by Delia Ephron
Another baby. This one should prove less elusive than the last.
It was before nine and stores weren’t open yet. The child must belong to the owner, Claire. Whoever that was. I started to leave by the front door, but the deer were still nibbling and a convention of squirrels had gathered on the lawn. Squirrels did get rabies, and a person bitten by a rabid one didn’t always survive the antidote: shots injected into the stomach. A sixth-grade classmate had informed me of this, his eyes bulging excitedly as he whispered behind his earth science book. Exiting by the back instead of the front, I ran down the driveway to my car, jumped in, and slammed the door. Even locked it. I hit the horn several times. This caused the squirrels to scatter and the deer to amble off my property. For a second I felt smart, as if I’d invented a new use for the horn. The honking attracted the attention of my neighbor, Mr. Woffert, who was on a ladder engaged in serious construction. He had removed his clapboards and was stapling on Tyvek, the house-wrap. “Insulating,” he had informed me. The task kept him busy from sunup to sundown. I waved and pulled out.
The trip was quick—a scoot three blocks through my residential neighborhood, a left turn onto Route 35, which almost instantly declared a name change to Main Street. In five minutes, I had reached the intersection of Main and Barton. The site of the calamity was obvious. Three squad cars had spun in at odd angles. How dramatic. They’d been summoned while passing and had to make last-second screeching U-turns across the road. I drove past the shop, then turned into the public lot that backed and serviced businesses along both of Sakonnet Bay’s commercial streets. After trying the rear entrance to Claire’s, which was locked, I hustled down a pedestrian alley to the sidewalk. Flashing my reporter’s ID, I squeezed between some gawkers and pushed my way in.
The small gift store was cluttered with glass and china plates, teapots, figurines, and also ruffled velvet throw pillows with gingham bows, mirrors, shelves of soaps and body lotions. Three cops—three-quarters of the on-duty force—huddled at a skirted table, while a plump woman in a flowered dress fluttered around, trying to see over their shoulders.
“Excuse me, I’m Lily Davis from The Sakonnet Times. I’m sorry about—”
“Baby.” She pressed her hand against her heart. “He gets into everything.”
A policeman turned around. “We’re taking him to LePater’s, Claire. We’ll grease him out, don’t worry about it. Who are you?” he asked me.
“Lily Davis,” I repeated. “Sakonnet Times.’’
“Stay back, out of our way.”
“Of course.” I read his name tag, Sergeant McKee, and wrote it down on my pad.
He returned to the problem at hand, allowing a viewing instant, and I saw that the baby, Baby, was a dog—a dachshund, to judge from its unmistakable hot-dog shape. A silver pitcher sat upside down on its head. “I should have given him obedience training,” wailed Claire. I took notes, as the sergeant scooped him up, supporting his tummy with one hand and the pitcher with the other. We could hear Baby’s muffled moans as we moved out of Claire’s Collectibles. A small crowd fell in behind for the short walk around the corner to LePater’s.
A female officer herded the shoppers into a compact viewing gallery next to a rack of chips. Matt, the cashier, handed over a bottle of Wesson oil. While the third officer held Baby in place on the counter, Sergeant McKee lubricated his hands and began massaging Baby’s neck, sneaking his fingers into the pitcher. Onlookers strained with anticipation. Would Baby be pried from the silver jug before he expired from fear? The only sound was the rustle of a paper bag when someone reached in for another doughnut.
Finally McKee managed to ease the pitcher off the dog’s head.
Everyone hooted and cheered. Baby barked. His sausage body rippled and twisted. The cop tried to adjust his grip, moving his hands from the animal’s haunches to his middle, when Baby squirmed free and fell or leapt about four feet to the floor. He hit the ground on his side, and waved his legs before righting himself. Then he dashed at me and sank his teeth into my ankle.
“Eek.” I heard myself utter the tiniest squeal. Baby released my flesh and raced through the fruit section. He skidded a few feet, trying to stop, scrambled in an attempt to move in another direction, and then shot right back. Sergeant McKee seized the dog just before it attacked again.
