Hush Little Baby (7 page)

“We? Who’s we?” said Cinda.

Kit did not feel like long explanations. “Two of my friends are over here helping me with him,” said Kit.

Muffin beamed. Kit had won an admirer.

Cinda said, “Kit, I also have to apologize because Ed told me he scouted around the house and peered in windows and scared you. He shouldn’t have done that. It’s just that we were both coming apart, worrying if Dusty would take good care of the baby.”

They had been right to worry. Dusty had not taken care of the baby. She had not even told Kit how to take care of the baby before abandoning him. But Sam was not abandoned. He had a family waiting. Cousins. And they weren’t Ed, and they were nice.

“I just feel so much better hearing your voice,” said Kit. “You sound just right for a mother.”

Row muttered, “Not so fast, Kit. You don’t have any idea who that is. And she didn’t say whether she’d met the baby, she just wanted to know who’s here with you.”

Kit glared at him. “She’s just upset!” she hissed. “She’s had a terrible day of worry.” Rowen had no idea what it was like to wait for an adoption baby to arrive. Kit knew, because she had read lots of articles in women’s magazines and listened to several panels on talk shows. You and your husband had to go through examinations and inquisitions and inspections, and it took weeks and months to qualify for a baby, but then there was no baby available, and you had to wait and wait and wait and wait, and then when you found out there was going to be a baby, and it would be born in — say, September, like Sam — then you bought all the baby things, and told all your friends, and took time off from work, and practiced changing diapers — and the mother — say, Dusty — changed her mind.

No wonder Ed had been crazy! Kit would have run over a flower bed, too, if she had been waiting for Sam all her life and couldn’t find him, didn’t know if he was all right. Well, of course, it wasn’t Ed waiting for the baby, it was Cinda and Burt Chance. What nice names! The baby was going to be Sam Chance. No, that didn’t really work. She would have to ask what name the baby was really and truly going to have. Jonathan Chance. Alexander Chance. Michael William Chance. There were lots of wonderful possibilities.

“Kit, would you be a darling and bring the baby to us?” said Cinda. “Ed is driving everywhere he can think of to find the baby, hoping to find Dusty at one of her old haunts, and Burt is driving everywhere
he
can think of. I have to stay by the phone, and we so badly, badly want our baby here and we want him now.” Her voice broke with grief, and Kit’s heart exploded for her. Kit was the one cuddling and kissing this perfect little guy while his mommy, his mommy who had waited for years and years, was alone in the house with a phone!

Kit did have a driver’s license, and Dad had given her a car for her sixteenth birthday. It was in the garage at home. It was an ugly square Volvo. She hated the looks of it, but Dad felt she would be safer in it than any other vehicle. So she was safe, though totally not cool. On the other hand, it was probably the best car for hauling a baby in. And the car carrier was upstairs.

Rowen said very quietly, “You were afraid of Ed Bing.”

“Row, this is the baby’s mother.”

“No, she isn’t. She wants to be the baby’s mother.”

“But that’s wonderful, Row! She’s waiting for him! Do you see Dusty waiting for the baby? Cinda’s probably been choosing names for the whole nine months, and Dusty hasn’t even picked one out yet. A cousin is a just right person to adopt a baby.”

“I don’t see how being a cousin qualifies you for anything,” said Rowen. “You’ve never laid eyes on this Cinda. How do you know she’s a cousin? Just because she says so?”

It was true that Ed had come alone to the wedding. Kit could not remember other relatives on Dusty’s side. But who would claim to be related to Dusty unless they were? And it was a relief to know that Dusty could do something right: She could admit that her cousins would be better parents than she would. It was only natural to have a few worries at the last moment. If Dusty had been here at Dad’s house, Dusty would decide, but the day was ending, night was coming, and this baby needed a parent and one was on the phone. It sounded perfect to Kit.

“Let’s go ask your mother,” said Row in an interfering pushy way. “Or Shea’s mother. Or mine.”

She had been so glad to see Row, and now she was just irked. He was getting in the way. He was all inconvenient advice and obstruction.

“Or the police,” said Rowen.

Kit’s hand was over the phone to muffle their conversation. She glared at him.

“Do you think we should call 911?” said Muffin intently.

