Pretty Baby: A Gripping Novel of Psychological Suspense

by Mary Kubica

  “What’s that for?” I asked, watching as she removed a course of earrings from her ear: an angel’s wings, a cross, red lips.

  “It’ll only hurt for a second,” she replied and with that I held the baby while she thrust that pin through my ear and set the earring inside the swollen lobes. I screamed, squeezing the baby unintentionally, and Ruby, she screamed, too.

  We tossed the empty bottles of hair dye into the trash and then the girl pulled me close, streaking eyeliner across my eyes. I’d never worn makeup before, nothing other than a hint of pale pink rouge Momma swept across my cheeks every now and then. I looked at myself in the filmy mirror: the hair, the earring, the dark mysterious eyes.

  The reflection that stared back was anything but mine.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, slipping the eyeliner into my pocket, the pocket of that green coat that used to be hers. And then she took a pair of scissors to my hair. I didn’t object. I held very still, watching in the mirror as she snipped erratic strands from my head. “You know,” she confessed, tossing the wet clumps of hair to the bathroom tile, “I used to want to be a beautician.”

  I stared at my reflection and thought it best that she was not. My mop was misshapen: longer on one side than the other, lanky bangs that hid my eyes.

  “My mother was a beautician,” I said, then wondered what Momma would think of me now. Would she be disappointed in me, or would she see that I was doing what needed to be done? I was taking good care of Lily, just like I told her I would. “My name is Claire.”

  “Claire?” she asked and I nodded my head. “Claire what?”

  Her own reddish hair she’d dyed dirty blond. She took the scissors to her hair, too, and on the dingy floor the strands coalesced.

  “Claire Dalloway.”

  She tossed it all in the trash: the scissors, the safety pin, what she could collect of the hair from that floor. She opened her own bag and dumped its guts into the bin: a torn magazine, an ID, a half-eaten bag of Skittles, a phone. And then she reached inside the black garbage bag and snatched the Skittles, having changed her mind. The rest she left behind.

  The girl was standing in the bathroom, hand on the door. Someone on the other side knocked, a heavy, thumping blow. “Hang on,” she snapped, and then, to me, “I’m Willow,” she said, “Willow Greer,” and I knew after she left that bathroom, I’d never lay eyes on her again.

  “I’ll meet you at the bus,” she fudged, and with that, I hoisted the slipping baby onto a hip and watched my former self walk out the yellowing veneer door and into the gas station, past a line of waiting women who’d lost their patience.

  She wasn’t on the bus when I returned.

  HEIDI

  She’ll have nothing to do with the bottle.

  I try again and again to set the formula-filled bottle into Juliet’s mouth, but she’ll have nothing to do with it. I press my lips to her forehead; it’s cool. No fever. I change her diaper and attempt a pacifier, I spread diaper rash cream onto a healed rash, but nothing will do, nothing will soothe my child.

  And it’s in the way that she nuzzles her nose into the black crepe dress that the answer comes to me, the answer, utterly simple: that one thing only a mother can provide.

  I sit down in the rocking chair and, reaching behind me with a single arm, begin to unfasten the mismatched buttons up my back, sliding my arms out of the dress so that before Juliet, I am exposed. Nothing she hasn’t seen before, I think, recalling those nights in my mind that I sat down with Juliet, in the sleigh glider in the nursery with its pale pink walls and damask sheets, and pressed her to my breast so she could drink her fill, until her hunger eased and she drank herself asleep, her eyes slowly becoming too heavy to hold open, and there, in the nursery, with only the glow of the moon to keep us company, my Juliet would suckle until she drifted to sleep. I recall the way she would slurp insatiably at times, staring at me with her huge brown anime eyes as if I was the best thing in the world, her eyes filled to the brim with love and awe. Love and awe for me.

  But Juliet, I’m noticing, eyeing the child before me, Juliet’s eyes are blue.

  It’s no matter, I tell myself, knowing how babies’ eyes can change on a dime. Brown one minute, blue the next, and yet there’s something different about it, about those eyes, about the way they stare at me.

