Crossing the Line

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  Besides, he was a man. How in touch with his feelings did I expect him to be? How up-front, how articulate?

  Heh. A damned sight more in touch, up-front and articulate than me, which was why I was scared to death to ask the questions that needed asking, to hear the answers he needed to give. It was damned selfish of me, and I knew it, but I just wasn’t ready.

  “Yes, well,” I said, rising, unable to meet his eyes, “it’s been a tough season for everybody.”

  I continued taking Emma on the tour I’d begun earlier.

  “This is the bathroom, but I don’t suppose you’ll be needing that just yet either. Still, I guess you’ll be due for a bath eventually. I wonder how…? Oh, don’t you worry, I’m sure we’ll work it out. And this is my bedroom. Now, then…”

  I stopped.

  “Tolkien?”

  “Yes?”

  “Where’s she going to sleep? I don’t have a cot or anything.”

  “We’ll get a cradle later on today. Babies don’t like big cots. They get lost in there.”

  “But where will we get a cradle on Christmas Day? No one will be open.”

  He smiled, flashed his Scotland Yard C.I.D. ID my way. “Someone will open,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  I looked around my bedroom. “I know!” I said, opening a dresser drawer.

  “Uh, no,” Tolkien said, gently taking Emma from me.

  “But…?”

  “Emma’s not sleeping her first official sleep here in a dresser drawer.”

  “Then where?”

  “She’ll sleep with us, of course,” he said, settling down on the edge of the bed.

  “You mean you’ll stay?”

  “Right now? Of course. I wouldn’t leave you alone on your first day.”

  “Because you don’t trust me to know what I’m doing? Because I might put her in the drawer?”

  “Because you’d get scared. And lonely.”

  He was right, as usual.

  We lay down on the bed, Emma between us.

  I would have thought we’d both fall asleep in a second, given that we’d been up nearly twenty-four hours at that point.

  But we didn’t sleep, couldn’t sleep.

  We were both too scared that if we did, we’d roll over on her.

  “What if we fell asleep and she cried and we didn’t hear her?” I whispered.

  “We’d hear her,” he whispered back. “We’re right here.”

  “What if she cries and I don’t know what she wants? You know, she and I don’t speak the same language, at least not yet.”

  “You’ll learn. Check if she’s wet, check if she’s hungry. If it’s neither, just hold her close so she can feel your heart beat.”

  “What if she grows up to hate me?”

  “Well, of course she’ll do that. They all do. The big question is always—When will it start and how long will it last? But you don’t have to worry about that for at least another ten years.”

  “What if she doesn’t like it here?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “No.”

  “She’s going to love it here.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. Then, “Why will she love it?”

  “Because you’re a lunatic.”

  Well, there was that. At least he smiled when he said it.

  And one last question, the question that had been on my mind since I’d found her and instantly fell in love with her.

  “What if they won’t let me keep her?”

  New Year’s Day, night

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  I’d fallen asleep on the sofa, but I woke to the pounding on my door. Looking at my watch, I saw that it was still just 7:00 p.m., New Year’s Day.

  Bam! Bam! Bam! The pounding came again. And then a familiar voice: “Jane!” David yelled. “Open up!”

  I unlocked the door to find David and Christopher there, suitcases at their feet.

  David’s never been very tall, but just now he looked like he could take on Goliath and win. His Israeli skin was even darker after the time in Greece, his black hair just as curly as ever. As for Christopher, it still surprised me after all this time that he wasn’t a blonde. He was such a blonde, in personality at least. And yet he wasn’t. He was like a second David, which was not a bad thing but always startling.

  During David’s first months with Christopher, there had been some territorial prickliness between us; my fault, really. But as I’d come to realize just how much my best friend was in love with this new person who had come on the scene, I’d eventually learned to develop a healthy, if still sometimes grudging, respect for his position in our world. As for David himself, he’d always not only been my best friend, he’d been my best family too, my best supporter, and certainly my best conscience.

  Apparently, David and Christopher hadn’t even taken a moment to drop their things upstairs first.

  “What are you doing back a day early?” I asked, holding the door open as David rushed in, looking worried, a bit frantic. Christopher, as usual, moved at a less hurried pace, sauntering in behind.

  “What do you mean, what am I doing back early?” David asked. “You sent a message that you had big news.”

  “Yes, but you’re supposed to still be in Greece. Didn’t you like it this time?”

  “Oh, you know Greece,” he said. “It was soooo Greece.”

  “What was wrong with it?” I asked. “Too much pita for your culinary taste?”

  “The streets were literally paved with the stuff,” he scowled. “It was like negotiating a minefield made out of dough.”

  “He’s exaggerating, of course,” yawned Christopher, plopping down on the sofa where I’d recently been snoring. “It was absolutely heaven. But once your message arrived…”

  “…saying you had big news,” put in David.

  “…he could no longer relax,” continued Christopher.

  “So here we are!” said David.

  “I really could have used another day at the beach,” Christopher said.

  “There will be other times. So—” David turned to me, all Israeli overenergy “—what is your big news, Jane?”

