Manhattan Lullaby (18 page)

Bethany was all pink skin, blue eyes and blond hair, a vision of Tinkerbell in acid-washed denim. And Jared was long and stringy with the enormous hands and feet of a body that was still playing catch-up with its own growth. And as if to prove that, he walked with all the awkward grace of someone whose legs seem to have grown longer overnight. They were very attractive children.

“Janie,” said Steve happily, “this is Jared and this is Bethany.”

Janie formed a wide, nonthreatening smile and beamed down at both children. “Hello, I'm so—”

Tinkerbell interrupted. “Who's
she
?” she said to her father, curling her rosebud lips into a childish sneer.

“Uh …” Steve looked over at Janie, his eyes begging for patience. “Janie is a friend of mine.”

“Oh? What happened to Lavinia?” It sounded more like an accusation than simple curiosity.

But before Steve could answer, Jared, bored with picking at the pimple in the middle of his chin, joined in. “He probably dumped her. Mom said she wouldn't last.”

“Lavinia is on a buying trip to Europe,” said Steve firmly, and then to round out the explanation, “Janie and I are just friends.”

“I'll bet,” said Tinkerbell, wrinkling up her nose and looking at Janie with the eyes of a thirty-six-year-old divorced mother of two.

Janie who had never met children as openly hostile as these, was momentarily at a loss as to what to do. Her immediate reaction was to bail out of this little outing and salvage what was left of her Saturday in the soothing and comfortable presence of the devoted Chester. But, nasty little children not withstanding, she knew she had a responsibility to Steve to try to stick it out.

For his part, Steve was used to his children acting like this. They had been doing it ever since before the divorce. At first he had put it down to the trauma of being a part of a disintegrating family and so had tried to be patient, loving and understanding at their little outbursts. Later, of course, as their behavior failed to improve and in fact got worse, he put it down to their having to adjust to their mother's new marriage and their new stepfather, Bubba. And lately he had begun to ascribe it to the fact that Jared was teetering on the brink of puberty and so would naturally be prone to less than civilized behavior. Any or all of the above were preferable to having to face the truth. And so he put on a big smile and said, “Guess where we're going today?”

The children just looked bored.

“We're going to the zoo!” cried Steve excitedly.

“The zoo?” they whined in unison. “That's kid stuff.”

“We wanna go to Times Square,” said little Bethany.

“Yeah, who wants to go see a bunch of dumb animals. We wanna see the pimps and the hookers and the drug addicts,” added Jared gleefully. “Just like on TV.”

Steve shook his head with a little chuckle. “It's the zoo today, I'm afraid.” And he began to lead them all toward the exit.

As they went through the revolving doors, Janie couldn't help herself. She leaned close to Steve and whispered, “Don't they have PBS in Fairfield?”

Two hours later they had “done” the Central Park Zoo. And not surprisingly the only ones who enjoyed the exhibits were Steve and Janie. The children had remained bored throughout—that is when they weren't arguing with each other.

“You pushed me,” cried Bethany.

“Did not,” lied Jared, pushing her again.

“Did too,” wailed Bethany and shoved him back.

Janie had spent the entire two hours trying to pretend that she was not with these children just in case she ran into anyone she knew, or even worse, in case anyone should think that she was their mother. This was not as difficult as it sounded, because neither of them had said a word to her since leaving the train station.

Steve meanwhile had been busy wiping noses, refereeing bouts of pushing, shoving and whining and stuffing enough popcorn and candy apples into them to feed a small South American country, in an effort to be a loving, understanding and sympathetic divorced father. It was only to be expected, therefore, that as they finished their tour of the zoo, Jared, after a brief consultation with Bethany, turned to Steve and complained, “We're hungry.”

And Steve, like any other deposed daddy, had already planned for that eventuality. “Good, we're all having lunch at the Palm Court.”

“The Palm Court! But we wanna go to McDonald's,” cried Bethany, her steel-blue eyes welling with tears at the possibility of not getting her own way.

