Instead, he was staring at my sister, and I couldn't blame him: she made Michelle Pfeiffer look like a hag. Tonight she was wearing moon boots (they were in, then out, and now in again, and I didn't care how often they came back in, I hated them, I wasn't a damn astronaut), black jeans, and a huge dark blue poofy parka that should have made her look like a blonde Michelin Man but, because God was cruel, did not.
"You never told me you had a sister," he said, looking deep into Laura's blue, blue eyes.
"You never told me you had a Jon." She giggled, obviously liking what she saw as well.
"I never told you I have a bleeding ulcer, either. Barf out, you guys. Come on, Laura, we'll be late."
"It was nice meeting you," she said, holding out a mittened hand.
"Meetcha, too," he mumbled, still gaping. He had goose bumps as big as cherries, but he didn't seem to notice he was standing shirtless in subzero cold.
"I hope to see you again soon."
"Blurble," he replied. At least that's what I think he said.
"Well, 'bye!" I said loudly—no mistaking that, I hoped. I practically pushed Laura out the front door and slammed it behind us.
"Oh, he was cute!" she was already gushing as we walked to the car. I trudged; she skipped. "Where do you know him from? Does he have a girlfriend? Of course he has a girlfriend."
"Laura, take a pill."
"Only if you stop being one," she snarked back. A mittened hand flew to her perfect, bow-shaped mouth. "Oh, I'm sorry! It's just… I'm a little nervous about tonight."
"Baby Jon won't bite. He doesn't have any teeth. He might puke on you, though."
"I've baby-sat before," she said happily. "It won't be the first time."
"Heck, I've been on dates that weren't so pleasant."
Chapter 21
The Ant greeted us with, "Get inside quick! There's a killer on the loose!" She grabbed me by the jacket collar—the first time she'd touched me in years—and hauled me into the foyer. Laura hurried in behind me just in time to avoid the door being slammed in her face.
"Those aren't killers," I explained, unbuttoning my coat. "They're Cub Scouts. They just want to sell you some wreaths and wrapping paper."
"Very funny, Betsy." The Ant was quite the wreath herself in a dress of poison green, which she had trimmed with a glittery red belt two inches wide, long fake red fingernails, and large red hoop earrings. Her lipstick matched her accessories, and her eyelids were as blue as the Caribbean. Her fake eyelashes were so long I at first thought a couple centipedes had crawled up there and died.
"No, it's the Driveway Killer," she was insisting, helping Laura (Laura had that effect on people) off with her big puffy coat. "He struck again! Took one of my neighbors right out of her driveway. At first we thought she'd, you know, just left—her husband—" The Ant made the universal "drinky drinky" motion with her thumb and forefinger. "But then her body turned up in the parking lot of the Lake Street Wal-Mart. Lake Street! Can you imagine? How tacky!"
"Er," was all Laura managed. The Ant could tax even her formidable powers of niceness.
"I'm sorry about your neighbor," I said, and I meant it, though the sentiment was probably wasted on the Ant, who apparently thought where your body turned up was far more important than how you lived your life.
"She was just minding her own business, coming in the house—or going, we're not sure which—and he grabbed her. I've been scared out of my wits ever since!"
"That's hard to imagine," I said sweetly.
"So you have to be very careful around here, girls."
I assumed she was talking to Laura.
"If something happened to you, I don't know what I'd do."
I was, against all my better instincts, touched. "Aw, Antonia. I don't know what to say."
"We'll be careful," Laura promised.
The baby monitor was on the little table for the car keys, and we could hear a thin wailing coming out from it. "Please, please be careful! Nobody else will sit with Baby Jon while he's like this."
"Jesus, Antonia. He's got colic, not rabies."
"And I'm late."
"We got here right on time, so I don't want to hear anything out of you. When did he eat last?"
"The baby nurse left all that on a note on the fridge." The Ant was putting on her black wool coat. Her hair didn't move, which was a good trick considering it was shoulder length. "The party is supposed to be over around one."
"Where is Mr. Taylor?" Laura asked.
"Oh, he's…" The Ant made a vague gesture. "Don't worry, if I have too much to drink I'll get a cab."
