Hush Little Baby Read online

  It was clear that this was not a doll.

  With no warning, its little chest heaved. It made a croaky sound, not the soft coo Kit would have expected. More like a frog. Its little back arched, and its miniature feet pressed down on Kit’s waist, not as if the baby were trying to stand, but as if a convulsion were coming on.

  Kit was terrified. What was she supposed to do?

  What if it died? What was that horrible thing babies got, that sudden infant death thing? How did you know? Should she call an ambulance? Why was its little chest jerking around, both getting air and not getting air?

  “Come on, baby, take a good breath. You can do it,” she crooned, hoping that babies did not sense fear the way attack dogs did.

  The baby breathed deeply. Its little head sagged so fast that Kit had to catch it in her palm, so it wouldn’t snap off. It seemed to lose its spine, and turned into a Beanie Baby, all sag and no bone.

  Kit felt the same.

  Cradling the baby very carefully, so it would not notice that anything was happening and react by suffocating itself, Kit walked into the family room. Here the decorator had gone huge: huge furniture, huge shelves, huge jugs and baskets, and a huge collection of duck decoys, although Dad had certainly never hunted a duck. Dad hunted movie concepts.

  The wall of windows was high above the seventeenth hole, with a view of water hazards, artfully planted trees, and a sweet little curve of bridge. If a golfer was going to behave badly and swear at his game, it was here.

  To Kit’s right was a stretch of long thin glass cabinets — the romantic British butler look that some people might refer to as a kitchen. Dad did not cook. He hardly ever had food around. If Kit stayed over here more than a day or two, Mom packed a picnic basket. Sometimes she would send a thermos of Dad’s favorite coffee, which was when Kit wanted to know why they hadn’t just stayed married, and Mom wanted to know why Kit had to bring that up again, and it took all Kit’s self-control not to develop an attitude.

  Anyway, Dad was an eating-out kind of guy, so the room was not really a kitchen, but just an extension of the family room that happened to have appliances and sinks.

  The baby stirred. Its little face stretched out of shape and its body quivered, as if on the verge of a sneeze, and then it sank back with a burble and slept with its tiny mouth open.

  Kit was already exhausted and she had not been in charge of this baby for two minutes.

  She didn’t think the baby was literally a newborn. It didn’t have the wrinkled, red, rashy look of being brand-new. It looked softer and a little rounded, as if it had had a week or two to get used to the world. But Kit doubted the baby was as old as one month.

  She balanced the tiny body in the crook of her left arm, and with her right hand she spread the flannel blanket across the middle portion of the sofa. The decorator had chosen a leather couch, dyed hunter green to give it a British library look, crusted with brass studs. Kit lowered the baby into the dip of the sofa, where the seat met the back, so the baby could not roll over and fall off. Although it looked like an awfully young baby for knowing how to roll.

  The moment it left the warmth of her arm, the baby woke up.

  Its eyes opened so wide that Kit giggled, and the baby stared not at her, the source of the giggle, but straight up, as if its eyes didn’t go left and right yet. It gurgled, a much sweeter sound than the frog croaks. Its feet began to wave, as if the baby thought feet were hands.

  Kit’s father was very big on photographs. Perhaps it was his Hollywood attitude, or perhaps all fathers are big on photographs of their children. By Kit’s estimate, Dad had taken a million snapshots of her, and a thousand movies. Dad believed every event, no matter how minor, must be immortalized. He still photographed her at the airport, arriving and departing, each and every visit she made to him in California. Fearful that he would miss a minute of her life, he handed a pack of cameras to Mom and Malcolm whenever he left New Jersey for a longer stretch than usual.

  Dad had a collection of very impressive, very expensive cameras, but everybody else was afraid of them. There was too much adjusting to do, and too much fear of breakage or loss. So for years now, he’d been buying disposable cameras by the dozen and ordering people to use them in his absence. So, sitting on the counter in the unused kitchen was a stack of cameras, all still in their bright yellow cardboard boxes.

  Now the baby was waving all four limbs, giving it more in common with upside-down turtles than with humans. Kit opened a camera, peeled away the foil, and took a flash photo. And because she had been brought up to believe in quantity, she took five more. Whatever angle she used, the baby was adorable.

  She had been afraid of the baby to start with, because it was so little and so unexpected. But now she saw that the baby was beautiful. Even though the baby seemed fine lying in the slant of the sofa, Kit had to pick it up again. She nuzzled its face and tummy. “Go back to sleep, little sweetie,” she crooned. “Mommy will be back in a minute, Mommy will be —”

  And then she thought:

  How do I know Dusty will be back in a minute?

  For that matter, how do I know Dusty is the mommy?

  Chapter 3

  DUSTY DROVE AWAY WITH good intentions. She had a mental list of things that must be accomplished swiftly and in the proper order.

  But handing the baby to Kit was such a relief.

  Babies were enormously difficult. You could think of nothing else.

  And Dusty was accustomed to thinking of her own body, not some little twenty-inch, eight-pound body. (She’d had a cat that size once, but the cat took care of himself. The baby, now — it most definitely would not take care of itself. It had not once slept more than two hours at a time, and sometimes it slept only ten minutes!)

  She had gotten quite cross with the baby for refusing to sleep during the night. And not only did it stay awake, it would not lie peacefully in the little bassinet at the motel room. It whined and whimpered and croaked. Some nights not even picking the baby up and rocking and cuddling it would soothe it. Sometimes it just kept on crying.

  It was so annoying to be backed into a corner. Dusty liked a world where all the choices were hers. She was determined to make this work out her way, no matter who got stubborn and difficult.

  The rental car drove smoothly, and she found a nice calm radio station and listened to nice calm music. That was boring, so she found hard rock, and began dancing her arms and shoulders to the music. She had ten pounds to lose! The weight horrified Dusty. Having a baby was not good for your figure. Or your stamina. Or your complexion. Or anything that Dusty could tell.

  She drove past the turn she’d meant to take.

  She noticed it half a mile later.

  Dusty had found that if she looked hard enough, she could always see that things were meant. Now she realized that Kit, who never went to her father’s house when Gavin was in California, had been brought to the house just to help her, Dusty. It was meant for Kit to be standing in the door just when Dusty expected the house to be empty. So it was meant for Kit to take care of the baby.

  And who could be better at such a task?

  Kit had her father’s strong will and decisive manner (and none of her mother’s unfriendly attitude). Kit was terribly reliable.

  Dusty kept driving.

  The sky was so blue and the sun so yellow and the day so warm.

  She thought, I deserve some time to myself. I didn’t ask things to work out like this, and it’s way too hard. I’ve been struggling with this baby and this situation for seventeen days now. I will get my hair done and have a facial, and I’ll charge an outfit that fits, so I don’t feel fat. Something with style, maybe in that new shade of plum, and then I’ll go to the aromatherapist. I need to lavish attention on myself for a change. It just isn’t good for you to give up all your space and energy. You must take time for yourself.

  Dusty felt better. She loved thinking of her Self, which felt like a person zapped inside her, whom she could ad
mire and be glad about. But not when her hair was nasty and her stomach sagged and she had been up all night with a baby who would not improve.

  Once her hair was done, she would face her problems. You could do anything if your hair looked good. Kit was lucky, her hair always looked good.

  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.

  “W
hat’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.