“No!” said Kit. “We are not facing an emergency. And I don’t want Dusty in trouble. I don’t want some social worker taking poor Sam the Baby and sticking him in a foster home for months until they decide what to do next. I want Sam the Baby to be home in his own crib tonight.”

Cinda said, “I’m sorry, Kit, I can’t quite hear what you’re saying. Please, Kit, please, I need your help and I need it now.”

“Ask her where Dusty is,” hissed Rowen.

Muffin hissed right back, “Row!”

“They don’t know where Dusty is,” Kit told him irritably. “Yes, Cinda,” she said, “I can take the baby to your house.”

“Can I go, too?” cried Muffin. “I’m a great baby-sitter. I love Sam the Baby. I’ll come and I’ll help. You’ll need help.”

“
Muff,
” said Rowen.

But Kit said, “Yes, you can come. I’ll be glad to have the company, and if you’re in the backseat with him I won’t be looking back every second to see if he’s all right and then maybe having a fatal, Dusty-type accident when I’m not looking at the road.” Kit hoped Row would want to come, too. Or do the driving himself, in the car he handily had in the driveway.

The directions Cinda gave were long. Kit read them back into the phone to be sure she had the right turns and route numbers and landmarks, and Rowen said, “Those guys are seriously hiding from their fellow man.”

“Would you like to come, Row?” Kit asked nervously. She didn’t know how she felt toward Rowen right now. He was being a jerk, trying to make the decision about the baby, but she would certainly like to have his company. She felt muddled. It was as if Dusty had climbed into her brain.

“I don’t think you should do this,” said Rowen flatly, “and I don’t want to get mixed up in it.”

“So you won’t come?” Kit snapped.

“You shouldn’t go, either,” he said. “Just do me a favor. Just call your mother and ask what she thinks.”

But Mom wasn’t home. They’d have to wait for Mom to show up, and then Mom would come over, and they would have to discuss things, one of which would be: Why didn’t you tell me about this in the first place? Mom would insist on waiting for Dusty, and even more time would pass, and authorities would be brought in, and Dusty would be in trouble, because Dusty was always in trouble, and Dad would be crazed that he had to deal with her again, and he would stay on his coast and not come to Kit’s, and he’d hold Kit half responsible. And meanwhile, where would Sam the Baby sleep, and would Cinda and Burt, the cousins, be able to take him?

Kit wanted to drive in the driveway with the new baby and be the one to place the baby in its mother’s arms.

She loved this picture, and reminded herself to take along a camera or two, because Cinda and Burt Chance would have bought their baby album, and now she, Kit, would take the first roll of film to fill it. What a gift!

Muffin could hardly believe that Rowen agreed to let her go along. Probably he thought it would be easier to explain to Mom and Dad than violent movies. Or maybe he was assuming he wouldn’t have to explain anything to Mom and Dad, and that was probably right, because Kit and Muffin and Sam the Baby would meet the new parents and then Kit and Muffin would drive back to Shea’s and none of their own parents would ever know anything about it.

Muffin tucked the disposable camera into the little front kangaroo pocket of her own pink sweatshirt.

She would take pictures of the new mommy and daddy meeting their new baby.

Kit brought the baby carrier downstairs. It seemed designed for a larger person, who would sit up and take notice. Sam the Baby just folded into a ball and slept in his carrier the way Muffin slept in her kangaroo bag.

“Why didn’t the baby’s new parents come to the hospital?” asked Muffin. In second grade, the teacher had read out loud a book about adoption. It was beautiful. But Muffin didn’t know anybody who was adopted. Now she did. Sam.

“I guess there was a mix-up,” said Kit.

Muffin hated this kind of answer. That was the trouble with being nine. People knew so much more than you did. What kind of mix-up? Muffin felt grumpy. Then she looked at Sam.

When you were nine, it was crummy to know nothing, but when you were new, like Sam, it was awesome and miraculous.

“I would love to have you for a brother, Sam the baby,” whispered Muffin. “I could be the older one, instead of Rowen always being the older one. And you would think I knew everything, instead of Rowen always telling me I know nothing. And I would make my mother change you, because you’re too disgusting for me. I would take care of you when you were clean and beautiful.”

