Baby Talk Read online

  Annie glanced down at the chocolate milk carton in her hand. There was no doubt in her mind that her weight problems were her mother’s fault. Who wouldn’t have problems with obesity, growing up in a house like that! Her mother drank chocolate milk like it was water, packed the kitchen full of potato chips and cookies and crackers and all kinds of other fattening (but oh so tasty!) goodies. She honestly didn’t know how her mom managed to keep her weight halfway under control eating like that all those years.

  Unable to resist the urge, Annie finished off the last of the chocolate milk. Maybe she had weight problems, but Natasha wouldn’t. She would be careful not to set such a bad example for her own daughter.

  When she got up and opened the cabinet under the sink to throw the empty carton away, she gasped.

  A little brown mouse had darted past her and then disappeared under the refrigerator.

  “Damn!” Annie hissed, clutching the empty milk carton to her racing heart.

  She glanced uneasily around the tiny kitchen, her skin tingling. What a poor excuse for a home! She had called the apartment manager twice already about the mice, but the lazy woman hadn’t done a thing about it. Neal had bought some little boxes of rat poison at the grocery store and left them out under the sink and behind the refrigerator, but they didn’t seem to do any good. Living in these conditions was just plain unacceptable. She would call the manager again as soon as Natasha woke up. And she would give the lady a piece of her mind!

  Annie sat back down in the dinette chair, shaking. Through the doorway to the living room she could see her broken up reflection—her fat reflection—in the tile mirrors some previous tenant had glued to the wall in a vain attempt to make the tiny apartment look bigger. The tiles were supposed to look fancy—they had fake gold veins running through them to give a marble-like effect—but she thought they just looked cheap. Like everything else in the depressing place.

  Annie crossed her arms on the little dinette table and set her head between them, the way she used to back in high school.

  And she began to weep.

  CHAPTER 3

  Neal returned to the flower shop just after one o’clock to pick up his afternoon orders. Grammy was still out to lunch, but she had left his stack of delivery slips on her desk. On top was a pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT telephone message sheet, as usual. Annie called him at least once each day to tell him what to buy at the grocery store on the way home. It always humiliated him to receive such messages at work—he would never be comfortable with this “young husband” routine.

  Neal didn’t bother to read the message, quickly shoving it and the rest of the stack of paper into his jacket pocket. As he began to load the van with the deliveries, Mildred appeared at her desk and gave him an odd little smile, as if they shared some juicy secret.

  What was that all about? Neal thought, as he carried his next load of flowers out to the van. He glanced down at his shirt, then his pants, wondering if maybe his fly was open.

  Then he remembered the pink message slip.

  Maybe it hadn’t been from Annie after all. But who else could be calling him at Snell’s Flowers? He hadn’t worked there long enough to give anyone but Annie the phone number.

  He dug the pink paper out of his jacket pocket. His eyes were immediately drawn down to the MESSAGE portion of the note.

  As he read the words that were written there, his eyes widened.

  I love you.

  Neal looked back up at the FROM line.

  Baby Natasha, it said, in Grammy’s precise little script.

  “Holy Christ,” he said, half-choking on the words. All at once, his legs felt rubbery.

  “You allright, son?” a deep voice said from behind him. It sounded far away. Neal teetered, dropping the entire stack of delivery slips on the pavement.

  Old man Snell watched closely as Neal scrambled to collect the slips before the wind got hold of them. Neal snatched up the pink one and pushed it into the middle of the stack.

  “I thought you were going to keel over there for a second,” Snell said, with a casual chuckle. But when Neal looked up at him, he could see that the big man looked genuinely concerned, and suspicious.

  “I lost my balance, that’s all.” Neal shoved the stack of papers back into the pocket of his jacket, then managed a relaxed laugh and patted his stomach. “I guess I ate a little too much at lunch.”

  “That’ll do it sometimes,” Snell said, but his pale blue eyes told Neal he didn’t believe the excuse.

  Neal turned back to the van, but Snell remained behind him.

  “You aren’t on any kind of...medication, are you son?”

  “No sir,” Neal said quickly, turning to face him again.

  “You know it would be very dangerous for you to operate a ve-hi-cle like this under the influence of any kind of drug.”

  “I know. I’m not on drugs.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean to say you were,” Snell said, though he seemed glad that Neal had been so direct. “I just thought you might be takin’ anti-histamines or somethin’ like that.” He paused. “See, I’m an ex-athlete, and I know somethin’ about this sort of thing...”

  “I’m not taking any kind of drugs, prescription or otherwise.”

  “Well, that’s good, son. Drugs don’t do a man a bit of good. Not one bit.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Snell gave one of his fatherly nods. He eyed Neal for another short moment, then walked back into the shop.

  Neal finished loading up the van as quickly as he could, avoiding eye contact with anyone. He became more and more angry. By the time he finished and drove the van away, it took all his self-control not to screech the tires at every turn. That goddamn Annie! Her stupid joke had almost cost him his job! Not to mention making him look like an idiot, having his little girl calling him at work, leaving gooey messages. Thank God they didn’t know much about his family—he had only told the old man that he was married and had a child, nothing more specific than that. If they knew Natasha was a five-month old infant, Annie’s little joke would have blown up in her face. He was sure that the Snell’s weren’t the type of people who would approve of telephone pranks, especially coming from an employee’s wife.

