Maybe Baby Page 8

  Rusty was sniffing around the basement, flipping lights on and off, when he heard the footsteps upstairs. The sound stopped him cold; he hovered in the shadow of the water heater.

  “Anybody home?” a man’s voice called from above. Rusty was almost relieved when he realized the voice belonged to Ray.

  “You start reading about all these crazies and you get spooked,” he told Ray upstairs in the kitchen. “It’s even got Judy all freaked out. She’s got this idea that we’ve had burglars in the house. She keeps bringing it up.”

  “Hmm,” Ray said. “Weird.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Rusty batted at the air around his head as if there were a swarm of flies following him, then opened the refrigerator and pulled out a six-pack. “Personal safety is such a mirage. We kid ourselves into thinking we’re safe, yet every day we cross roads, plug in hair dryers above sinks, you know? You’ve got to keep your head on straight.”

  “I can’t find Gretchen,” Ray blurted out then. “She’s taken off. I thought maybe she came here.”

  “Nawp,” Rusty said, leading Ray into the living room, where the midafternoon sun was highlighting dark stains in the rug. He took a moment to survey Ray’s baggy shorts and swishy cotton shirt, then handed him a beer. “Noticed your truck” was all he could think to say as he sank into the comfort of his chair. “Nice truck.”

  “Oh, it’s really Gretchen’s. She picked it out.” Ray popped the tab on his beer can and sipped gingerly from it.

  His hair had been professionally cut since the shower. It fell in thick flat feathers along the line of his jaw. Rusty couldn’t look at it without getting his hands out of the way, hiding them under his thighs like great manta rays. He felt a sharp twinge below his rib cage.

  “I’m surprised you’re home,” Ray said, casting glances around the living room as if Gretchen might be hiding behind a couch.

  “Sour stomach,” Rusty said. “Probably stress.”

  Ray nodded and rubbed his chin. “I could lend you some tapes on Zen,” he offered. “I’ve got one out in the truck.”

  Rusty ran a thumb back and forth across the upholstery on his armrest. “Maybe,” he said between sips of beer. “Maybe.”

  When she pulled onto Seeley Street, it took Judy several minutes to notice the red Ford pickup parked in front of her house. A pile of dirt by the drain spout caught her eye as she stepped out onto the drive. How long had that been there? Were there moles living under the yard again? Their neighbors, the Epcotts, had gone to such trouble last year to get rid of them.

  Judy heard men’s voices as she reached the screen door. She checked her watch. It was a quarter to four. Rusty wasn’t supposed to be home yet, and the other voice sounded uncannily like that of Gretchen’s boyfriend, Ray.

  Sure enough, she spotted his truck out front, and when she came into the house, she found the two of them in the living room, Rusty in his recliner with a Miller, Ray squatting by the tape deck. When they saw her, they both stood, Rusty struggling up from his chair, nudging an empty beer can under his seat with his big toe.

  “Gretchen’s disappeared,” he said quickly, hiking up his pants. He was still wearing his work shirt, but it was unbuttoned, swinging open to reveal his ribbed tee and pale chest hair, something Judy despised him for showing in front of company. “Ray’s here.” The words came out in a strangled-sounding slur. Then he pointed, as if she hadn’t noticed.

  Judy let her purse slide down her arm. “What do you mean, disappeared? Disappeared where?”

  “That’s the thing,” Ray said, stepping forward, looking shy. He was wearing a collarless white shirt and purple Birkenstocks. “I thought she might have come here. I got home late last night, and the apartment was empty.”

  “I know,” Judy said. “I was just down there. I tried knocking.”

  Ray looked perplexed. He tugged nervously at his beard with his thumb and forefinger. “You were just in Chicago?”

  “Whoa, whoa, wait a second,” Rusty bellowed, his body teetering. He steadied himself with a hand to the armrest. “I thought you were at work.”

  “Likewise,” Judy said, shooting him a scowl. She slipped off her shoes and sauntered into the kitchen. “I had a meeting with Hael,” she called over the shutters.

  “Yikes.” Ray emitted a nervous laugh.

