C
HAPTER 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.