by Rob Shepherd
7:05. Gary gathers his laptop and empty lunchbox container from his desk, carefully avoiding the smiling faces in the picture frame. He takes the stairs down to the parking lot and piles his things into his Corolla next to the car seat. As he settles himself in the driver’s seat his hand automatically reaches for his cell phone. After all this time he still finds himself constantly going to call home.
The anxiety he would feel as he listened to it ring: praying she would pick up, hoping that maybe this time she would sound like her old self. But praying most of all that she would be there, that everything was okay, that they had made it through another day. Near the end he had been calling every fifteen minutes, hiding in the bathroom at work and compulsively dialing their home number just to reassure himself with the sound of their voices.
“Don’t worry, she’s just a little down.” Roger had brushed aside Gary’s fears. “It’s not that unusual; just give her some time.” But Roger hadn’t seen how much Maybelle had changed; he hadn’t seen her drawn face and empty eyes.
7:15. He pulls out of the parking garage and sees that it’s starting to snow. He remembers that he needs to make a stop on the way home. It’s going to make him later, but he needs to pick up some essentials.
By the time he pulls into the parking lot at the Superstore the ground has turned completely white, making it difficult to distinguish from the grey sky. He grabs a shopping cart and navigates his way through the preoccupied shoppers to the baby supply aisle.
Formula. He and Maybelle had been dead set against using formula. Lying on the couch with her feet in Gary’s lap and caressing her stomach, Maybelle had told Gary that she was determined to breastfeed. “I don’t care how hard it is,” she had said. “He deserves the best. I feel like I would do anything for him, and I haven’t even met him yet.” Rubbing Maybelle’s swollen feet, Gary agreed.
Later he’d thrown those words back at her, forced them down her throat as she stood crying with her arms wrapped around her now deflated stomach. “I thought you would do anything for him. So why can’t you love him?” he shouted, helpless with incomprehension.
Now there is no choice. He puts the formula in the shopping cart: the most expensive brand. He will still give him the best he can.
He moves down the aisle, adding diapers and baby powder to his cart. He wonders if he has time to stop at the toy store on the way home. He wants to buy a new mobile: something with lots of colour and music. The old one, the one he and Maybelle had picked out together the week before the birth, was broken. He thought a new mobile might help with the crying. But no, it’s already 7:50. There isn’t time.
He is about to wheel the cart around and head for the checkout when on impulse he circles back to the frozen food section. Tuesday. She used to heat chicken pies with a side of potatoes and peas on Tuesdays. Before she stopped cooking. Before she stopped getting out of bed.
He’s still standing there staring at the pies when he hears someone saying his name. He turns to find Laurie, one of the moms from Kiddie Korner, pushing her own grocery cart overflowing with vegetables and fresh fruit.
“Gary, how are you? We’ve missed seeing you at playtime!”
Laurie smiles. He’d always liked her smile.
“Yeah, I know,” he looks down at his hands. “I keep meaning to come. I’ve just been really busy lately.”
She nods, that familiar compassionate look in her eyes. “Don’t I know it. These little rascals really keep our hands full, don’t they? Still, it would be nice if you could make it. Braydon’s such a sweet kid, and we really need you to balance out the estrogen in the group!”
For the first few months Gary had gone to Kiddie Korner every Wednesday evening and Saturday afternoon. He had tried to take Braydon somewhere every day: to the park, to the gym, for long walks in his stroller. Gary would point out passing dogs, kids playing in the park, birds flying overhead—anything and everything—and Braydon would babble back in his own baby language. Sometimes when they were walking Gary would stop and take Braydon out of his stroller and just hold him. He wanted to tell Braydon he was sorry for leaving him trapped in that house with Maybelle for so long.
But Laurie was right. It had been a while since he had gone anywhere with Braydon. That’s why he needed to get home.
“I’ll try to come soon, Laurie, I promise.” He grips the cart’s handle, getting ready to move on, but she stops him by putting a hand on his upper arm.