  I place my breast beside Juliet’s mouth, and watch in admiration as she locates the nipple, and as she latches on, I find it all so familiar, the tingling sensation in my breast, the release of oxytocin that fills me with a sense of calm. I run a hand across my Juliet’s head and whisper, “There now, pretty baby,” as I watch for the rhythmic sucking and swallowing action, for the big brown eyes to stare at me with awe. Love. Wanting me and only me.

  But instead there is exasperation in those eyes, those blue eyes that look at me untrustingly, as if I’ve pulled a fast one on her, before she begins to cry. I slide a finger between her mouth and my breast, and attempt to reposition her, certain that she hasn’t latched on correctly. I try cradling her in either arm, and offer milk from either breast; and then, when this doesn’t work, I move Juliet and myself to the couch, where I lie on my back, with her sprawled across my chest: biological nurturing, or so it’s called, the way nature prescribed. Just as my lactation consultant, Angela, suggested I do when Zoe had trouble nursing.

  I think of my lactation consultant, of Angela, of how I will phone her for advice if this doesn’t work. And Angela will come as she always used to do, and she will help position Juliet so that she will eat; she will once again explain to me breast compression to increase milk flow, and before I know it Juliet will suckle as she used to do.

  And then there’s a sound in the hallway, footsteps that are loud and impatient, and I curse Jennifer, sneaking into my building again when someone was coming or going, not even bothering, this time, to buzz the intercom or call my cell. Trespassing, I think, wondering where I’ve left my Swiss Army knife.

  I lie on the couch, with my black crepe dress pulled down to my waist, and Juliet, floundering like a fish out of water, on my chest, about to scream.

  There’s no time to escape into the recesses of my bedroom for a place to hide before Juliet lets out a bloodcurdling scream and the front door flings open, and I see him, standing on the other side of the wooden door, staring at my attire, the black dress, the streaks of makeup dried to my skin.

  His mouth formed in the perfect loop, his eyebrows raised in question.

  His hair stands on end, in a jumble, as my heart beats fast, the room spinning laps around me. Juliet is screaming into my ear, her fitful body becoming hard to hold.

  Not Jennifer at all.

  But Chris.

  WILLOW

  That bus dropped us off in Chicago, the baby and me. Ruby, I reminded myself as I stepped out of the station and onto a bustling city street. It was cold outside, and windy. The Windy City, I called to mind, thinking of those days in the Omaha library with Matthew, looking up Chicago in the pages of the books.

  I’d never seen anything like Chicago in my whole entire life. There were people everywhere. Cars and buses, buildings that soared into the clouds. Skyscrapers, I told myself, knowing now where they got that name. I turned and over my shoulder I saw it: a building with antennas that scraped the sky. It had to be a hundred floors or more, that building, twice as high—three times as high!—as any of those buildings in Omaha had been.

  It didn’t take long to figure out I had nowhere to go. People stared at me, and it wasn’t a stare that was kind or concerned, but mean, judgmental, uncaring. I hid at first, the baby and me, in whatever dark alley we could find, leaned up against mildewed brick buildings, beside doors that were locked and barred. There were smelly garbage bins and Dumpsters down those alleys, and sometimes there were rats. I spent my days sitting on concrete—wet from the rain—staring up at the steel grating of the fire escapes. And hiding. I was certain they were coming for us, that Paul and Lily Zeeger were coming, that J
oseph was coming. But it occurred to me then, after a day or two, that with all those people there in Chicago, there was no way they were ever gonna find me, no way at all.

  And Joseph, well, Joseph was still dead.

  And then, when I wasn’t worrying about the Zeegers coming for me, or Joseph, I was worrying about other stuff: what to eat and where to sleep, for the money Matthew had given me was all but gone. It was cold out there, cold during the day, cold during the night, the wind making it hard sometimes to walk in a straight line. It took me only a night, maybe two, to figure out how I’d have to forage in the garbage for food, after restaurants tossed their leftovers in the trash at closing time. I’d hover in the alley where they couldn’t see—just waiting, begging the baby to keep quiet—and then I’d pick through the Dumpster for something to eat. I saved whatever money I had left for the baby, for Ruby, for her bottles of formula.