Patiently, Steve hunkered down in front of his daughter so he could talk to her face to face. “Bethany, honey, you can go to McDonald's any time. This is a special lunch and we want to have it in a special place. Don't we? Besides, we want Janie to enjoy her lunch, and I don't think she would like McDonald's as much as the Palm Court.” His voice was full of soft fatherly reason.

Bethany sniffed back a few tears. “Who cares what
she
wants.”

“I do,” said Steve, standing up again and looking over at Janie. “Because I invited her.”

Lunch was no picnic. The children didn't want anything on the menu, and it was only when Steve finally allowed that they could select anything they wanted from the dessert table instead that any kind of goodwill was established. Even then, Jared sat sullenly in his seat because Steve wouldn't let him have a sip from his glass of beer. “Bubba always lets me,” he said before clamming up entirely.

When it was almost over, and Janie was thinking that this was possibly the longest morning and afternoon she had ever had to endure, Bethany leaned over and whispered something to her father. Steve nodded and then turned to Janie. “Would you mind taking her to the ladies' room?”

Glad for any excuse to get away from the table and hurry the afternoon along to a grateful conclusion, Janie was on her feet in a flash. “Not at all.” And she reached out to take the little girl by the hand.

But Bethany ignored the proffered hand. “I can go by myself,” she said to Steve.

Janie shrugged and walked toward the washrooms. She knew Bethany was following her because she could see her reflection as they passed the store windows that lined the hallway leading to the lower level.

A few minutes later, standing in front of adjoining sinks, the little girl looked up at the mirror and caught Janie's reflection. “I don't like you,” she said with as much venom as an eight-year-old could manage.

“Is that so?” replied Janie as she calmly finished washing her hands. “Well, I don't like you either.” And then she left the little girl standing at the sink.

Bethany quickly dried her hands and followed Janie out into the hall. When they got back to the table, Steve was paying the bill.

“Janie says she doesn't like me,” simpered Bethany to her father as soon as she sat down.

Steve threw a questioning look at Janie, who shrugged. “She said it first.”

Steve turned to his daughter. “Janie's my friend. So I'm sure you didn't mean what you said, did you Bethany, honey?”

Bethany-honey pulled a face and then answered, “Yes, I did. She's not your
friend
. She's just another one of your women. Just like Momma said.” And then she looked at Janie and poked a tiny little tip of tongue between the soft pink blossoms of her lips.

“I'm sorry,” said Steve to Janie. “She's not comfortable around strangers.”

“No, just pimps, hookers and drug addicts,” replied Janie acidly. She was upset with herself because this child, this Tinkerbell terrorist, was making
her
feel like she shouldn't be there.

With forced jocularity Steve tried to rescue the moment. “Well, enough of that. Now, what do you two want to do this afternoon?”

Jared, roused from his sulk by the question, looked at his Mickey Mouse watch. “It's three-thirty. We have to meet Mom and Daddy-Bubba at four o'clock.”

“What!” cried Steve in disbelief. “You're supposed to have the whole day with me.”

Bethany chimed in then. “Bubba's taking us to the Christmas Show at Radio City and then we're going skating at Rockefeller Center.”

Steve slumped slightly in his chair and looked at Janie. “I guess Brenda strikes again,” he sighed, a man defeated one more time by a woman he used to call “sugar-lips.”

Janie knew it wasn't very nice, but for her part she felt relief flooding through her body at the thought that her day with Steve's children was fast approaching its finale. She was tired, she was fed-up, and most of all she was disillusioned. Somewhere in the back of her mind she had envisioned that the day might lead to a revelation. A new appreciation for the children of her species. Perhaps even the germ of a growing fascination. But it was not to be. Not after a day with these kids.

She was sure now that she had made the right decision about Bradley and his baby. Sometimes it was hard enough to love your own children. She could see that from the look on Steve's face. To love someone else's children, therefore …

Later that afternoon, after they had delivered the children to Radio City Music Hall, Steve walked Janie back toward SOFI. They were quiet, companionable, keeping step in spite of the surging Christmas crowds. When they were almost there, Steve spoke up.

“My idea didn't work very well, did it?”

