look. She pours another cup, apologizes. Her tips are going to be crummy today.

She’s not concentrating. The reason is, on the way to work she bought a home pregnancy test ($9.95 at Rexall). She put four drops of pee in the glass tube (it’s tucked behind the coffee filters, in the back room) and she has to leave it two hours to see if a red ring shows up on the paper. She has fifty-five minutes left to wait.

She looks out the window. Sandy’s husband is standing outside Felsen’s, reading a newspaper. She’s embarrassed, thinking about how he saw her bare tits last night. She has always thought that Mark is very cute. So’s Virgil, of course.

Virgil did not French-kiss her good night after their date. He’s acting more upset about their baby than she thought he would. She tried to cheer him up by telling him that as a result of her pregnancy, she’s getting bigger on top. He didn’t seem interested.

She asked how he felt about the name Patrick. That was when he put his hand over his eyes and said he had a headache. She said do you want me to give you a neck rub. He said forget it.

The girl who lives in the Richards’s old house comes in for a doughnut to go. Jill wonders if the girl recognizes her from the falls.

Ann is almost sure of it. That waitress is the girl she saw yesterday. Everybody in the world is having sex except her. Even sixteen-year-old kids have boyfriends making love to them in the woods, and babies. Even that skinny girl outside the Laundromat had someone make love to her. Ann sleeps with a hot-water bottle.

She feels as if someone’s looking at her. There’s a boy around eighteen standing there holding a copy of
Rolling Stone.
He’s having an erection. On his way to the waterfall probably.

Reg arrives with his Rototiller at half-past two. Ann leads him down to the field where she would like the garden to be. Just the spot he had in mind.

After she goes back to the house he stands there a minute, looking at the soil. It’s black as coffee grounds. He bends to pick up a few sticks. He can hear a record playing back in the house. Some country singer. Ann must be playing the music very loud, because he can hear the words plainly even out here. “Through the sleepless nights I cry for you, and wonder who is kissing you. Oh these sleepless nights will break my heart in two.”

“They’re trying to get the Pope to declare it’s an official miracle,” says Mrs. Jakowski. She’s telling her son Steve about a woman in Italy who woke up one morning to find a perfect image of Christ’s face on her palm. Mrs. Jakowski is extremely religious. She usually reads to Steve from the Bible during these visits. She will open the New Testament in a minute, in fact, at which point Wayne will go back to his room. Steve does not appear to be very interested in the New Testament either. He’s drawing a tattoo of a naked woman on his arm with a ballpoint pen Mrs. Jakowski has lent him. But it’s impossible to know for sure what he is thinking, because he has not spoken in three years, since he stabbed Mr. Jakowski in the heart twenty-four times and cut off his testicles.

Mike Douglas is talking to his guest, Bert Convy. Mike is asking Bert what he will be doing in the next few weeks. Bert says he’ll be in Vegas, opening for Lola Falana. Mike says that sounds exciting and asks Bert if he would be willing to sing something. Bert sings “Feelings.” This makes Wayne start laughing very loud, which makes two of the orderlies and Mrs. Partlow look up nervously. Sudden outbursts like this are always a source of concern here. The orderlies don’t understand that Wayne’s laughter makes perfect sense. Last time he had his session with Dr. Poster, the psychiatrist for the fifth floor, and Dr. Poster asked (as he does every week), “What are you feeling?” Wayne had recited the lyrics of “Feelings.” “Feeling like I never knew you. Feeling like I never lost you.” It was the first time Wayne had ever seen Dr. Poster write anything down on his pad. He had to ask Wayne to slow down so he could get it all. When Dr. Poster was done, Wayne had said, “I think you’ve got a hit on your hands.” Dr. Poster wrote that down too.

Wayne decided it would take too long, sending his ad through the mail. So he has called the newspaper and they’ve told him they will send him the bill. He has simply given his address as 125 Prospect Street. Which it is, although on the rare occasions when he sends someone a letter (mostly President Carter and Mike Wallace), the return address he prefers is 125 No Prospect Street. In any case, his ad will run in the personals column tomorrow. He’s in such a good mood that he offers to play Aggravation with Norman and Marcelle, who are here with their mother again today, on account of spring vacation. He lets Marcelle win.