“Oh my goodness, give me that poor angel.” Claire snatched Baby from McKee. “He was only excited, weren’t you, my honey?”
I looked down to see if my pants were ripped, and now heard laughter, which made me snap my head up quickly. All I saw was the group of shoppers staring, some slowly chewing. They might have been an audience riveted by an exciting movie but continuing, as if on automatic pilot, to shove snacks into their mouths.
McKee moved in close. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
“Eek.” I heard someone mimic the sound I’d made when I was bitten. Then snickers of laughter. “Eek,” someone else peeped. More titters. A wave of amusement swept the crowd.
“Do you want to press charges?” asked McKee.
“I don’t give a shit. I don’t give a goddamn shit, you idiots.” I walked out of the store.
No sooner did I reach the sidewalk than I was horrified. I’d insulted the Sakonnet Bay police. “Idiots,” I had said “idiots,” hadn’t I? And I’d flung “I don’t give a shit” at the cops in front of nearly half the town’s residents. My ankle hurt, it really hurt. I’m not good at pain. I’ve cried at the dentist’s office, winked tears simply from a novocaine shot, and now my ankle was throbbing. Why hadn’t they expected Baby to freak? They should have summoned an animal expert, phoned the SPCA, or taken the dog to the vet. Instead, they oiled it up and yanked it out.
I became aware that I was standing in a throng. People who had been peering in the window were now backing away from me. It was a dog bite. I can’t be brought down by a dog bite.
Fixing my eyes on the wall of the building, focusing on dry fragments of flaking paint, I forced myself to walk normally, making sure the heel of my right foot grazed the concrete each time I took a step. The cops might be watching. As well as everyone else. I wasn’t going to embarrass myself toe-hopping through the alley and across the public lot.
I sighed into my car as if I had fallen into a safe house.
I sat there not knowing what to do. Suddenly I was hot. Roasting. I fished my keys out of my purse and turned on the ignition so I could roll down the windows. I hit the wrong button and locked the doors first by accident. My eyes were wet. Tears of pain, I hoped, not humiliation. After rubbing them with the back of my hand, I tilted the rearview mirror to assess my face.
I looked like a clown in a sad circus skit. My normally peachy complexion was white, with a watery smear of mascara under each eye. My face, a pleasing oval, had grown mournfully long. Serious gray eyes had a panicky pinpoint intensity. So piteous was the image, it would not have seemed inappropriate if a teardrop had been painted on my cheek. Most alarming, however, was my hair. The burnished red had acquired a garish glint, and short pixyish strands stuck to my forehead and cheeks, while others, on top, torpedoed skyward.
I was beyond repair. I reset the mirror for driving, and forced myself to examine my ankle.
Using both hands, I hoisted my right thigh and gently lay the calf across my left leg. I folded up the hem of my slacks. The back of my tan sock was red.
“I’ll have a look at that.” Sergeant McKee materialized at the window, a spook, and without asking permission, stuck his head further in, an invasion of my personal space. “I’m going to push the sock down all around, okay?”
I didn’t answer, since I would have been talking directly into his hat. Also, I didn’t trust myself to speak. Who knew what the simple act of having someone fuss over me might unleash? As I pressed back, trying to merge with the seat so our bodies wouldn’t connect, I felt the sock resist separating from the sticky wound.
McKee pulled his head out the window. “It’s pro
bably going to swell up a little. You might need a tetanus shot.”
“I’m fine.”
He folded his arms on the window ledge and drummed his thumb impatiently.
Suppose I became a joke? I just moved here, and already I’m a joke? I could see the sleepless nights ahead. The obsessing. The endless replay of worry. I’d heard those people in the store laughing.
“Let me drive you to the hospital,” he said.
“That’s not necessary.”
“Get out, goddammit, I’m taking you.”
“Okay.” Capitulating was such a relief that concealing it became paramount. I busied myself, dropping my keys back into my purse, organizing objects there. This must be post-traumatic shock. I was going to either shout insults or sob.
His car was parked behind mine. While I stood, mostly on one foot, he quickly cleaned up the passenger seat, tossing a bag of Fritos and a Rush Limbaugh paperback into the trunk. He must be a conservative, big surprise. This was a Republican town.