"Thank goodness," I said. "If you get too blitzed, just take a nap in the driveway and wait around for company."
She glared. "I suppose you think you're being funny again."
I glared. "A little funny."
Laura walked in the direction of the kitchen.
The Ant left.
I went upstairs, scooped up my squalling brother, and snuggled him to my shoulder while he gasped and decided to knock off with the crying. My finely tuned vampire senses informed me he didn't need a diaper change.
We went back downstairs and caught up with Laura, who was standing at the main counter reading a careful, detailed note signed Jennifer Clapp, R.N.
"She has a baby nurse, and she needs us?" She clucked her tongue at Jon, who grunted in return.
"The nurse only works business hours. And my dad put his foot down about a night nurse when the Ant's home all day."
"Mr. Taylor said no to her?"
"It happens occasionally." Propping Jon's well-cushioned bottom on my forearm and his head on my shoulder, I opened the fridge and grimaced. It was full of skim milk, iceberg lettuce, soy sauce, Egg Beaters, and bottles of formula. If I was alive, that'd be a real problem. Poor Laura!
And "Mr. Taylor"? Laura's biological father. Nobody knew that little factoid but me, her, and the devil.
It was really complicated and would have even been silly if it wasn't so frightening. See, the devil possessed my stepmother for a while. And I think it's telling to report the Ant was (is!) such a miserable human being that no one noticed. I mean, how friggin' unbelievable is that?
"Oh, you're evil and insane and running over pedestrians with your bicycle and granting evil wishes and encouraging people to jump off tall buildings… same old, same old, eh, Antonia?"
Anyway. So my dad's second wife was possessed by the devil for a while, yes, that's right, the devil, and had a baby, my sister Laura. And then went back to Hell.
The Ant, "coming to" with a drooly baby to take care of, promptly dumped Laura in the waiting room of a hospital and went back to her old life without looking back.
So—here's where it gets weird—the Ant and my dad are Laura's biological parents. And the devil is her mother. And Laura was adopted by the Goodmans (come on! The Goodmans?), and raised in the suburbs of Minneapolis.
Have I mentioned her unholy hell-powers, like the bow made of hellfire and the way she can eat whatever she wants and never get a pimple?
So. It was a little weird when she referred to our—her—father as "Mr. Taylor." It was always "Mr. Taylor" or "Betsy's father." I had no idea how to handle it, so I just let it go. Just another thing hanging over my head like a wobbly guillotine.
"There isn't shit to eat," I announced, shutting the door, "as usual."
"We can have a pizza delivered." She held out her arms, and I handed the baby to her.
"I don't care; I can't eat it anyway. It's you I'm worried about. I get desperate enough, I can always drink the bottle of soy sauce. Mmmm… salty. Anyway, did you eat supper before you came over?"
"No," she admitted.
"God, how pathetic are we? Don't start," I warned the baby, who had stiffened in Laura's arms and looked ready to start with the yowling again. "I'm thirty and I'm baby-sitting and scrounging in the fridge for a meal. Next I'll be calling my boyfriend to tell him to come over so we can make out."
"At least yo
u have a boyfriend," Laura pointed out.
I smiled sourly and said nothing.
"He's sooooo cute," Laura cooed. Tonight Baby Jon was wearing a T-shirt, Pampers, and thick green socks. He'd put on a little weight, but he still looked more like a hairless, angry rat than the plump Gerber babies I saw on TV. "Isn't he just the darlingest thing you've ever seen?"
"This is a scary side of you, Laura, and I thought I'd seen the really frightening stuff."
"Goooooooo," she replied, tickling Baby Jon under his pointy chin. Jon glared at her and then the odor of his discontent filled the air. "Oooooh, someone needs a diaper change." She looked at me.
"Daughter of the devil," I said.
"Vampire queen."
"Okay, okay, I'll do it. Gimme him."
Jon chuckled when I took him back, which, given his age, I knew was impossible. He wasn't really laughing, just like he wasn't really glaring. Still, it was cute.
