Читать книгу The Baby Chronicles - Judy Baer - Страница 8

Wednesday, March 3

To whom it may concern:

To the owner of the leaking Ziploc bag that at one time may have contained a sandwich and some baby carrots that now houses fuzzy mold and oozing liquid, please remove your biological warfare project from our refrigerator. There are some in this office who want to keep their lunches cold and do not want vomitous yellow gunk dripping onto our yogurt cups. If this is not done immediately, fingerprints will be lifted from the plastic bag and the guilty party will be fined large amounts of money and forced to eat the contents of the baggie.

The Management

War has broken out in the Innova lunchroom, and it isn’t pretty. We’ve been eyeing each other with suspicion, covertly watching our once-trusted friends and coworkers stash their lunches in the break-room refrigerator to identify consistent patterns of behavior. Betty is my top suspect, for leaving a Tupperware container of cottage cheese and pineapple on the counter until the cheese aged into a yellowed slime the texture of yak milk.

Harry usually picks up something at the deli, so I assume the half-eaten pastrami on rye that’s fossilizing on the bottom shelf is his. Bryan is hard to pin down because he brings his lunch in everything from old bread bags to cast-off foam containers. Mitzi carries her meal in a tidy Gucci purse she’s turned into a lunch box. I suspect that beneath that designer exterior lurks a plebian plastic bag carrying the hard-boiled eggs that she intentionally leaves in the fridge for weeks at a time to torment the rest of us. Old eggs give off a distinctive rotten, sulfurous smell that is easily recognized but requires a full-scale refrigerator cleaning to eradicate.

And that’s part of the problem. Nobody wants to be in charge of cleanup, so we’ve allowed a zoo of microscopic bacteria, fuzz, mold and moss to build and flourish. Our lunchroom is not called the Bacteria Buffet for nothing.

I’ve ordered Mitzi to do the dirty deed, but she says it isn’t in her job description, that removing toxic waste is the task of a professional. Her only concession to helping out with this office problem was to send her cleaning lady in one day to do the job—and then submitting her bill to me for payment.

Mitzi breezed into the break room on strappy sandals that matched her pink designer suit, put her Gucci lunch box on the table, opened it and took out a delicate tray of sushi. She batted her fake eyelashes at me and put the sushi in the refrigerator. Then she took a bottle of designer water out of the bag and tripped off to her desk to file her nails, read the paper and make sure she and her husband had secured tickets for the symphony—all of which, she insists, are somewhere in the “unwritten” agreement concerning her job description.

Mitzi missed her calling. I could see her as an executive for a company run by Barbie and her stiff-legged dolly friends. Barbie has a Dream House. If she ever develops a Dream Office, Mitzi is the one for her. Work would involve picking out professional-looking suits in all shades of pink, refurnishing rooms with expensive furniture and groaning over long days at the office when one should really be at the beach.

“There you are, Whitney. I’ve been looking for you. Where have you been?” Harry had a stack of contracts in his arm and a frazzled look on his face.

“Standing here. You’ve gone by the door three times and looked in.”

“Nonsense. You must have been hiding.”

I didn’t bother to point out that hiding from the boss during office hours is frowned upon, even here at Innova where the expression “running a loose ship” was probably invented. Besides, I know from experience that around here, you can run but you can’t hide.

“Take a look at these, decide what we should do about them, report back to me and we’ll determine our next step.” He thrust the papers at me as if they were the proverbial hot potato. All Harry really wants to do is design software. Things written on paper bore him, even contracts that bring in paying customers.

He spun on his heel to leave, then paused and turned back. He’s very graceful for a short man who’s carrying more weight that he should around his middle.

“Whitney, I don’t say it much, but I really do appreciate what you do around here. Bringing you into the Innova family was the smartest thing I ever did.”

I blinked, dumbfounded. “Why, Harry, thank you…”

“And get those things back to me ASAP and tell Mitzi to get the lipstick off her teeth on her own time.” The touchy-feely moment was over, and he was gone.

The Innova family. I like the sound of that. Dysfunctional as it is, I’m glad I’m part of it, too. Then the word family brought me back to the conversation Chase and I had had last night, the one about starting our own little family.

How much, really, had the idea of having a child right now been sparked by the thought of sharing those special months with Kim? We shop together, we eat together, we pray together. Maybe being queasy and nauseous together would be fun, too.

