The Baby Merchant Page 23

  Starbird’s response is as swift as it is reflexive. Outstripping thought, the arm clenched around Gary’s throat shoots out and, fueled by rage, snaps back and, with the compressed power of bone and muscle, smashes into Gary’s neck.

  Anybody looking out one of the back windows a minute later will see nothing more than two drunks poised at the top of the red clay berm that rises behind the DelMar. They are heading into the strip of scrub pines that separates the motel from the mall parking lot. The heavyset drunk stumbles along with his arm around the tall one’s shoulders and the tall man’s hand planted firmly on the back of his unsteady partner’s fat neck. Too bad about the limp, baggy one, he looks too drunk to walk, has to be dragged. No matter, the other guy will take care of him. The clumsy drunk’s tall friend will get him into the car and put him where he belongs. Wherever that is.

  There isn’t time for Starbird to reflect on what just happened. He has come to a place there is no getting back from. What happens next has to happen fast.

  25.

  Odd: when Sasha comes back to the room at midnight the air has changed. It’s as though some big creature has just moved out. She is at the door with her back stiff and her shoulders high. Squinting like a speed-reader, she skims all the surfaces, but the geometry of small objects has not changed. There’s just more space in the room. Wary, she moves inside, alert to signs of intrusion. The stale layer of old smoke and takeout food that hangs in cheap motel rooms is gone. Did Marilyn fix the air conditioning or did Dancy come in and open the window? Maybe it’s the silence. No neighbors’ TV drumming in the walls, no rattling AC and for once, no baby wailing, the silence is amazing. At the diner Marilyn kept Jimmy in her soft lap until she’d conned him into thinking he had everything he cared about. Now the baby is draped over Sasha’s shoulder like a plush puppy with its soft face mashed into her neck, sleeping.

  With Jimmy quiet the room seems brighter, somehow. Unless it seems bigger. Once she’s satisfied herself that there’s nobody hiding here and nothing has changed, Sasha expands. She is getting herself back. Maybe I’m finally over it, she thinks. When you’ve never been sick, a difficult birth rolls into you like an eighteen-wheeler and leaves you weepy and gasping. What the fuck is this? I’m too weak to run, my lungs are so shallow that I can’t even yell, am I always going to be like this? Every day Sasha marks signs of progress: last week she only cried once a day, and. Wow.

  Today she didn’t cry at all. Brilliant! Soon she’ll be fit to pack up her stuff and leave. She can strap this baby in his car seat and drive him down to Florida and hand him over to people who know how to place babies: “There.” Then she can walk away. Of course she’ll snuggle him for a minute before she lets go, so he knows that she’s doing this for both their sakes. She’ll squeeze him tight so that at some level he’ll always remember the feel and smell of her. She’ll feed and change him one last time so she can hand him over to the Newlife placement staff in mint condition. Then she can say goodbye for good. Well, maybe until his college graduation, when he’s big enough to handle the news: look, I’m your mom. He’ll be grown and gorgeous and maybe they can be friends. She’ll give him her best painting— if she’s good enough by then, she may have work hanging in the Whitney or the Modern, so the gift will be worth a few dollars. Graduation present, son. Surprise.

  Why is she crying?

  I’m not crying, she tells herself. It’s the Air Wick or some damn thing. Thank God I’m strong again, even though the incision burns and I’m still dripping.

  Soon she’ll be done here. Nothing can stop her now. And Gary Cargill? Just let him try. As it turns out, she’s not alone. Women with babies have friends out there— that nice guy in the supermarket— dark hair, saturnine look broken by a sweet smile that she surprised out of him. If Gary shows his face again, I have an ally. He’ll be there, she thinks, even though she knows he won’t. Never mind, everybody wants to help a young mother. Kidnapper, she’ll cry, unless it seems more expedient to cry rape. Tomorrow she’ll call a lawyer and get a restraining order. Then if Gary follows her she can bring down the entire contents of the fucking Florida State Police barracks on him. Nobody’s going to get my baby. What am I saying? Nobody’s going to get between this baby and the nice, grown up, perfect parents that he deserves.

