Crossing the Line

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  The doctor readied a needle.

  “Is that necessary?” I asked, holding Em closer as if to shield her.

  “Second month,” said Soph, The Expert, squidgying her nose in thought, “so she’s going to get polio and DTaP.”

  “DTaP? What’s that?”

  “Diphtheria, Tetanus and something-I-can-never-remember Pertussis. The last is for whooping cough, even if I can’t remember the first part of it.”

  “Acellular,” Dr. Khouri provided.

  “That’s right!” Sophie smiled, giving the doctor at least an A. “Anyway, Jane, you wouldn’t want Em catching any of those things, would you? And you certainly wouldn’t want her passing them on to anyone else.”

  “No,” I said reluctantly, “I suppose—”

  “OWWWWW!!!”

  Of all the different cries I’d heard Emma make—the hungry cry, the sleepy cry, the I-need-to-be-loved-right-now cry—I’d never heard her make a sound like that before. I also never knew before that I could feel so much distress at an obvious pain not my own.

  It took all eleven verses I knew of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” to settle her back down again.

  By the time I got to the end of verse eleven—“What a special star you are!”—Sophie had calmly discussed with Dr. Khouri supplementation and any of the questions I myself would normally have asked about immunization: what reactions to expect, how to treat them, when to call the doctor.

  “Any more questions?” asked Dr. Khouri, as Emma at last fell asleep in my arms, bottle in mouth, a tiny frown of remembered pain still creasing her brow. “Are you having any issues with anything you’d care to discuss? Any family-adjustment problems?”

  Sophie nearly choked on that last. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Dr. Khouri looked perplexed.

  “With Jane,” said Sophie, hustling me out of the office, “the family’s been adjusting for nearly thirty years.”

  “That wasn’t very nice, Soph,” I said, after I’d made an appointment for Emma’s fourth-month visit and once we were out on the cold pavement again.

  “Oh, don’t be so serious.” Sophie smiled serenely, just like the cat who’d swallowed the Prozac. “You’re always so serious all the time.”

  “But what if I’d wanted to ask the doctor some more questions?”

  “Emma’s fine, Jane. She’s fine!”

  “Well, then, can I ask you something?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What’s with the mood swings? One minute, you’re Sybil—”

  “Sybil?”

  “—and the next, you’re like…like…”

  “Like what, Jane?”

  “Like a real sister.”

  “Oh, that,” she smiled.

  “Yes,” I said, dead serious, “that.”

  “It’s the breastfeeding. It’s worse than pregnancy that way. Plays bloody fuck-all with your hormones, it does. Taxi!”

  I knew one thing for certain, as my ears tried to recover from Sophie’s screech: When it came time for Emma’s fourth-month visit, I was going to just have to bite the rattle and go with her on my own.

  I’d asked Dodo if she would take me shopping on her lunch hour. She was very flattered.

  “Me?” she asked, hand going modestly to chest. “You want my fashion advice?”

  It was hard to understand why she was so surprised. As an editor, as a member of the female race, Dodo had the most impeccable taste.

  “What do you need help with?” she gushed, as we exited the office building that housed Churchill & Stewart, our bags slung firmly over our shoulders in the serious-shoppers stance that all women recognize. “New furniture for your living room? Things for the kitchen?”

  I stopped in my tracks on the sidewalk, shoulder bag in midswing.

  “What do you mean?” I demanded. “What’s wrong with my living room? What’s wrong with my kitchen?”

  “Oops,” Dodo said quietly, “sorry.” Then she linked her arm with mine to jolly me along. “Come on, then,” she said. “So, what did you say we were looking for?”

  “Clothes for Emma.” I explained how, even though I’d been given a lot of things for the baby at both showers, there had been a paucity of clothing. “And babies just keep growing!” I expressed the awe I constantly felt at how much Emma continued to change from one day to the next.

  “Oh, good!” enthused Dodo, hailing a cab. “I know just the place.”

