Manhattan Lullaby (13 page)

“I thought, well you know, just this one time won't hurt.” Joyce finished with a shrug.

Maxine smiled. “Welcome to the club, honey.”

Joyce was serious again. “What's it like being a mother?”

“Well, let's just put it this way. After pregnancy comes childbirth. The terrible twos. Adolescence.”

Joyce held up her hands to silence her. “Enough, enough, no more information. I don't think I can handle it right now.”

Maxine acquiesced. She was beginning to depress herself. She had thought about adding adulthood to the list because of her own situation with Bradley. Then she decided that he was probably still covered under adolescence.

“It's a big commitment, isn't it?” said Joyce in a very small voice.

Maxine picked up something in the tone that set her on guard. “Joyce, why did you really come to see me today?”

For a moment Joyce said nothing. The silence in the room was broken only by the hiss of heated air from the vents below the window.

“Joyce?”

Joyce took a deep breath. “I—” she cleared her throat. “That is …”

“Are you thinking about
not
having this baby?” asked Maxine quietly.

“How did you guess?” Joyce seemed surprised.

“I'm Dear Maxine, remember?” said Maxine with just a hint of irony.

“Well, as a matter of fact, I had thought about getting—”

“Was it something I said?”

Joyce shook her head.

Maxine continued to explain. “The side effects, they're not
that
bad. Really.”

Joyce gave a little smile. “No, it's not that. It's me. I don't know anything about being a mother. I like my career. I like my life the way it is. So I thought …”

“What does Harry say?”

“Not much.”

“Not much!”

Joyce fidgeted in her chair. “I mean, I haven't had a chance to really sit down and talk to him about it. And anyway, he's acting funny lately. Every time I say I feel sick, he says he feels sick. I'm exhausted, but he sleeps more than I do. And you know what else?”

“He has cravings.”

“How did you know?” asked Joyce in surprise.

“Harry and I were pregnant once too.”

“What do you mean, you
and
Harry?”

“Some men get more involved in their wives' pregnancies than others. And I'm not just talking about Lamaze classes here. They call it the Couvade Syndrome. It means that some husbands of pregnant women mirror the symptoms of the pregnancy.”

“You're kidding,” cried Joyce in disbelief. And then she laughed. “Harry can't afford to lose any hair.”

Maxine grinned back at her. “Listen, with me he even had labor pains. We thought it was an ulcer until the doctor explained it. Harry is a real family man.” And as she said it she suddenly recalled the night when he had offered to help her bathe Bradley's baby. Maybe having a baby with Joyce was just what he needed to get over his continuing attachment to her. And then, like a computer working out a problem, her brain spat out another premise for examination. Maybe it wasn't her he was attached to but the family they had been. Maybe that's what kept Harry mooning over their marriage. It was a possibility worth considering. And so she chose her next words carefully.

“Joyce, I think you should sit down and have a serious talk with Harry about what you're feeling. It wouldn't be fair to either of you for you to make this decision on your own.”

Joyce sighed. “You're right. But then I knew that's what you'd say.” She thought for a moment. “Do you think Harry wants this baby?”

“You won't know for sure unless you ask him. But my guess would be that he does. Or at least he will when he gets over the shock of becoming a grandfather and a father in the same year.” Maxine looked at her watch. “Oh my God!”

“What?”

“It's after twelve. I've got to be at the Ladies Press Club luncheon in ten minutes. I'm the speaker.” Quickly Maxine grabbed her purse and stood up. She was looking directly into the baby drawer. “The baby!” She turned to Joyce. “Would you mind? Just until I get back. I'll only be an hour or so.” And Maxine grabbed her jacket from the hook behind the door.

“But I—” Joyce started to protest, but Maxine was already on her way out the door. “What do I
do
with it?” cried Joyce after her.

Maxine paused in the hallway. “If it's wet, change it. If it's hungry feed it, and if it cries, pick it up.” And with that she was gone.

