The Changeling

by Victor Lavalle

  Apollo set Brian on his belly on the black rubber padding while the other kids tore around the play equipment. At two months old, Brian remained, by far, the youngest. Meaghan and Imogen flickered with interest at the sight of the baby. Isaac and Shoji completely ignored him. While on his belly, Brian puckered his lips and basically kissed the ground a few times before Apollo rolled him onto his back. Brian reached out, and Apollo slipped a set of large, plastic toy keys into the baby’s hand. Brian gripped and yanked and stared at the keys. He shook them wildly. His face practiced expressions, squinting at the keys, pursing his lips as if he were suspicious of them.

  The other dads crowded closer and asked after Brian’s development like coaches eyeballing a rival player. Had Brian rolled over on his own yet? Transferred objects from one hand to the other? Raked up Cheerios by himself? The fathers bandied these questions about, half curious and half competitive, but Apollo didn’t mind. In fact, he enjoyed it just as much as them. He said nothing of the tremendous book he’d found the day before. Why would he? None of these men talked about their jobs, or their hopes and dreams, not when there were children to discuss. Apollo took out his phone and snapped a dozen pictures of Brian there on the rubber matting. The post from yesterday—the pictures of Brian in the Riverdale basement—had been a hit, at least the first few. Apollo logged onto Facebook and, just to be thorough, uploaded the images he’d just taken. All twelve.

  THE DAY BEFORE, on Emma’s first morning back to work, she woke up alone, the two boys already off on a book hunt in Riverdale. After taking a piss, she ran the shower. Half an hour under the water, and Apollo never walked in to shit, Brian didn’t cry to be changed or fed or held. She’d never want a life without those two, but thirty minutes?

  Yes, please.

  Emma shaved her legs in the shower, though this had to be done slowly because it hurt to bend over. She washed her hair. She applied makeup in the mirror after the steam dissipated and felt surprised by her own face. How could she feel so different and look, largely, the same?

  First day back to work. She surprised herself with how eager she felt to get there. Only part-time, but she retained her health insurance. That alone made the job worth having. Apollo never had health insurance. Once she’d been cut from full-time, he made more money, but her health insurance made a big difference. For instance, Kim would still be paid for her work as their midwife. Though, sadly, they were refusing to pay her for the delivery because, technically, she hadn’t been the one to do it.

  Before getting dressed, Emma went to the freezer and found her storehouse of pads doused in witch hazel. She slipped one inside her panties and enjoyed the cold relief. Before leaving, she found her phone, tapped it on to find the message from Apollo. Eleven pictures of Brian deep asleep. She laughed at the sight, and her face flushed with love. She texted back: Why is my baby sleeping in a basement?

  Then she left for work.

  Emma passed Holyrood Episcopal Church on the corner of Fort Washington and 179th. Maybe they’d have Brian baptized there. Only two months, and already Lillian, raised Episcopalian in Uganda, had been hinting about the need. Emma’s family had been Catholic, rare birds in Boones Mill. But after her parents died, there hadn’t been much churchgoing for Emma and Kim. People were kind to them, invited them to worship all over the place, but the Valentine girls became a congregation of two.

  Emma headed east, passing a worn-down Papa John’s branch and the new pharmacy that had replaced a butcher’s shop. St. Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church on Wadsworth Avenue, then 24-Hour Dental Lab, N&C Brokerage, and New Age Financial, all in a close row on the next block. At this hour the sidewalks were blurry with working people headed to their jobs and swarms of teenagers buzzing toward school. Emma announced herself as a problem to all those around her because she moved slowly. People muttered, even growled, as they sped around her, but she didn’t give a shit about them. Worse was the growing pain she felt the farther she moved from her apartment. A strange sort of swelling filled her chest, her throat.

  She missed her son.

  The feeling, nearly like grief, forced her to stop at one corner and lean on a mailbox. She cried quietly while the light went from green to yellow to red. She missed Brian, and now her breasts swelled, both filling with a stabbing pain. She’d brought her breast pump in her bag, planning to empty them during lunch, but she couldn’t wait that long. She sobbed softly and felt the distance from her child as surely as the ache in a phantom limb. Passersby noticed her, then ignored her. She caught her breath, straightened up, and made her way to work.