  Why is she still holding him? Carefully, she puts Jimmy down on his back the way conscientious mothers do, no SIDS risk here; never mind that she is no mother and won’t have to do this much longer. When her son throws his arms above his head like that they curve like little parentheses. He looks like a Botticelli cherub shouting Mirabile. Sasha looks into the tiny, mashed face of this larval human and thinks with a surge of excitement, Look what I’ve done. Look at him!

  When you plan to give your unwanted child away, you can’t look it in the face for long.

  You should try not to look at it at all.

  Jimmy wakes twice in the night instead of the usual three or four times; for once he eats readily and drowsy Sasha tends to him so the feeding and sleeping unfold like a gentle dream that lets you wake up fresh. When she opens her eyes it’s almost eight A.M. and she feels wonderful, maybe because for the first time since they came home, she hasn’t been yanked out of sleep by Jimmy’s thin little rabbity squeal. The silence is sublime. For a minute she forgets that she even has a baby. What does Sasha want to do today? she wonders, marveling. What would Sasha like to do? She yawns and rolls over. Then she sees the crib and, even before the episiotomy sinks its fish hooks in the floor of her body, remembers. The baby. It’s late, sunlight is coming in and Jimmy isn’t crying, what’s the matter, he’s so still! Oh my God, what if he’s died?

  Panicked, she surges up in the bed, ready to dial 911, seize him and start CPR, whatever it takes— my God, what does it take—when her baby spasms and kicks with one of those atrocious piggy grunts that newborns make because they just remembered where they are and that breathing is a continuing responsibility. Then as her heart stops he settles again. Sleeping. He is just sleeping.

  New as Sasha is to all this she knows that when your baby is sleeping hard and well, you don’t bother him. Even though part of her wants to shake him awake: “are you all right?” “are you sure you’re all right?” the rest of her yields to conventional wisdom. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Let sleeping dogs lie.

  It is like a gift of time. Thank you, my good baby. Sweet! Smiling, she stretches like a patient at the end of a long convalescence. A few more days like this and she’ll be fine.

  Better, she thinks. We’re getting better. She feels a hundred pounds lighter this morning, like Edmond Dantes coming out of the Chateau D’If. Strong. Like any prisoner, she emerges feeling leaner, smarter because she has survived. She is definitely on a roll. She lost all autonomy when she got pregnant. Her body took over and sent her rocketing into something she didn’t want but refused to stop because. Because what? Not clear. It isn’t just a Catholic thing, she thinks. It’s more profound. Altered by pain, she came out of the hospital diminished. Gradually she’s getting back her strength. Soon she’ll be strong enough to manage her life. One more night like this, she thinks. Please God, one more night.

  Jimmy wakes up and she changes and feeds him and puts him down again with such ease that she hardly notices how much time it takes to maintain one of these demanding, unfamiliar little beings, and if she does notice? No matter. They will be going south soon. Before she puts Jimmy in the car she’ll phone Newlife. She wants to confirm that arrangements are in place at the Pilcher home in spite of her defection. When she leaves Jimmy with his real parents and walks away she won’t be an unwilling mother any more, she’ll be an artist again. Instead of being a garage and filling station for somebody she didn’t invite and doesn’t know very well, she will be autonomous. All potential, with her best work still ahead.

  During her ordeal, Sasha realizes, something fundamental changed. She is before everything an artist, but when she gets back to work it won’t be etching or e
ngraving or pulling tiny editions of lithographs. She isn’t interested in multiples now. She has, after all, created this unique person. When she was pregnant she thought of him in the abstract as a monotype, a unique print, but even a monotype opens up the possibility of a second printing. In her case this translated to: can always have another baby. Not now, but somewhere down the road. Now she’s not so sure. Whoever Jimmy is, he’s distinctively himself. The discovery makes her breath catch. The next one will be nothing like him.

  She is too pressed and confused to think it through, but she is coming to a decision. She can’t spell it out. Instead, the decision she makes arrives couched in terms of her work. She is done with multiples. The bigger the print run, the less the value. It may take years to learn and longer to be any good at it but Sasha is committed now. Everything she does from here on out has to be one of a kind. She will paint.

  Marilyn comes with a half-dozen doughnuts, a sweet ending to a morning that began well. Smiling, the plump proprietor opens the box: honey dips dripping with glaze, jelly doughnuts and iced crullers, which they are supposed to split although Sasha can only eat one and Marilyn will scarf up all the rest. She has brought flowered paper napkins and Frappuccinos so it looks like a party. Some women turn into fools when there’s a baby around and now that Sasha has let her hold him, Marilyn is hers forever.

