“Now I understand what’s thrashing around in that tangled brain of his,” the woman said when Buffy finished. “The way he was holding that child and chattering at her a minute ago, I thought he’d drunk windshield cleaner by accident.”
Restlessness seized her. “I can’t just stand here,” Buffy said. “Excuse me.”
“Both bathrooms are free. Take your pick.”
“Thanks, but that’s not what I meant.” From the closet, Buffy fetched the vacuum and set to cleaning the house. While she worked, she reflected on the strange fact that Carter hadn’t rejected his daughter despite the method of her conception. Still, she knew better than to make too much of a little fatherly interaction. Just because the man wasn’t a jerk like Roger didn’t mean he’d turn out to be a saint, either.
After lunch, while Mazeppa proudly took the baby for a walk in a borrowed carriage, Buffy dusted the furniture, degunked the oven and scrubbed the bathrooms. Carter kept the place in decent shape, but he’d missed the fine points.
She tore a fingernail, one of three such casualties in the past week. Afterward, she gave herself a manicure. Reluctantly bypassing bright purple and dark green polish, she settled on pale pink, in view of the fact that she would have to apply for employment as soon as she reached a city.
Buffy hated to admit how much she didn’t want to leave Nowhere Junction. During her childhood and teen years, she and her sister had been carted all over Southern California, and she’d learned not to care where she was as long as she could go shopping.
But the townspeople had welcomed the dress store with open wallets. And she’d promised to fix dinner for Murdock on Saturday. And if somebody didn’t tease Carter into playing hooky and sneaking into swimming pools once in a while, he might grow old without ever having lived.
She had no right to meddle in his business, Buffy reflected sadly. Furthermore, she’d be a fool to grow attached to a town or to a man. There was no sense breaking your heart longing for what would never be yours.
Not to mention, how long could she be happy in a place with no mall?
*
The meaning of life became clearer to Carter while he was replacing the spark plugs on the Reverend O’Rourke’s car. It wasn’t that he received a divine revelation. Rather, his gaze fell on a bumper sticker.
It said, Real Men Stick Around.
Now, he hadn’t been figuring on decamping, considering that he owned a business here. But he suspected there was a nugget of wisdom there that might help him, if he probed deep enough.
Hoping for further enlightenment, he glanced over at Gigi Wernicke’s front bumper. Her sticker read, Groundhogs, Eat My Socks!
Since that didn’t help, he circled to the back of the preacher’s car. It advised him to Pray for Peace, which was not a bad idea, depending on Buffy’s mood.
Gigi’s rear sticker gibed, “Groundhog Station? That’s really nowhere!”
Still searching for more, Carter ambled over to the third car that had been dropped off that morning. It belonged to George Weinbucket. The banker-cum-Realtor’s bumper sticker said, Fathers Are Not Optional.
“There you have it,” Carter announced to the empty garage. “Exactly.”
*
Buffy spent the afternoon at Finella’s in conference with her seamstresses, who now numbered half a dozen. She decided not to break the news of her imminent departure for fear of disrupting the momentum. It would be better to tell Finella at the last minute, and trust her to carry the ball. The group could continue to raise funds for the school, which was important.
Also, maybe Buffy could stick around a while longer. Carter had said he wanted to work things out. She was dying to know what he meant by that, although a bit afraid, too.
Would he arrive with a lawyer and dispute the DNA findings? If the clinic had made one mistake, he might point out, it could also make another. That she herself had once worked for the clinic and had recruited him as a sperm donor looked bad, even though it was pure coincidence.
Buffy stretched her shoulders as she walked the five blocks home from Finella’s house. While she hoped for the best, she had to be prepared to cut her losses.
She arrived at Carter’s place to find that Mazeppa had done the grocery shopping. When Buffy tried to repay her, the older woman balked.
“I always contribute something, wherever I’m staying,” she said. “I really moved in here to get away from Billy Dell and Willie’s diaper bills.”