  The three-story limestone building, built in 1914, had been funded by Andrew Carnegie, and the list of former locals it once served included Marianne Moore and Maria Callas, Ralph Ellison and Lou Gehrig. But Emma preferred to think of all the kids, anonymous and important, who’d been served at this branch, by women like her, for a hundred years. She hoped to be for each of them what Ms. Rook had been for her, a low-key liberator, a safeguard and a salve. Emma loved being a librarian.

  Emma reached work at 8:35 and let herself into the building to find her colleagues—her friends—had strung up a sign that read WELCOME BACK in gold letters. Sheryl bought a cake from Carrot Top, best carrot cake in New York City. Carlotta had already brewed a fresh pot of coffee. Yurina, the youngest librarian, was the one who’d bought and hung the sign.

  “I missed you,” Emma said as she hugged each woman.

  Carlotta, overcome, kissed Emma on the forehead. It felt like a blessing from a high priest. They asked to see pictures of Brian, and Emma happily obliged. They cooed about his beautiful big eyes, the shape of his darling ears. Carlotta and Sheryl, mothers themselves long ago, gave unsolicited advice and made Emma promise to “cherish every moment because it all goes so fast.” Oh, the clichés of parenting! She knew that someday she’d be saying them to new parents, too, and so what? Really, all of it was lovely, and Emma couldn’t have asked for a better return. She ate cake and sipped tea. The older ladies crowed with praise when they heard Apollo had taken Brian to work with him. Then the librarians prepped for the day.

  Emma grabbed the books in the book drop bin, then got the newspapers from outside. Down to the basement—the adult reading room level—where she replaced yesterday’s editions with today’s. Carlotta had already begun unpacking the new arrival books and checking them against the packing lists. Sheryl would be on the second floor today, the children’s section, though the branch was so small that all of them traded floors, and jobs, a few times a day. At the front desk Yurina powered up the two computers, and Emma checked that the four loaner laptops were fully charged. Then it was ten o’clock, and they opened.

  Just then her phone rattled in her bag. When she took it out, she found another photo blast from Apollo. Father and son in the driveway of a large home. Apollo is leaning into the minivan he’d rented, either loading or unloading bags. Meanwhile Brian is lying on a blanket in the driveway staring up at the trees. Before she could do more than glance, a group of daycare kids entered the branch, and Emma found herself fully occupied.

  Emma made it all the way to noon with the feeling she had something stuck between two of her back teeth, that kind of irritation. It didn’t let up until the end of her day, returning home at three P.M., when she realized the problem. That second photo sent to her phone this morning. The shot of Apollo and Brian in the driveway. Her first thought was, Why the hell are you letting my son lie down in a driveway? But then a second thought came to her: Who took the picture?

  She found her phone in her purse and spent the next ten minutes on 179th Street trying to find the picture to confirm her memory, but it had disappeared. It wasn’t in her texts, her downloads, her photo gallery. Just gone. As if the person who’d sent it had snatched it away.

  “I’M GLAD YOU brought the kid.”

  Apollo and Brian made their morning meet-up with Patrice downtown on Avenue B. Patrice waited outside a tiny computer shop. At about this same time, Emma
was opening the Fort Washington branch on her second day of work.

  “Check out this rig,” Patrice said, turning his phone screen toward Apollo. It showed the photo of a desktop computer with two monitors, four speakers, and more. “I’m going to build me an even better one than this.”

  Apollo was wearing Brian turned ’round in the BabyBjörn, so the kid faced Patrice. He lifted the baby slightly higher as if to show off his own rig.

  “You know who you look like?” Patrice asked. “Master Blaster.”

  “Who runs Bartertown?” Apollo said.

  Patrice sneered, “Master Blaster runs Bartertown.”

  Apollo and Patrice hugged each other as best two men could with an eight-week-old dangling between them.