  “Bring me whatever you’re having,” Rusty called to Judy. “I don’t know what the hell anyone is talking about.”

  “I’m just having water,” Judy said curtly. Her nerves were suddenly on edge. The water felt cool running over her fingers, reinstalling her sense of balance and composure. A glass of water, a glass of pure water, she often thought, was a great equalizer.

  “Great. Bring me some,” Rusty shouted.

  “I’d love a glass,” chirped Ray.

  Judy came in with three tall glasses, and the three of them stood in the center of the living room, gulping, sullen. Judy studied Ray’s feet, their hairy tops—like feet with toilet seat covers, she thought.

  “How late?” she asked.

  Ray raised an eyebrow, lowered his glass.

  “How late did you come home last night?” Her voice came out crisp and stern. She thumbed some dark beads at her throat.

  “I’m working on a major performance piece. I only have access to the stage at night,” Ray said. “I lost track of time.”

  “Oh, please.” The words slipped from Judy’s mouth, fluid, too easy.

  “Lighten up, Judy.” Rusty set a hand on her shoulder. “Ray’s very upset here.”

  “He doesn’t seem upset,” she snapped, setting her glass down on an end table. “I come home and you two are drinking beer.” She turned her gaze to Rusty. “Am I the only one around here concerned about our daughter’s welfare?”

  “Actually,” said Rusty, “Ray was about to play me a Zen tape.”

  Judy pursed her lips.

  “I’m heading out.” Ray raised his palms. “There’s really nothing to worry about.”

  Judy cocked her head to the side. “Your upstairs neighbor has children named after galaxies. They have no toys except for foam blobs, and you tell me not to worry?” She gave an uncharacteristic snort. “What’s to say Gretchen wasn’t kidnapped? I’ve seen Rosemary’s Baby.”

  “Mrs. Glide”—Ray pressed his hands together and bowed forward slightly—“we’re not like that.”

  “That’s what my son tried to tell me about the Hare Krishnas.”

  “Thank you for the water,” Ray said politely, crossing then to shake Rusty’s hand. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “Please,” Rusty said, seeing him to the door. Judy peeled off her stockings and curled up on the couch in a little ball. “Don’t say anything,” she said to Rusty. “Don’t say anything at all.”

  All evening Judy and Rusty moved through the house, pacing without pacing. Doors opened, ringing hollowly. Judy jumped any time she heard a noise that sounded remotely like a phone—when a car honked, when Rusty used the electric can opener on the cat food, when he went in and out of the garage. She felt alternately hot and cold. She could not escape the sense that, one by one, her children had disappeared. Leaving no forwarding addresses, they dissipated like mist and left Judy feeling that she had imagined them, that their births had been mere daydreams.

  Was this how their cat—Ivy—felt, Judy wondered, when her litter had been distributed among the neighbors? At least in Ivy’s case, the kittens still lived nearby. Donald and Celeste had taken one, the Epcotts another, and a young couple who had lived briefly across the street had adopted the third, Judy’s favorite. When the windows of all the houses were open during the summer, Ivy could at least hear her kin mewling. It wasn’t as if she’d lost track of them.

  Ivy scaled the back of the couch and jumped on Judy’s chest, kneading with thick gray paws, her low purr like an idling car. Judy wondered if Ivy ever felt depressed, if Ivy ever mourned.

  The bird clock in the kitchen let out its digital warble. Rusty was on his thi
rd Braunschweiger sandwich. He stood by the toaster, a knife at the ready. The tube of liverwurst looked disturbingly fleshlike—maybe it was just this batch, or maybe he’d just never noticed. It seemed distasteful suddenly, and he put it away. Tomorrow, he vowed, he’d start lifting weights.

  The light in Donald’s workshop was on next door, and through the kitchen window across the way, Rusty saw Celeste was still working. He could imagine the seagulls, the sound of the waves. He had a flash of what it would be like to be in Celeste’s body—mind serene, the world ahead full of happy little grandkids. She and Donald lived a life of easy rhythms, soothing surroundings. He looked over the shutters into his own living room, which had hardly changed since he and Judy had married—same soggy brown couch and paneled walls, same urn-shaped table lamps giving off mustardy glows, same round pleather footstools anchored to the dark carpet. It was like looking at an old forest, Rusty decided, slowly rotting, full of poisonous mushrooms.