“How are you really, Gary?” she asks, concern writ on her face. “I know it can’t be easy, raising a child by yourself. I was worried when we stopped hearing from you…”
He forces a smile. “Really Laurie, I’m fine. It’s good. Things are going great.” He needs to get home. He’s needed at home.
“Well, if you need anything, just give a call, okay? Promise? You’re a good man, Gary, a good father.” Laurie gives his arm a final squeeze before letting go and continuing down the aisle.
8:10. He sees the time on the cashier’s wristwatch as he pays for his groceries, and his stomach clenches. He’s late. He should have been home earlier. A good father would have been home earlier.
He bundles the groceries into the car and drives home too quickly for the snow-covered streets.
8:25. The house is dark as he pulls up to the curb. He pauses on the doorstep with the key in his hand. Even now, he remembers the dread that would wash over him before he opened the door. He never knew what to expect. Would Maybelle rush at him, thrusting a screaming Braydon into his arms like garbage she couldn’t wait to dispose of? Or would there be deathly silence as Maybelle lay comatose in bed and Braydon cried himself into an exhausted sleep in his crib, covered in his own waste?
“You’re a bad mother!” he had screamed at her, all his bewilderment and pain spilling out in a flood of rage. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know,” she’d sobbed. “I need your help.”
But he’d turned away from her, hugging Braydon to his chest, feeling his warmth and trying to fill his son, his beautiful son, with all the love and comfort he could give.
He puts the key in the lock and opens the door. The house is quiet. He lugs the groceries past the living room and into the kitchen. He puts the formula away in the cupboard. He’s still not used to how big the house feels without her presence.
The days after she left were filled with whispers. At work he heard he heard his female colleagues telling each other, “She left. Just packed up her stuff and was gone before he got home”; “Postpartum depression, must be. My cousin had it and she was like a different person.” At Kiddie Korner the women were more vicious: “It’s unnatural, a mother leaving her child behind like that”; “Usually it’s the father who’s the deadbeat, whoever heard of a mother abandoning her child?” Then all the phone calls: “Gary, how are you?” “Gary, you’re so brave to be taking this all on by yourself.”
He hadn’t felt brave; he had felt relieved. He had been ashamed to feel like that, but he couldn’t help it. Now he and Braydon could be together without Maybelle’s misery. Now he could teach Braydon how to throw a football, he could take him on bike rides, he could do all those things that fathers do with their sons. He would be a great father.
The light’s flashing on the answering machine. A new message. That makes three over the past week. Plus the letter.
For the first few weeks after she left it had been great. But then Gary started to get tired. It was difficult: working all day, coming home to relieve the babysitter, playing with Braydon all evening, and then waking up throughout the night to feed and comfort him. And Braydon cried. A lot. Constantly. He remembered Maybelle complaining about the crying, but he hadn’t noticed it before she left.
He could hear the crying now. The sound starting up from the bedroom. Softly at first, but he knows it’ll get louder. The muscles in his jaw tighten. He presses the button on the answering machine.
“Gary, it’s Maybelle. I know I’m probably the last person you want to speak with ri
ght now, but I wanted to… Gary, I know I messed up, but you don’t know how bad it was. And I got help; I’m getting help. I miss him, Gary. Call me, I’m staying with Mom.”
The sounds grow more insistent. A whimpering, mewling sound creeping out of the bedroom and crawling down the hallway.
“Gary, it’s me again. Please call me. I’m so, so sorry for leaving like I did. It was unfair to you, to him, but you didn’t understand and I just… I had to get away. But… please Gary, call me. I need to know you’re okay.”
It’s become a wailing, screeching cry, reverberating around the kitchen and inside Gary’s skull. He grips the table, willing it into silence. But it continues.
“Gary, please, I’m staring to get worried now. Please call me. Is everything okay? Is he okay? Look… I know you don’t want to see me, but if I don’t hear from you soon I’m going to have to drive down. Call me.”
It’s a shrill, unrelenting cry, almost a scream. He can’t put it off any longer. Gary picks up the diapers and baby powder and starts to make his way towards the bedroom at the end of the hall. As though sensing his approach the cries break off abruptly, and he’s left making his way down the darkened hallway in an unnatural silence.
