Baby Talk (4 page)

It was a first prize award he won in a
tennis championship his junior year in high school. On top was a
man who was swinging his racquet overhead, as if leaping to serve
the ball. The end of the racquet had snapped off when the heavy
trophy had slammed into the hardwood floor. Neal had been furious,
blaming it on the baby, who was crying so loudly that he couldn’t
keep his mind on what he was doing. Later, he felt guilty. He knew
it was his own fault for not taking all the trophies out of the
case again before he moved it. Annie had actually told him to do
this, but he hadn’t listened to her. He tried in vain to glue the
trophy back together.

Neal sighed and gulped down some more of his
beer. He supposed none of that mattered. Playing sports and winning
trophies were now a thing of the past.

Annie appeared at the kitchen doorway, the
baby in her arms.

“Who gave you the message at work?”

“The old lady. Grammy.”

“What did she say, exactly?”

“She didn’t
say
anything. It was a
message slip.”

“Oh. Well, what did
it
say?”

“I already told you, Annie.”

“‘I love you. From Baby Natasha?’”

“Yeah,” Neal said, taking another swallow of
beer.

“Where is it?”

Neal reached for his shirt pocket, but then
remembered he had thrown it away. “I don’t have it anymore.”

Annie looked skeptical. “Uh-huh.”

Neal felt his blood pressure rising. “I tore
the damn thing up and threw it away, Annie! I didn’t want to leave
it laying around for somebody else to see—it was bad enough as it
was.”

Annie nodded, but the skeptical look was
still there. “Maybe one of the people you work with did it, as a
joke.”

“Why in the world would they do that? I
haven’t told anyone else about what happened this morning. You’re
the only person who knows.” Neal glared at his wife for a few
seconds. “That means, wifey dearest, that it
had
to be
you.”

“Or you.”

Neal did not speak for a moment. “What do
you mean by that?”

“I think you know what I mean, Neal.” Annie
retrieved the baby seat, put Natasha in it, and began to prepare
dinner.

Neal went into the living room, so angry he
was shaking. He picked up the paper off the floor and began to
scour the classified ads for a new job. This was a nightly
ritual—this and driving to the library to use the Internet to
search the online job listings, as they could no longer afford such
“luxuries” as an online connection or even cable TV. Or even a cell
phone! At the beginning of the summer, when school had ended, he
thought he might be able to find a position in which he could use
his knowledge of chemistry—maybe an opening for a lab technician or
analyst. But he had nearly given up hope. No one wanted to hire a
chemist who “almost” had a college degree. The market was saturated
with plenty of qualified applicants.

After his routine perusal, he chucked the
paper into the chair beside him. This time, it did not slide off
the plastic covering.

“Nothing new?” Annie said from the kitchen
door.

“No,” Neal said softly. He gazed at the
baby, who he could see through the doorway, sitting in her baby
seat. She seemed to be gazing back at him.

Neal could hear a skillet sizzling and
popping on the stove. From the aroma, he knew Annie was making
fried chicken, his favorite meal. She knew how to prepare it
exactly the way he liked it, crisp but without much grease. At
least she could cook halfway well.

“Is the delivery job really that bad?” Annie
said.

“Well...no. I guess not. At least I don’t
have to be around those Snell bozos very much. I spend ninety
percent of my time on the road. But it’s minimum wage, Annie. We
can’t live on that.”

“I know,” she said. Neal hoped she might
feel guilty, but if she did, her face didn’t show it. She refused
to consider the idea of working again herself until Natasha was old
enough to go to school. Neal actually admired Annie’s resolve to
devote all her time and attention to the baby—he didn’t think that
leaving infants in day care centers, with total strangers, was a
good idea. But he didn’t think it was smart to raise kids in
substandard conditions, either. And what about money for Natasha’s
education? Where would that come from? Out of the sky? But Neal had
grown tired of that discussion, and he knew Annie had, too.
Whenever they got into it, he always ended up feeling like the
“selfish prick” insurance salesman who had knocked up his
sister.

“I have to find something that pays more,”
he said. “And something that’s more mentally stimulating. If I
don’t, I’m going to go fu—I mean, I’m going to go stir crazy.”

At that instant, Natasha let out a
“gaaaaa-oooooh” that was loud enough to drown out the sizzling and
popping of the chicken. Neal and Annie both laughed.

Annie picked Natasha up out of her baby seat
and brought her back to the doorway.

“What did you tay, honey?” Annie said,
tickling her chin. “Tay tometing for Mommy and Daddy.”

Natasha smiled and worked her mouth, but no
sound came out.

