Baby Love

by Joyce Maynard

  “If she won’t be cold.”

  “I’ll just leave her diapers on.” She sits down with Sunshine resting against her skin. That must feel good.

  “Like this?”

  He moves toward Tara, bends over and touches her leg as if she were marble.

  Sunshine is sucking now, and wrapping her fingers around Tara’s other breast. Greg notices now that Tara has tied a pink bow around the baby’s topknot.

  “Really just one change,” says Greg. He pulls three bobby pins out of Tara’s hair, very gently so he won’t pull her hair. It falls onto her shoulders.

  She’s alone in a room with a man. She has no clothes on. She is not embarrassed.

  Carla is trying to decide between a panda bear and a seal. They’re both cute. What she likes about the seal is the way he isn’t smiling. He looks like a seal whose mother has just been slaughtered by seal hunters. Probably most people would like the panda better. She’ll get the bear for Sandy’s baby. She’ll get the seal for herself.

  She wishes she had told Greg this morning. When he said, “But this girl is another type. She has a baby.” She should have told him then.

  Carla never used to believe the stories women told, about knowing the instant their child was conceived. She didn’t feel that way the other time, never thought of what was conceived the other time as being a child. But now she has no doubt. She’s one and a half days pregnant.

  Jill has just thrown up again. It’s called morning sickness but she has it all day long. She goes through two packs of Pep-O-Mint Life Savers a day, just to get rid of the bad taste in her mouth.

  One thing’s for sure. Her absolute least favorite place in the world to spend this afternoon is in a roomful of babies and mothers. She will just call Sandy tomorrow and explain. Right now all she wants to do is go back to bed.

  Wanda wishes she was smarter. She is sure there is something she should do now, about Mrs. Ramsay, but she doesn’t know what. Mrs. Ramsay said so many things last night that Wanda can hardly remember any of them. She just knows she has to be a very good mother now, or Mrs. Ramsay will get the police after her. She always thought Mrs. Ramsay liked her. She thought Mrs. Ramsay was sort of like a mother to her. Now she understands that Mrs. Ramsay does not like her after all.

  She also understands that Mrs. Ramsay thinks she’s fat. She didn’t know she was that bad. Mr. Pineo, yesterday, didn’t seem to mind. He said he liked to see a girl with curves on her. Of course she does not like Mr. Pineo. He wants to do some very weird things. She wishes she had said no about the chocolate sauce. That was gross.

  Well, she is not going to eat any birthday cake at Sandy’s party. Or just a thin slice. And she’s going to be a good mother. She will put Melissa in a party dress and tights. Maybe it’s too hot for tights. But the only clean socks she has don’t match the party dress. All the other babies will be looking perfect. It isn’t that hot anyway.

  She gets dressed up too. Actually, she looks pretty nice. She puts on some lip gloss. Something funny happens then. For a second, or not even that long, she forgets that Melissa’s just a baby. She thinks: Now I’ve got to put on Melissa’s lip gloss. Then of course she realizes that Melissa doesn’t wear lip gloss.

  She thinks about Dwight. It’s really too bad he went away. She liked him much better than any of the others she has dated since then. In fact she was in love, she thinks. She wishes he was here now and they were married, or just going to Sandy’s party together. She would tell him what happened with the lip gloss. That’s the sort of thing she never has anybody to tell. She would like the old ladies who come up to look at Melissa in stores to say, “Oh, I see she has her father’s eyes.”

  She wishes she hadn’t let Mr. Pineo do that thing with the chocolate sauce.

  A present for Mark Junior. She has forgotten a present.

  Also, she has split the underarm seam of her shirt. Also, Melissa just wet through her party tights.

  Why did you do that, you idiot? I just changed you. Why are you always wetting all over the place? I’m sick of it.

  She’s holding the baby, not close up against her, but out in the air. She’s shaking the baby. Melissa’s head is wobbling all over the place, and she won’t even cry. Wanda keeps shaking her.