Janie shook her head.

“You know, they're not that bad, really. It's just that they're going through a stage what with the divorce and everything.”

“I know,” said Janie, who was not about to be the one to burst Steve's fatherly fantasies. He was having enough trouble keeping them intact as it was. “You want to come in for a drink?”

“No, I think I'll pass.” He stuffed both hands into the depths of his pockets. “Anyway, I gotta get home and take Tony out. You know, I really miss him when I haven't seen him all day. And he's always so glad to see me.” He turned and walked back up the street and into the gathering winter dusk.

Chapter Fourteen

The day after Bradley picked Rogue up from the hospital he decided to tell Maxine the full extent of his experience with Nurse McAdams. Now that he knew the baby was O.K. and his own parental panic had subsided, he was able to appreciate the funny side of things. Imagine not being able to answer even the simplest of questions about your own baby! The old nurse must have thought he was a pretty weird kind of a father, all right. But then, come to think of it, he
was
a pretty weird kind of a father. So he told his mother the whole story with plenty of emphasis and a few embellishments here and there to get the maximum impact.

Maxine, whose own sense of humor fortunately ran to the bizarre, and sometimes even past it, thought the part about her being Rogue's mother was funny enough, and Bradley's description of Nurse McAdams looking over her glasses and saying “And what is
in
the bottle, Mr. Kraft” drew a bout of appreciative laughter. But the other part—the part about Bradley not knowing what could have been life or death information about his son—was not funny at all. She knew something had to be done to rectify that situation and the sooner the better.

“We'll have to find the mother,” she said to Bradley. “We need to know a few things about the baby in case this ever happens again. And also, one of these days you're going to need a birth certificate to enroll him in school, so we need to get that from her too.”

“School!” cried Bradley, who had no desire to see the woman with the pink hair again, especially not up close. “He's only a few months old, Ma. We don't have to worry about school just yet.”

“
You
were only a few months old once, and now look at you. Time passes. Believe me, we need the birth certificate.” It was not a justification—it was a determination. And Bradley knew that when his mother used that tone of voice there was no point in arguing with her. Determination, however, could not necessarily overcome situation. The one thing in his favor and against Maxine's plan was that they had no idea who or where Rogue's mother was. Or at least, that's what he thought.

“O.K., Ma,” he agreed, taking a conciliatory stance before trying to dissuade her with logic. “But how are we going to do that? We don't even know who the mother is. She may not even be in Manhattan anymore. She could be …” He swept his arms in a wide arc to show the absolute impossibility of their situation, “anywhere.”

“With pink hair? Where else is she going to go? Des Moines?” Maxine retorted with a logic of her own.

“All right.” Bradley nodded in agreement. He felt it was safe to concede the “where” issue. “But, Ma, even if she's still in New York, even if she's still on the island, do you know how many women there are in Manhattan with pink hair?”

“Too many,” replied Maxine and went to get her purse. When she returned she took out her wallet, opened it and extracted a folded slip of blue paper. “But there can't be too many whose names are”—she consulted the American Express receipt—“Pauline McCormick.”

“What!” cried Bradley, almost leaping across the space that separated them. “Where did you get that?”

Maxine shrugged. “It was in the bottom of the bag that the baby came in. I kept it because I thought one day it might come in handy.”

Bradley was still in a mild case of shock. The woman with the pink hair, the mother of his son, had a name
and
an American Express card. He could see it now. One of these days he was going to switch on the television set and there she would be—

“Hi, you don't know me, but I'm the mother of Rogue Kraft. I may have given up my baby, but I never go anywhere without my American Express card.”

Oh God!

Rogue had a mother. A woman who owed money, had an address and a life! She was a real person, not just a nameless, incorporeal womb from which had erupted the tiny, perfect body of his son. It was an idea that even in the raw stages of its development had far-reaching implications. Not the least of which was the possibility that at some point she might change her mind and conclude that the contribution of an egg makes for a better parent than the contribution of a sperm and decide she wanted her
baby back
. The baby that he had come to think of as solely his—and Maxine's, of course.