  “Waa!” came the tiny cry from my bedroom.

  That tiny, well-timed cry even roused Christopher from his lethargy. There were four eyebrows raised in that living room, none of which were mine.

  “Do you think you might keep it down to a less-than-shout?” I whispered, myself remembering Emma for the first time. Well, it really does take time to adjust to a new baby if you’ve never had one in the house before, even if it does seem as though they take over every instant of your very being, which would make you think you’d by necessity get used to it faster but you don’t.

  “Wha—?” asked David.

  The crying had already stopped. Emma would do that sometimes: cry for the briefest of moments, as if she’d been awakened for a second and instantly wondered, “Just how the hell did I wind up with her?” But then she would fall right back to sleep again.

  “Come on,” I said, still whispering, gesturing for them to follow me into the bedroom.

  I didn’t turn on the light, allowing the light from the room beyond to be sufficient.

  We all looked down at her, sleeping in the blue and white fine-print floral cradle that had been all I’d been able to find on instant you-have-a-baby-on-Christmas-Day notice.

  After a long moment, David spoke, still gazing on that sleeping face, tiny cap on her head to keep her warm. But unlike everyone else, he didn’t ask me where I’d found her or what I planned to do. “She’s beautiful,” he said, awed by her.

  “That’s not what everyone else says,” I said.

  David looked at me abruptly. “How could they not?” He looked back at her. “It is so patent-leather obviously true.”

  “The first thing everyone else says,” I said, “is ‘she’s black.’”

  “Details,” said David.

  “Details,” echoed Christopher, spe
aking for the first time since he’d seen her.

  “Where did she come from, Jane?” David asked, reaching out one strong finger and gently touching her cheek.

  I explained about finding her abandoned on the steps of the stone church.

  “What do you plan on doing with her?” Christopher asked, practical. And who could blame him?

  “I’m going to try to keep her, of course,” I said, unable to keep a defensive, defiant note from creeping into my voice, expecting a fight.

  “Of course,” David agreed, finger still touching her cheek.

  “Oh, well,” said Christopher. “I suppose if you two are agreed…”

  “Exactly,” said David.

  “But aren’t you worried?” Apparently, Christopher wasn’t finished. “Don’t you think someone might come forward at some point—the mother changing her mind or someone who knows the mother realizing what’s happened—who has a prior claim and wants her back?”

  He was voicing my greatest fear.

  “Yes,” I conceded, “I do realize that could happen. But right now, she needs a home, and someone who will love her and care for her.”

  “And you think that person is you?” Christopher asked.

  I looked at him closely, expecting an accusing or derisory look. But it wasn’t like that at all. He looked sincerely curious.

  “Yes,” I said, feeling uncharacteristically sincere myself, “I do.”

  “You know, Jane,” said David, derailing my sincerity, “she looks a bit like you.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No, I’m not. Look at her: she has your hair color—” true, we both had black hair, although mine was straight and spiky “—and your mouth. That is one hell of a determined mouth for a little baby to have—beautiful too. No one would ever dream of messing with someone with a mouth like that.”

  “Not if we can help it,” Christopher added.

  “No,” echoed David, “not if we can help it.”

  “What are you two saying?” I asked, unable to dare believe that I was hearing what I thought I was hearing, least of all the strength of conviction in Christopher’s voice.

  “Remember, Jane,” said David, “one time when you said, ‘Just my luck. Instead of one fairy godmother…’”

  “‘…I have to wind up with two,’” finished Christopher.

  “Yes,” I said, “I do remember saying that.”

  “Well,” said David, “now your baby has two fairy godmothers as well.”

  Christmas Day, later-ish

  What with the holiday and all, and Social Services being closed for the day, or the man who was supposed to be on call not answering, Tolkien figured we’d been granted a reprieve.

  “You do realize, Jane,” he said, after we’d woken from the briefest of naps, Emma still safe between us, “eventually we’ll need to go through the proper channels. It’s not like you can go on with this indefinitely, without reporting the finding of Emma to the proper authorities.”

  “But—” I started to object.

  “But we don’t need to do it right this minute,” he soothed. “Sure, they might be angry later that we didn’t wake the whole country on Christmas Eve just to do things the proper way—”

  “Will you get in a great deal of trouble over this?” I asked again, the thought sinking in for the first time. It was one thing to hang for my own self-involvement, quite another to pull him down with me.

  “Shh,” he said. “Don’t worry about that now. We’ll deal with that when we get to it.”

  What he didn’t say, what hung in the air as a harsh reality, was that once the responsible organizations were called into the situation, I might not be allowed to keep her.

  But we weren’t going to deal with that just yet, so we spent the day getting to know what Emma was like.

  What Emma was like was a great big sleeper. And a great big pee-er and pooper. And a great big eater; or drinker, I should say.

  She must have been at the bottle a dozen times that first day. After a bit, though, I began to realize that every time she cried, she wasn’t necessarily looking for food. For, whenever we lay down together, she’d somehow root her way around until she was at my breast. And somehow, that just didn’t seem to be all about food.