  Just the place turned out to be a store I hadn’t set foot in since…

  “Harrods???” I demanded-asked, standing on the pavement as I looked up at the familiar green sign.

  The last time I’d been in Harrods had been during the fifth month of my pregnancy charade. I’d come to try on maternity clothes, just to see what I looked like, and wound up stealing what I had come to think of as “The Cloth Baby,” hence the title of my book, one of those fabric-stuffed wrap-around-the-waist contraptions that they keep in maternity dressing rooms so that women who are not very far along can get an idea of how the clothing will look when they are. My theft had earned me the distrust of the Security Department and I hadn’t hazarded a return trip since.

  “I can’t go in there!” I objected. “They probably have my picture on a wanted poster!”

  “Of course, you can,” Dodo soothed, gently tugging on my arm. “It’s been months. Besides which, you won’t be going to the same department. No one will recognize you in the baby department.”

  “But,” I tried one last objection, “Harrods? It’ll cost me a fortune. I said I wanted to pick up a few baby clothes, not spend the equivalent of a down payment on a yacht.”

  “It’ll be fine,” Dodo said, leading me through the store. “You did say you didn’t want to get Emma just the usual kind of boring baby clothes…”

  True, I had said that, in the cab on the way over. I’d told Dodo that I didn’t want Emma looking like one of those boringly silly babies, always dressed in too-cute things; I wanted her to be a cool baby. Of course, I did realize that last made me sound like a silly woman.

  I’d been right to ask Dodo’s advice, I realized, as I stood there in the baby department, arms stretched out as though I were a mannequin as Dodo piled items on top.

  I didn’t care how silly it made me sound: “Dodo!” I squealed, me never having been much of a squealer before. “These are sooo cool!”

  And they were.

  No Peter Pan collars for Em. No bloomers with tight elastic bands that would hurt as they cut into chubby little baby thighs. No endless sea of pink. Some pink, of course, but no sea.

  Instead, my baby was going to be decked out in cool colors, like aqua and red and yellow and even a black long-sleeved T-shirt with a tiny pumpkin on it that Dodo found on the very back of the rack that was sized just right for Emma to wear the following autumn, provided she kept growing at the same rate. There were cool denim overalls. There were cool one-piece playsuits that looked so comfortable I wouldn’t have minded having some myself. There was even a cool lime-colored hat.

  “I know Emma will wear that with great élan,” Dodo said, tossing that last on my pile.

  “This is all sooo…cool,” I said again, not daring to look at the total as the sales clerk ran my credit card through.

  “I’m so glad I was able to help,” Dodo smiled. “If that’s everything, I should get back to work.”

  “Actually there was one other thing I was hoping you could help me with.”

  Okay, so maybe I’d had an ulterior motive when I’d asked Dodo to help me pick out Emma’s wardrobe. Did that necessarily make me a bad person?

  “Oh?” asked Dodo.

  “What kind of clothes would you wear—” how best to put this “—if you wanted to seduce a man’s interest without obviously seducing him?”

  She looked at me shrewdly.

  “Is the man in question Tolkien?” she asked.

  After the shower she’d thrown me, I’d found myself fielding a string of questions from famil
y and the people at C&S concerning Tolkien’s real place in my life. The combination of him having been there New Year’s Day coupled with his presence at the shower had telegraphed the fact that he was something more than just the simple “great good friend” he’d claimed to be. So I’d confessed, told everyone—even Stan from Accounting—about our romantic past, our tentative present, our uncertain future. It seemed scary, almost unbearably vulnerable, having so many people know about something that meant so much to me, but sometimes the truth hunts you down like a dog and there’s just no escaping it.

  I rolled my eyes at Dodo’s question, trying to mask the importance of this all to me. “Well, duh, Dodo.”

  “Just a suggestion,” she said, “but I’m much more likely to help you if you’re nice to me than if you’re not.”

  “Sorry.”