  “Really though,” Apollo said. “Master Blaster had the little guy on the back. Me and Brian are more like Kuato and his brother.”

  Patrice held open the door to the computer shop. “You going to compare your baby to motherfucking Kuato?”

  Apollo rested his hand gently on his son’s head. “The Martians love Kuato,” Apollo said. “They think he’s fucking George Washington.”

  Patrice ushered them into the store. “You’re a weird dude, my man. Just know that.”

  Five customers were in the store. With Patrice, Apollo, and Brian inside, the place now reached maximum capacity. The woman behind the counter looked up from her conversation, took in the new bodies, then returned to her sale. Brian wriggled in his carrier and mewled softly. This caused an almost allergic reaction throughout the room. Every adult besides Apollo hunched forward as if protecting their ears with their shoulders. Two of the men scanned backward, straight-up scowling. The woman behind the counter sighed loudly.

  Apollo hardly registered the reactions. He made himself busy getting his bag off his back, setting it down, then unstrapping Brian. He went down on a knee, undid Brian’s onesie, and pulled back the lip of his diaper. Brian kicked both legs out and mewled louder. Soiled. Apollo pulled out the changing pad and laid it flat on the floor and pulled back one of the diaper straps—that adhesive crackle.

  Only then did he look up to find seven horrified expressions focused on him and the now half-naked and soiled baby.

  “Problem?” he asked.

  A moment passed, and all five customers stampeded out of the store. Even the guy in the middle of a sale joined the exodus.

  Now Patrice grinned. “I’m real glad you brought the kid,” he said. He turned to the woman behind the counter, instantly first in line for service. “I’ve got a long list.”

  Apollo shrugged and finished up with Brian.

  —

  Patrice left the store with a half-dozen bags in hand while Apollo carried only a rolled-up dirty diaper.

  “You and Dana should think about having a kid,” Apollo said as they walked down the block.

  He’d regretted it right after the words left his lips. It was a dick thing to say. He knew it. Didn’t he hate it when people on the streets offered unsolicited advice about how he should be caring for Brian? Old women scolded him for not covering him up, and others demanded he be uncovered. Old men jabbered about how best to burp or bounce or feed the child. Didn’t he loathe even those with the best intentions? But then he’d done something like it to Patrice. Maybe having a child was like being drunk. You couldn’t gauge when you went from being charming to being an asshole.

  “You’re right about that,” Patrice said. “If we don’t have kids, how will I ever know the joy of carrying a handful of shit?”

  They weren’t far from the Strand, just a walk crosstown. They headed that way without making a conscious decision. The store’s motto was “18 miles of books.” Apollo couldn’t think of the last time he’d found a book worth serious money there—the stacks were picked over by thousands of readers every day—but they couldn’t be downtown and refuse to visit. It would be like snubbing a beloved uncle.

  Manhattan air, in early winter, gets as crisp as a fresh apple. As they walked, Apollo turned Brian around so he wouldn’t face the cool wind. Turning him inward made Brian look up into his father’s face, or perhaps just up at the blue sky between buildings. The boy puckered his lips, and his tiny nostrils flared as Apollo and Patrice walked quietly toward the Strand.

  As a matter of routine, they pawed through the wheeled carrels that lined the front of the store. These were the worn-down paperbacks, the Signet Classics of Frankenstein and Jane Eyre; beat-up textbooks and cookbooks. Patrice and Apollo weren’t looking for anything worthwhile—it was just part of the ritual.

  “So I had to leave before you came out of the basement in Riverdale,” Patrice said.

  “You should’ve come downstairs and said goodbye,” Apollo teased.

  Patrice cleared his throat and ignored the taunt. “You find anything good?”

  Apollo cradled the back of Brian’s head as he leaned forward to read the paperback spines. He inhaled his son’s scent and considered the question. Did he find anything good? A book he’d be willing to split profits with Patrice over? Brian rubbed his head against the small patch of his father’s skin he could reach. Did he find anything good?

  “No,” Apollo said. “Nothing good. It was a bust.”