Annie looked at Neal sympathetically. “Don’t
you think you might have just imagined that she said ‘I love you’?
That sounded a lot like it a minute ago.”

“I didn’t
imagine
it,” Neal said
defensively. “She said it loud and clear, all three words:
I—love—you.”

Annie nodded, but Neal could tell she no
more believed him than if he had told her that Natasha had played
duplicate bridge with him that afternoon.

Neal saw a flicker of light behind Annie,
and he smelled something burning. “Annie, I think your chicken’s on
fire.”

“Oh!” she said, rushing back into the
kitchen.

Neal got up from the couch and followed her.
Annie quickly set Natasha down in her baby seat, then reached for
the handle of the flaming skillet.

“Don’t!” Neal said. He took a dishtowel off
the counter and moved the skillet over to the sink.

While Annie tried to save the chicken, Neal
went over to Natasha. The little baby looked up at him and slowly
kicked her feet, like she was riding a tiny bicycle. Neal didn’t
touch her very much, but now, he had an impulse to grab her bare
foot. Which he did. The tiny foot felt strange in his hand, hot and
clammy, like the paw of some furry animal.

Natasha’s eyes remained fixed on Neal’s
face. He watched her for a long moment, feeling a little uneasy. He
relaxed a little and smiled at her.

Her mouth opened.

At first, Neal thought she was going to
speak to him again. Instead, some yellowish goo bubbled out and ran
down her chin.

Neal backed away. “Annie, Natasha’s—”

Annie turned around, saw what was happening,
and scooped Natasha up into her arms. She picked up a dishtowel and
cleaned the baby’s face with it.

Natasha’s tiny brown eyes remained with
Neal’s, her expression oddly distant.

He took another step back from her,
wondering if the yellowish goo had been served up especially for
him.

C
HAPTER 4

Neal awoke sometime in the middle of the
night, his bladder full. This had always been a normal occurrence
for him, but now, he was drinking a beer (well, sometimes two or
three beers) every night, and he was waking up more often.

He peered in the direction of the night
stand to check the time. As always, Annie had left the telephone
off the hook, and the receiver was blocking the view of the alarm
clock. But Neal was sure it could not have been past 2:00 am. The
baby woke up every night around that time to be nursed, and Neal
had never managed to sleep through the clamorous process.

He lay there for a couple of minutes,
debating about whether to get up and go to the toilet or try to
ignore the dull ache in his groin and go back to sleep. He finally
opted for the latter. But as soon as he closed his eyes, he became
aware of the room’s unusual quiet. Normally, he could hear both
Annie and the baby breathing. At this particular moment, however,
he could only hear the far-away sound of traffic on Roswell
Road.

Neal rolled over in Annie’s direction and
listened more carefully. She was facing the other way and he still
could not hear her, or the baby, breathing.

He moved his head closer to Annie’s.

At last, he heard the slow, gentle sound of
inhalation and exhalation. His wife was a heavy sleeper—sometimes
when the baby woke up for her nightly feeding, Neal would literally
have to shake Annie awake. He thought it a bit odd for a mother so
concerned about her child’s well being to allow herself to fall
into such a deeply unconscious state.

Neal sat up in the bed and peered across the
room, at Natasha’s crib. It was positioned at an angle between the
window and Neal’s trophy case, an arrangement that gave Annie the
easiest access to it in the dark, and also minimized the chances of
Neal slamming into it during his nightly treks to the bathroom.
Neal could barely make out the crib’s shadowy form in the darkness.
He strained his ears and listened for any sound that might be
coming from it, breathing or otherwise.

But there was not a peep.

Now,
he
was starting to worry about
crib death.

Neal quietly slipped out of bed. As he
stepped onto the cool hardwood floor, the room appeared to teeter
slightly—the effects of the three beers he had drunk before dinner
hadn’t quite worn off.

He paused briefly to steady himself, then
took a step towards the crib.

When his right foot came down, a hot streak
of pain had shot up through the sole—it felt like he had stepped on
an ice pick.

Neal screamed.

He lost his balance, falling away from the
crib and landing on the floor, on Annie’s side of the bed. He
slammed against the hardwood with such force that the entire room
shook, the glass in the trophy case rattling. His left shoulder
took the brunt of the impact. For a precious instant, there was
only numbness, but then a wave of pain rose and crested through his
shoulder that was so intense he thought he might pass out.

“Shit!” he gasped.

Annie turned on the lamp beside the bed. The
baby started crying.

“What happened?” she said, in a panicky
screech, one reserved for baby-related emergencies.

“My foot,” Neal grunted.