  Her guests aren’t due for an hour yet, but Sandy is ready. She has hung blue and yellow streamers from the kitchen light—twisted, the way they did it for her junior prom—and there’s a bunch of balloons hanging down the middle, right over the cake. The cake says: “We love you, Mark Jr.” She will keep it out of sight until she lights the candles. Sandy just wanted to see what it looked like on the table, before putting it back in the refrigerator.

  She has covered the table with a paper Holly Hobbie tablecloth and matching paper plates and napkins. Of course Holly Hobbie is more for a girl, but that was all they had left at Felsen’s News, and besides, all the guests are female. Sandy has put their party hats on their plates and little baskets full of jelly beans and Sweetarts next to them. Sandy knows the babies won’t be able to eat the jelly beans, although she gave Mark Junior a Sweetart just now, and it dissolved on his tongue. He made a very cute face. The jelly beans are more for the mothers.

  They’re going to have pink champagne. Mark will bring it when he comes home. He’s putting in some overtime today. But he promised to be back in time for a toast.

  Sandy was hoping the portrait of her and Mark Junior would have been ready today, but when she checked at the K-Mart they told her they’d mail it in a couple of days. It probably won’t be that great anyway.

  Mark Junior is wearing his New York Wets shirt again and a pair of tiny little sneakers that look like the kind joggers wear. They cost too much, of course, but Sandy couldn’t resist. She’ll tell Mark they were on sale.

  She couldn’t decide what to put on herself. The woman from New York, Carla, is coming to the party, and Sandy doesn’t want to look like a hick. She decided her white frilly dress is too immature. So she has put on jeans and a shirt, with a chain around her neck. Safer to be casual.

  The others will be impressed that she knows Carla. Sandy will work it into the conversation that Carla used to have a job at a magazine. She hopes they don’t say anything dumb.

  She tries to imagine what it would have been like if she had come up with the money for a portfolio and gone to modeling school. If someone had discovered her, like Margaux Hemingway, just sitting in a restaurant. Although she has the impression it was an expensive restaurant, and of course Margaux Hemingway already had a relative who was a famous writer. She read a book by him once. The Old Man and the Sea. She skipped all the fishing parts.

  But if she had gone to New York or Boston and a modeling agency had liked her, she would have rented an apartment. She knows just what kind of furniture she would want. Those modular units you can rearrange and make into a conversation pit for parties, or a regular sofa-loveseat combination, or even a bed. How would she meet anyone, living in a city? Probably it would be like in Scruples, where the model falls in love with one of the photographers who takes her picture. She ends up going to Hollywood and getting hooked on drugs. It’s a miserable life. Money does not buy happiness. A person’s best bet is staying home and building a family. Look at Margaux Hemingway. She ended up getting a divorce.

  Sandy feels guilty that she was even thinking about that other life. She is very lucky to have Mark. He takes good care of her. He never had much chance to sow his wild oats. It’s understandable if he wants to go out to Rocky’s and play Space Invaders sometimes. Why shouldn’t he go fishing with Virgil? He brings home the bacon, doesn’t he?

  The thing about a champagne drunk is, it doesn’t last long, but while it lasts, far out. Normally Mark would prefer beer. But this stuff isn’t half bad.

  He’s sitting on the bank of the Contoocook River, out behind the plant where he works. Used to work. He has sixty-three dollars in his pocket, from his last paycheck. The rest went for the champagne. Which is mostly gone n
ow.

  He’s thinking about his son, who is five months old today. He’s remembering the day Mark Junior was born. Sandy thinks the reason he ran out of the delivery room was the blood. She always blames him for that. She says he ruined the bonding.

  It wasn’t the blood at all. He has seen plenty of blood and guts, deer hunting. What he couldn’t stand was the look on Sandy’s face. She didn’t even look like Sandy anymore. She could have been his mother, could’ve been his grandmother. Could’ve been a man, in fact. Mark had never seen anyone in that much pain, working that hard before. It made him feel like a jerk, that it was his wife, and not he, working so hard. Nothing he ever did in his whole life mattered, compared to that. And since then, it’s as if she knows that too. He used to think she was so delicate and fragile. Now he knows that is just a trick. She humors him, like he’s a little boy. She knows, and someday his son will know, that when it came down to it, Sandy was the strong one. Mark just stood out in the hall throwing up.