  APOLLO AND BRIAN returned home in the late afternoon but found the apartment as dark as nighttime. The curtains had been pulled shut in the living room. When he went to pull them open, he found a safety pin holding the two panels together. The same in their bedroom. The blinds in the kitchen were pulled down. Apollo found Emma in Brian’s bedroom, up on a short ladder, with a drill in one hand. The room’s curtains were in a small pile on the floor.

  She remained so immersed in her task that she hadn’t even heard them come in. Apollo watched her quietly from the doorway. Brian didn’t even struggle in his carrier, as if he too were taking in the strange sight. Emma raised the drill to the top of the window frame and pulled the trigger, then sank the spinning drill bit into the wood until it disappeared. When she pulled it back out, dust fell across her and to the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Apollo asked.

  Emma turned so fast, she nearly fell off the ladder. She brought the drill out like a pistol, pointed straight at him.

  “How was work?” he said.

  “Blackout curtains,” Emma said, then turned back to the window frame and drilled a second hole. The noise finally made Brian stir. He hadn’t been sleeping, but at least he’d been calm.

  “I thought we weren’t going to start sleep training yet,” Apollo said.

  Emma came down the ladder and set the drill on the floor. She took something out of a box that had been hidden under the piled curtains. She climbed back up the ladder, pulled a screwdriver from her pocket, and installed the blackout curtain’s frame.

  “We’re not starting that yet,” she said as she worked.

  “Then why are you putting those up?” he asked. “And why are all the windows covered up?”

  “I found a good message board for moms,” she said. “They told me these were best blackout curtains around.”

  “How much did they cost?”

  Emma didn’t answer him. She finished and came back down the ladder.

  “Why did you lay Brian down in that driveway?”

  Apollo practically clutched his pearls. “I was packing up the car. I tried to do it while I was wearing him, but I had to lean over too far. He cried. So I put him down. But it was just for a few minutes. Anyway, how did you know?”

  “You sent me a damn picture,” Emma said.

  Apollo stepped back. “I did?”

  Emma held out one hand. “Let me see your phone.”

  She scrolled through a few screens, then shut off Apollo’s phone with a grunt. Together they went into the kitchen. Apollo asked to see her phone now. She held hers up and said the picture was gone.

  “Well, why did you erase it?” he asked as he handed Brian to her.

  “Did I say I erased it?” she asked. “Why would I erase
it?”

  She sat at the kitchen table with Brian, pulled up her top, and snapped open her nursing bra. Brian attached without error.

  Apollo opened the fridge and took out ingredients for a quick dinner. “Sometimes you think you’ve sent me a message, but it’s just sitting in drafts,” he said. “It’s possible you still have it. Let me look.”

  Emma almost leaped up from the chair but caught herself. If she hadn’t been feeding the baby, she might’ve pounced right on Apollo’s back.

  “I’m trying to tell you I got a disturbing photo, and all you can do is accuse me of making a mistake.”

  Apollo brought a frying pan to the stove, poured a capful of olive oil, set the fire, and quickly chopped an onion and garlic clove. He paid inordinate attention to the process in an effort to keep his mouth closed. Behind him Emma cooed at Brian, whispering sweetly, in a way that suggested she too was trying her best to change the mood.

  By the time they were eating dinner, they’d calmed enough to talk about the photo again. Emma explained what she’d seen and when it arrived, and now Apollo scrolled through his phone with the thoroughness of a detective. Brian had been set on the kitchen floor in a baby bouncer. As Apollo checked Emma’s phone, she used one foot to move Brian in a gentle up-and-down motion. The boy stared at the ceiling light, but his eyelids quivered. With the potential of his sleep so near, Apollo and Emma began to whisper. Then they were nearly drowned out by the steam pipe right behind Apollo’s chair. At night the radiators would rattle to life, but hopefully Brian would be deep asleep by then.

  “I’m going to fix the door to his room,” Apollo said. From his chair he could look directly into the back. There actually wasn’t a door at all. It had been that way since they moved in. He’d needed some kind of motivation to go ahead and do the job. “I’ll go to the super and see if he has one. I’ll give him some money to install it.”