The Baby Merchant Page 24

  It’s almost four A.M. The streets (thank God?) are empty at this hour. She loses five minutes when she takes the wrong turn but thank God it will take five minutes less to get home to Jimmy now that she knows what she did wrong. The drug store is right where the doctor said it would be. It looks deserted but an inside light is on and in spite of her fears, a bright-eyed teenager in crisp white comes to the door as soon as she rings the night bell.

  The pharmacist turns out to be the holdup. Old. Stupid. Maddening. He looks at her over the high counter at the back of the store, paddling through a stack of prescription slips.

  “If Dr. Drinan really phoned this in I sure don’t have a record of it.”

  “Of course he did! I just spoke to him.”

  “I don’t see it.” As if she’s trying to put something over on him.

  “Don’t you have it in the computer?”

  He scowls. “Why would I do that?”

  “He said he would call!”

  “Well, nobody called. Toby, did you take any calls?”

  “No sir.”

  “It’s suppositories. For my baby!”

  “And it’s supposed to be …”

  She names the product. “Please, I can’t leave him alone.”

  He pushes up his glasses and rubs his eyes like an old person who can’t process what you are saying. “How old is your baby?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “What does he weigh?”

  She guesses. “Nine pounds.”

  “And you want to use these on him?”

  “I have to, it’s urgent.” Hurry, old man. “Nothing works!”

  “Ma’am, I don’t know.”

  “What?” She’s ready to vault the counter and choke him. “What!”

  The old man is still rubbing his goddamn eyes. “For a three-week-old it’s a very strong drug.”

  “He’s very sick.”

  “I don’t think Dr. Drinan would …”

  “He did.”

  “Well, I’ll just have to see about that.”

  “Call the service! The number is …”

  “One minute. Now, if you’ll just wait here.”

  He goes into the back leaving Sasha in stasis, trembling and determined not to cry. When he comes back with the handset Sasha seizes it from him and punches in the number. The service picks up on the tenth ring. She shouts, “Don’t put me on hold!” They listen. Desperate, she rages at the pharmacist, “They don’t have a record, they have to call the doctor and wait for him to call us back.”

  The pharmacist is sucking his tooth.

  Frantic, she trusts the phone at him. “You talk to them.”

  “No need.” Crafty old bastard, did he think she was going to boil these things and find some way to get high? After all this he takes the handset, flicks it off and says, “Now simmer down. They know you. Consider it verified.”

  Once she has the damn things, the real terror sets in. How long has she been gone? What if Jimmy threw up while she was out and choked on it, or dehydrated and went into convulsions while she was driving across town, what if he woke up and needed her and got scared? What if something awful happened to him while she was trapped here in the washed-out fluorescent light waiting for the prescription that can save his life? Either or. Is this what life and death matters come down to? Either or?

  Driving back to the DelMar takes less than five minutes but in five minutes a baby can wake up filthy and screaming, he can cry so hard that he vomits and chokes to death on it; in five minutes a baby can stop breathing simply because you aren’t around, sometimes he can stop breathing when you’re there and there is nothing you can do about it or, God, he can wake up all cured and then get so scared because you’ve left him all alone that he’ll cry and cry and keep on crying so hard that he gets sick all over again.

  She jumps out of the car almost before it stops rolling. Sobbing, she starts shoving the trash bins away from the door, did she really think plastic barricades would protect her child? Does she hear him crying? What if he’s too weak to cry? Has something awful happened to him? Terrified, she vows never to leave him again.

  Everything goes wrong the way it does when urgency runs up on the heels of reason: the bins are hard to move. Crippled by haste she drops her keys, drops the prescription, feels her purse squirt out from under her tightly clamped elbow as she bends to pick it up. The simplest operations confound her. Like an exercise in stop-motion photography she watches her hand thrusting the key at the lock first this way, then that until finally she wrenches the door open and hurries in and thank God the baby is right where she left him, in place and sleeping quietly with that little pigeon breast going up and down, up and down and when she doubles over the crib and sniffs. The sick smell is gone. The diarrhea has stopped.