It’s waiting for him. He pushes away the memory of a smashed mobile, of a tiny bundle thrown to the floor.
The air is dank and musty; the silence hangs heavy.
It wasn’t him. He is a good man, a good father. But he had been tired, and Braydon wouldn’t stop screaming. Gary had been walking him around and around the bedroom for hours, the mobile’s inane song driving him to distraction, weeping from frustration and exhaustion.
And that’s when he’d felt that terrible thing well up from somewhere deep inside: a thing that he didn’t even know existed. He felt it rising up and bursting forth. It wasn’t his hands that were hurling the mobile against the wall; it wasn’t his hands that were shaking and shaking Braydon until the crying stopped. It was this other, malevolent thing that had escaped. And the part of him that was still Gary, that was still good, had watched in revulsion as this terribleness slithered into Braydon, forever replacing his son’s soft skin and sweet smile with something sinister. And when, gagging, he’d shoved it away, what remained in his hands was this terrible monstrosity.
He pushes open the door slowly, and hesitantly makes his way over to the crib.
“Hey, little guy,” he coos through a cracked voice. “You hungry? I picked up some more food for you on the way home. And tomorrow I’m going to buy you a new mobile. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
He reaches into the crib and picks up the monstrous bundle, its hideous, deformed shape disgorging flecks of spittle and vomit. It reeks of decay. He cradles the grotesquerie to his chest, feeling in its misshapen limbs and featureless face all the hatred and evil that had spewed out of him.
But it doesn’t matter. He wouldn’t think of the other little bundle now gone. He is a good father. He will love this thing. His creation. His son.
Granted Wishes
By Adrian Ludens
“It’s bad enough all the sports magazines you got out in your waiting room are about four months old, but now you got the gall to ask me if my wife and I are kin?” Dewey Davenport peered at Doc Haggard through narrowed eyes.
“Now don’t get your feathers ruffled Dewey; I’ve just got a few questions is all.” Doc Haggard -certainly looking like his name as far as Dewey was concerned- scratched the bridge of his nose and stared at the floor. He seemed to be contemplating something but Dewey didn’t feel like being patient.
“I’m growin’ a beard Doc; is there trouble with Edie or the baby?” He’d actually been having fun snickering over the magazine’s errant predictions for the football season and wanted to get back to it. “This appointment lasts much longer n’ I’ll look like ol’ Walt.”
“Disney?” Doc Haggard asked. He looked baffled.
“Whitman,” Dewey corrected. Then something occurred to him and he clenched his fists. “What kind of a madman has his severed head frozen and stored for future use?”
Haggard put his face in his hands. Dewey heard him sigh heavily. When the doctor looked up again he said, “I don’t know. Can we please stay on topic?”
“I don’t even know what the topic is, unless you’re gonna make more accusations about Edie n’ me.”
“My number one concern is for your wife,” Haggard said. “There seem to be some complications with the pregnancy. I’m afraid we’re talking about birth defects.”
Dewey sat up straight. As hard as he and Edie had worked at this, as seriously as they’d taken it, these were words he hated to hear. He kept his mouth closed and listened.
“I only ask about your family tree as a precaution. I have to eliminate all possibilities.”
“Edie and I aren’t kin; end of story.” Dewey folded his arms to build a protective barrier. He bit his lip and wondered what could be wrong with the baby.
“Dewey, I’m gonna lay some figures on you so we can get to the bottom of this. About 40% of birth defects are caused by genetic or environmental factors. Sometimes it’s a combination of both.”
“Dammit almighty! I told Edie not to buy them no-name brands. I knew that stuff wasn’t fit for consumption.”
“Not generics; genetics. They build your body,” Doc Haggard explained. “It’s your chromosomes, your family history of disease and such.”
“Nobody in my family has died of anything except old age or lung cancer,” Dewey revealed.