  I was scared, for about a million and one reasons, but the thing that scared me the most was that something might happen to that baby, something bad. I didn’t want to hurt her. I was only doing what needed to be done, I reminded myself time and again when the baby spent the night in a fuss, screaming till she cried herself to sleep.

  I liked Chicago, I did. I liked the buildings and the anonymity of it, the fact that no one in the world was going to find me there, in the Windy City. But it was the train that delighted me the most, that train that soared over the city streets, and then down, down, down underground. I spent nearly all my money on one of those train passes, so that Ruby and I could ride the train as much as we pleased. The “L” I heard someone or other call it, and I had to remind myself “L” when my brain started mixing it up with every other letter of the alphabet: R, P, Q. When the day was cold or rainy, or we were otherwise bored, we’d climb on the train, the baby and me, and ride.

  I realized quickly that there was a library there along the brown line of that train. It said so right on the map: Library. I was pretty sure it was an omen, a sign.

  I climbed up the steps to the train platform one cold, rainy April day after we’d been in the city a week, maybe two. I had that baby tucked up inside my coat to keep her dry and warm. And we waited there, on that platform, beside men and women with too-big umbrellas and their briefcases and bags. They stared, they pointed fingers, they whispered. About the baby. About me. I looked away, pretended not to notice, letting my hair fall into my eyes so I couldn’t see the way they stared, the way they pointed.

  The first train that came, it was too crowded. I didn’t like the crowds, being so close to strangers that I could smell their perfume, their shampoo; being so close that they could smell my stench, days upon days of body odor and sweat, of the sour smell of spoiled milk and seafood that drifted from the garbage by which we slept, enfolding the baby and me in a noxious stench.

  And so I told the baby we’d wait, we’d wait for another one. And I stood there, watching as everyone else climbed on board, not a single one of them paying me the time of day.

  But then I saw it: a woman hesitated a split second before boarding that train, the only person in the whole entire city of Chicago who’d ever hesitated for me. But then she, too, climbed on board that train and out the window she stared, at the baby and me, though I looked away, my eyes like stone, pretending that I couldn’t see.

  That next brown line train that came by, I got on, being hurled through Chicago and toward the library, a great big redbrick building in the heart of the city, its green roof spotted with winged creatures that kept watch over me. But I wasn’t scared.

  I didn’t think I’d ever see that woman again.

  But then I did.

  CHRIS

  I’m utterly speechless, my mouth hanging open, my tongue unable to produce words. Heidi lays on her back on the living room sofa, completely topless, some black dress I’ve never seen before pushed down beneath her chest. Her hair is in shambles, some kind of updo that has since come undone. Makeup dribbles down her face: dark eyeliner I’ve never seen my wife wear, dark lipstick that’s smeared everywhere. The baby is screaming, out of control, and I have to remind myself that Heidi would never hurt that baby.

  Heidi loves babies.

  And yet I’m not so sure.

  I glance around our home, taking in the emptiness, entirely aware that the door to my office—to Willow’s aka Claire’s—room is sealed shut. “Heidi,” I say then as I cautiously let myself into my own home and close the door, “where is Willow?”

  I whisper in case Claire is there, hiding behind the closed door with a knife. I tell myself that Claire has done this, that Claire has rendered my wife topless, the baby frantic. And yet there are no restraints, no belts or cuffs binding Heidi to the couch.

  My words come out unsteady, without rhythm. I don’t even know how they manage to emerge. My throat is dry, like sand; my tongue feels like it’s grown to two times its size. An image of Cassidy Knudsen half-naked haunts me, alternating places with an image of a man and a woman stabbed to death in their bed.

  “Heidi,” I say again, and I see then, the way that she presses that baby to her chest. Heidi would never hurt that baby, I remind myself again, paralyzed by the scene before me, trying to figure out what the hell is going on. And then it comes to me, all of a sudden, what it is that Heidi’s trying to do. My God!

