Baby Love

by Joyce Maynard

  One night he came back and told her, “Now I’m ready.” First he gave her a bath, so hot that tears ran down her cheeks. She knew by then not to say anything. Not after what he’d been through. She was just grateful.

  He scrubbed her with a wire brush. Then he laid her out and dried her like a newborn baby. “Now?” she said. “Now?”

  Finally she was ready and he entered her. Her muscles practically sucked him in, tugged at his cock, wouldn’t release it. All those months holding the semen in, he was ready to explode. But he stayed inside her, didn’t let go until the sun came up.

  One whole year he kept her blindfolded. He’d read something Stevie Wonder said about how your sense of touch becomes refined when you can’t see. It was true. She never had orgasms, before or after, like the ones she had the year she was blind. She cried when he told her he was taking the bandages off her eyes.

  They invented a language. He read twins do that sometimes, when they’re children. He never said to her, this word means this, or I want to make up words with you. He just started saying things and she started answering him. They had words for things that don’t even exist in English.

  Toward the end it was hardest. She was getting more restless—wanting to wear clothes, to get a TV set. Wanting to go out, those last months. That was when he had to stay up all night, thinking of things to do. It was like trying to find a cure for cancer. Not even a cure; he knew the case was terminal, always knew this couldn’t last. It was just a matter of trying to keep what they had going as long as he could.

  Once, that last month, she said to him, “Couldn’t we get married? Move to a different apartment. I’d get a job and we’d make friends, have kids. We could be like other people.”

  After all he had shown her, she wanted to be like other people. That was the most depressing thing. He knew then there was no more point in prolonging it. Time to finish.

  He thought he would just kill himself. If she believed—after everything that had happened—that she could live like other people, let her try it. Then he found out about the baby and that changed everything.

  He had the one weak moment. Coming home—it was February, and down below zero—and finding that even though the superintendent had turned their heat off, she was still naked, the way he wanted her to be. Not pacing around, the way she had been those last few weeks, but lying on her mattress with her hands on her belly. He knew to look at her that she must have been sick.

  “I was wrong wanting things to change,” she said. Now she’d be good. Now she’d do everything he told her to. She only wanted one thing.

  “That’s the one thing you can’t have,” he said. He had spent three days in the state library studying medical books, figuring out the best way to get rid of a baby. Even though he knew getting rid of the baby wouldn’t be enough. He was weak enough to hope.

  He worked like a watchmaker, inserting the wire. No problem dilating her cervix, of course. She couldn’t close herself to him if she wanted. But then when he began scraping her uterus, probing the wire deeper and deeper to make sure he’d dislodged it, she started bleeding. At first just a trickle, like her period, so he wasn’t worried. Then streams of blood, deep red, soaking the mattress, spreading into a bigger and bigger stain underneath her. She was pale to begin with, of course, from never going outside. Her skin tone just changed to bluish. Pulse got very slow. She was so weak she could hardly talk. Didn’t need to. He knew she was thinking: Kill me now please. So he did.

  And now there is someone else waiting for him to take care of her. Someone else who understands that life in the zoo is not worth living after life in the jungle. If he were stronger—younger maybe, not so tired, because he is still strong—Wayne would try it again. Find another apartment in some other old mill building, get another mattress, another set of black window shades. Take her there, try for a few more months of shutting everything out except their two bodies. But the hospital has taken a lot out of him—even with the vitamins and the exercising. What he said to Charles about drugs being poison—that was true too. His concentration isn’t as sharp as it used to be. It’s too late for him to be her lover.

  “Is this the exterminator?” That’s what she asked him on the phone. Well, yes, he will tell her. Yes, I am.

  Mrs. Ramsay is not home, of course. Wanda came straight over here from Sandy’s, but she did not expect to find Mrs. Ramsay and Melissa, and she was right. The door is locked but the lights are on in the dining room. Wanda can see, from the window on the porch, that some of Mrs. Ramsay’s things are gone. (The TV for one. There is the remote control machine, sitting on one of the chair pillows, connected to nothing.) The top drawer of Mrs. Ramsay’s buffet is missing, and some photographs have been laid out in a line on the table. Hard to tell what the subject was—just a lot of large pink shapes.