  She says, all by-the-way, “Did you hear the noise?”

  Sasha turns with her face flaked with sugar. “When?”

  “Last night.”

  “What kind of noise?”

  “Don’t know.” Straddling the desk chair like a Valkyrie in equestrian position, Marilyn disappears another cruller. “A couple of people complained.”

  “When was it?”

  “Don’t know. I sure didn’t hear it.”

  “Maybe we were still at the diner.”

  “Maybe.” Marilyn wipes confectioner’s sugar off her upper lip. The smear of raspberry jam on her lycra top matches her lipstick.

  “What do you think it was?”

  “Maybe it was nothing.”

  Nervously, Sasha reaches for another doughnut. “Maybe so.”

  “These things,” Marilyn says. “You never know.”

  Oh shit, just when I was beginning to like it here. “We didn’t hear it,” Sasha says, willing it to go away.

  “Me neither.”

  “After we went to bed we didn’t hear a thing,” she repeats. “Jimmy only woke up twice, and look at him.”

  The carton has floated onto the end of the bed and Marilyn has to lurch to her feet to seize a frilled honey dip. “Sleeping like an angel.”

  Something creeps up Sasha’s ribs like a set of disembodied fingers. “Or a stone.”

  “So cute.”

  “Is it OK when they sleep this hard?”

  Marilyn glances into the crib. “Don’t worry, he’s just growing. Being a baby is hard work.”

  “He is, isn’t he? Growing.” This makes her smile.

  “He’s definitely filling out.” Marilyn’s cheeks are as pink and full, like Jimmy’s. “Sweet thing. Nice and fat.”

  He is. When she got him, Jimmy’s legs and arms were like sticks but in just three weeks he’s begun to look a lot more like a baby than he did when they cleaned him up and handed him to her. Sasha was scared she’d squash him or accidentally fall on him before they cleared the hospital. She was afraid he’d shrivel up like a butterfly cracked out of the cocoon too early. Now he’s getting fat and she’s learning how to take care of him. Whatever he is right now is because of her. Sasha is too sensitive to her position to get wrapped up in this project, but she’s pleased. It is a mistake to invest any ego in a person she’s about to give away, but Marilyn’s right. Her baby does look snug in the crib. Clean and snug and for the moment, satisfied. Well kept. “I guess he is.”

  “I love a fat baby.”

  “Do you think he’s too fat?”

  “Just right, I’d say. You’re doing a good job.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Didn’t I just say so?” Marilyn advances on the crib. “Didn’t I tell you that you’d just love being a mom? When they’re little and easy and need you, it’s the happiest time of your life. Isn’t it? The happiest time of your life?”

  Sasha can’t answer.

  “Sweet thing. Isn’t he adorable!”

  “I guess he is.” She manages to sound diffident but she is thinking: At least I did something right. It crosses her mind that the good-bad feeling she has right now needs some examination. Hey, she thinks, surprised. Nobody says I have to give him away. Marilyn doesn’t give her time to think through to: I could always keep him. With her fleshy upper arms flapping, Marilyn bends over the crib.

  “Hello, sweet thing. Is he always this pink?”

  Sasha moves to intercept her. “Don’t wake him up.” She means: Don’t you dare touch my baby.

  Smirking, Marilyn thrusts her hand into the crib. “He feels a little hot to me.”

  “Oh my God.”

  Marilyn snatches Sasha’s baby before she can stop her. He jerks awake. His arms fly out and he opens his throat in that poor little hurt-bunny squeal. “Wow, he’s like a little furnace.” Marilyn sniffs. “And the smell!”

  “Don’t!”

  “Pheeewie!” She peels the diaper anyway. “Look at that. Just smell the sick.”

  “Give him here.”

  There is a wet, blarching sound. “Ewww! Poor little thing’s got diarrhea, listen at him! He’s running like a sieve.”

  “I said, give him here!”

  She doesn’t bother to phone the pediatrician. She takes him into the office. “Don’t worry,” the doctor tells her after the nurse takes pity and pulls her out of the dismal, packed waiting room, “if this doesn’t work we’ll get him into the hospital.”