After work I stopped at Norah’s Ark, my favorite pet shop, to get food for Mr. Tibble and Scram. Norah was behind the counter, having a deep conversation with a turtle. Her dark, curly hair was fastened into a ponytail that erupted from the top of her head. She has remarkable gray-green eyes, full of humor and compassion and a ready grin.

“Hi, Whitney, how’s Mr. Tibble? What’s Scram up to? Oh, yes, and Chase?” Norah always asks about the pets first.

After leaving the pet store, I picked up a pizza and arrived at home by six-fifteen. Chase was already there. Odd. He usually doesn’t arrive until seven or after.

At least I thought he was home. His car was in the garage, but the house was dark. I found him in the darkened living room, lying on the couch with a pillow over his eyes. Mr. Tibble was sleeping on his chest, his head nuzzled beneath my husband’s chin. Scram, who’s learned his place in Mr. Tibble’s pecking order—below the bottom—was sleeping across one of Chase’s ankles.

When Mr. Tibble heard me come in, he turned his head and sleepily kneaded his claws into Chase’s chest. That started a chain reaction. Chase jumped at the needle-sharp nail pricks, Mr. Tibble yowled and hung on by his claws to Chase’s shirt. Scram, jettisoned off Chase’s leg and sure he must be somehow the cause of all this commotion, headed for the hills, or, in this case, the back of my favorite chair.

“I usually don’t see this much excitement when I walk into a room,” I commented, first prying Mr. Tibble off Chase and then rubbing the broad part of Chase’s chest where the cat had been hanging.

“So much for a nap. I think I may be going into cardiac arrest. Could you do CPR on me, please?” Smile lines crinkled around his beautiful blue eyes, and I felt my own heart do a little lurch.

“Oh, I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.” I put my arms around him and kissed his lips. “What are you doing home? I didn’t expect you until seven.”

“Tired, that’s all. I got done early today and decided to sneak out.” He brushed a strand of hair from my eyes. “Maybe I’m getting old and can’t keep up the pace.”

I searched his face, unable to tell if he was joking or serious, but he smiled at me and, as usual, banished every sensible thought from my brain.

After dinner, as we sat together on the sofa, Mr. Tibble and Scram once again snoozing next to us, Chase asked. “What’s Mitzi been up to today?”

The Mitzi saga is Chase’s idea of a soap opera, and I’m his verbal TiVo. I replay my day with Mitzi every evening so he can have a few laughs.

“That podiatrist husband of hers is clamping down on shoes with pointed toes. She says he’s seen a rash of bunions lately and wants her to wear flats. As you can imagine, Mitzi is fit to be tied. She’s been wearing sensible shoes out of the house and hiding high-heeled shoes in a briefcase and bringing them to work but has begun to feel that’s being ‘unfaithful’ to her husband. Recently she forced Betty Noble to stay late and teach her how to sell her shoes on eBay.”

“At least she didn’t waste work hours on it,” Chase commented.

“She didn’t have time. She was too busy researching cellulite cures during the day.”

“How is Kim?”

I waved my hand. “Up and down. Chase, do you think Kurt is right to be so worried about her having another child?”

“Kurt’s cautious. The man is going to be a certified public accountant. Those types don’t make their money taking risks. It’s in his nature to be cautious. There was a time that it was assumed that the hormone surges of pregnancy fueled breast cancer. That’s not so black-and-white today, especially in women like Kim whose cancers were caught early. Kurt and Kim need to get all the facts from their specialist and then make the decision.

“It can go either way,” Chase added matter-of-factly.

“For women whose cancers are caught early, a subsequent pregnancy may not be nearly as dangerous as was once assumed. Still, Kurt can find information out there that says a woman’s survival is affected negatively, as well. They need to be talking to their doctors, not scaring themselves on the Internet.”

“It’s so hard for them.”

“They’ll be okay, Whitney. They’re a praying pair.”

Of course. I felt my mood lighten. “You’re right. They have the God factor on their side.”

Chase pulled me close. “Did you think anymore about our conversation last night?”

“I didn’t think about much else. Poor Harry didn’t get much bang for his buck from any of his employees today. I prayed about it, too.”

“I know. I did—”

The phone rang, interrupting what Chase was about to say.

“Whitney, this is Kim. What are you doing?”

“Having a romantic tête-à-tête with my husband.”

“Oh, good, I didn’t interrupt anything important, then.”

Chase overheard her comment, rolled his eyes and went to make coffee, leaving me alone with the conversation.

