Manhattan Lullaby (21 page)

Bradley digested this information for a moment. “But, Dad, it's been a long time since Ma was pregnant. Why are you eating weird food now?”

Harry shook his head. When babies could be delivered in Bloomingdale's bags it was sometimes harder to remember the more traditional methods. He decided that the only way to deal with it was to come right out and say it. “Joyce is going to have a baby. You are going to have a little sister.”

“A sister! You mean I'm going to be a bro—brother?” Bradley was trying to put this possibility into the proper orientation. He had come here to ask his father to help him find a wife and he was getting a sister instead. “Wow! Does Ma know?”

Harry nodded. “But she thought you should hear it from me.” He paused. “Are you O.K. with this? I mean, is it going to bother you, you know, not being an only child anymore?”

Bradley thought things over for a few moments. When he was finished he looked up. “You know, Dad, fathers and sons are supposed to be able to do things together. Maybe we can be fathers together. It could be kinda neat.”

Harry smiled at his son. “Thanks. I'm glad you understand.”

But Bradley had gone beyond mere understanding. He was getting quite caught up in the idea. He leaned forward. “Yeah, you know, we can take the kids to the park and to the zoo and … You know, Dad, being a father is really a fantastic feeling. You're gonna love it. I know you will.”

“I already do,” mumbled Harry through a mouthful of french fries as he looked at the twenty-seven years of experience that sat across from him.

Bradley was so excited that he actually picked up a chicken finger and started to eat. It had a wonderful deep-fried, illicit quality about it, and it reminded him of the food he used to eat when he was a teenager, before he found out that everything but raw vegetables and undercooked carbohydrates was bad news if you wanted to function past the age of forty.

Harry finished off his platter and burped contentedly behind his hand. “So, now we gotta deal with your problem.”

“My problem?” asked Bradley, happily chewing on a chicken wing.

“Yeah, the child welfare people. When are they coming round?”

“God, I almost forgot! They're coming tomorrow evening. Dad, I've got to find a wife by tomorrow night or they'll take Rogue away from me. I know they will. Do you now anybody who can pretend to be my wife for one evening?”

“I don't run around with a lot of twenty-seven-year-old women, son. Especially not these days.”

“Maybe Joyce could …”

Harry shook his head. “Even though Joyce looks younger than her age, I think in her current condition her pretending to be your wife would only complicate matters. I mean, she's four months pregnant and Rogue is only about three months old. There's a certain discrepancy there that someone from child welfare is liable to pick up on.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “You know, there is someone you could ask. Someone who would fit the bill perfectly.”

“Who?” Bradley took a bite of his burger. The flavour of charred meat sent his taste buds singing for more.

“Janie.”

“Janie!” He almost choked and had to wash the meat down with a long slurp of beer. “You mean you actually think I should ask the woman who left me at the altar to pretend to be my wife? Dad, really, come on.”

“You still love her, don't you?”

Bradley nodded. “You know I do.”

“Well, my guess is she probably still loves you too. This might be a good way to break the ice with her. You know, call her up, explain the situation, play the daddy in distress. She loves animals, so you know she has a soft heart. I bet she'll agree to help you out.”

Bradley was becoming more attached to the idea now. As it sank in, it didn't seem quite so farfetched. But he wanted to be convinced just a little more. “Do you really think so?”

Harry shrugged and smiled. “Does chocolate syrup taste good on chicken wings?”

After lunch Harry went back to the office. Not his office, however, but Maxine's. He had agreed with Bradley that he should tell her the news about the child welfare people while his son went to work convincing his ex-fiancée to play mother for a day.

When he stuck his head around the door Maxine was busy working away on next month's column and Rogue was in his usual place in the filing cabinet, sound asleep. It was a pleasant little scene, full of domestic connotations, but this time instead of reminding him with longing of all that had gone before it triggered only happy thoughts of all that was yet to come.

“Making up another letter?” he inquired with an edge of humor in his voice.

Maxine looked up from her work and smiled. Harry's presence was no longer an unwelcome blast from the past. Now that he was getting his own life back on track she found that she was actually pleased to see him. “No way. After last time, I have a whole new respect for truth in journalism.”

“Yeah,” said Harry, lounging comfortably against the doorframe. “It's bad enough to lie in print and lose a Pulitzer, but it's something else to lie in print and get a baby.”

“I didn't
lie
,” corrected his ex-wife. “I just rearranged some information. And anyway,
that
”—she gestured toward the open drawer of the filing cabinet—“proves that I was writing the truth, doesn't it? There are some mothers who want to give up their babies to the fathers. I just hope there aren't any more of them.”

“As your editor I will accept that defense and as your ex-husband I hope so too. One motherless grandchild is about all I can handle at the moment. Which brings me to the point of all this.”

Maxine cocked her head to one side.

“It seems that Bradley's little visit to the hospital is having repercussions.”

“Oh-oh. I don't think I like the sound of that word.”

“Like it or not, Bradley and his ‘wife' are going to get a visit from the child welfare people tomorrow night.”

“Oh no!” Maxine slumped a little in her chair. “But why?”

Harry shrugged. “It seems they want to make sure that Bradley and his wife are fit parents.”

“Amazing, isn't it? Two women can have a defrosted baby together and then decide they don't want it. Nobody cares. My son was only trying to be a good father and all of a sudden the Kiddie Cops are coming out of the woodwork.” She looked up at Harry. “What are we going to do? He doesn't have a wife. He doesn't even have a girlfriend.”

“I told him to get Janie to come over and pretend to be the mother. You go out for a while and then come back and pretend you're visiting. You know, play the concerned mother-in-law. It would make it all look more normal.”

“You're a sly one, Harry Kraft.”

“Me? I'm not sly. I'm just being a father. You know he wants to get back with her. This is a good way to break the ice and make sure he doesn't lose the kid at the same time.”