Stunned by the sudden responsibility, Joyce sat for a moment to gather her thoughts. She was an only child. As a teenager she had never babysat for anything but plants, houses and pets. In short, while she may have traveled to the far corners of the earth and been alone with all manner of famous and infamous people in the course of doing her interviews, she had never been alone with a
baby
before.

“It it's wet, change it. If it's hungry, feed it. If it cries, pick it up,” she repeated Maxine's instructions like a comforting litany once or twice more and then she stood up and looked into the drawer.

Rogue Kraft was awake now, and he looked back at her with great blue-eyed solemnity as if summing up her abilities as a substitute caretaker. And Joyce had the definite impression that he knew perfectly well she had never been alone with a baby before. She could see it in his eyes.

“Hello, baby,” she cooed softly. “It's me, Joyce, remember? But Maxine will be right back so please, please, don't need anything until she gets here, O.K.?”

Rogue Kraft appeared to sum up this appeal for a few seconds. Then his face creased and began to turn red. He waved his plump pink fists frantically in the air, grunted and then opened his toothless cave of a mouth and released a piercing wail of discomfort. Even Joyce recognized it as such, though she had no idea what was happening until, a few seconds later, a decidedly unpleasant odor began to suffuse first the filing drawer and then the rest of the office. It made her already tender stomach lurch with protest. Briefly she leaned against the filing cabinet for support. And then she did the only thing she could do. She reached into the drawer, extracted the baby and looked around for a fresh supply of diapers, which as it happened were in the next drawer down, filed under D.

Chapter Eleven

Maxine was wearing her “good” black dress—the one with the sophisticated padded shoulders and the moderately plunging V—which made her short neck seem longer and, let's face it, more youthful; the pearls Harry had given her for their tenth anniversary and which only saw the light of day on special occasions; a pair of textured panty hose patterned with those little fuzzy dots that looked as though some sort of alien lifeform was flourishing on them; and heels that were a good inch higher than the ones she normally wore. She looked in the mirror to study the effect. It had been a long time since she had gotten ready for a date, but even so, instinct told her that something wasn't quite right.

“I look like I'm going to an Italian funeral,” she muttered irritably and then did a half turn so she could examine her reflection from another angle. Maybe she looked better from the rear. Not that that would do any good unless she wanted to spend the evening walking backward. But the new angle didn't make her look any better.

“It just doesn't look like
me
,” she complained and tugged at the shoulder pads, pulling them up. That made a difference. Not that she looked more like her. But at least she looked like somebody. She looked like Marcus Allen. She pushed the shoulder pads sideways a little. Hello, “Maxine Dearest.” She slumped with a sigh. The pads settled back toward her spine. Bending slightly from the waist and raising one limp-wristed arm, she did a reasonable impression of Charles Laughton. “The bells, the bells!” she cackled and then broke into a little grin. Getting ready for a date with a younger man required a sense of humor, no doubt about it. Then she tore the shoulder pads, which were fortunately only attached by Velcro, from their moorings and threw them on the bed. There, that was better. Or was it?

She took another long, appraising look at the woman in the mirror and then unhooked the pearls. There was something about pearls that always said “Aunt Margaret.” And whatever she might or might not want to say to Jeffrey Mondavi, it was not that.

Fishing around in her jewelry box, she came up with a pair of dangling faux-diamond earrings that she had bought on a sortie to Ciros one Saturday afternoon after having one of those
consoling
single lunches with two of her divorced friends. She put these on, decided that the effect was definitely more up to date, and then sat down and took off the fuzzy dotted stockings. These she replaced with a plain pair that advertised itself as Night Nude, Size B. Standing once more, she studied herself in the mirror again.

“Now I look like I'm going to an Italian wedding!” She was still not satisfied with the way she looked, although common sense told her that if she took off anything else she would be down to her underwear, and you couldn't go to dinner in your underwear, not even in New York City.

