by Mike Wells
Neal went into the living room, so angry he was shaking. He picked up the paper off the floor and began to scour the classified ads for a new job. This was a nightly ritual—this and driving to the library to use the Internet to search the online job listings, as they could no longer afford such “luxuries” as an online connection or even cable TV. Or even a cell phone! At the beginning of the summer, when school had ended, he thought he might be able to find a position in which he could use his knowledge of chemistry—maybe an opening for a lab technician or analyst. But he had nearly given up hope. No one wanted to hire a chemist who “almost” had a college degree. The market was saturated with plenty of qualified applicants.
After his routine perusal, he chucked the paper into the chair beside him. This time, it did not slide off the plastic covering.
“Nothing new?” Annie said from the kitchen door.
“No,” Neal said softly. He gazed at the baby, who he could see through the doorway, sitting in her baby seat. She seemed to be gazing back at him.
Neal could hear a skillet sizzling and popping on the stove. From the aroma, he knew Annie was making fried chicken, his favorite meal. She knew how to prepare it exactly the way he liked it, crisp but without much grease. At least she could cook halfway well.
“Is the delivery job really that bad?” Annie said.
“Well...no. I guess not. At least I don’t have to be around those Snell bozos very much. I spend ninety percent of my time on the road. But it’s minimum wage, Annie. We can’t live on that.”
“I know,” she said. Neal hoped she might feel guilty, but if she did, her face didn’t show it. She refused to consider the idea of working again herself until Natasha was old enough to go to school. Neal actually admired Annie’s resolve to devote all her time and attention to the baby—he didn’t think that leaving infants in day care centers, with total strangers, was a good idea. But he didn’t think it was smart to raise kids in substandard conditions, either. And what about money for Natasha’s education? Where would that come from? Out of the sky? But Neal had grown tired of that discussion, and he knew Annie had, too. Whenever they got into it, he always ended up feeling like the “selfish prick” insurance salesman who had knocked up his sister.
“I have to find something that pays more,” he said. “And something that’s more mentally stimulating. If I don’t, I’m going to go fu—I mean, I’m going to go stir crazy.”
At that instant, Natasha let out a “gaaaaa-oooooh” that was loud enough to drown out the sizzling and popping of the chicken. Neal and Annie both laughed.
Annie picked Natasha up out of her baby seat and brought her back to the doorway.
“What did you tay, honey?” Annie said, tickling her chin. “Tay tometing for Mommy and Daddy.”
Natasha smiled and worked her mouth, but no sound came out.
Annie looked at Neal sympathetically. “Don’t you think you might have just imagined that she said ‘I love you’? That sounded a lot like it a minute ago.”
“I didn’t imagine it,” Neal said defensively. “She said it loud and clear, all three words: I—love—you.”
Annie nodded, but Neal could tell she no more believed him than if he had told her that Natasha had played duplicate bridge with him that afternoon.
Neal saw a flicker of light behind Annie, and he smelled something burning. “Annie, I think your chicken’s on fire.”
“Oh!” she said, rushing back into the kitchen.
Neal got up from the couch and followed her. Annie quickly set Natasha down in her baby seat, then reached for the handle of the flaming skillet.
“Don’t!” Neal said. He took a dishtowel off the counter and moved the skillet over to the sink.
While Annie tried to save the chicken, Neal went over to Natasha. The little baby looked up at him and slowly kicked her feet, like she was riding a tiny bicycle. Neal didn’t touch her very much, but now, he had an impulse to grab her bare foot. Which he did. The tiny foot felt strange in his hand, hot and clammy, like the paw of some furry animal.
Natasha’s eyes remained fixed on Neal’s face. He watched her for a long moment, feeling a little uneasy. He relaxed a little and smiled at her.
Her mouth opened.
At first, Neal thought she was going to speak to him again. Instead, some yellowish goo bubbled out and ran down her chin.
Neal backed away. “Annie, Natasha’s—”
Annie turned around, saw what was happening, and scooped Natasha up into her arms. She picked up a dishtowel and cleaned the baby’s face with it.