  Boy, Neal would let Annie have it when he got home!

  * * *

  Annie sat up with a start. She was still sitting at the dinette table, a small puddle of drool where her head had been resting. She reached up and touched her forehead—it was slick with sweat.

  The dream she had been having came rushing back at her. She was working in some huge, futuristic factory, and there had been some kind of emergency (a radiation leak?) and everyone was in a panic. An alarm was blaring throughout the massive complex, but she couldn’t escape—thousands of faceless male workers (was she the only female?) were jamming up all the exits, not pushing or shoving, but just pressing hard against each other, so hard that she couldn’t breathe.

  Now that she was awake, she could still hear the alarm in her mind.

  She turned her head towards the bedroom, realizing that the sound might not have just been in her head—she knew it well. It was the raucous beep-beep-beep tone that the telephone makes after you’ve left it off the hook for a couple of minutes.

  She rushed into the bedroom to check on Natasha.

  To her relief, she found her daughter alive and well. The baby was staring up at mobile above her crib, her tiny fingers slowly wiggling back and forth, as if she was trying to grasp the plastic, multicolored fish that were slowly circling above her head.

  “Is my baby o-tay?” Annie said, scooping Natasha up in her arms. She was wracked with guilt over falling asleep and neglecting her child. That was how crib death happened!

  Natasha just grinned back at Annie, completely unaware of any danger, past, present or future. A rivulet of spittle ran down her chin and onto the orange baby jumper that Annie’s mother had given her, with Natasha’s name embroidered across it.

  Annie kissed the child’s
little forehead, then glanced at the telephone. It was, of course, still off the hook, just the way she had left it.

  Cradling the baby in one arm, Annie picked up the receiver and listened. It was completely dead, just like it always was after the beep-beep-beep noise stopped. The sound must have just been in her dream, only—she had been leaving the phone off the hook almost every day since Natasha was born, and it had never made that raucous beep-beep-beep noise twice. It only did that for a minute or two after she took it off the hook, and then became silent. Like it was now.

  Annie placed the receiver back in its cradle and carried the baby into the kitchen. When she saw the time, she gasped. It was almost one o’clock! She thought she had only been asleep for a couple of minutes, and it had been almost an hour.

  As she prepared lunch, she decided that her unconscious mind had created the sound, as well as the dream surrounding it, to wake her up so she could go check on Natasha. Some part of her knew she had slept too long and decided to get her attention, and with a sound that she associated with the baby.

  Wasn’t the human mind interesting?

  * * *

  It was almost 6:15 when Neal got home from work—it took him over an hour to drive what should have been a half hour commute, maximum, from the flower shop in Buckhead to the apartment on Roswell Road. The Atlanta rush hour traffic was appalling, and fighting his way through it, after spending an entire day on the road, always worsened his mood.

  When he came in the front door, he found Annie sitting on the couch, reading some women’s magazine, and, as always, munching on potato chips and drinking chocolate milk. Natasha was asleep, sitting beside Annie in her baby seat.

  Neal slammed the door shut behind him. “What you did today was very, very stupid, Annie.”

  The baby’s eyes opened. She immediately started crying.

  “Neal!” Annie hissed. “Why did you have to slam the door? You woke her up!”

  Annie quickly set the potato chips and chocolate milk down beside the couch, out of Natasha’s sight, and then picked up the wailing baby. “There, there sweetie...shhh...everything’s o-tay.”

  Natasha was soon quiet, looking up at Neal, her eyes locked on his face.

  “I don’t appreciate it, Annie,” Neal said. “I don’t appreciate it one damn bit!”

  Natasha made some gurgling sounds, but Neal ignored her.

  “What in the world are you talking about, Neal?”

  “As if you don’t know,” Neal laughed. “You’re on my fucking back all the time about getting a good job, and then you do something that could get me fired!”

  “Don’t use language like that around Natasha.”

  Neal motioned angrily to the baby. “She can’t understand a damn thing I say.”

  Natasha made another gurgling noise.

  Neal slung his jacket and the afternoon paper into one of the easy chairs. The paper slid off the plastic covering and onto the floor, which only made Neal more furious. Annie didn’t want to remove the protective plastic from the shoddy furniture they rented, afraid the company wouldn’t take it back later, when she and Neal had enough money to buy their own furniture. That was a laugh! Neal was certain that all of the rented junk would be worn out—plastic and all—long before then.

  “She can too understand,” Annie said. “Babies can understand a lot of things, even from inside the womb. My books say so.”

  “Your books,” Neal said sulkily. “You wouldn’t know how to wipe Natasha’s butt without those damn books.”

  Annie’s face turned pink. “What’s the matter with you? I didn’t do anything!”

  “Oh, no, you didn’t do anything. Just called me at work and left an idiotic message that nearly got me fired.”

  “I didn’t call you at work today. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes you did.”

  “I did not!”

  “Well, then I suppose she left the message,” Neal said, motioning to Natasha.