He was still on the floor, writhing around
in pain, alternating between gasping and struggling to see what had
impaled him. Whatever it was, it was still lodged in his foot. As
Neal squirmed, the heavy, offending object banged and scraped
across the floor.

“Oh my God!” Annie gasped.

Neal rolled over onto his side, onto his
good shoulder, and stared at his left foot. His tennis trophy was
dangling from it, the one that had broken when he had moved the
trophy case into the bedroom. The top of the trophy—the sharp,
jagged end of the broken-off tennis racquet—was buried deep in his
flesh, imbedded in the tendons.

“Shit!” Neal yelled again. But this time, he
could hear cold fear in his voice. In his mind’s eye, he could
clearly see the minute details of the tennis trophy’s sheared off
racquet—the crook about halfway down the shaft, the jagged spirals
of metal that fanned out from the end, the little patches of
rust...

“Get it out of me!” Neal shouted, over the
incessant wailing of the baby.

Annie leaped down onto the floor, a
terror-stricken look on her face. She reached for the trophy but
couldn’t seem to decide how or where to take hold of it.

“Jesus!” Neal said in frantic frustration,
shoving himself upright on the floor. Another wave of pain crested
in his shoulder. Bright red blood ran down the trophy’s side and
dripped steadily onto the floor. He started to grab the base of the
trophy with his hand, then changed his mind and pressed on it with
his good foot, holding its heavy base against hardwood.

Neal closed his eyes and braced himself.

In one quick but agonizing motion, he yanked
his foot away from the metal object, letting out a grunt that
sounded more animal than human. He passed out for a few seconds.
What he saw when he opened his eyes, he would never forget. His
foot flung out a thick spray of blood that splashed across Annie’s
ashen face. She looked like someone in a horror film who had just
witnessed a slashing.

But the image just beyond her was far more
disturbing. Over the top rail of the crib, two dark eyes were
watching him. He could see the top of Natasha’s fuzzy head and her
two tiny, paw-like hands gripping the wooden rail. The eyes seemed
completely vacant, yet there was a feeling that they conveyed in
that fleeting moment that Neal could only interpret
as...satisfaction.

Neal screamed, screamed like he never had
before in his life.

Annie clasped her hands to her cheeks,
smearing her face crimson, unaware that Neal’s blood had splashed
across it. She stared at his foot, her eyes wide with horror. There
was a puffy, gaping hole in its sole, about the size of a dime.
Blood was spurting out of it, forming a puddle on the floor.

“Ambulance!” Annie blurted. “We have to call
an ambulance!”

She leaped up from the bed and took a step
towards the night stand. Instead of the hardwood, she stepped on
Neal’s left hand and cried “Ow!” (something that Neal would later
remember and find darkly amusing) and began fumbling with the
telephone. But at that moment, Neal barely heard or saw any of
this—he was still in shock. He looked back over at the crib, but
Natasha had disappeared—her head and hands were no longer
visible.

“What’s wrong with this damn thing!” Annie
said frantically. She was punching 9-1-1 into the telephone over
and over again, the receiver to her ear.

Neal finally came to his senses. “It’s dead,
Annie. You left it off the hook. You have to hang up and wait
until...oh, never mind!”

“What?” she said, rattled.

“Just hang up, Annie. I don’t need an
ambulance. I’m not dying.”

Annie hesitated, staring down at his
bleeding foot—it was still gushing blood. “But you have to go to a
hospital!”

“Maybe I do, but you’re not going to get
anybody on that phone until you hang up for a minute and get a dial
tone.”

Annie lowered the receiver, but did not hang
up. She was still staring at Neal’s foot. For a second, he thought
she would throw up.

“Get me a towel, for God’s sake.”

“You need to wash it out,” she said,
glancing at the blood-drenched trophy. It was lying on its side, a
few feet away from Neal, between him and the crib.

“I know, but I don’t want to get blood all
over everything.”

“But—”

“Just
do
it, Annie!”

She started to hang up the phone, then just
dropped the receiver on the floor and trotted into the bathroom.
This time, she was careful not to step on Neal’s hand.

He eased himself across the floor, to the
bed, and propped his back up against it. As he did this, he did not
take his eyes off the crib. He wanted to put as much distance
between himself and the baby as possible.

Annie came back into the room carrying a
frayed navy blue bath towel that his mother had given him for his
dorm room at college. Neal started to take it from her but she
pushed his hand away. She wiped up the blood on the floor, then
carefully took hold of Neal’s ankle. After patting the sole of his
foot dry, she began to wrap the towel around and around the
wound.

Neal stared past her, at the bloody tennis
trophy. “How did it get on the floor?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t
know
?” Neal said, raising
his voice.

“No, I don’t.
I
didn’t do it—don’t
try to blame it on me.”