Natasha’s tiny brown eyes remained with Neal’s, her expression oddly distant.
He took another step back from her, wondering if the yellowish goo had been served up especially for him.
CHAPTER 4
Neal awoke sometime in the middle of the night, his bladder full. This had always been a normal occurrence for him, but now, he was drinking a beer (well, sometimes two or three beers) every night, and he was waking up more often.
He peered in the direction of the night stand to check the time. As always, Annie had left the telephone off the hook, and the receiver was blocking the view of the alarm clock. But Neal was sure it could not have been past 2:00 am. The baby woke up every night around that time to be nursed, and Neal had never managed to sleep through the clamorous process.
He lay there for a couple of minutes, debating about whether to get up and go to the toilet or try to ignore the dull ache in his groin and go back to sleep. He finally opted for the latter. But as soon as he closed his eyes, he became aware of the room’s unusual quiet. Normally, he could hear both Annie and the baby breathing. At this particular moment, however, he could only hear the far-away sound of traffic on Roswell Road.
Neal rolled over in Annie’s direction and listened more carefully. She was facing the other way and he still could not hear her, or the baby, breathing.
He moved his head closer to Annie’s.
At last, he heard the slow, gentle sound of inhalation and exhalation. His wife was a heavy sleeper—sometimes when the baby woke up for her nightly feeding, Neal would literally have to shake Annie awake. He thought it a bit odd for a mother so concerned about her child’s well being to allow herself to fall into such a deeply unconscious state.
Neal sat up in the bed and peered across the room, at Natasha’s crib. It was positioned at an angle between the window and Neal’s trophy case, an arrangement that gave Annie the easiest access to it in the dark, and also minimized the chances of Neal slamming into it during his nightly treks to the bathroom. Neal could barely make out the crib’s shadowy form in the darkness. He strained his ears and listened for any sound that might be coming from it, breathing or otherwise.
But there was not a peep.
Now, he was starting to worry about crib death.
Neal quietly slipped out of bed. As he stepped onto the cool hardwood floor, the room appeared to teeter slightly—the effects of the three beers he had drunk before dinner hadn’t quite worn off.
He paused briefly to steady himself, then took a step towards the crib.
When his right foot came down, a hot streak of pain had shot up through the sole—it felt like he had stepped on an ice pick.
Neal screamed.
He lost his balance, falling away from the crib and landing on the floor, on Annie’s side of the bed. He slammed against the hardwood with such force that the entire room shook, the glass in the trophy case rattling. His left shoulder took the brunt of the impact. For a precious instant, there was only numbness, but then a wave of pain rose and crested through his shoulder that was so intense he thought he might pass out.
“Shit!” he gasped.
Annie turned on the lamp beside the bed. The baby started crying.
“What happened?” she said, in a panicky screech, one reserved for baby-related emergencies.
“My foot,” Neal grunted.
He was still on the floor, writhing around in pain,
alternating between gasping and struggling to see what had impaled him. Whatever it was, it was still lodged in his foot. As Neal squirmed, the heavy, offending object banged and scraped across the floor.
“Oh my God!” Annie gasped.
Neal rolled over onto his side, onto his good shoulder, and stared at his left foot. His tennis trophy was dangling from it, the one that had broken when he had moved the trophy case into the bedroom. The top of the trophy—the sharp, jagged end of the broken-off tennis racquet—was buried deep in his flesh, imbedded in the tendons.
“Shit!” Neal yelled again. But this time, he could hear cold fear in his voice. In his mind’s eye, he could clearly see the minute details of the tennis trophy’s sheared off racquet—the crook about halfway down the shaft, the jagged spirals of metal that fanned out from the end, the little patches of rust...
“Get it out of me!” Neal shouted, over the incessant wailing of the baby.
Annie leaped down onto the floor, a terror-stricken look on her face. She reached for the trophy but couldn’t seem to decide how or where to take hold of it.