  I do realize that some might question my wisdom: asking man-challenged Dodo for fashion suggestions that would catch a man. But I wasn’t crazy. Dodo had never had any problem attracting men. No, her problem was that they always managed to slip off the hook, the slippage having nothing to do with how she looked. Hell, if I were a man I’d…

  “Jane?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Stop looking at me like that. You’re making me damned uncomfortable.”

  “Sorry.”

  Feeling somewhat chastened, I behaved myself as, toting my bags of stuff for Emma, Dodo led me to the women’s department.

  Dodo, in typical fashion, found what she was looking for in no time.

  “A black turtleneck?” I scoffed as she held up the offending object. “I’m not planning on robbing a bank!”

  “It’s not just any black turtleneck,” she said, eyes glittering, holding the shirt against me to size it up. “On you, it’ll be a tight black turtleneck.”

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll spend the whole time in it worrying if I’m getting any back fat and if he can see it.”

  She ignored my surliness.

  “And the perfect thing to pair it with,” she said, holding up a red plaid miniskirt, “is this!”

  “I’ll look like a schoolgirl,” I objected.

  “Exactly!” she said.

  “But Tolkien’s not one of those kind.” I was offended. “He doesn’t like little girls.”

  “Of course not, Jane.” She looked exasperated, as though it was just too much, dealing with a woman who didn’t know her Armani from a hole in the ground, which I didn’t. “So you’ll wear the ensemble with sheer black stockings and high-high heels.”

  “And men like that sort of thing?” I asked, skeptical.

  “Men love that sort of thing,” she insisted. “On you it’ll look…” And here, she began looking at me in a way that I recognized as being the same sort of look I’d given her back in the baby department.

  “Cut it out,” I said, taking the items from her. “You’re making me damned uncomfortable.”

  “Sorry.”

  Even though I’d tried to tell myself that I should be patient, that I should wait until Tolkien was ready for us to get closer, I couldn’t help myself. Feeling anxious that progress wasn’t being made quickly enough, I decided to take matters into my own hands by visiting the proper authorities. Thus, leaving Emma in the capable care of David, having first verified with Tolkien that he was working in the office all day, I embarked on a visit to Scotland Yard.

  I’d never seen where he worked before. Oh, sure, I’d passed by it a thousand times, but, never having been arrested for anything major, I’d never once been inside.

  Not having thought things through completely, I hadn’t counted on being stopped at the door, having my purpose there questioned, having the picnic basket I’d brought with me thoroughly examined for explosive devices.

  “Do I look dangerous to you?” I asked the guard with some asperity.

  He gave me a rather long once-over, taking in my red plaid miniskirt, my tight black turtleneck, my black sheer stockings and high-high heels.

  “Actually,” he said, “you look very dangerous to me.”

  “There’s only Tuscan sandwiches in there,” I said, as he tossed through my basket.

  “And chocolate mousse,” he said, holding up a covered china bowl.

  “People need to eat.” I shrugged.

  “Nice cutlery,” he said, inspecting one of the silver spoons I’d put in for the mousse.

  “Thanks, I cleaned it myself.”

  “And you say Inspector Donald is expecting you?” he asked, replacing the fork and tucking everything up again nicely.

  “No, I never said—”

  “Best call up to make sure,” he cut me off.

  He lifted his phone, pushed some buttons.

  “Inspector Donald, there’s a Jane Taylor here says she’s got an appointment with you, but she’s not on my list…uh-huh…uh-huh…okay, right.”

  He hung up.

  “He says you don’t have an appointment with him—”

  “I never said—”

  “—but he’ll see you all the same.”

  Feeling there was no point in my objecting yet again to what he was saying I’d said but had never said, I accepted his directions to Tolkien’s office, thanked him for his help, and tried to ignore the feeling that he was watching my legs as I walked away.