“I know you didn’t do it,” Neal said. His
eyes focused on the crib. “That goddam baby did it.”

Annie gasped. “
What?
”

“You heard me.”

Annie stared at him. “You’re crazy.” She
finished wrapping the towel around his foot and tucked the end in
neatly.

Neal felt himself becoming more and more
angry. “I just saw that baby—
your
baby—looking over the top
of the crib like she was glad I hurt myself.”

Annie looked at Neal as if she couldn’t
decide whether to feel sorry for him or to be afraid. She stood up
and went over to the crib. Neal sat up straighter as Annie leaned
over the wooden contraption. His heart started to pound. Neal
wasn’t sure he
ever
wanted to see Natasha’s face again.

“How’s my wittle baby?” Annie cooed softly,
picking Natasha up. The child’s eyes were shut (thank God) and she
was asleep, or at least pretending to be asleep. But Neal noticed
something else that made him lean forward even more.

“Look!” he said, pointing at Natasha.
“There’s blood on her forehead.”

Annie inspected the baby’s face, then wet
one finger and wiped the red droplets away.

“See! I told you. That proves it,
Annie.”

She put Natasha over her shoulder again and
turned towards Neal. “It proves what?”

“That she...put...the trophy over there.”
Neal pointed towards a spot on the floor where he thought the
trophy had been when he stepped on it. He had hesitated over the
word “put” because he couldn’t envision how Natasha could have
actually done it.

Annie sadly shook her head. “You’re in
shock, Neal.” She kissed Natasha’s sleeping face and set the baby
gently back in her crib.

“I am not in shock,” Neal said, glaring at
his wife. “I know exactly what happened.”

“I do, too,” Annie said.

“What do you mean?” Neal said, though he
thought he knew what she was going to say. He grimaced as another
wave of pain welled up in his foot.

“You left your stupid trophy on the floor
and stepped on it.”

“I did not!”

“Yes you did. And now you’re trying to blame
it on a little baby, the same way you did when
you
accidentally broke the stupid trophy moving the case in here. “

“I’m not ‘trying’ to blame it on her, Annie.
I know she— “

“Shhh! You’re going to wake her up
again.”

Neal was breathing hard, so angry he nearly
forgot about his throbbing foot. He struggled to hold his voice in
a whisper. “You think I left that trophy in the middle of the
floor? I haven’t touched that trophy since the day it broke.”

“That’s a lie, Neal.”

Neal was taken aback by this. “Excuse
me?”

“You tried to glue it back together a couple
of weeks ago. Remember?”

Neal was so mad he tried to push himself up
off the floor.

“What are you going to do, Neal? Shove me
into the wall again?”

He became very still. Even though more than
a year had passed since then, Annie just couldn’t leave it alone.
He hadn’t shoved her—he had grabbed her arm to stop her from
hitting him, and then she’d lost her balance! What did she expect,
anyway, acting so self-righteous? It was just after they had gotten
into the biggest argument ever about her pregnancy, when Neal had
told her, in no uncertain terms, that he wanted her to have an
abortion. She had become so angry she’d started to take a swing at
him, and when he grabbed her arm to stop her, she slipped and fell
against the wall, bumping her shoulder, but it was nothing
serious.

“I didn’t shove you ‘against’ anything,
Annie.”

“Yes you did.”

“No I didn’t, and you know it.”

Annie glared at Neal, her eyes watery.

“Anybody else probably would have shoved
you, the way you acted that night. You think I’m so terrible for
wanting an abortion, but...” Neal motioned around the room. “...is
this
how you want your kid to grow up? Living in a dump,
with a father who’s a college dropout?”

“You don’t care about our child, Neal—all
you care about is yourself. You can finish your degree as soon as
Natasha’s old enough to go to kindergarten and I can start working
again. A few years won’t make any difference.”

Neal rolled his eyes. “That’s easy for you
to say.”

“You don’t know what’s important in life,
Neal.” Annie started to say something else, then gave a long sigh.
“I refuse to argue about this anymore—there’s no point in it. But
you
never
should have shoved me, Neal. Never. There’s no
excuse for it. You could have killed our child.”

“Our child is alive and well, in case you
hadn’t noticed. You ‘could’ have burned the whole apartment
building down today with your cooking accident, but that didn’t
happen, did it? A million terrible things ‘could’ happen every day,
but they don’t.” Neal over looked at the crib. “Not usually,
anyway.”

Annie glanced at the crib, then shook her
head as if she could no longer deal with him. “You’re losing it,
Neal, if you think Natasha could actually climb out of her crib and
put that trophy on the floor.”