“Jesus!” Neal said in frantic frustration, shoving himself upright on the floor. Another wave of pain crested in his shoulder. Bright red blood ran down the trophy’s side and dripped steadily onto the floor. He started to grab the base of the trophy with his hand, then changed his mind and pressed on it with his good foot, holding its heavy base against hardwood.
Neal closed his eyes and braced himself.
In one quick but agonizing motion, he yanked his foot away from the metal object, letting out a grunt that sounded more animal than human. He passed out for a few seconds. What he saw when he opened his eyes, he would never forget. His foot flung out a thick spray of blood that splashed across Annie’s ashen face. She looked like someone in a horror film who had just witnessed a slashing.
But the image just beyond her was far more disturbing. Over the top rail of the crib, two dark eyes were watching him. He could see the top of Natasha’s fuzzy head and her two tiny, paw-like hands gripping the wooden rail. The eyes seemed completely vacant, yet there was a feeling that they conveyed in that fleeting moment that Neal could only interpret as...satisfaction.
Neal screamed, screamed like he never had before in his life.
Annie clasped her hands to her cheeks, smearing her face crimson, unaware that Neal’s blood had splashed across it. She stared at his foot, her eyes wide with horror. There was a puffy, gaping hole in its sole, about the size of a dime. Blood was spurting out of it, forming a puddle on the floor.
“Ambulance!” Annie blurted. “We have to call an ambulance!”
She leaped up from the bed and took a step towards the night stand. Instead of the hardwood, she stepped on Neal’s left hand and cried “Ow!” (something that Neal would later remember and find darkly amusing) and began fumbling with the telephone. But at that moment, Neal barely heard or saw any of this—he was still in shock. He looked back over at the crib, but Natasha had disappeared—her head and hands were no longer visible.
“What’s wrong with this damn thing!” Annie said frantically. She was punching 9-1-1 into the telephone over and over again, the receiver to her ear.
Neal finally came to his senses. “It’s dead, Annie. You left it off the hook. You have to hang up and wait until...oh, never mind!”
“What?” she said, rattled.
“Just hang up, Annie. I don’t need an ambulance. I’m not dying.”
Annie hesitated, staring down at his bleeding foot—it was still gushing blood. “But you have to go to a hospital!”
“Maybe I do, but you’re not going to get anybody on that phone until you hang up for a minute and get a dial tone.”
Annie lowered the receiver, but did not hang up. She was still staring at Neal’s foot. For a second, he thought she would throw up.
“Get me a towel, for God’s sake.”
“You need to wash it out,” she said, glancing at the blood-drenched trophy. It was lying on its side, a few feet away from Neal, between him and the crib.
“I know, but I don’t want to get blood all over everything.”
“But—”
“Just do it, Annie!”
She started to hang up the phone, then just dropped the receiver on the floor and trotted into the bathroom. This time, she was careful not to step on Neal’s hand.
He eased himself across the floor, to the bed, and propped his back up against it. As he did this, he did not take his eyes off the crib. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and the baby as possible.
Annie came back into the room carrying a frayed navy blue bath towel that his mother had given him for his dorm room at college. Neal started to take it from her but she pushed his hand away. She wiped up the blood on the floor, then carefully took hold of Neal’s ankle. After patting the sole of his foot dry, she began to wrap the towel around and around the wound.
Neal stared past her, at the bloody tennis trophy. “How did it get on the floor?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Neal said, raising his voice.
“No, I don’t. I didn’t do it—don’t try to blame it on me.”
“I know you didn’t do it,” Neal said. His eyes focused on the crib. “That goddam baby did it.”
Annie gasped. “What?”
“You heard me.”
Annie stared at him. “You’re crazy.” She finished wrapping the towel around his foot and tucked the end in neatly.
Neal felt himself becoming more and more angry. “I just saw that baby—your baby—looking over the top of the crib like she was glad I hurt myself.”