  He wants to be a good father. When Mark Junior is older, they will go fishing together. Mark will teach him how to tie flies. They will sleep out in the woods, just the two of them. In the morning Mark will build a fire and they’ll cook sausages and hash browns. Mark will tell his son what it was like when he was a little boy and he went camping with his dad. (He doesn’t remember this exactly, but he knows they did, from all his mother’s stories about what a terrific father he had.)

  A terrific father does not smoke marijuana, that’s for sure. Especially not marijuana he stole out of somebody else’s house. He doesn’t steal records and think about balling Linda Ronstadt. Mark tries to picture his dad fantasizing about Patti Page and Teresa Brewer. Sure.

  This is good grass. He didn’t mean to smoke any. He was just going to give the bag to Virg. But it’s good stuff.

  He read in Rolling Stone the other day that the Grateful Dead are going to give a concert on top of Mount McKinley at summer solstice. Mark picked up a hitchhiker one time who had seen the Dead live. The guy said this amazing thing happens at their concerts. Everybody in the crowd—twenty, thirty thousand people—everyone is thinking the exact same thoughts. Coexperience, he called it. The other great thing, he said, is that their music actually causes negative ions. At first Mark thought that was a bad thing, but the guy explained it’s the other way around. Positive ions are what cause stagnation. Pollution. Negative ions refresh the air. Like, a thunderstorm is full of supercharged negative ions. If you could get the Dead to play in the middle of Los Angeles during one of those really bad smog periods, and you got all those thirty thousand people there listening and coexperiencing, the negative ions would actually break up the smog.

  The girl with the red car. What is she doing in that house all alone, listening to redneck music? If he had been this stoned when he got in her car yesterday, and they didn’t have Virgil along, he would’ve balled her. Sandy’s crazy friend Jill. There’s another one for you. Virgil told him one time they did it three times in a single afternoon.

  Mark would screw her five times. She would be begging him to stop. “Can’t stop now,” he says. “I’m full of negative ions.”

  Screwing Linda Ronstadt on top of Mount McKinley while the Dead play “Sugar Magnolia.” Is it cold in Alaska, even at summer solstice? They are wrapped in furs. They don’t even need to light up a joint; all you have to do is breathe.

  Linda Ronstadt has never had a baby, for Christ’s sake. Why is everyone he knows having babies?

  Wanda can’t stand it anymore, the way all Melissa does is sleep. If she would’ve cried, Wanda would’ve stopped sooner. What drives Wanda crazy is the way Melissa goes all limp and stares at her, like she is the mother and not the baby, and she’s saying: “Now don’t you feel guilty? See how I suffer? But do I object? Do I complain?”

  She has got to get out of this apartment. No way is she going to Sandy’s party, with Melissa like this. She will step out for some air, maybe some French fries at Rocky’s. Melissa sure isn’t going anyplace.

  “Long time no see.” It’s Ronnie Spaulding, leaning on the pinball machine. He didn’t act so buddy-buddy when he dropped her off the other night. Maybe he was just in a rush.

  “Hi.”

  “So where’ve you been keeping yourself? I was looking for you.”

  She has a telephone. There is such a thing as knocking on the door.

  “Want to take a drive?”

  They will do just about as much driving as they did bowling. Wanda knows.

  “My baby’s upstairs, sleeping.”

  “So we’ll make it fast. The kid will sleep another twenty minutes, right?” He strokes her hair. Puts his head against hers. Sticks his tongue in her ear. He probably read about that somewhere.

  Greg has never done a picture like this. It could almost go on the front of a Mother’s Day card. Actually, Greg isn’t drawing in a sentimental way. This is just what Tara looks like.

  Since that first conversation they’ve said very little. She has just been sitting here with Sunshine in her arms and he’s standing at his worktable, sketching. Every once in a while he gets up to change the record. He has tried to pick music she would like, and although she has not said anything, he thinks she does like it. Sometimes she sings along with the chorus, very softly, once she’s learned it. All the lyrics have been sounding significant to her. Emmylou Harris, at the moment. “If I could only win your love.” Their eyes meet a lot.