  It’s a long time before her trembling stops.

  It’s an even longer time before she can rest. Jimmy wakes naturally and she changes and feeds him— Pedialyte and the soy milk formula the doctor sent her away with, after which she puts him down quickly so he won’t feel the strength draining out of her, pats him in place and crashes, limp with relief.

  26.

  By the time Sasha wakes up it’s late and they both feel better. Amazing how fast babies recover. By early evening Jimmy is himself again, but she needs to be sure he’s OK to travel. Nice man, the doctor calls. Unusual in the twenty-first century, although Sasha’s too new at this to know it; the pediatrician’s a Southern gentleman in the deep South, where this kind of thing still happens.

  “Yes,” she says. “He seems to be fine.”

  “Then you want to start him back on Enfamil,” he says. “And bring him in tomorrow so I can look him over.”

  “Oh, please!” Yes, she means. Yes and thank you. But, Enfamil. In her rush to get Pedialyte on her way back from his office yesterday she forgot to buy formula.

  “Enfamil,” he repeats. “The sooner he’s back on his regular diet, the better. Give him a day and then let me look at him. As it is,” he adds, alerting Sasha to a fresh problem, “there are a couple of things we’ve overlooked.”

  “Enfamil.” She has to get off the phone! “I’ll see to that!”

  She can’t go back to this doctor, she realizes. He knows this baby hasn’t been chipped. Chill, lady. Just keep him well. Fine, but how? In the anxiety and confusion that roll in when a new baby gets sick for the very first time, she’s run out of formula. In addition, her squirting baby went through so many Huggies and packages of wipes that she’s almost out. Worried, she jumps up and in the next second, giddy and reeling— when did she last eat?— sits down hard. They need supplies. It’s raining. She can’t take a sick baby out in this, but she can’t let him starve. In the way of new mothers she thinks dutifully that she has to give Jimmy exactly what the doctor orders. She can’t take him out— he’s had a fever!— and she’s vowed never to leave him alone again. Rummaging, she finds a lone bottle of Enfamil in the bottom of the mini-bar. “It’s going to be OK,” she tells Jimmy, even though she knows this bottle is the last. “It really is.”

  Moving like a long-distance wader, she burps her baby and changes him and pats him down in bed.

  “Start with the food,” she says aloud, as though the words will bring order. Troubled, she steps out into the blond, slick light of a rainy Georgia afternoon. She is looking for Marilyn, whom she sees framed in the office window at the far end of the block of units. Thunderclouds merge. It starts to pour and the motel parking lights flash on.

  For whatever reasons, the call angers Marilyn. “In spite of what you might think,” she yells, “I can’t just drop everything and come down there. I have a business to run.”

  “I’m sorry, I just.” Sasha manages not to cry on the phone, but it’s a good thing Marilyn can’t see her face. “The baby’s been sick and I’m out of formula.”

  Wrong tactic. “Honey, he was sick and you didn’t tell me? I thought we were friends!”

  “I’m sorry, I was upset
.” She elaborates: out of formula, out of Huggies and the DelMar hand towels are rubbing all the skin off his bony backside. “Oh, Marilyn, can you come down and watch him just for a minute while I pick up these things?”

  “Can’t it wait a while?”

  “I have to get them before he wakes up. If I don’t, he’ll get …”

  “Sick,” Marilyn says sullenly. “You should have told me.”

  “ … sick again.”

  “Oh, that poor baby. You should of taken better care of him.”

  “Oh Marilyn, please!”

  “OK. I should be done here soon.”

  “Thanks,” Sasha says. She doesn’t have a choice. Marilyn’s the only person she knows here, except for Delroy. Behind Sasha, Jimmy stirs; she just put him down so he should be good for an hour, but at three weeks you never know. “What time do you think?”

  “I already said! Two minutes.”