Annie looked at Neal as if she couldn’t decide whether to feel sorry for him or to be afraid. She stood up and went over to the crib. Neal sat up straighter as Annie leaned over the wooden contraption. His heart started to pound. Neal wasn’t sure he ever wanted to see Natasha’s face again.
“How’s my wittle baby?” Annie cooed softly, picking Natasha up. The child’s eyes were shut (thank God) and she was asleep, or at least pretending to be asleep. But Neal noticed something else that made him lean forward even more.
“Look!” he said, pointing at Natasha. “There’s blood on her forehead.”
Annie inspected the baby’s face, then wet one finger and wiped the red droplets away.
“See! I told you. That proves it, Annie.”
She put Natasha over her shoulder again and turned towards Neal. “It proves what?”
“That she...put...the trophy over there.” Neal pointed towards a spot on the floor where he thought the trophy had been when he stepped on it. He had hesitated over the word “put” because he couldn’t envision how Natasha could have actually done it.
Annie sadly shook her head. “You’re in shock, Neal.” She kissed Natasha’s sleeping face and set the baby gently back in her crib.
“I am not in shock,” Neal said, glaring at his wife. “I know exactly what happened.”
“I do, too,” Annie said.
“What do you mean?” Neal said, though he thought he knew what she was going to say. He grimaced as another wave of pain welled up in his foot.
“You left your stupid trophy on the floor and stepped on it.”
“I did not!”
“Yes you did. And now you’re trying to blame it on a little baby, the same way you did when you accidentally broke the stupid trophy moving the case in here. “
“I’m not ‘trying’ to blame it on her, Annie. I know she— “
“Shhh! You’re going to wake her up again.”
Neal was breathing hard, so angry he nearly forgot about his throbbing foot. He struggled to hold his voice in a whisper. “You think I left that trophy in the middle of the floor? I haven’t touched that trophy since the day it broke.”
“That’s a lie, Neal.”
Neal was taken aback by this. “Excuse me?”
“You tried to glue it back together a couple of weeks
ago. Remember?”
Neal was so mad he tried to push himself up off the floor.
“What are you going to do, Neal? Shove me into the wall again?”
He became very still. Even though more than a year had passed since then, Annie just couldn’t leave it alone. He hadn’t shoved her—he had grabbed her arm to stop her from hitting him, and then she’d lost her balance! What did she expect, anyway, acting so self-righteous? It was just after they had gotten into the biggest argument ever about her pregnancy, when Neal had told her, in no uncertain terms, that he wanted her to have an abortion. She had become so angry she’d started to take a swing at him, and when he grabbed her arm to stop her, she slipped and fell against the wall, bumping her shoulder, but it was nothing serious.
“I didn’t shove you ‘against’ anything, Annie.”
“Yes you did.”
“No I didn’t, and you know it.”
Annie glared at Neal, her eyes watery.
“Anybody else probably would have shoved you, the way you acted that night. You think I’m so terrible for wanting an abortion, but...” Neal motioned around the room. “...is this how you want your kid to grow up? Living in a dump, with a father who’s a college dropout?”
“You don’t care about our child, Neal—all you care about is yourself. You can finish your degree as soon as Natasha’s old enough to go to kindergarten and I can start working again. A few years won’t make any difference.”
Neal rolled his eyes. “That’s easy for you to say.”
“You don’t know what’s important in life, Neal.” Annie started to say something else, then gave a long sigh. “I refuse to argue about this anymore—there’s no point in it. But you never should have shoved me, Neal. Never. There’s no excuse for it. You could have killed our child.”
“Our child is alive and well, in case you hadn’t noticed. You ‘could’ have burned the whole apartment building down today with your cooking accident, but that didn’t happen, did it? A million terrible things ‘could’ happen every day, but they don’t.” Neal over looked at the crib. “Not usually, anyway.”
Annie glanced at the crib, then shook her head as if she could no longer deal with him. “You’re losing it, Neal, if you think Natasha could actually climb out of her crib and put that trophy on the floor.”