But more important than how she looked was why she cared so much about how she looked. After all, this date had originally been to get Harry off her back. But new developments on the Joyce front seemed to be taking care of that quite nicely. In fact, she hadn't even heard from her ex-husband in several days. This she took as a good sign. So why was she still going out with Jeffrey Mondavi? Why was she going out and leaving her
son
in charge of his son—for the first time? Why was she so concerned about the way she looked? And why was she having so much trouble getting it right?

And then it hit her: because she had no idea what Maxine—the woman—was
supposed
to look like. Oh, she knew what Harry's wife was supposed to look like. And she knew what Bradley's mother and even Rogue's grandmother was supposed to look like, because she saw that woman in the mirror every day. She even had a pretty good idea of what Dear Maxine was supposed to look like (and here she included the pearls), but none of these women was going out with Jeffrey Mondavi, a man from another generation. And the last time Maxine had had to dress
Maxine
for a date with a man had been twenty-eight years ago. But she knew that what worked then would not work now. Besides, she had no idea what had happened to the felt circle skirt with the poodle appliqué. And she had even less of an idea why, her other motives having receded, she was still going out with him.

Bradley stuck his head around her bedroom door. “Hey, Ma, you look fantastic!”

“You think so?” Maxine tugged at the neck of the dress, pulling up the bodice so that the V wasn't quite so low. She wondered if maybe a scarf would look all right. It
was
cold outside. And it would stop Jeffrey from letting his eyes wander down the front of her dress if he were so inclined.

She turned to her son. “You think maybe a scarf?”

Bradley shook his head. “Scarves are for old ladies. You look great just the way you are.”

“You're sure the earrings aren't too much?” She shook her head and little lasers of light bounced around the room.

“The earrings are perfect.” He came and stood behind her. “Ma, are you nervous about going out with him?”

“Nervous? Why should I be nervous? Just because the last time I had dinner with a man other than your father it was like
The Night of the Living Dead
. Just because I'm old enough to be his mother. Just because I'm leaving you alone with the baby.” She turned to face him. “Are you sure you don't want me to get a babysitter? Someone who knows what to do?”

“I can handle a sleeping baby, Ma. You've already bathed him and changed him and fed him. What else can he need?”

Maxine wasn't convinced. “Maybe I should stay home.” She pulled off one earring and then the other.

Bradley took the earrings from her and clipped them back on. “You're going out. You're going to have a good time. You are not going to worry. Besides, one of us has to have a love life and it doesn't look like it's going to be me.” As he spoke, he was guiding her out of the bedroom and down the hallway to the front door.

“I'm not having a love life. I'm just having dinner.” The thought that her son thought that she would actually consider going to bed with anyone other than his father was a disturbing one. Even in light of current circumstances, she still felt that her son shouldn't
know
his parents did those kinds of things with each other, never mind other people. The idea that Bradley had ever envisioned the act that created him had embarrassed Maxine ever since she knew he was old enough to. For that reason she had never been able to bring herself to have that talk with him about where babies come from. And as she later found out, neither had Harry. Which, considering how her grandson arrived, had evidently been a mistake. Maybe it wasn't too late …

While she was pondering that possibility, Bradley was getting her coat from the hall closet, helping her into it and steering her as far as the front door. “Have a good time, Ma. You deserve it.”

She looked into his face. His remark surprised her. Since when had he shown any interest in her personal enjoyment of anything? He was her child and as such he had always been preoccupied with his own selfish self-interest. She had accepted that. As a mother she felt it was her job, part of the natural order of things. But now what did she see in those eyes that hovered a few inches above her own? Was that a flicker of maturity, the faint and distant glint of an emerging adult? Or was it just that the light bulb in the vestibule needed changing? “Bradley, I …”

He put both his hands on her tiny shoulders and looked down into her face. “Ma, I haven't said anything before. I guess because I've been too wrapped up in my own problems. But I really do appreciate what you've done for me … and for Rogue. I know it's been a lot of work and I know I haven't been much help. I promise I'll try and do more.