Hush Little Baby (3 page)

Dusty loved when things worked out so well.

Kit stroked the baby’s wrist, which made its hand curl. She set her index finger in its palm, and three miniature fingers covered her own long polished fingernail.

Dusty had been frazzled and exhausted, not surprising if she had just had a baby. Even if she had had this baby a couple or three weeks ago. But whether or not you were a mess, did you hand your new baby over to your ex-stepdaughter and drive away?

Why would you sob and gasp and yank at doors trying to get your sleeping baby out of a car?

Why would you take this baby to a house you did not live in? A house that technically was closed to you?

Had Dusty expected Dad to be here? She hadn’t acted that way. If Dusty had found the house empty and used the key that apparently Dad had not gotten around to collecting from her, what had she planned on doing? Was she going to live here for a while? Suppose Kit hadn’t been here. Could Dusty — even Dusty! — have planned to leave the baby alone in the house, while she drove off on this errand she had to do?

The thought of a tiny baby alone in a large stale hotel of a house made Kit’s skin crawl.

The image of Dusty driving away, leaving a baby in an empty house, made Kit gag.

Dusty had not even told Kit the baby’s name. Or whether it was a boy or a girl.

It didn’t seem like the thing a mother would do with her new baby.

So … was Dusty the mother?

Or … was Dusty the baby-sitter? In which case the real mommy had not made a wise decision in caretakers.

Or … neither one? In which case … whose baby was this?

First Muffin and Row stopped at the video store so her brother could rent the movies that he and Shea and Kit were going to watch.

Muffin had complete faith that these would be the kind of movies she was not allowed to watch. There would be hours of violence and screaming and people leaping from buildings and saving one another from maniacs and firing their machine guns and rescuing the world. Muffin would be tucked up in her kangaroo sleeping bag on the floor and would feel safe and wonderful in the half dark, with the teenagers talking, and Shea dancing to herself, because Shea danced to herself the way other people sang to themselves or talked to themselves, and the dogs sharing the tacos, and the cats sleeping on her feet to keep her safe.

Muffin did not know Kit, but Row had pointed her out at school events. He found her very appealing. To Muffin, Kit had seemed a speck boring, as if Kit were the type who really did spend her time carefully listening, rather than busily thinking her own interesting thoughts. Row said that meant Kit was a nicer person than Muffin, since Muffin never listened. Although, he added, that was not difficult; everybody was nicer and more desirable than his sister.

Row picked up bags of chips at the counter (Fritos, Doritos, honey mustard pretzels, and sour cream potato chips), although you never had to worry about food at Aunt Karen and Uncle Anthony’s.

Shea’s family had much better food than Muffin’s family.

Muffin’s mom was very healthy. Health was a favorite topic for her. She drank only herbal teas, and took special medications made from the centers of important flowers, and had a daily dose of seaweed to purify herself. She bought bread at a particular grocery, and vegetables from another, and she cooked with great care, so that they never needed salt or butter, but just the flavor of the vegetable.

Muffin’s dad didn’t pay any attention to this when he was at work. He mainly had cheeseburgers and french fries and vanilla shakes for lunch. Every night he fibbed to Mom and said he had had no salt and no cholesterol, and every night Mom seemed to believe this. Even when she was the one to clean the old McDonald’s bags out of the car, she believed they had just flown in and had nothing to do with Dad.

In matters of nutrition, Muffin did not disobey her mom. She actually ate her little baby carrots in their plastic lunch bag; and she actually had her yogurt and her organic plums and her seven-grain bread with homemade peanut butter.

But at Shea’s, it would be impossible to pay attention to Mom’s food theories, because Shea’s family were the junk-food champions. There was nothing they didn’t have, and it would all be open, so you didn’t have to be the one actually ripping the package apart. There would be a dozen packages on the counter, clipped at the top with colored bag clips to keep things crisp and greasy and salty and yummy, and in the freezer many kinds of ice cream would already have one scoop out of them, and in the refrigerator leftovers would beckon, and in the bread box, there was never bread. There were cupcakes and chocolate-covered doughnuts.