  Never. Why can’t she explain? There are just too many reasons. “Oh please, not the hospital.”

  “Don’t worry, we won’t admit him if we don’t have to, I don’t abuse newborns unnecessarily.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Just be careful he doesn’t dehydrate. Keep him hydrated and if he doesn’t improve, there are a couple of other things we can try. If nothing else works, I’ll meet you at the E.R. day or night and we’ll get an I.V. into him.”

  The next few hours are hard. To cure a baby of diarrhea you have to starve him: Dr. Spock. Ice chips. Liquid, all she can give him is Pedialyte cut with water and even that won’t stay down, until it does she can’t start him on a soy-based formula. It is an odd night, so filled with desperate worry, terrible misgivings and Jimmy’s misery that Sasha will register but not process the message that came in while she was on the far side of Savannah waiting for the pediatrician to assure her that Jimmy isn’t going to die. Which he won’t if he’ll just stop vomiting the Pedialyte which, weeping, she coaxes into him quarter ounce by torturous quarter ounce.

  Is this normal? The doctor will know. She picks up the phone to a series of buzzes. She can’t call out until she clears this fucking voice message. How long has the phone message light been on, did the doctor call while she was on her way home from his office? God, what if he left important instructions and she’s doing this wrong because she was too stupid to pick up? Trembling, she punches the code. Shit, it’s Marilyn: “Honey, a man phoned here. He said don’t worry, your boyfriend’s gone for good. Your baby’s sick, honey, at least give his poor daddy a chance.”

  “Shut up, Marilyn. Shut up!”

  It takes the doctor’s service forever to pick up. They put her on hold forever. There is another long interval before the doctor calls back. Sasha is desperate, rocking the baby and murmuring into his ear as she frames a pact. “Be OK, please, baby. I’ll do anything you want if you’ll just be OK.” My fault, oh God this is all my fault for trying to do this on my own oh God, I should have stayed at the goddamn home. Or taken him back to Grandmother. At least she’d know what to do. I have no right to keep this baby, I
love him and I don’t know what to do for him. Wrenched by unexpected grief, she resolves: I can’t take care of him. Oh God if you’ll just make him better I promise, I’ll give him to somebody who can. For now, Jimmy’s stopped twisting in pain. He is sobbing in his sleep. Weeping, she puts him down.

  By the time the doctor calls back with a prescription, Sasha is too upset to think about anything but picking it up. What is she going to do about Jimmy? He’s too sick to go out and she has to get this new stuff for him. Miracle suppositories that will stop the vomiting, the doctor said, available at the all-night pharmacy now; if she can get one of these into him it will melt and quiet his insides before he can spasm again and push it out. Thank God he’s asleep. Every time he wakes up he goes off at both ends so she’s terrified of waking him up. There’s been a fever. He’s too little to leave and far too sick to take. Marilyn, she thinks. I’ll take back everything I said about you. She phones and phones the manager’s unit, sobbing, but she can’t rouse her even when she goes up to the apartment and bangs on the door. Behind her in the dark motel, Jimmy is sick as hell but safe in his crib. Suppositories, she is supposed to save his life with suppositories. My God. Why didn’t the doctor tell her this afternoon, was he afraid she’d freak and overdose her child? Hell yes she complained. “He’s a very small baby,” the doctor explained tonight before stumbling back to bed. “And you’re a new mother. These things are very strong.” Shave half a suppository down to a sliver as instructed, he told her, it just might do the trick. Yawning, he added, “And if it doesn’t, take him to the E.R. I’ll meet you at the E.R. in the morning, before I start my rounds.”

  God she hates to leave him. God she has no choice. She deleted Marilyn’s voicemail but she has registered it. Somebody out there— the cute guy from the market?— somebody wants her to know that Gary Cargill is gone. Gary is gone and Jimmy is sleeping, the place is locked, she has to go! She’ll be away for thirty minutes, tops. Away. It makes her sick to think about it. Sasha Egan doesn’t pray, but right now she is praying. “Please God,” she murmurs, locking the sliding windows and securing them with a stick. “Please God please God, please God.” Going out, she tries the knob twice after she slams the door and in a fit of protective madness pushes the city’s huge plastic recycling containers one by one in front of the unit door.