  My heart stops beating altogether; I lose the ability to breathe.

  Suddenly I’m bounding across the room, fully prepared to snatch that baby from Heidi’s hands.

  Heidi rises to her feet all of a sudden, before I can catch her, clutching the baby like it’s hers. I think of that birthmark on the baby’s leg. The doctor said we really might want to have it removed, she’s said. She and me. Like it was our baby they were talking about. Our baby.

  This was never about Willow, I realize then and there, that sudden, obsessive desire Heidi had to help some homeless girl she’d seen on the train.

  This was about the baby.

  And suddenly I’m not worried about Willow—Claire—hiding out on the other side of the office door; I’m worried Heidi has done something to hurt the girl.

  “Where’s Willow?” I ask again, standing a foot, maybe two, shy of Heidi and the baby. And then again, when she doesn’t answer, “Where’s Willow, Heidi?”

  Heidi’s voice is flat, nearly impossible to hear thanks to the baby. But I read her lips anyway, the simple proclamation: “She’s gone.”

  Wake up, wake up, wake up! my mind screams, certain this is only the aftereffects of last night’s drinking binge. Certainly this can’t be real.

  “She’s gone,” I repeat more to myself than Heidi, and then, “Where?” And a dozen possibilities float through my head, a dozen possibilities that scare the shit out of me, each one worse than the next.

  But Heidi doesn’t answer the question.

  The baby struggles in her arms. I grab a blanket from the arm of a chair and try to hand it to Heidi, to get her to cover up. “Give me the baby,” I say to my wife, and then, when she shakes her head and backs farther and farther away—toward the bay window, stepping on a cat’s tail in the middle of retreat—a compromise: “Just let me hold Ruby so you can fix your dress,” I suggest, unprepared for the impetuousness that takes over Heidi’s obliging brown eyes. Her eyes look demented, her skin flaming red.

  And then she begins to scream.

  Her words come out deranged, like some head case you’d see on TV. Illogical terms that oddly make sense to me. There are words: baby and Juliet. Juliet. She must say that word a dozen times or more: Juliet.

  She’s pissed that I called that baby Ruby. The baby is not Ruby, Heidi reminds me: she’s Juliet. But no, I think recalling the article Martin Miller sent to me; this baby is not Ruby nor Juliet.

  This baby is Calla.

  “Heidi,” I say. “This baby is...”

  “Juliet,” she snaps again and again and again. “Juliet!” she screams, frightening the baby all the more.

  I can hardly place
the name, it’s so far flung from memory. And yet it’s there, in bits and pieces. Heidi—years ago—lying on a hospital bed, cloaked in a hospital gown and tears; Heidi flushing her contraceptives, pill by pill down the john, pretending not to cry.

  But now she’s calling me names: liar and murderer and thief. She doesn’t mean to, I know she doesn’t, and yet she’s squeezing that baby unintentionally, and the baby is crying—howling like a wolf at the goddamn moon—and Heidi is crying, too, tears that flow down her cheeks like water down a drain.

  “You’re mistaken,” I say, as gently as I can. Heidi has convinced herself that the baby, that this baby, is the one she lost eleven years ago to cancer. And I could explain the idiocy of this—the fact that that baby is dead, the fact that if that baby were still alive, he or she would be eleven years old—but I realize all too clearly that the woman standing before me is not my wife.

  I step forward and reach my hands out to the baby, but Heidi snatches her away. “This baby, Heidi. This baby is not...” and I could go on, but I don’t. I’m terrified by the unstable look in her eyes, of what she might do to that baby. Not intentionally. Heidi would never hurt a baby, not intentionally anyway.

  And yet I don’t know.

  “Just let me hold the baby,” I say, and then to appease her, “just let me hold Juliet.” And I’m thinking of all the things I should have done when we lost that baby. I should have consoled her more, I think; that’s what I should have done. I should have taken her to a shrink as her ob-gyn said to do. Among other things.