“I’m Tom McKee, by the way,” he said as we drove out of the lot.
“Lily Davis.”
“I remember. Do you have a doctor?”
I shook my head and then, since his eyes were on the road, bleated a short no as well. My doctors were in Manhattan. So was my hairdresser. I wouldn’t be caught dead getting a haircut in Sakonnet Bay. I considered whether to mention this, undoubtedly for perverse reasons—having already begun to irritate people today, I now couldn’t stop myself. I heard a beep.
“That’s my pager,” said McKee. “Ignore it. Mynten?”
“Excuse me?” I turned to find that he was offering me a hard candy in a wrapper with a twist at each end.
“What’s this?”
“An orange-mint thing. A throat lozenge. My wife buys them wholesale by the gross.”
“Thank you.” It didn’t taste bad, somewhere between medicine and a sweet: even better, sucking it gave me something to do. McKee removed his hat, balanced it on the armrest between our seats, and I got a good look at him for the first time.
He seemed about thirty-two. Five years younger than I. Maybe not. Maybe thirty-four. My obsessing was taking a new turn, compulsive age-guessing. He radiated health, almost glowed with well-being. That’s what struck me the most: how robust the sergeant looked, with fair skin and ruddy cheeks, as if he’d just come in for milk and cookies after riding his bike on a cold November day. From the side, he was compelling, mostly owing to an elegant, pronounced jawline. Less impressive from the front, I decided, as he glanced over. Something was out of sync about his features. Thick brows jutted over brown eyes that were possibly too close together, or perhaps the problem was that his nose, while straight, was slightly too wide. No, he was not quite handsome, but boyishly winning.
His dark brown hair was styled for Sunday school: short, side part, front combed up and over into a stiff wave. He might be excessively neat. He might also use mousse. Borrow his wife’s. A secret vanity. I imagined him pulsing a bit into his palm, rubbing his hands together, and then, in one motion, coating his hair from front to back. I must have been recovering, or I wouldn’t have been speculating about the officer and his hair products.
“Where’d you get those dumb ideas about deer?”
“Excuse me?”
“Deer don’t cross the road looking for love. Pumpkins, maybe acorns.” He was referring to the article I’d written last week about the increase in car accidents caused by lovesick deer or, depending on one’s point of view, the increase in the number of deer killed by careless drivers.
“As a matter of fact, deer do travel farther during mating season, and when they pair off they’ll cross the road to get to …” I couldn’t think how to describe it. “Their love nest, I guess.”
“Love doesn’t enter into it.”
Oh God, was he a hater of hyperbole? A stickler for accuracy? Like, I have to say, my ex-husband. I wasn’t going to concede, so I shut up. The beeper went off again.
“Isn’t that for you?” I asked.
“I’ve got a security company, and when I’m on duty my brother’s supposed to pick up. Don’t know where he is.” He looked exasperated by this problem. Did it occur often? He extricated his beeper from his front pants pocket, lifting his rear off the seat to do so. He was chunky around the midsection. “You should write about DUIs instead of Mary Burns.” This was a reference to another column I’d written, about a woman who had reported her underpants stolen from a dryer in the laundromat. I hadn’t realized until now how carefully my work was read. By everyone? Or just by him?
“DUIs. I’ll suggest that to the editor.”
“Under-age drinking, too. That’s another problem.”
I jumped on him. “Are you talking about my son?”
“sam?”
“Do you know him?”
“Everyone knows him, he’s got no hair. Hangs out with Deidre. I wasn’t referring to him.”
“Oh.” Everyone knows Sam? No, everyone knows of Sam. Points out the weirdo. Speculates about him. And who was Deidre? Did McKee know more about my child than I did?
He tapped some more numbers into his beeper and studied the response. “How’s your ankle doing?” He turned and smiled. This had the effect of a car’s brights coming at me on a dark night.
“My ankle’s fine.” If I didn’t move, it didn’t hurt. “I’m fine.”