Sam the Baby opened his eyes, which were very large for his face, while his nose was way too small, just a perky spot in the middle of his stare. He blinked his eyes, and long dark lashes swept his cheeks, and Muffin laughed at him, and she thought, His lucky, lucky mommy and daddy.

She could hardly wait to meet them, the way she loved to meet all her friends’ parents, because the dads would pick you up and pull on your ponytail, and the moms would listen to your stories and fix you snacks and fix your hair, and they remembered what vegetable you had not wanted to eat last time.

She hoped, and it was treason, that Sam the Baby’s new mommy and daddy liked all food, the way Aunt Karen and Uncle Anthony did, instead of no food, like Mom.

Kit seemed to have lost the camera she’d been using, which was annoying, but that was how disposable cameras were. They disappeared for months, but eventually turned up and the pictures were developed, and you had the additional treat of photos from a forgotten occasion.

Kit got another camera from the stack while Rowen hefted the carrier out to his car, so he could drive Kit to her car. Sam noticed nothing. He went right on snoozing even as they shifted his little body. He won’t know who changes him, thought Kit, or who loves him, or who his mother is, or who adopts him.

It was a strange, even terrifying thought: Sam the Baby had no thoughts about the things that were happening to him.

She took six photographs immediately, in case she never found the other camera, so that she would still have a memory of Sam to keep.

Rowen drove them to Kit’s house. Mom’s sporty red Miata and Malcolm’s heavy champagne BMW were not there. It was strange to think of all this happening and no parents knew.

Rowen transferred the carrier to Kit’s car.

“Where’s Shea, anyway?” asked Kit as she strapped herself into the driver’s seat of the Volvo and Muffin found a place in the back next to Sam.

“We had a big fight,” said Row, without the slightest interest in Shea or the fight. When you were cousins you could be casual like that. “She didn’t like the movies I picked out and said I was a slime and why didn’t I leave and I said I was not a slime —”

“He is a slime,” Muffin explained.

“— and Shea threw us out —”

“Call Shea back,” said Kit, “and tell her as soon as Muffin and I have delivered Sam the Baby, we will be there for movies and spending the night. Don’t eat all the food without us.”

R
OUTE 80 WEST
.

It was a good thing Kit had plenty of gas. Cinda had given her the exit number, but she hadn’t said it was fifteen miles! Oh, well. At seventy miles an hour, which was the scary rate traffic was moving, it didn’t take long. Kit, who was new to driving, preferred speeds like thirty miles an hour.

It was a relief to get off the highway.

North on Dexter Mill Road. They were practically in Pennsylvania.

It was beautiful, hilly country. The leaves had just begun turning. Splashes and trills of scarlet and orange leaves flared in the sunset and then vanished. The sky deepened quickly from blue to slate.

In the backseat, Muffin sang songs she remembered from her own babyhood, not so long ago. “Ride a pretty little horsey,” she sang to Sam.

At a twenty-four-hour convenience store (convenient to whom? There were no houses!) Kit turned left on Hennicot Road. Hennicot Road was just there; it seemed to serve no houses, no schools, no stores, no population whatsoever. It seemed not to go anywhere except farther and farther away. Muffin’s earlier question, the one Kit had answered so casually, sprang back into her mind. Why hadn’t the new parents come to the hospital?

Kit had not done much driving in the dark, but then, where she lived, it never really got dark. Every road — and her part of the state was a solid interweaving of roads — was lined with streetlights, and every store stayed open late, glowing with light, so darkness was only an occasional pocket.

Here, the trees closed overhead and the road tunneled beneath them, and she no longer knew what the sky was doing. Hennicot Road had potholes. Not ordinary potholes from the weight of trucks and the convulsions of freezing weather. Old crumbling holes, as if so few people drove here there was no reason to repave.

Kit had never been any place that was not full of people.

The huge sprawl that was New York City, that extended deep into New Jersey, had vanished. She was in a country she did not know; had not known existed. They went past the kind of house where people married their relatives, and had snarly foxy dogs that bit, and used the insides of cars for porch chairs.

“Aaaaahhhhhh, Kit!” shrieked Muffin.

Kit’s fingers went into spasm on the wheel.

“He’s going to the bathroom all over the place. He stinks! He’s worse than the oil tank farms on the New Jersey Turnpike! You have to change him. Drive over there to that diner. We’ll use their restroom to wash up in.”