“Well now, there’s your other leading cause; an environmental problem,” Doc Haggard pointed out. “Does your wife do much drinking?”
“Coffee, soda, tea and more coffee,” Dewey revealed. “But no booze. She had an uncle that worked at a brewery. He died there.”
Doc Haggard raised his eyebrows. “You’re telling me there’s some truth to the old tale about the worker who fell into a vat and drowned?”
Dewey shook his head. “Nah. Kicked in the head by a Clydesdale while he was shoveling out a stall. But it still scared her off the stuff.”
“How about smoking?”
“We both cut down to a couple packs a day when we found out she was pregnant.”
Doc Haggard groaned and looked pained. Dewey thought about the food served at the hospital’s cafeteria and wondered why the Doc didn’t have sense enough to avoid it.
“Illegal drugs use or abuse of prescription medication?”
“You asking or offering?”
“Don’t try to be funny, Dewey, just answer the questions honestly,” Doc Haggard said.
Dewey wasn’t trying to be funny but decided not to let on. “We both drank a potion one time right before Edie got pregnant.”
“A potion?” The old doctor leaned forward. His mouth hung open.
“That’s right. Feller said it would help give us the exact baby we wanted.”
“Tell me about the potion and the, uh, gentleman who gave it to you.”
Dewey closed his eyes and began to speak.
“Edie and I wanted a perfect baby. Not just a healthy, happy baby, but also a baby with Hollywood or a big modeling contract in their future. A baby like that would be our ticket out of here. A cash cow, but it’d be a kid. You know what I mean.
Well guess what? No one—not our pastor, not our oh-bee-gee-why-inn, not even the surrogate agency we called—said they could help us with such a specific desire. You’d think with stem cells or whatnot, somebody would’ve figured out a way to custom-make babies.
Science and religion let us down but Edie and I knew if we wanted something bad enough, a way to get it done would appear soon enough.
We went strolling downtown one particular evening. First we stopped at the Brass Nail for burgers, then window shopped a few businesses that were closed for the night. We were minding our own business, enjoying the fresh air and all that. But then all of a sudden bad news hit for both of us: we were out of smokes. So Edie said, ‘Let’s cut throug
h that alley there. I think Thrifty Smokes is on the next block.’
So we cut through the alley between Cerrilllos Road and Ortiz. Half way down is a door I never noticed before. ‘That’s new,’ I remember saying. Instead of ragging on me for pointing out the obvious like she usually does, Edie stared at the stenciling on the door all goggle-eyed like a little girl at her first carnival. ‘Granted Wishes, K. Okopelli’ was stenciled on the door.
Edie pushed the door open and we went on in. Was it ever dark in there! The only light came from a few candles. This old hunchback was perched behind a beat up desk. He looked like a cross between a medieval wizard and a reggae singer; whattya call those guys? A rasta-ferryman?
This guy’s skin was dark and his face was kinda hard to see, but I did notice that he had a really big nose. The way it hung down it sort of reminded me of a…well, you figure it out. He had crazy dolls and masks all over his office. There was a charred spot on the floor where it looked like he’d built a fire. I sorta glanced around for a fire extinguisher but didn’t see one. This dude even had a shriveled up little head with leathery brown skin and stitched-up eyes and mouth hanging by its hair from a nail pounded into the front of his desk! It was like a movie or somethin’.
My wife and I looked at each other and we both knew what the other was thinking: ‘We really came to the right place!’
The guy, Dr. Okopelli, smiled at us and asked what our deepest wish might be. Edie and I both started talking at once but it didn’t seem to matter to the guy. He just smiled and nodded a time or two. When we both had run out of steam he said that he could assist us but there would be a cost.
For a second there, I was thinking, ‘Here we go; he’s gonna ask for our eternal souls or some such.’ Well, I was wrong. ‘Three grand,’ he said. Edie? She reached into her purse.
To make a long story short, we wrote the doctor a check that cleared out both our checking and our savings, and in return he mixed us up a special batch of medicine, gave us our instructions, played a catchy little tune for us on an old wooden flute and sent us on our way.