  What to do? Wanda thinks that taking someone’s baby, even if it’s your grandchild, must be against the law. But what if you hit that baby, and now all she does is have diarrhea and sleep? If Wanda told the police and they found Mrs. Ramsay, she would tell them about that.

  Wanda has that feeling in her stomach like when she has just eaten a pizza and three Milky Way bars, wishing she could throw up and it would all go away. She just stands there in her Moonlight Acres uniform with the ketchup spatters on the front, her face pressed up to the window, watching the glass fog up.

  “You’re probably wondering where I got my scar,” says Mrs. Ramsay. She is sitting naked except for her underpants on the mint-green motel bedspread facing Tara, rubbing vitamin E oil into her breasts. Tara has been focusing on a painting of a covered bridge that hangs over the TV set.

  “After Dwight was born,” she says, “Harold didn’t want to do it anymore. He had this problem with his weenie, if you want to know the truth.

  “Which was fine by me, only I wished I could have a little baby girl. What’s the use of knowing the detached rosette chain stitch if you never have a little girl to make dresses for?

  “So I prayed to God to give me a baby. I waited, and then what do you think? My stomach starts getting bigger. Mrs. Smith stops paying her monthly visits. Harold gets pretty disturbed, because the situation with his weenie is still the same, you understand. I explain to him: I did not commit any sins to get this baby. This is like Mary and Jesus.

  “You have never seen needlework like I did that winter. A tiny cable-knit cardigan. A little lattice-smocked bathrobe. Argyle booties. A crewel-embroidered bunting. You name it.

  “In my sixth month, the doctor says, ‘I don’t understand this. There is no kicking.’ ‘This is a well-mannered little girl,’ I say. ‘That’s all.’ ‘But I can’t get a heartbeat either,’ he says.

  “In my seventh month, I get pains like you can’t imagine. They open me up—Caesarean. And you know what’s in there? A mole. Hydatiform mole, it’s called; looks like a bunch of grapes. They think I am out cold for this, but I am not. I hear everything—doctors and nurses coming from all over the hospital to see. Two of them fighting over who gets to keep it. Lots of jokes.

  “And here is what my doctor does, just before he sews me up. He puts one hand on each side of my incision and he makes my skin move like it’s the mouth on a puppet. He makes this puppet mouth ask one of the nurses what she’s doing Friday night. She gets very excited and tells the doctor she’s free. ‘Too bad,’ he says. (This is still my stomach he’s playing around with.) ‘Because I’ll be all tied up.’ Then he gives me the stitches, and this is where he gave them to me. After I got home I took all the little dresses to the dump.”

  It literally takes Mark’s breath away, the water is that cold. “I don’t know how the trout stand this,” he says.

  “Trout?” says Val. “You mean there are fish in this brook?” Then she sort of goes crazy, screaming, splashing all over the place, pulling herself up on a rock. Mark’s pants and the Hawaiian shirt fall into the water, float downstream.

  “Get my shirt,” she yells. Mark is downstream, stan
ding naked on the shore near the shallower water. He steps out on a fallen log, reaching. Misses, falls in. The shirt is gone.

  “What a bummer,” says Val. “That was my best top.”

  All they have left to wear are Val’s jeans and the terry-cloth seat cover from Mark’s car. They get inside and Mark turns on the heater. Val sits way on her side. Her nipples are all wrinkled up from the cold. “You sure look like an idiot, wearing that seat cover,” she says. Mark guesses he is not going to make it with her after all.

  “How can you be sure?” says Greg. “If it’s only been a couple of days.”

  “My breasts feel different. I feel all this blood pumping to my uterus. It’s just very clear to me.”

  He is silent, peeling the paper off a conté crayon.

  “So how do you feel about it?” she says.

  “I have to think. I need some time.”

  He has never needed time before, to know how he feels.

  “You want it, don’t you?”

  “Did you hear a car start? What’s a car doing out here in the middle of the night?”