The two of them cooked side by side. Nothing fancy, just canned chili to which Mazeppa added garlic powder and cut-up zucchini, along with baked corn bread from a mix. Buffy, who was fixing the salad, couldn’t believe that Gigi’s store didn’t carry arugula, avocados or fresh basil. Thank goodness there were marinated artichoke hearts and herbed croutons.
Her heart performed gymnastics when she heard Carter enter. As usual, he headed first for the shower.
Mazeppa stirred the chili. “Don’t eat too much of this,” she warned. “The spicy stuff gets into Allie’s milk, you know.”
“It’ll toughen up her taste buds,” Buffy said. “She’ll need it when she’s older.”
“Why’s that?”
When I haul her from one place to another, she won’t get indigestion from unfamiliar food. Now what had inspired that negative thought? she wondered. Sad thoughts led to sad results, her mother always said. To dispel the bad luck, Buffy took a pinch of salt and tossed it over her shoulder.
Mazeppa mistook the gesture for a reply to her question. “Okay, I understand you can use garlic as a salt alternative, but there’s no sense messing up the floor. Just because I’m a bag lady doesn’t mean I live like a pig.”
“That was to banish the bad luck.”
“What bad luck?”
“Any of it that snuck in the back door while we were talking.” Buffy got out the broom. Since she’d mopped the floor once already today, a modest sweeping sufficed. “What happened to your family?” she asked to sidestep the fact that her reply made no sense. “You seem too intelligent to be a bag lady.”
“You think only stupid people can be homeless?”
“I never thought about it.” Buffy swept the salt and a few crumbs into a dustpan. “Don’t you have any relatives you could live with?”
“Those quarreling ingrates make King Lear’s brood look like the Brady Bunch,” muttered the thin-faced woman. “I can’t tolerate my own flesh and blood.”
“You have kids?” Buffy asked in surprise.
“They’re not kids anymore,” Zeppa said. “They’re grown up, except for their immature moral development.” She tightened the rubber band that held her lank hair out of her face. “Useless bunch, that’s what they are. And I’m not fixing to say another word about them, either.”
“Another word about what?” Carter strolled into the kitchen, looking fresh and smelling better than bread straight from the oven.
Buffy stifled the urge to throw her arms around him and nuzzle his newly shaved cheek. And to whirl him around until they found themselves transported into a 1950s sitcom in which their biggest problem was what to fix when his father came to dinner, instead of how to deal with a baby that modem technology had helped to create.
She must be suffering from low blood sugar. She’d heard it could muddle one’s thoughts.
“Another word about dinner,” Zeppa said. “Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it. That’s a heavenly aroma. Thanks, ladies.” At the playpen, Carter crouched for a clear view of Allie. “How’s my little girl?”
“Da da,” she said.
“Your little girl, huh?” snapped Mazeppa. “Only if you love her and care for her. Biology doth not a parent make.”
He gave the baby his finger to examine. “Buffy told you the news.”
“And swore me to secrecy,” the bag lady responded. “So don’t go scolding her.”
“We could hardly keep you in the dark, with you living here.” After reclaiming his finger, C
arter pulled out a chair at the table. “I mean to raise my daughter right here where she belongs. Sooner or later people will guess the truth anyway, although I’d prefer it was later.”
“Wait a minute.” Buffy couldn’t believe what she’d heard. “What do you mean, raise her here where she belongs? Allie belongs with me!”
He served himself chili and corn bread. “You don’t have a home. Not that I’m throwing you out. But you’ve indicated you’ll be moving on soon, hunting for work. With no money, you might be living out of your car for a while. It’s hardly a suitable situation for a baby.”
“Carter Murchison!” cried Zeppa. “I don’t believe you plan to separate this baby from her mother.”
He took a deep draft of water before speaking. “I don’t aim to. But tell me this, Buffy. Who’ll watch her while you work?”
“Ever heard of day care?” she snapped. “Besides, who would watch her while you work?”
“Zeppa, for a while,” he said. “Don’t forget my dad. He already dotes on her and he doesn’t even know yet that she’s his granddaughter.”