I pretended he really liked me, though at this age he couldn't pick me out of a lineup. I cuddled him close all the way up the stairs, when Laura couldn't see.
The truth was, nights like this were the highlight of my life right now. I jumped whenever the Ant called. Bottom line? Baby Jon was the closest I was ever going to get to having a baby of my own. No tears, no sweat, no periods… no babies.
Ever.
Sinclair and I could do a lot—would do a lot, if he ever got over our little problem of the month. But we couldn't make our own babies.
Jess told me over and over not to be silly, there were only a zillion babies in the world who needed good homes, and Marc backed her up with horror stories of abuse from the E.R. She was right—they were both right—and I tried not to feel bad.
But at thirty, I hadn't thought I was forever turning my back on having my own babies. It was funny… I'd never seriously thought about having a baby. I just always assumed I would. And then I died. Isn't that the way it goes sometimes?
"It's dumb," I told Baby Jon, stripping him of the nasty diaper and setting it aside (I would later place it beneath the Ant's bed, where she'd go crazy trying to find it). "Dead people can't do lots of things. Walk, talk, have sex. Get married. Bitch. I'm lucky I can do anything, instead of just hanging out in a coffin and slowly turning into fertilizer. So what do I focus on? The good stuff? The cool powers? No, I piss and moan because Sinclair can't knock me up. Does that make sense? Does that sound like a person who's counting her blessings?"
"Fleh," Jon replied.
"Tell me." I sprinkled him like salt on a roast, rubbed in the powder, and then put a new diaper on him. He sighed and waved his little arms, and I caught a tiny hand and kissed it. He promptly scratched me with his wolverine-like nails, but I didn't mind.
Chapter 22
"I can't thank you enough for coming out," the Ant said. Again. To Laura.
"It was our pleasure, Mrs. Taylor. Your son is adorable."
The Ant looked doubtfully at the monitor, which occasionally vibrated with Baby Jon's snores. "It's… it's nice of you to say so. I hope he wasn't any trouble."
"He's darling!" Laura exclaimed, brushing spit-up off her shoulder.
"Yeah, a laugh a minute," I grumped. "And I'm busy tomorrow, so don't even think about it."
"I'm free," Laura piped up.
"That's all right, girls. My fund-raiser was postponed, anyway. And Freddy can come over then, anyway."
"Freddy?" I asked sharply. "Hooked-on-her-migraine-medication Freddy?"
"She's not hooked," the Ant, no stranger to substance abuse, insisted. "She just has a lot of migraines."
"I don't care if she has a lot of brain tumors! She's not watching Baby Jon!"
"It's not up to you," the Ant snapped. Then, "Who?"
"When is your meeting?" Laura interjected quickly. "I'm sure we can work something out."
The Ant puffed a strand of hair out of her face, which didn't move. "Laura, I appreciate that you are trying to do your best, but there's nothing to work out. I'll be the one to decide what's best for the baby."
I got ready to pull her head off her shoulders and kick it up the stairs, a grisly surprise for my dad if he ever got back, when Laura asked, "Like you decided before?"
Whoa.
"What?" the Ant asked.
"What?" I warned, frozen in the act of reaching for the Ant's tiny head.
"The baby. From before. You decided what was best for her… that you couldn't take care of her."
"Now?" I asked my sister, who had apparently gone insane when I wasn't looking. "You're picking now to do this?" Rotten timing: a genetic legacy poor Laura couldn't escape.
"I don't—I don't—"
I dropped my arms to my sides. The Ant had a whole lot more to worry about right now than beheading by stepdaughter.
"It was a good choice," Laura added, "if it was the one that was best for you. Still, do you ever wonder what happened to her? Do you ever think about her?"
"No," the Ant said, looking right into Laura's incredible blue eyes. "I never think of her. Just like when you aren't here, I never think of you. That was a long time ago, and I never think about how when you wear your hair pulled up, you look like my mother. The way she looked when she liked us more than the bottle. I never think about that, and I never think about her, and I never, ever, ever think about you."
"Oh," Laura gulped, as I fought not to fall into the hall plant. She knew! She knew! And she never said anything! "I see."