  He closed his eyes and felt his way down the hall to the bedroom, crawling into the familiar sag of his bed. His belly glurped, audible above the sound of crickets. “Judy,” he called faintly, hoping for the sound of her feet in the hall, the smell of her hovering, but the house was still. Rusty rolled onto his side and let his gaze rest on the window, the white sill framing blue-black sky. The moon hung just below the curtain rod, a bleached curve of bone, a broken fragment floating.

  In the living room, Judy sat up on the couch, reading, the phone cord stretched across the carpet to the jack so that she wouldn’t miss a ring. She started a mystery, then hovered by the bookshelf, looking for something else—avoiding the book of baby names. Eventually, she relented and flipped through the dog-eared pages, now yellow, smiling to herself as she came across names she’d once highlighted. Myrtle. Had she really considered Myrtle? There were twenty or so names she’d underlined in red pen—the ink had bled into a smudgy pink over time. Forrest, Casper, Lowell, Dustin, Mariah, Penelope, Jeanette. She had spent hours going through names, trying them out around the house under the noise of other noises. “Casper, Casper, Casper,” she’d repeat as she vacuumed. “Lowell, come here, Lowell,” she’d mutter under her breath as she washed dishes. “Jeanette, just stop it,” she’d say sternly, flipping on the garbage disposal.

  For her first pregnancy, Judy presented Rusty with her perfect name at dinner one night. “Forrest Lowell,” she had announced. Rusty had looked up, giving her a one-eyed stare. “Who’s that?” She presented the name again with all the conviction of a woman in a commercial, selling scouring powder or instant pudding. “Forrest Lowell, that’s the name if we have a boy,” she’d said brightly, smiling with all her teeth. Forrest Lowell had instantly been shot down by Rusty, who deemed the name too state-parkish. “Henry,” he’d said over his pork chop. “Henry is clean-cut, sensible—we’ll get a lot of mileage out of a strong American name like that.”

  And so Henry it was, Henry Buck. All of Judy’s rigorous testing and on-site application were for naught. Though the name Henry Buck Glide appeared on the birth certificate, Judy had reserved her own special name for when she was alone with her baby. From time to time, she would whisper, “Hello, little Forrest Lowell.”

  By the time her second child was due, Judy waited to announce the name she’d been rolling around on her tongue until she and Rusty were in the car on the way to the hospital. “You got to name the last one,” she told Rusty gently, “now this one is mine.” She’d closed her eyes to let a contraction pass, then said proudly, regally, as she stared straight ahead at the sunshine beating on the dash, “Constantine Wilhelm”—a name so fabulous, so gallant-sounding it made her shudder.

  The brakes squealed, and Rusty turned to her and told her she could get out and walk to the hospital if she thought he was going to raise a son with a name that sounded more like a fancy chicken dish than a little boy.

  And so their second son, born just after midnight, was named Carson, after the man who had parted the rainbow-lit curtains and brought Rusty back to life after a long day in the waiting room: Carson Jonathan Glide. “Here’s Johhhhny,” Rusty liked to say when he held Carson as a baby, chuckling to himself. Judy had only frowned.

  With her third pregnancy, Judy had been resigned about a name. Her only hope was that if she had a girl Rusty would not name her after his mother, Clematis—an unwieldy pessimist who had passed away that winter after neglecting to go to the doctor for pneumonia, insisting that she could cure herself with plenty of hot onion juice. If Rusty pushed the name Clematis, Judy had decided she would suggest a different kind of creeper: Ivy, Ivy Jane. But Rusty had solemnly presented the name Gretchen—a random and unexpected gift. And Judy had stowed the name Ivy away for a cat, and when that cat had kittens, she got her Forrest, her Lowell, and a Constantine Wilhelm, the runt.