  At quarter to six Sasha opens the door and sticks her head out; why is she surprised that Marilyn’s not anywhere? She phones, but the phone is on the machine. Probably so she can come down here for a few minutes as she promised, to keep an eye on Jimmy, right? Just in the back getting her things, she tells herself. She’ll be down in just another minute.

  At six she is on borrowed time, pacing to the door and back every two or three minutes until on her last pass she sees Marilyn’s fat little boy kicking a soccer ball in the parking lot. Shameless, she opens the door wide and waves. “Hey, Delroy.”

  “Hey.”

  “You want an. Uh. A cruller?”

  In seconds, he is hers, sitting on the desk chair with his cheeks filled and his stubby legs sticking out. “It’s pretty old.”

  “It’s all I’ve got. Listen, do you know where your mother is?”

  “Momma? Yep, she’s up there with some guy but …” Ripping through the stale cruller he clears his mouth and says, “Oh, right, she said run down here and tell you she’ll be just a bitty minute.”

  “When was that?”

  “Before.”

  Behind her Jimmy stirs. If he wakes up now, what the hell is she going to feed him? If he starts crying he’ll spasm, she thinks, and go shooting off at both ends. “Delroy, I need a big favor.”

  That mean, narrow look: “I can’t.”

  “Ten dollars?”

  “You going at the mall?”

  She nods. Because he’s still weighing it she says, “Twenty.”

  “Plus Kentucky Fried Chicken,” Delroy says. “The bucket.”

  “Fine. I need you to stay here with the baby until your mama comes.”

  “Plus corn muffins,” he says. “And a quart of butter becan.”

  “Butter what? Oh, pecan.” Wallet, she thinks. Wallet and coupons on the formula and the Huggies. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. Don’t let anybody in and if anything happens, get your mother down here.” Car keys. Check the back window. Oh, don’t cry, Jimmy. Stay asleep and please don’t cry.

  “OK. And get me one of them apple pies,” he says. “And also too one of the cherry ones.”

  “Anything you want, but you take care of my baby, you hear?”

  Sasha is moving so fast now that she won’t see the little distortion of the face that’s supposed to be a smile but always goes awry. “Oh yes Ma’am.”

  “Until your mother comes,” she says, but she thinks to call Marilyn’s unit to seal the deal. With her hand over the mouthpiece she says, “And if you don’t do a good job I will murder you.”

  This time Marilyn picks up. She is flustered and breathing hard. Checking an imaginary watch. “Oooh sorry, it’s later than I thought. Be right down, I swear. Two minutes, tops.”

  In the Food King Sasha darts to the baby section and scores the necessaries, wishing she’d run into that nice guy from the other day; she needed a hand with the errands right now. Delroy expects brand name ice cream and brand name fried chicken. Well, he can go to hell. That nice guy. Did she imagine she saw his car in the Food King parking lot? Department of wishful thinking, right? Not eating makes you stupid and you start seeing things you only wish you saw. Another time she’d go back outside and scope the lot in case. Strange town, God knows she could use a friend, but she has to get back. Jimmy will be fine with Marilyn, but she’s worried all the same.

  Broad daylight, practically. Well, the end of it. Busy street, lots of traffic at the motel, customers in the diner, plenty of people around, Marilyn in the office pinning up her back hair and fluffing up her breasts under the flowered top before she tucks the master key in the cuff of her One Size Fits All knee-highs and ambles down to the Egan unit with her neck still flushed from good sex with the spring water supplier, her regular, and uses her master key because Marilyn is the manager and the manager doesn’t have to knock. Blowzy, sleek and confident she rolls in, letting the words spill into the room ahead of her, “Oh you sweet baby, you just come to Mama Marilyn, you sweet baby thing.”