  Wanda is standing on Sandy’s doorstep again. She wouldn’t have come up if she hadn’t seen the light on. In fact, through the window from the street, it looked to Wanda as if Sandy was dancing. She turned the music off when Wanda knocked. Now she has opened the door. Mark Junior is asleep in her arms with one fist wrapped around a piece of her hair.

  “I need help,” says Wanda. Up to now she has held it in, but when she sees Sandy with her baby, she begins to cry so hard that at first Sandy can’t make out what she’s saying. “Mrs. Ramsay took Melissa. We’ve got to find her.”

  The sound of her parents screwing woke Jill up. (Was that her mother crying? Hard to picture.) Now she can’t get back to sleep, thinking about tomorrow. She is thinking of the fetus diagrams in her biology book, the little fish faces and the tiny curled spines, the transparent skin with the bones showing through. She wonders if it will be big enough to see. What do they do with it after they take it out?

  Bring sanitary napkins, size super, they said. There will be bleeding. Jill has not used sanitary napkins since the first year she had her period, when she was thirteen. It happened during math class—a wet feeling in her pants, a trickle down her leg when she went up to the board. Her friend Debbie took her to the girls’ room and showed her what to do. “Now you can be a mother,” Debbie said. Did they ever laugh.

  She will leave around seven, explain that she’ll get breakfast at McDonald’s so she can be at the mall when it opens. Later she will tell her mother that one of her friends is altering the dress for her.

  She wishes she didn’t have to go alone.

  No matter how many kids she has someday, she will never name any of them Patrick.

  The records are stacked high next to the stereo—all Dolly Parton. Ann hasn’t been putting them back in the jackets tonight. She has not mopped up the spilled Kahlua either, or drained the tub. There’s a pool of wax on the windowsill, under one of the candlesticks. The dog has not been fed.

  Ann is pacing the floor. Back and forth over the Oriental rug a thousand times, leaving a little trail of bath powder. Sometimes she will say the words to the songs along with Dolly. I hold an armful of nothing close to my side. The days come and go, they mean nothing to me. I want you to be the last one to touch me. I will always love you.

  The sky has begun to lighten. Sun’s coming up. Ann goes to the door, steps outside, looking down the road. The air is heavy with the smell of lilacs. The black flies hover around her. She can tell it’s going to be hot. She goes back in, leaving the door ajar.

  Mount Saint Helens has erupted again. Volcanic ash is falling as far as Wyoming. In Spokane, day looks like night. The Columbia River is about to wash out three towns. That’s what the newscaster on the Today show says. It is a black-and-white set. Budget motel.

  “Rise and shine,” says Mrs. Ramsay. Tara is curled up in one of the two twin beds with her arms around Sunshine. They only got here four hours ago. She wishes she could sleep some more.

  “Could we stay here a little longer?” says Tara. “If I get Sunshine up now she’ll be fussy all day.” Melissa-Susan lies in her drawer, not moving.

  “We have to hurry,” says Mrs. Ramsay. “We have to stop them before they kill any more babies.”

  Carla dreams of a baby on the rocks. He is propped up in an infant seat, kicking a piece of grass with his foot. All around him the water is swirling. Where’s the mother? Is she crazy?

  He is smiling, straining at the little safety belt that holds him in. He lifts his head up, leans forward. He has never been able to do that before. A butterfly lands just beyond his toe. He would like to hold it. Stretch.

  There she is, in the water. Shampooing her hair. Bubbles drip all down her neck, onto her breasts. She is naked. There is a man with her—a boy really—scrubbing her back. “Not there,” she says. She’s laughing.

  The sun’s in his eyes. He doesn’t like that. “Uh,” he says. “Huh. Huh. Uh. Bub. Bub. Bub.”

  She can’t hear; the radio’s turned up too loud. “What do you think this is, a James Bond movie?” she says.

  Kicking harder now. Butterfly gone. She hasn’t changed his diaper in a long time. His skin is beginning to turn pink. Toe on moss. Head forward. Hands reaching. Bub. Bub. Bub.

  “I should check the baby,” she says. They kiss again.