  One time, when we were lying down, I happened to have my top off, having just finally showered and feeling too tired to dress yet. Emma latched on to my breast and began sucking.

  Some people might think that icky—something about a baby suckling a nonlactating breast somehow being icky in a way that suckling a genuinely lactating one was not—but the way I figured it, it was Emma’s first full day in her new world. If she needed to do that to feel at home, I certainly wasn’t about to stop her. It wasn’t like she’d be doing it every day until she turned twenty or something; hell, it wasn’t even like she was going to be doing it more than just this one time. But if that’s what it took to make her feel comfortable in the moment, then it was fine with me until the moment passed and there was time to search for a suitable substitute.

  “Not going to find anything there, I’m afraid, old girl,” I said. Then I called to Tolkien: “Could you look in my writing table for What to Expect When You’re Expecting? It should be in the second drawer, right-hand side.”

  He was in the doorway in a moment, book in hand. He stopped there. “You two look beautiful, you know,” he said.

  I blushed. It had been several months since he’d seen me with my top off.

  “Crap,” I said, reaching for the book. “It’s just the Madonna effect.”

  Back during my fake-pregnancy days, I’d bought this prego bible so I’d know what I was talking about. Now I flipped to the section on breastfeeding.

  Reading the section now made me feel hugely guilty.

  “Do you realize,” I asked Tolkien, “that breastfeeding invests kids with all kinds of antibodies that help prevent illness? And get this! Breastfed kids have IQs that are eight points higher than those who aren’t! What the hell can I be thinking of? I can’t deprive Emma of those eight points! What if they’re the only difference between her being a genius and being something else?”

  “It’s not like it’s something you can help, Jane. You didn’t give birth to her, didn’t plan it this way.”

  “No, I guess not. Still…”

  “Besides, there’s lots more important things to pass on to kids.”

  “Such as?”

  “Warmth.”

  “I can do that. Sometimes.”

  “Good citizenship.”

  “Could be a problem.”

  “Humor.”

  “Got that.”

  “Anyway, don’t you think that everyone worries too much about doing what’s right, only within the greater context of what everyone else will think?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I’m not sure exactly either. It’s just that everything seems to be some sort of contest these days, with the sole criteria of winning being who’s following things most closely to the book.”

  “Well, you don’t have to ever worry about that with me,” I said. “Even when I try doing things by the book, I somehow end up with a whole different story entirely.”

  Pounce! “Meow!”

  It was Kick the Cat, the white-and-gray puffball I’d gotten to replace Trevor’s detested Punch the Cat after he’d moved out. I’d forgotten all about Kick.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked. “And where have you been?”

  “Meow!”

  “Ah, I see,” said Tolkien, “he’s been to London to visit the Queen.”

  “We are in London.”

  “True.”

  “Did you have a good time, Kick?”

  “Meow!”

  “Are you hungry? This is Emma, by the way. She’ll be staying with us for a bit.”

  As Tolkien went to get Kick some food, Kick inched her way towards the baby at my breast.

  “Be gentle, Kick,” I said. “
She’s still smaller than you.”

  When Tolkien returned, I asked, “Do you think it will be a problem, having Kick here with Emma?”

  He thought about it. “Nah,” he said. “People have cats with babies all the time. Besides, Kick’s not a violent cat. Just keep your eye out, that’s all.”

  “Ouch!” I cried.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I think she bit me!”

  “Kick?”

  “No, the baby!”

  “She doesn’t have teeth yet, Jane. She can’t bite you.”

  “Well, it certainly felt like it.”

  “Maybe she’s just sucking too hard or sucking too long on one side?”

  I switched her to the other, meanwhile flipping through my book, where I learned that the sucking reflex is incredibly powerful in newborns. So, after the other breast got tired (me having concluded that women who took breastfeeding on for more than one night deserved some kind of medal or something) and after she drank so much formula that she couldn’t seem to hold any more—or at least not for another hour or two—I offered her the clean knuckle of my pinkie. She took to it like it was the greatest thing in the world.

  “Huh,” I thought, “imagine that? Imagine if the only thing standing between a human being and sheer contentment was a knuckle.”

  It was time for me to be a braver person than I was accustomed to being.

  “What has it been like for you…” I asked Tolkien, non sequitur-ing my way along to something more serious, “…these past few months?”

  He took in a deep breath, let it out softly, spoke softly. I could only guess that this was as hard for him as it was for me.

  “It’s been hell, Jane,” he said, “sheer hell. You?”

  “The same,” I said simply. “A different kind of hell, I expect, but the same.”

  I could have gone into detail, the details I knew so painfully well, about how losing him had been the hardest thing that had ever happened to me, how it had been as though the most essential part of myself had been cut out. But it wouldn’t have been fair; nothing that smacked of self-pity, however true, would have been fair. I had brought it on myself. I had no right to cry injury.

  “I never stopped loving you, never stopped wanting you.” He spoke as if reluctant to make those admissions. “I couldn’t really understand why, even if you were pregnant with another man’s child, we couldn’t be together. After all, I knew you loved me.”