Maxine thought for a few seconds. “Maybe you and Joyce should come over tomorrow night too. Just drop by. You know, show the woman that Bradley comes from a loving family. Make sure it goes smoothly. It couldn't hurt.”

“You're pretty sly yourself.”

“Just being a mother.”

Having solved that little crisis, Harry changed the subject. He had something of his own he wanted to say to Maxine. It was in the nature of a confession, and what he was seeking was in the nature of an absolution.

“I told Bradley about the baby.”

“Which baby?”

“Joyce's baby,” replied Harry.

“How did he take it?”

“Fine. He says we can be fathers together.” Then he looked down, avoiding Maxine's gaze. He examined the toes of his shoes. They were scuffed. Then he moved on to the cuffs of his trousers. Was one longer than the other? Or was it just the way he was standing? He straightened up. There, that was better. Then, in a rush of words and without looking Maxine directly in the eye, he made his confession. “The-Rainbow-Room-opened-last-night-I-took-Joyce.”

He took a quick peek at Maxine's face to see her reaction. What he saw surprised him.

Maxine had never been one of those women who could hide their feelings behind a bland mask of indecipherable expression. If she felt it, she wore it, in her eyes, on her lips, even, somehow, with her nose. And what she was wearing now said she was feeling a little bit sad, a little bit happy and just a hint of the bittersweet. It was a feeling he couldn't quite put his finger on, but the last time he had seen Maxine with this particular expression was the day Bradley had first gone off to school on his own.

“Are you mad?” he said.

“Why should I be mad?” replied Maxine with a shrug.

“Because I took her to
our
place.”

“Harry, it's not
our
place. It belongs to the Rockefellers. And she's your wife. You can take her anywhere you like.”

Women! Just when you thought you had them figured out, they hit you with logic, with understanding, with, with …

“Did she like it?”

“Sure. It looks a lot like it used to look, but different.”

“Don't we all.”

Harry got the definite impression that the subject had been dropped. He was off the hook and he eased himself off the doorframe. He was feeling relaxed and pleasantly full and forgiven. Things were coming under control and life was taking on an enjoyable if different direction.

Maxine noticed as he stood up straight that the material around his shirt buttons was stretched to its limit. “You're putting on a little weight?”

Harry looked down at his stomach. “A couple of pounds, maybe.” He patted his belly comfortably.

Maxine nodded. “Cravings again, eh?”

“I don't have cravings. I'm just hungry lately.”

“What did you have for lunch?”

“Chicken wings,” replied Harry, and avoided going into any more detail.

“And what else?” prompted his ex-wife.

“Chocolate sauce,” he mumbled.

“What did I tell you?”

“You know me pretty well, don't you?”

“We've been friends for a long time.”

Harry nodded. That definition of their relationship had a comfortable, enduring sound to it. There was no finality. Unlike
ex
-wife, it didn't negate everything that had gone before. Satisfied, he moved to go. “Well, maybe I'll see you tomorrow night?”

“Probably. I'll be the one who's pretending she doesn't live there.”

Chapter Sixteen

By the following evening Bradley had everything ready for inspection. The apartment was spotless. And the baby, asleep in Bradley's room, was clean, sweet-smelling and adorable-looking in a new pair of yellow sleepers that Bradley had bought that morning from a little shop just up the street called Yuppie Kids. But most important of all, Janie, who was the key to the success of the evening, had agreed after much coaxing and cajoling to come over and play wifie.
Not
, as she had pointed out to him numerous times, that she was not fully aware of the irony of the situation,
but
, if he was in trouble she felt it was her duty as a “friend” to help him out. And he had been so stupidly grateful that he had accepted her redefinition of their relationship without argument or comment.

But in spite of his efforts and his easy acquiescence to Janie's point of view, there was still one fly in the ointment. The child welfare people were scheduled to arrive at any minute and Janie was nowhere in sight. He knew this because he was standing by the window looking up the street for any sign of her.

He paced once, twice across from the window to the door, listened at the door for the wooshing sound of a rising elevator and went back to the window, leaving a nose print against the cold December glass as he tried to see even farther up the street.

Where was she? Maybe she only
said
she was going to come over when she actually had no intention of showing up at all, just to punish him for what happened at the wedding. Would she do that? Wouldn't she? How could she do that after all they'd been through together? Maybe that was why.

He went down the hall and listened outside the bedroom door for the sound of a stirring baby. Nothing. Well at least that was something. If Rogue slept through this whole thing and the social worker was a halfway reasonable sort, he might just be able to cope without Janie.

He was on his way back to the window when a knock came at the door. Was it the lady or the tiger? There was only one way to find out.

When he opened the door, Janie was standing there, taking deep breaths of her own to offset the fact that she had obviously been hurrying. The tips of her ears and nose were red from their transit through the cold night wind and her eyes were watering just a little. Bradley felt a terribly compelling urge to reach out and wipe the wind tears away, but he caught himself just in time.

“You're late!” he complained, glancing up and down the hall and then pulling her inside. He was angry with her for not getting there earlier, but he was also angry that she had agreed to come at all. How could she help him out like this after what he had done to “them”? How could she make him feel so guilty and grateful at the same time? How could she say that she was just his “friend”?

“I
know
I'm late,” she answered in a normal voice, slipping out of her coat as though she were just dropping by for a chat instead of a masquerade.

He saw that she was wearing the blue cashmere sweater and skirt, an outfit he had always liked her in, as he had told her many times before. It made her look so soft to the touch, so warm, so familiar, and so unlike the lady executive.

“Hush! You'll wake the baby,” he whispered, taking her coat and being careful to avoid touching the soft warmth of her cashmered arm. He hung the coat in the closet. “They'll be here any minute.”