“You say that a lot. ‘I’m fine.’” He imitated me, catching the cadence of the brave little soldier.
“I’m sorry I was rude to you before. In the market. I truly am sorry.” I changed the subject and spoke in what I hoped was an especially bland manner. “Is someone’s alarm going off?”
“Yes. I need to take a detour. Five minutes is all.”
So he wanted a favor. That gorgeous smile was manipulation, his ace in the hole.
“Are you in pain?” he asked.
“No. Absolutely not.” I urged him to go ahead, take his detour, not to think twice about it. I practically slobbered goodwill. It was a way to regain equal footing.
“You can’t write about this,” he said.
“Of course not.” We both knew why. It wasn’t police business.
McKee turned left, heading south of Main. He informed Dispatch that he was taking a short break, and we sped through the posh part of town. In less than two minutes we reached Ocean Drive, where residences could house battalions.
Although most of these mansions, spaced football fields apart, were uninhabited in the off-season, the air was alive with electronic buzz. Upkeep. Gardeners, carpenters, contractors—their vans and trucks lined the road. The noisy equipment provided an affectionate reminder of jackhammers in New York City streets. My ears were at home here.
We entered a narrow driveway between two fat round bushes. On an identifying marker, NICHOLAS was spelled out in brass letters on white wood. McKee slowed the car to a crawl.
“I don’t hear an alarm.”
“It’s silent, but in any event, it’s not registering on the pager. Probably someone leaving the house tripped it and screwed up a few times before setting it right.” His voice was relaxed, but his posture alert, attention shifting left to right. Perhaps someone was lurking behind the stately trees along the gravel drive.
“Why do these people have alarms, anyway?” As a devotee of the police log, I knew that Mary Burns’s purloined underpants was about as serious as crime got.
“Who knows.” He laughed. “They like to spend money. They like to imagine someone’s after their stuff. They like to keep my business going.” He snapped open the ashtray; it was jammed with old Mynten wrappers. As we wedged ours in, the shade trees ended, releasing us into a bright sun that illuminated a blanket of pea green. Couture grass. It stretched for what looked like a quarter-mile, interrupted by a few freestanding curved and clipped hedges. On a small upward slope stood a two-story gabled house with weathered gray shingles and white shutters. The white rail on the wooden porch broke for wide shallo
w steps to the door.
McKee pulled up in front. “Stay here.”
“In the car?”
“Yes. And don’t take any notes.”
“I won’t. I told you, I’m not working. I can’t even walk.”
Craning this way and that, I spotted no life whatsoever—nothing left out that needed to be put back, like lawn furniture or bicycles or a stranded mower. No cars were parked in the driveway or near the garage. This was obviously a false alarm.
After ringing the doorbell repeatedly, McKee began peeking in windows, then disappeared around the porch to the back. I occupied myself by inspecting his vehicle.
Was it a department violation to leave me alone inside? That would make two department violations, doing private work on police time and leaving an unguarded citizen in his cop car. His walkie-talkie hung off the dash; I could transmit false messages. I could completely screw up his life. Why this notion crossed my mind, I have no idea. I consider myself a moral person, the sort who accepts the first invitation and never cancels if a better offer comes along. When a waitress miscalculates a bill in my favor, I point it out. What was in McKee’s briefcase? To take my mind off subjects that were none of my affair, I examined my ankle.
Baby had left little doggie teeth marks. The skin around them was rosy pink and puffy. I tapped the wound lightly. This produced a drumbeat of pain, not terrible, even by my standards. There was no serious blood loss. If I washed the cuts, I probably wouldn’t have to go to the hospital. All I needed was water. And Bactine. I should definitely apply some antiseptic, and soon.
I opened the car door. The Nicholases must have some form of germ killer. I didn’t want to get a massive infection from a dog bite and lose a leg. I could imagine my city friends discussing how ironic it was. Lily moved there to protect her son, and look what happened to her. People in the city loved irony, while it didn’t seem to be valued at all in Sakonnet Bay. I suspected this was something Sakonnet citizens were right about. I’d find McKee and ask him to let me borrow some Bactine from the medicine cabinet.