Muffin thought happily of shedding pets and yummy chips and violent movies and staying up late.

Kit should be doing something sensible, but one of Dusty’s characteristics was the ability to make everybody around her equally dumb.

The house hummed.

Appliances and air-conditioning talked gently.

Kit felt as if she were visiting distant relatives. She could think of nothing to do but sit on the sofa and watch the baby sleep.

Dusty did not come back.

Kit went to the front hall to check the carrier. Yes, inside the carrier, under a second baby blanket, was a packet of newborn diapers, some baby wipes, a pack of disposable bottles, and a six-pack of ready-mix formula. She toted the whole thing into the family room and set it on the floor next to the baby. The huge green sofa made a wall between the baby and the big picture windows that faced the golf course.

There was something new in the room along with the baby.

There was a distinctly unpleasant smell.

Terrific, thought Kit. Baby-sitting should be restricted to clean events. Oh, well. At least I have a pack of newborn-size Huggies.

The little terrycloth jumper the baby had on unsnapped between the legs and out the back. She peeled it away, and released its tiny curled feet into the air. The paper diaper was so small she burst out laughing. It was fastened with little tapes. When she tugged at them, the diaper fell open.

It was a boy.

“Hello, little guy,” she whispered to him. “What’s your name, little sweetheart? Tell me your name.”

She mopped him up with a baby wipe, which wasn’t too bad after all, and then realized she’d tossed the diaper out before seeing exactly how it worked. Handily the diaper pack had illustrated instructions. Four steps.

“Stretch sides and elastic in back,” she muttered, and sure enough, this mini paper garment had stretch sides and elastic, which she stuck under the baby’s bottom, and then little grippers to hold the back to the front.

He liked having his feet free, and waved them eagerly. If Kit had been lying on her back and waving her feet around like that, it would have been aerobic exercise to die from, but the baby was just enjoying himself.

“You need a name, kid,” she said to him. She tucked his tiny feet back in the little footed jumpsuit and snapped the legs up. Then she stroked his cheek and instantly he turned to her finger and tried to get it into his mouth.

“Do you want something to eat, little guy?” she said. “Are you trying to give me instructions?”

She studied the available materials. A long slim plastic envelope got stuck down into a plastic bottle, and the envelope edges lapped over the bottle top. Then you opened the fliptop of a can of Similac With Iron Infant Formula, which sounded right (and smelled disgusting), and poured some into the bottle. Then you fit a nipple into a screw top and fastened the whole thing down. The formula was room temperature, so Kit decided she didn’t have to heat it.

If I were this kid’s mother, thought Kit, the last thing I would do is leave him with me. I don’t know how or when to do anything.

“What’s your name, fella?” she said to him.

He was squalling. This was definitely an instruction. Get that bottle in my mouth! he was yelling.

She rested his little head on the crook of her left arm, his feet dangling off the end of her left hand. The nipple seemed large enough for a colt, and she was scared it would choke him. But after a minute of scrabbling and failure, the baby remembered how this was done. He chugged down his milk with concentration, a little man with a major task.

“You’re a serious guy. You need a solid name,” she told him. “I’m going to call you Sam. Sam the Baby.”

Kit’s mother was crazy about babies. Mom ran the nursery on Sunday morning while the parents were in church. She’d cuddle and sing and rock the babies and tots, and of course get to miss the sermon, which she despised anyway. (Mom did not like advice, one reason she hadn’t stayed married to Dad: Dad gave advice solidly. Kit rarely paid attention; Mom paid too much and got mad; and poor Dusty paid lots of attention, but missed the point and did the wrong things.)

Mom burped her nursery babies, an event that in grown-ups would be embarrassing, but in babies was adorable, so Kit carefully propped the baby on her shoulder and patted his tiny back. Sure enough, a hiccupy thwop of a burp filled the room with gassy, milky scent and the baby turned soft and pliable against her, and Kit was in love.

She held him again in the crook of her arm, and he had one more swallow, and then fell asleep, completely and instantly, the nipple falling from his mouth, milk draining onto his chin.