  Annie glanced at the baby, then looked back at Neal. “What on earth are you talking about? What message?”

  “‘I love you,’” Neal said sarcastically. “Signed, Baby Natasha. Cute, Annie. Very cute.”

  “Baby Natasha?” Annie laughed. “You’re kidding.”

  “No,” Neal said firmly, but he was beginning to feel off balance. “It’s not funny, Annie. It almost cost me my job.”

  Annie opened her mouth to say something, but shut it and just stared at him. There was a sad look in her eyes.

  “What?” Neal said.

  “I’m worried about you.”

  He let out a short, nervous laugh. “What do you think, I’m imagining it?”

  Annie broke eye contact with him. “Five month old babies can’t talk, Neal. I looked in my books today and— “

  “Your goddamn books don’t mean a thing! Can’t you ever think for yourself?”

  “Shhh! You’re scaring her!”

  Natasha had stopped moving and was looking at Neal with her strange, reptilian eyes, her mouth half open. The expression on her face seemed to be a combination of confusion, fear, and curiosity. Annie hugged her against her shoulder, turning the baby’s face away from him.

  Neal said, “You act like that damn baby is made of china. She’s not going to break into a million pieces just because somebody raises their voice.”

  “You’re not just raising your voice, Neal. You’re yelling.”

  “Well, so what if I am! People have been yelling for millions of years, and I haven’t ever heard of a baby dying from it.”

  “Maybe not dying, but getting messed up from it later.”

  Neal looked at Annie for a moment, then shook his head. “I’m getting a beer.”

  “Good. Maybe it’ll calm you down.”

  “I am calm,” Neal said over his shoulder. He opened the refrigerator and tore a can of beer from a half-used six pack. “I’m surprised you don’t keep the beer in a paper bag, so Natasha can’t see it. No telling what it might do to her later on.”

  “What?” Annie called.

  “Nothing,” Neal muttered. He popped the top and guzzled a few cold swallows, then noticed a bent up fork that was lying beside the sink. He picked it up and shook his head. She couldn’t even load the goddamn dishwasher right! At least half of the cheap silverware they had bought at Wal-Mart had fallen down to the bottom of it and been bent all to hell by the spray rotor. But that didn’t matter, not to Annie. If it wasn’t directly connected to Natasha in some way, it was of no importance.

  Neal took another swig of beer and sat down in one of the dinette chairs. When he did so, it gave another one of its annoying squeaks—he only weighed 170 pounds, but it would barely support him. All the furniture in the apartment was nothing but cheap rubbish, rented at exorbitant prices from one of those companies that prey on young people who have no cash or credit. The only decent thing in the place was Neal’s trophy case, which was in the bedroom. He had moved it down from Louisville, from his mother’s house, over the summer. He hadn’t known exactly why he had wanted to bring it back to Atlanta with him—maybe it just reminded him of the “good old days” back in high school, when he played tennis and golf and basketball every afternoon, before he was so burdened with adult responsibilities.

  But even that little project had met with disaster. He had first put the trophy case in the living room, but then decided it would look better in the bedroom, because it didn’t really go very well with all the plastic-covered furniture. While he was sliding it across the floor, one of the trophies—his favorite trophy—had fallen off and broken.

  It was a first prize award he won in a tennis championship his junior year in high school. On top was a man who was swinging his racquet overhead, as if leaping to serve the ball. The end of the racquet had snapped off when the heavy trophy had slammed into the hardwood floor. Neal had been furious, blaming it on the baby, who was crying so loudly that he couldn’t keep his mind on what he was doing. Later
, he felt guilty. He knew it was his own fault for not taking all the trophies out of the case again before he moved it. Annie had actually told him to do this, but he hadn’t listened to her. He tried in vain to glue the trophy back together.

  Neal sighed and gulped down some more of his beer. He supposed none of that mattered. Playing sports and winning trophies were now a thing of the past.

  Annie appeared at the kitchen doorway, the baby in her arms.

  “Who gave you the message at work?”

  “The old lady. Grammy.”

  “What did she say, exactly?”

  “She didn’t say anything. It was a message slip.”

  “Oh. Well, what did it say?”

  “I already told you, Annie.”

  “‘I love you. From Baby Natasha?’”

  “Yeah,” Neal said, taking another swallow of beer.

  “Where is it?”

  Neal reached for his shirt pocket, but then remembered he had thrown it away. “I don’t have it anymore.”

  Annie looked skeptical. “Uh-huh.”

  Neal felt his blood pressure rising. “I tore the damn thing up and threw it away, Annie! I didn’t want to leave it laying around for somebody else to see—it was bad enough as it was.”

  Annie nodded, but the skeptical look was still there. “Maybe one of the people you work with did it, as a joke.”

  “Why in the world would they do that? I haven’t told anyone else about what happened this morning. You’re the only person who knows.” Neal glared at his wife for a few seconds. “That means, wifey dearest, that it had to be you.”

  “Or you.”

  Neal did not speak for a moment. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I think you know what I mean, Neal.” Annie retrieved the baby seat, put Natasha in it, and began to prepare dinner.