“You’d turn this sweet little thing over to that old grump Murdock?” The dark-haired woman dumped so much ranch dressing onto her salad that hardly a speck of green remained visible. “I wouldn’t trust a cat to that man.”
“My daughter’s breast-feeding,” Buffy noted. “She can’t be away from me for more than a few hours. Haven’t you heard the research? Breast-feeding helps prevent cancer, diabetes and ear infections. Where I go, she goes. End of discussion.”
Carter studied her ruefully. “You can stick around here, if you like. But she needs her dad, too. Fathers are not optional.”
“Didn’t I see that on a bumper sticker?” asked Mazeppa.
“Truth is truth, wherever you find it.” Carter’s air of self-satisfaction infuriated Buffy. How dare he expect to keep Allie. She had never in her wildest dreams anticipated such arrogance.
“It’s my responsibility to support my daughter,” she said. “The dress shop is promising, but I’ll need capital to establish it on any kind of permanent basis. Right now, I have to land a regular job, and that means moving to a city. Away from you, I might point out.”
“Real men stick around,” he said.
“Now, I know I’ve seen that on a bumper before,” Mazeppa said.
Someone pounded at the front door and flung it open. Before anyone could rise, Billy Dell marched through the living room and into the kitchen. “Hey, Carter! Ain’t you comin’ to the ‘mergency school board meeting?”
“Shoot. I forgot.” He crumpled his napkin. “No need to trouble yourselves, ladies.”
“As if I’d miss a school meeting.” Mazeppa bustled around, putting food away. “Just give me a sec to fetch my cart. You never know when some old papers or a clean jar will come in handy.”
“Meeting’s being held in the kindergarten room, on account of the auditorium floor’s still wet,” Billy advised. “Now I better go make sure Willie’s okay. She was feeling a mite crampy earlier and she don’t fit into those tiny chairs. Mimsy’s sitting on the crafts table with her.”
Buffy’s first thought was that she didn’t give a damn about a school board meeting. Then she remembered that, if Carter had his way, five years from now Allie would be attending that very school.
It was a sobering thought.
Chapter Eight
Carter hustled across the street, his mind buzzing. Would Buffy really take her daughter and leave, just when he was getting to know his child?
He’d hate for Buffy to go, with or without Alison. The prospect left him twitchy and restless. If he weren’t careful, he’d do something stupid like follow her to the big city.
That kind of impulsive behavior always led to disaster. Look at that time he went to Houston with Amy, and again when he made his sperm donation in L.A. How many times could a man make a darned fool of himself in one lifetime?
Limitless, he supposed.
On the school playground, kids were running and screaming under the distracted supervision of Lilibeth Anderson. She was too intent on peering through a window at Quade Gardiner to notice Joseph Grimes giving one of his younger sisters a mud bath.
Carter decided not to intervene. The giggling girl was already about as dirty as she could get.
Ahead of him, Buffy held the front end of Mazeppa’s shopping cart as the two women dragged it up the building’s front steps. Thick blonde hair floated around her face and, in a demure pink sundress, she looked as pretty as an ice-cream cone on a hot night.
She’s the mother of my child. The thought sent tremors through Carter. He got even more of a thrill when his daughter’s gray eyes fixed on his face. Riding securely in a cloth baby carrier on Buffy’s hip, she reached out toward him. He couldn’t resist striding forward to grasp her tiny hand.
Other latecomers rushed past, and he wondered if they were puzzled by his unaccustomed radiance. How could he help it, in the presence of this miracle, this discovery that he had a daughter?
“Put your tongue back in your mouth before you trip over it,” snapped Mazeppa.
Carter blushed to the roots of his hair. It was just his luck that the wrong person had noticed.
Inside the school, the scuffed hallway echoed with the creak of shopping-cart wheels as the three of them hurried to the kindergarten room. When they entered, they found a folding partition had been removed between two classrooms, providing an open space.
The dimensions might be large, but the furniture wasn’t. When Carter tried to fold himself into the only unoccupied seat in the front semicircle, he felt like Quade looked in another of the tot-sized chairs. His knees were inches from his chin and his cowboy boots stuck out in front like clodhoppers.