  Marilyn won’t find the baby in Sasha’s room, nor will she find the neatly lettered card propped up on the bedside table; she isn’t that concerned. “Huh,” she says, backing out of the unit and closing the door, only slightly disappointed to find it empty. “She musta took him.” Love to pick up that sweet baby and snuggle him, a treat for him after that twitchy mother with her undersized front, but hey, it’s almost time for the Nightly News and she has other fish to fry. “All that fuss and she took him with her after all.”

  When Sasha gets back— it was only twenty minutes!— when Sasha gets back from the market with everything Jimmy needs and supermarket chicken and generic ice cream for Delroy, she won’t find the baby in her room either. She won’t find him up in the diner or propped up in the sand pit out back while Delroy digs for quarters, now that the rain has stopped. She won’t find him in the diner and she won’t find him in the manager’s office and she won’t find him kicking his pink mouse feet in the apartment upstairs with Marilyn tickling him on her quilted, ruffled bed. She won’t find him at all. The only thing she does find is a note that strikes instant paralysis even as it seals her into its own little prison and shuts off all the exits. Although she picks it up, she doesn’t see it, really. Rather, she sees but does not comprehend. Throwing it down, she runs outside shouting, “Delroy!”

  Block lettering in black ink on an index card, symmetrical, firm and oddly beautiful— who? That child, she thinks. Please let it be that fucking child:

  HE’S SAFE.

  TELL NO ONE.

  That fucking child, fobbing her off with a note. Like you think I won’t tell your mother on you. More angry than worried, she screams, “Delroy!”

  Four

  The Transaction

  iv.

  Poor baby!

  When Daria chose a father for her baby, she did not ask a poet. With her long history of alarms and distresses, her psychiatrist warned her not to get pregnant at all. She was too volatile. After all, he said, playing to her ego, aren’t you an artist? Validated, she beamed.

  An artist who will be remembered.

  The doctor frowned. “At what cost?”

  “I have to do this.” Daria’s eyes blazed. Why did she imagine a baby would free her work? “I need a child!” She was blocked; critics said her verse was pretty, but empty. What could possibly be missing? The answer came to her in a night vision. With a baby, she would soar. Nothing Dr. Furman said or did could stop her. She was herself again by that time, after the trouble at Yaddo— not such a bad breakdown, really, she was only a little tremulous, sobbing and gnawing her knuckles because the words wouldn’t come. Doctor, fragility is written into the job description, look at Emily Dickinson.

  From infancy Daria had it beaten into her: You are special. It is her job to measure up so, fine. Make me proud. She can, she is a poet. She will, Doctor, don’t you see? No more flameouts for Daria Starbird, let her out. Let poetry set souls on fire. Long after her body turns to ash her work will live, and, God, so will the baby you advised her not to have! In spi
te of her psychiatrists’ warnings she went ahead. She knew he’d have her wit and what was, back then, her beauty; a handsome face just like hers. Of course he’d be a boy. Her love and her solace, her muse and her best friend! She would be the shining center of his world, what more does any poet want? At the end he would be there to bring home her prizes, to collect her verse and edit her private papers, so the world would know how brilliant she was and how hard it had been. Life was untidy, her critics cruel, but never mind. With a baby to complete her, everything would come down the way it should.

  I am doing this for my work.

  To make sure she got pregnant, she went off her medication. Yes, doctor, I know what you are thinking, ,she wrote to Dr. Furman: words written to be read in classrooms long after she was gone. Great work comes out of volatile minds. Don’t worry. I will find a strong, capable father to take care of us.

  She began the search. The father would be older. Grounded in something practical, an organized, affluent, well made man who would love her above all. Let him look after her baby’s physical needs while she took custody of his soul. In the end she got neither. When she told Peter Gavian she was pregnant she thought he would be happy and honored. They were, after all, complementary, she and Peter. Rock and song bird. She was offering the man everything she had— her talent and his strength blended in a grand experiment, no strings, who wouldn’t be glad? Instead he wrote her a check and gave her hell for being so careless. Strange, within the week the oil company he worked for transferred him to the home office in Singapore.