  At 4 AM, Judy was still awake. Through a slit in the living room curtains, she could see the old woman across the street waiting for the paperboy. The drapes were drawn, and the woman sat in her living room, smoking, a miniature dachshund lying beside her in the rift of the couch cushions. From time to time, the woman went to the kitchen to refill her coffee, then came back, sat down, crossed her legs, checked her watch. Judy had never observed the routine, but she had heard the story from other neighbors. Early risers like Donald knew all the neighborhood rhythms.

  Two years back—or maybe three—the house across the street had been for sale. A young couple with a baby had moved in and sent for the grandmother, who at that time lived in Tucson or Santa Fe, somewhere south. Judy had watched the old woman wheel the baby up and down the block, day after day, while the parents were away at work, and Judy had often smiled to herself at the arrangement, which seemed harmonious enough, though the family was never friendly or keen to visit with the neighbors.

  Then, as quietly as they had come, the couple moved out, leaving the grandmother in their wake. She never closed her blinds and rarely left the house. All day she thumbed through the paper—smoked, drank coffee—and in the evening, by the light of the TV, she could be observed eating her supper on a little foldout tray, unraveling a great pile of sweaters in between slow bites. She had a whole box of them, and from time to time, she would take the recycled yarn and knit it into other shapes—little hats, scarves. Her dachshund had a marvelous trove of walking vests.

  Judy watched the woman light another cigarette and was swept up in the loneliness of the scene, the loneliness of being up at 4 AM in a dark house, clocks ticking, the moon still a numb drop in the summer sky. And slowly, Judy began to move through the house, running her fingertips along the wallboards as she drifted down the hall, feeling—in her long nightgown—like a ghost in her own house.

  From the doorway of the master bedroom, she observed Rusty sleeping, a bump on the bed, the white spread rising and falling with his breath. His leather slippers lay scattered across the carpet. His pajama bottoms were in a heap by the nightstand, like shed skin. Pale light seeped through the sheers.

  Even though the room was just as it had always been, it seemed impossible that she had ever slept there. The cherry headboard and the painting of The Blue Boy mounted above it seemed both familiar and foreign, in a way that made her uncomfortable. Was it possible, she wondered, entering the room, touching her hand to the corner of the bed, that all three of her children had been conceived here? It had been so long ago, yet the same bud vase had been on the dresser, many of the same clothes in her closet. She ran a hand across the row of sleeves, watched them ripple like water lilies.

  The air was heavy with moisture from a humidifier Rusty kept at the foot of the bed. This must be sort of what it’s like to be in a womb, Judy thought, curling up for a moment next to Rusty on her old side of the mattress. She fingered the silk cord that ran along the lapels of her robe and imagined it was an umbilicus. She seemed to float above the room. Nothing in here mattered to her anymore; she felt no connection—not even to her trunk in the corner, filled with family treasures (her mother’s rings
, her good linens, her wedding dress), not even to Rusty, who lay next to her, warm, softly snoring.

  From the kitchen, the tufted titmouse chirped five. The paper was probably on the front stoop now if she cared to read it. Mostly she just skimmed obituaries for interesting names and clipped coupons she rarely used, an old habit. Judy raised her head off the pillow and looked at Rusty’s sloping form huddled under the blanket, his face just barely peeking out. His forehead twitched; he scrunched up his nose. Judy wondered if he was aware of her, if he was faking sleep. It had been so long since she had watched him this closely, she no longer knew his patterns.

  Earlier tonight, she had longed to be close to him. But he was preoccupied, sitting in one of his cars again. She didn’t know why he didn’t just move out to the garage. Sometimes she envisioned that when he got old, he might just retire in a grand sedan and live like one of those people who have trash crammed up to the back window and spilling into the passenger seat. He could keep a little TV on the dash and open the glove compartment to make a tray table when he wanted to eat. If he backed the car into the garage, he could use the garage door as a front curtain, raise it every morning to watch people all along the street as long as he pleased.

  At times like these, Judy fantasized about living in her own apartment, everything around her familiar and in its place, no surprises, all her secrets out in the open. She pictured a quaint one-bedroom like the one Gretchen had taken during college, a place with nice molding and built-in bookshelves and a fireplace with a detailed mantel. There, she might finally have some anonymity, coming and going without the sense of being watched, a feeling that had prevailed ever since Carson disappeared.