Horace Popsworthy, who had put on a few pounds in recent years, had stuffed himself in so tightly that Carter expected him to go sproing! and explode from his chair at any moment. The man’s expression of offended dignity, however, precluded any friendly joshing.
The audience wasn’t having a much easier time of it. Some, like the well-rounded Gigi, had wisely remained standing.
As Billy Dell had told them, Mimsy sat on the crafts table beside Willie, who held her protruding abdomen as if afraid it might escape. At least there was no huffing or groaning, the way there’d been in church that fateful day of the Jezebel sermon.
Buffy appeared at home in her little chair with Allie perched on the writing surface. Mazeppa headed straight for some odd-looking fritters on a table at the rear of the room.
Quade tapped his gavel on his armrest. “As most of you know, a pipe burst in the auditorium today, which is why we’re meeting in here. This points up the urgency of raising funds by the start of the fiscal year.”
From Carter’s right, Finella said, “We’re raking it in with our dress-sale fund-raiser. For those of you who haven’t heard, be sure to stop by Murchison’s Garage tomorrow. We’ll have plenty of new merchandise.”
“Thank you,” Quade said. “I’m sure we all appreciate the effort. However, I doubt even you hardworking ladies can raise millions of dollars before the first of July.”
“A lot of us have tornado shelters that we don’t use much,” noted Gigi. “We could rent them out.”
Mazeppa groaned, a sound that bordered on a Bronx cheer.
“What about distance learning?” said B. K. Anderson, the druggist. “Universities are putting their courses on line. Kids love gadgets. Why not teach them that way? We could put our money into computers instead of a school building.”
“Distance learning for five-year-olds?” scoffed Willie. “I have one that can’t sit still more than ten minutes in the whole day. It doesn’t compute.”
From around the room came murmurs of agreement.
“We could take out a mortgage on City Hall,” Horace suggested. “A fine big place like that ought to be worth a few million.”
“To who?” asked Billy Dell.
“Renting out City
Hall would present a jurisdictional problem,” noted Quade, one of the few men in town who could pronounce “jurisdictional.” “School and city funds are separate. It would be illegal to mix them.”
“Says who?” demanded Popsworthy. “As the future mayor, I say it’s just fine. I am running unopposed, aren’t I?” He glared at Quade.
“Even if you’re elected, you wouldn’t have the authority to—”
“What do you mean, if?” roared the store owner. “It’s true then? You’re planning to run against me?”
“It never entered my mind,” Quade said.
“It ought to,” griped Mazeppa, and held up one of Finella’s fritters. “First thing you should do is outlaw these here science experiments from being offered as combustibles.”
“Comestibles,” said Gigi.
“Well, they aren’t edible,” the bag lady continued. “Finella, I’m a big fan of your Spring Salad, but the good Lord did not mean for us to create mutant fritters out of mashed potatoes and chocolate chips.”
Willie Grimes let out a guffaw that degenerated into a gasp. “Good heavens!” she cried. “My baby’s dropping and we haven’t even chosen a name yet!”
Along the rows of tiny chairs, large foreheads wrinkled in concern. Carter knew people were worried less about the imminent birth than about what name Willie might seize upon.
“You cain’t give birth yet!” cried Cissy Leroy. “Oh, what did I say? I mean, you...you can’t!”
“Watch your mouth, Cissy, or I’ll take a cane to you,” snapped JoJo Anderson. “I mean, a stick!”
“Stuff it, all of you.” Relinquishing her shopping cart, Mazeppa helped Mimsy hoist Willie to her feet. “Listen here, young lady. You name that baby whatever you wish, and if the rest of us don’t like it, we’ll bestow a nickname on the little guy.”
“Like what? Candy?” called some joker.
Carter couldn’t identify the culprit. Candy Cain, indeed.
“Thank you, Zeppa.” Willie nodded weakly.
Billy Dell leaped to join his wife as she tottered out of the classroom. The last thing Carter heard was Mazeppa saying, “I’ll watch your little ones tonight, so don’t worry about them.”
Designer Genes Page 11