Carla has made a list of things she needs to buy. When she woke up, Greg had already gone into town, so she’ll have to make another trip. She would have liked to go with him to explore. But it’s good that he’s feeling so eager to get started.

Coffee filters. Sweet butter. Eggs. They probably have the brown kind up here. Vegetables for salad. Maybe a nice potted plant to put in the window.

She has hooked up the stereo and now she’s playing an album of Carter Family classics: Mother Maybelle singing “Wildwood Flower” and strumming the Autoharp. Carla does some steps she remembers from her jazz class and sings, “ ‘Oh, he taught me to love him and called me his flower, that was blooming to cheer him through life’s gloomy hour.’ ” This is what she is doing when she hears Doris’s knock at the door.

Before she has even reached the house, Doris can hear music playing. It’s as she suspected. These new neighbors are hippie types. Doris wishes she hadn’t bothered to take out her curlers. The woman here probably doesn’t even wear a brassiere, much less cosmetics. Still, Doris figures she has come this far, and it was heavy lugging the sample case up the hill. She might as well give her introductory speech.

The woman who answers the door looks around thirty—tall, with frizzy blond hair. Wearing the kind of outfit Jill would buy: overalls and a T-shirt. No shoes. She’s not wearing lipstick or mascara or even foundation. If she wears perfume at all, it will be musk oil or something. At least she’s smiling pleasantly.

“I’m Doris Johnson from up the road,” she says, patting her own hair. Hard to believe anyone would think that frizz was attractive.

“And I was wondering if you’d be interested in a demonstration of our spring line of Avon products. We have some very exciting specials this month.”

Much to Doris’s surprise, this woman says yes. They sit at the kitchen table while the woman—her name is Carla—makes tea. Doris has never had tea like this. It’s called Red Zinger and it tastes like grass clippings. Carla’s teapot has two feet coming out the bottom with striped socks on them and the kind of shoes Jill used to wear to birthday parties when she was little. Carla apologizes for not having sugar. Doris says, “It’s delicious just like this, very unique.

“I wonder if you’re aware of the fact that the Avon company is our nation’s number-one cosmetics manufacturer,” says Doris.

Carla says she had no idea. That’s very surprising. She’s thinking: I would like to get along with the people here.

“You know, we got to be number one by providing dependable products at reasonable prices,” says Doris. “You don’t get to the top with an inferior product.” Carla says that makes sense and rummages in the packing boxes for her tin of Italian biscuits.

“Our moisturizer, for instance,” Doris says. “I’ve been using it six years and I bet you’d be surprised to know I’m forty-two.” Carla says she would not have guessed. She notices that Doris is studying Sally’s photograph of breasts and testicles. Where are those biscuits?

“I hear your husband is an artist,” says Doris, still studying the photograph. She’s trying to figure out if it is hills or valleys or what.

“That’s right,” says Carla. “Tell me more about this moisturizer. I should probably get some of that.”

“Well, the secret ingredient is collagen.” This is when she’s supposed to take out her sample and let Carla put some on her cheek and compare it to her present brand. These off-key singers are distracting her.

“I’ve heard that’s good,” says Carla.

“Do you have children?” Doris asks. “I have two myself.”

Carla says no. Then—later it will amaze her that she said this—she tells Doris that they’re expecting one. Why did she say that?

“What wonderful news,” says Doris. She’s genuinely pleased. This woman’s not as bad as she thought. “When are you due?”

“Not for a long while,” Carla says. “We may have to go back to New York before then.”

Doris hopes that won’t happen. Her son Timmy, who’s twenty-three, is still not married. She thought she might have a grandchild by now. It would be nice to have a baby nearby.

“Well, don’t mention I told you,” says Carla.

Doris says she knows how to keep a secret. Who is Carla’s doctor? Is she having trouble with morning sickness? Doris used to be so sick in the mornings she had to keep a box of Saltines and a bowl under the bed. She couldn’t keep anything down.