She wrapped him in his flannel blanket and put him carefully back in the slant of the sofa. Then she lowered herself next to him. “So, Sam the Baby,” she said softly, and in spite of herself she came very close to a sob, “so — who is your daddy, Sam?”

It was a very old Cadillac, once black and now a sort of aged bronze. The driver hated his car. He hated it so intensely that whenever he drove, he wanted to smash it. He could easily have driven through the plate glass of stores and when he drove, he like to pick out cars that he would crash into on purpose — except that he had to keep this car in working condition.

Every time he had to pour gas into its greedy gullet, he hated the car.

Every time he had to change the oil, he hated the car.

And today, driving up and around every one of the endless stupid identical dead ends of this stupid golf course development, he knew that his car was not as nice as the cars of people who picked up the trash on this street, never mind the people who lived here. If anybody was home (although this was not the kind of place where people stayed home; they bought mansions and then they went out to work or to play golf) they would see his ugly smeared old car, one step from the junkyard, and they would narrow their eyes. What’s he doing in our road? they would think. We don’t have losers here.

And now Dusty had ruined everything.

Money had been there. Enough money for both of them. He would have had the best car; the car of his dreams! But she was greedy. She wouldn’t settle for the original amount, and she certainly wouldn’t settle for less. He wanted the money so bad. And without Dusty, he could get nothing.

He was done with having nothing. He would get Dusty. He would get that money.

She had to hole up someplace and her ex-husband had a house in this Seven Hills place, empty almost all the time. If he could just remember where it was!

Even though they were architect-designed houses, supposedly full of personality and excitement, they looked exactly alike. Each had a little knobby row of green bushes around the foundation, and a single spindly maple to the left of the brick sidewalk and three white birches clumped on the right. Their grass got more attention than he had gotten in his entire life.

Okay, Dusty, he thought. Where are you?

But he was not really having thoughts. He was having rage.

Dad and Dusty had split a year ago.

Kit’s goal had been to keep herself bland and even.

When Mom left Dad for Malcolm, Kit had been so fiercely angry that she was afraid of herself. She was afraid of how much noise she would make if she started screaming. Afraid of the terrible words she would use to Mom. Afraid of throwing things, and breaking them; of throwing them directly at her very own beloved mother.

And so Kit gave herself Dullness Training. She succeeded. The key was in facial expression. No excessive movement of mouth or lips; no wrinkling of the forehead; no flinging the body around; and above all, no emotions that would make the eyes prickle with tears or the fingers clench.

Vocabulary had to be reduced. Kit preferred the basics:
how are you, thank you,
and
please
were fine. This prevented Kit from screaming names at the mother who had ended their happy lives, the stepfather she didn’t like because he’d been willing to have an affair with a married woman, and the father she adored — but was even more mad at, because he would not fight back. If that’s what your mother wants, that’s what she may have, Dad would say.

Although she had kept her grades up, because Kit liked studying, in all other ways she concentrated on being average. Sometimes when she was thinking of getting a tattoo of spiderwebs on her cheek, just to show these three grown-ups what she thought of their behavior, she would catch a glimpse of herself in a mirror — an okay, bland, acceptable girl who looked as if her biggest conflict was deciding whether to have cornflakes or Cheerios.

Kit was in the midst of being dull when Shea took up with her. Shea (and Shea’s exhausting family, pets, and hobbies) was exciting, wild, difficult, creative, and noisy. And now Shea’s cousin Row wanted to hang out with them. Shea said Row had a crush on Kit. Kit could not imagine this, because she felt far too blank and blah for anybody to like her that much. On whom did he have this crush? Her former, and possibly future, self—as active and exciting as Shea? Or her present self, the only one he had ever seen — as predictable and dull a girl as ever inhabited a high school?

Kit had come to Dad’s house for a favorite California sweatshirt. It featured a scary rock-band silhouette in glittering copper and raised evil black. With black tights and the sweatshirt, she could dance through the movies the way Shea danced, and maybe this was what Rowen Mason wanted.

And maybe not.