  Tolkien’s office, if anything, was even less personal than his home, meaning that there wasn’t even a CD player here to show that the occupant had anything other than business interests: no personal photos of him getting knighted by the Queen or shaking hands with Tony Blair (okay, I knew that nothing like that was likely to have happened in his life, but it should have happened), no metronoming silver-ball thingy on his desk for contemplative moments, no tiny fake putting green to brush up on a game he didn’t play; just a big map of the city on the wall with some stickpins in it that meant nothing to me but hopefully something to him and a large computer on a desk that was buried under the papers covering every inch.

  “Jane,” he said, half-rising, “you should never have told the guard you had an appointment with me when you didn’t.”

  He looked heart-stoppingly handsome in his dark suit, something I’d never seen him in before. You wouldn’t think a suit could stop a heart, but his did mine. On some men—men like Stan from Accounting, for instance—a suit is no more than the natural extension of an anal personality. But on a certain other kind of man, it becomes the most shockingly attractive accessory. If I weren’t so insanely in love with him already, that moment would have been for me like the moment when Elizabeth Bennet first glimpsed Mr. Darcy’s estate.

  “But I never said that,” I protested, snapping myself out of my own eye feast and getting angry now. I was beginning to wish I had given that guard grief for ogling me. “All I said was that I was here to see you. It was that guard who decided—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What’s up?”

  I raised my basket, half-expecting him to toss me out.

  “Lunch?” I said timidly.

  “You know,” he said, his actual words indicating that his tone should be harsh and yet it wasn’t, “I am working here.”

  “But you still have to eat,” said I, “and you did say that you were going to be chained to your desk all day doing paperwork, so I only thought to save you the trouble of having to go out and, oh, you know, forage for something and—”

  “It’s all right,” he said, mercifully stopping me in mid-frantic stride, coming around the desk and relieving me of my basket. “I was beginning to get hungry. So, what have you got in here?”

  I pulled out the Tuscan sandwiches, tried on a smile.

  “I thought maybe you’d like a change from turkey and cheese?”

  “How did you know that’s what I eat every day?”

  “Because you don’t look like a ham person?” I guessed. “Now, then, where should we…?”

  I looked over at his desk. Well, that was out. If I were to become responsible for messing up whatever
system of order was going on over there, it wasn’t likely to make him feel more warmly towards me.

  Seeing my confusion, he went to a closet, pulled out a navy fleece blanket that looked like the kind of thing you’d offer to a victim in shock at a crime scene.

  “I know it’s not the most picnic-y blanket in the world,” he said, spreading it out on the floor, “no red-and-white checks, but it’ll do. I keep it on hand for those nights I find myself sleeping in the office because I’ve worked so late.”

  I settled myself down on the blanket, feeling closer to him somehow as I pictured him sleeping under it. As I laid out the sandwiches, I thought that even if that old blue blanket weren’t the most romantic thing in the world, I’d give anything to be sleeping under it with him.

  He took a large bite of sandwich, chewed in that manly way men have—yes, I do know I’m a bit gaga over this guy—and swallowed.

  “So,” he said, “what did you want to talk to me about?”

  Talk to him about? I had to have a reason?

  “You didn’t come out here just to bring me lunch.”

  “Actually, I did.”

  “Come on. There must be something you want to discuss.”

  Oh, great, I thought. I’d imagined this impromptu lunch thing was such a good idea, an end in and of itself, but now, apparently, I was going to have to make some kind of purposeful conversation, too.

  I tucked my legs to one side, thinking, thinking…

  “Your parents!” I finally blurted out.

  “My parents?”

  “Yes, your parents. Don’t look so surprised. You and I have been back in touch for—what?—nearly two months now and you’ve never once mentioned how they’re doing.”

  “Fine,” he shrugged, looking somewhat bewildered, “same as always.”

  “Yes, but how did they react to our breakup?” I asked, and I realized suddenly that I was curious about these things. “What do they think about what’s been going on?”

  “Well,” he said, swallowing with a bit more difficulty it seemed, “of course I told them when we stopped seeing each other and of course they were distressed, said something about you being the most fun girl I’d ever brought home.”