"You're a real nice girl, Laura. I was happy to meet you. I'm always happy when you can come by. But it's late, and it's time for you to get out of here."
"Of—of course."
"A heart-stopping pleasure," I said, following Laura out the door. "Just like always. You jackass."
The Ant didn't say anything. Just stood in the doorway for a long time. Making sure the Driveway Killer didn't get us. Or making sure we really left.
Chapter 23
We walked to my car. We got in. I started it up. We sat for a minute, waiting for the heater to kick in. (We weren't too worried about the Driveway Killer.) We pulled out. We watched the Ant shut her front door. (She must have frozen her treadmilled ass right off, watching us leave.)
I couldn't stand it half a second longer and blurted, "I can't believe she knew. I can't believe she knew! She probably knew the minute she laid eyes on you, since you apparently look like her dead alcoholic mother. And she just… just let us come over and baby-sit! All those times! And you were at the baby shower! You brought her a fucking present from Tiffany's!"
"She is… a strong woman," Laura said faintly.
"She is a YAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGG-GGHHHHHHHH!"
"What? What?" Laura was twisting around in her seat, her hand on an invisible sword hilt. There was a sword there, but it only came out when Laura wanted it. And only she could touch it.
I looked at Laura, looked back up at my rearview mirror at the sallow blonde who was sitting in my backseat, and looked back at Laura. "Yuh—uh—I saw a squirrel."
Laura was looking straight into the backseat, on the floor, around the car. "For goodness's sake, where? Behind your brake?"
The blonde stared at me, and I tried to pull my attention back to France Avenue. "It just… scared the hell out of me. Popping up like that." I glared into the mirror. "Without warning."
"Sorry," the blonde said.
"Well, don't scare me like that!" Laura snapped. "It's been a stressful enough evening."
"Tell me about it," the blonde in the back said.
My heart was galloping along from the adrenaline rush (okay, adrenaline tickle, and "galloping" meant about ten beats a minute), which was stressful enough without having to watch Laura, the ghost in the back, and the road.
"Were you—did you—" I finally spit it out. "Were you planning this? Scratch that: how long have you been planning it?"
"I didn't really plan it," she confessed. "I carpe'd the diem."
"Well, Laura, I hope you—hope you know that for the—fo
r your mother, that was pretty good. I mean, she was almost nice. Which for her, was really nice."
"Yes, I know."
"Just give her time. She'll, uh…" Grow a soul? "And Laura… don't take this the wrong way or anything, but if you were planning on saying anything to our father…"
"Christ," the woman in the back said. "This is better than Days of Our Lives."
"Shut up!"
"That's good advice," Laura said.
"No, uh… I mean, I wouldn't recommend… maybe not right now, anyway…"
"Don't worry," Laura said, tight-lipped. "I wasn't."
"That's a load off my mind," the dead woman in the back said.
Chapter 24
"Well , it's been"—Upsetting. Tense. If I was alive, I'd have shit myself at least twice in the last hour—"really something."
"You're not going in?" Laura asked, pausing outside the front door. None of us used any of the side doors. I didn't know why. Yes I did. Nobody wanted to get mistaken for a servant. Even the servants (the housekeepers, the plant lady, the gardener) used the front door.
"No, no. I'm going to stay out here"—in the freezing, subzero temperature and bitter wind—"and get some fresh air." Even though I didn't breathe.
Laura's perfect forehead wrinkled. "Are you sure?"
"What," the ghost protested, "you're not going to let me in?"
"No, it's a real nice night. And I want to… look at the garden in the moonlight."
"You've got to be shitting me," the ghost protested. "I've been stuck outside for more than a week, and you're not letting me come in?"
"On second thought," I said, "I will come in."
"Let's hope you're a better hostess than driver," the dead woman bitched.
"You shut up. You're getting your way aren't you?"
"All I said was 'are you sure,' " Laura protested.
"Sorry, sorry. I'm pissed at the Ant on your behalf, and it's coming out at totally inappropriate times."
"That cow," the ghost said. "She let her little yappy dog poop in my yard every damn week. She thought I wasn't looking."
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