  She gets up to go to the bathroom. “Would you mind taking Sun?”

  Of course not. He hopes she won’t cry. Not that it would bother him. He just wants Sunshine to like him.

  She wrinkles her brow for a second, moves her mouth sort of like a guppy. She is looking for Tara’s nipple. She accepts that it’s not around.

  Tara closes the door behind her. He can hear her peeing. Everything about her is dear to him.

  Water running. She comes out with her arms wrapped around her breasts, the rest of her exposed. Pubic hair so pale it’s almost invisible. No bathing suit marks, no sign of last summer’s tan. (Does she know how to swim? He can teach her.) Bright red polish on her toenails. A small scar on her right knee, an old one. A little tuft of hair at the base of her spine. Just like the baby.

  He had never thought to wonder before who the father is. He can’t picture Tara with anyone but him. He wants to ask her: What happened? Who was he? How could he ever leave you?

  Carla hadn’t meant to walk so far. It was just so beautiful down by the river. Somebody should buy one of those old abandoned mills and restore it. You could turn it into a great restaurant. Or studios.

  There’s a couple—the girl is naked—making out in a car parked outside one of the mills. A young guy sitting on the grass by the river, smoking a joint. She thinks of that painting by Manet. Déjeuner sur l’herbe. All that’s missing are the parasols.

  She takes the stuffed seal out of the bag to look again. She puts it next to her cheek, trying to imagine what it feels like to be a baby. What it feels like to be a mother. Of course she will breast-feed. She will get some of those little Portuguese booties they sell in that shop in SoHo that look like Mary Janes with red-and-white-striped socks attached. Greg will do a painting that looks like mountains. Only it will be Carla. Her breasts, her belly.

  Chapter 13

  THIS TIME RONNIE WANTED Wanda to take all her clothes off. She was a little embarrassed, on account of not having started her diet yet, but she’s also pleased, that he would be interested. And he has parked the car way out behind one of the mills that was closed down ages ago. No one will see.

  He wanted her on top. He said “Press your ass up against the window. Let me see your boobs.” He is not even trying to get inside. He just wants her to do all this stuff.

  He has checked his watch three times. He must be worried that Melissa might wake up and need her. Wanda knows Melissa won’t wake up for a long time yet. “Suck my cock,” he says. Well, O.K.

  Two-thirty. Ronnie checks
his wrist again to make sure. That was when the dame was supposed to be here.

  A real space shot. Bright-orange hair and one earring. She was carrying this bag full of yarn, with one piece hanging down and dragging along the ground. Called him young man. Said just a minute there young man. I would like a word with you.

  Crazy talk, that she needs pictures of this particular slut spreading her legs, due to pending litigation. Something about Dustin Hoffman. I think you know the particular slut to whom I refer. I need Polaroids of her disgusting body committing sexual acts.

  He said, “I’m not a photographer. I don’t even have a camera.”

  “Not to worry,” she said. “Just be there at two-thirty and make sure she comes up right next to the window.”

  You can’t argue with eighteen hundred and twenty-six bucks.

  Chapter 14

  CARLA ARRIVES AT SANDY’S apartment forty-five minutes late. She hopes she hasn’t missed the cake. She would like to see the looks on all the babies’ faces when Sandy lights the candles.

  It’s a minute before Sandy comes to the door. She has been crying. Over her shoulder Carla can see the table, the hats, the balloons, the streamers. No one else is here.

  Ann is hoeing up squash hills. She works one shovelful of the cow manure Reg brought her into each hill. It smells good to her. Anything smells good, compared to those bags of bat droppings Reg has been loading onto his truck all morning. He keeps sneezing. She had to get out in the fresh air.

  She bought flats of zucchini and acorn squash down at the feed store. They are about two inches high, with three leaves apiece. She sets each one in its hole very gently, so she won’t disturb the roots. She pats down the soil and sprinkles water over every plant. She thinks of a recipe she saw once for deep-fried squash blossoms. She’ll make that.

  She has not even remembered about the card she sent, the ad in the personals column. So she’s not prepared when the phone rings. She’s out of breath, because she had to run all the way in from the garden and she was afraid that the person might hang up.