“Very funny.”

“What are you guys doing tonight?”

“Nothing. Especially since you interrupted our romantic talk.”

Kim didn’t take the hint.

“Then you wouldn’t mind if I came over? I’m feeling a little stir-crazy here. Today Wesley developed a fascination for fishing in our saltwater aquarium. He spent the morning turning light switches on and off until I thought I was either living with a strobe light or having a stroke. Then he picked up a terrible word from the neighbor child, which he’s finally tired of saying. And about two minutes ago I discovered that he’d been tinkering with the knobs on our stereo. I thought I would turn on some nice, soothing rain forest music and nearly blew out my eardrums.”

So it had been a day just like any other with Wesley.

“Does Kurt have class?” He’s finishing up his degree in accounting and preparing to sit for the CPA exam while driving a truck during the day to pay the bills.

“He does. It’s me who needs the diversion. Wesley discovered he can make the entire house tremble if he sets the tuner knobs just right. Until Kurt arrives to put a lock on the cabinet door, I’ll be peeling Wesley off the entertainment center. If I go deaf before Kurt gets home, I won’t be able to hear what Wes is doing next.”

My experience with Wesley is that when I can hear him, it’s okay. It’s when things are silent that I begin to worry. Entire rooms can be colored with crayons up to a height of two feet from the floor in virtually no time at all. Uncleaned litter boxes can be emptied onto many square feet of flooring. Kitchen cupboards can be cleared of their contents and many cereal boxes opened. Oh, no, noise isn’t the problem with Wesley. Silence is. Of course, it’s not my house that’s trembling.

“Can we come over?” Kim was as determined as a bulldog. I knew that even if I did say no, it probably wouldn’t stop her.

“I suppose…”

“Good. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.” The line went dead.

“What was that about?” Chase returned from the kitchen carrying a huge butterscotch walnut sundae and two spoons.

“Kim’s sanity is slipping. Wesley has discovered he’s mechanical.” I told him about the stereo.

Chase shuddered and then sighed. “I guess I’d better start making more sundaes.”

When in doubt, eat. It’s one of my coping mechanisms, too.

When they arrived, Wesley marched into the house first and flung himself at Chase’s leg, where he stood with both his little Nike-shod feet on Chase’s shoe. He refused to let go of Chase’s leg, forcing him to walk stiff-legged down the hall to greet Kim, dragging Wesley with him.

“Too bad he doesn’t like you,” I muttered to Chase. “The child is like a barnacle attaching itself to the hull of a ship. How are you going to scrape him off?”

Chase winked at me. “You’re just jealous that it’s not bedtime yet.”

Chase is Wesley’s favorite playmate, but I am queen of the bedtime story and back-scratching professional extraordinaire. I come into my own with Wesley the moment he starts rubbing his eyes and wanting to cuddle.

The color was high in Kim’s cheeks, and from the glint in her eye, I could tell that she and her son had come to an impasse and leaving the house was their only logical recourse. With Kim and Wesley, as with Kim and Kurt, when stubborn meets stubborn, it’s like two mountain sheep ramming horns. Nobody wins, and everybody gets a really bad headache.

They didn’t even have time for the normal niceties. Wesley bounced off Chase’s shoe and went straight for the huge plastic box that harbors his toys, dumped them onto the floor and then started chasing the cats. Mr. Tibble, wise to Wesley’s ways, dodged him by leaping onto the just-out-of-reach-for-Wesley back of the wing chair. With an intelligence born of experience, he also tucked his long black tail beneath him so that there were no handholds for Wesley to swing on. Scram—not the brightest bulb in the package—was rescued by Kim, who scooped him out of Wes’s grabby little mitts.

I, as silently as I could, breathed a sigh of relief. Kim is always saying, “He’ll grow out of it.” That’s true, but he always grows into something else.

“Okay, you two,” Chase demanded. “What’s up?”

Kim took the sundae he offered her and sank onto the couch with a relieved sigh. “I’m half-deaf from that sound system Kurt insisted was everything we’d ever need and more, I’m exhausted from running after a three-year-old with boundless energy and limited common sense and I’m smart enough to know that Uncle Chase and Aunt Whitney can make me sane again. Do you have any cherries for this sundae?”

This is the woman who wants another child? If the baby is anything like Wes, there isn’t enough ice cream in the world to keep any of us sane—and the biggest nut may turn out to be Kim herself.