  Seat forward. He lands on his face against the rock, too stunned to cry. Water crashes down, lifts him up. He’s spinning, swirling, upside down. Moving so fast. Where is the air? It’s like being born again.

  “The baby,” she screams. “The baby’s in the water.”

  Head on rock. Bubbles.

  Here is what Wayne did, once Loretta’s heart stopped beating. First he cut the nails on her toes and her fingers. When she was alive he kept them long, filed very sharp, so he could feel her fingers digging into his back, his thighs, his biceps, her toes running up and down his calves, while they made love. Feeling is the important thing. Not necessarily feeling comfortable.

  He knew some places where he didn’t want to put the clippings. In the wastebasket, for instance, for some eager beaver police sergeant to hit on. Down the drain. So he swallowed them—felt them scratching deep inside his throat, one of the few places where he had never felt her before. He took the longest fingernail and carved a deep X in his forearm, deep enough to draw blood. He sharpened a pencil with his penknife and sprinkled the lead dust into the cut. He still has the silver-colored scar.

  Then he clipped a little curl of her pubic hair. He didn’t wash the blood off, because that would have taken away her smell. He made it into a ring (her hair was that long, that thick; you could braid it) and he wore the ring all through the trial. The prosecutor would be up there leaning on the jury box, saying, “What we have here is an animal. No respect for human life,” and Wayne could sit listening, with his head leaned against his hand, his ring finger, just inhaling her.

  After he got what he needed, he had to clean things up. Not with any plan about getting rid of the evidence, staying free. His life was over anyway. He just wanted to protect their privacy—his and Loretta’s. Certain things are private.

  So he cut up her mattress. This takes a long time when you’re using nail scissors. Somewhere in all the blood was a clot he thought maybe was the fetus. He put that back up inside her—she would like that.

  The mattress pieces—he stuffed them in four green plastic garbage bags and drove out to the highway, scattering them in little bits over a fifteen-mile stretch near where he had met her, watching out for cops, because there was a fifty-dollar fine for littering.

  Then he went to Jordan Marsh to buy her an outfit. He never liked getting her clothes while she was alive—liked her naked, let her have a few pieces of men’s long underwear just because the room got cold, winters. But he wanted her dead body dressed just like anybody else, so they would never know.

  It was the first
time he’d gone into a store like that. There was a woman standing right by the door demonstrating a new line of umbrellas and another one that tried to squirt some men’s cologne on his arm. “Where can I buy a dress?” he said. “Also some shoes, and some underwear.”

  She told him so many different departments he couldn’t keep track, drifted off.

  Way in back, on the third floor, he found the pink chenille bathrobe. “It doesn’t matter what size,” he said. “I don’t need a bag.”

  Underpants. He rubbed seven different pairs against his cheek, studied the way they made the crotch. “Are you interested in bikini style?” said the girl. No, Loretta would not like that. He chose the plainest kind. White, one hundred percent cotton, elastic on the waist and reinforced crotch panel. A white cotton brassiere. “What size?” she said.

  He put his hands on the glass display case, spreading his fingers to just the size of her two breasts, making them curve out just in the shape of Loretta. “Like that,” he said.

  “Oh. Thirty-six B.”

  Then he bought her some pink bedroom slippers with rhinestone clips, and rhinestone earrings. He bought her a fourteen-carat gold ring and a natural-bristle hairbrush from England. The one thing he would not buy, even now that it didn’t really matter, was makeup. How could you paint that face?

  He carried the packages up the steps to their apartment and laid them next to her. He carried her to the bathroom, scrubbed her all over, until their smells were gone. He shampooed her hair and blew on it very softly while it was drying, to make it fluffy. Then he brushed and brushed. Then he eased the brassiere over her arms, fitted her breasts into the cups. He started to hook the brassiere in back and then he turned her over again to kiss her one more time in that place just above her nipples.

  Her skin was colder than usual and her legs were getting stiff. He put the shoes on slowly, and the robe, screwed on the earrings and fitted on the ring, leaving the underpants until last. Then it was time and he put her feet through the leg holes. He had to take off the slippers and put them on again. He slid the panties up her legs.