Payback (30 page)

I swallowed hard and managed to eek out, “Good
bye, Caden.  Thank you for coming.” It came out rather mechanical, as if I was being sarcastic, but I wasn’t.

I must have hit a nerve because he looked a little peeved.  “Marie, don’t do that. Of course
, I had to come for his birth.” He frowned, his head shaking in frustration as he left the room.

Over the next three weeks
, I found my life completely turned upside down. I knew it would be and had expected it to be a nightmare, but frankly, it was worse than I thought it would be. The sleep deprivation was horrible.  I was physically exhausted and mentally challenged by my Olympian efforts to be the perfect mother with a colicky baby. But things only seemed to get worse, and I was worried that my lack of sleep was making me too frayed for me to be a good mother. I needed help, and, since Momma didn’t raise no fool, I called Caden’s accountant.

After a few minutes waiting on the phone, he answered with a curt, “Don Simons. How can I help you
, Ms. Morrigan?”

“I need your assistance.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice smug, as if he had been expecting a call.

“I’d like someone to come in three times a week and clean the house, do laundry
, and help with the baby while I take a nap.”

“A nap?” Again, his voice inferred that I just wanted to lie around and have someone else do my work.

“Damn it, I have no one to help me. The baby is up every two hours feeding and I’m a walking zombie…yes, I want to take a nap!”

“I’ll talk to Caden and we’ll arrange something.  And since you’re on the phone, I need to let you know that next Tuesday Caden will be flying into Topanga Canyon.  He’s going to send a plane and a nanny to pick up the child. He’ll be returned to you the following day. You’ll need to send enough breast milk to last thirty-six hours
, just in case there’s a problem.”

“Whoa! Jack will only be a month old!  I’m not sure I want him going off with a stranger on a plane! Tell Caden that he needs to come to Bakersfield for the first six months.”

“That wasn’t the agreement.”

“Agreement? We had a brief conversation in which he said we would work something out. No, this is the agreement—he comes here until Jack is
six months old before I let him take Jack to Los Angeles. Period.”

“I’ll talk to Caden and get back to you. In the meantime, I’ve set up an account for you at Wells Fargo. You’ll have to go in and sign the signature card. Once that’s done, I’ll deposit the first ten thousand dollars in child support.”

Ten thousand dollars
. It was a lot of money each month, especially considering I had no house or car payment. I made a decision to put it aside and save it. “Fine, which branch?”

“Whichever one you want. Just give them your name and address and they can look it up on the computer.”

“Okay.”

The money was deposited
, and two days later a woman about my age showed up at my doorstep with an envelope filled with documents, including references and a surety bond.  Her name was Debbie, and I liked her right away. She had a long ponytail, a little extra baggage around the waist, a huge smile, and a fast California clip to her speech.

“Tell me about Jack,” she said
, after I made her a cup of coffee.

“He’s feeding every two hours and cries almost nonstop. I’m not sure why.”

“Is that him I hear?”

Duh?  What did she think—I had two babies back there?  “Yes.” Jack had just woken up and was already
cranking up into a full-on ear-piercing cry.  I stood up to go get him, but she put up a hand.

“Let me go get him.”

I rocked on the balls of my feet and then sat back down and nodded. A few minutes later, she showed up with Jack in her arms. He was still crying, but at least I knew this cry--he was hungry. After gathering him in my arms, I pulled up my T-shirt and winced when Jack latched on to my very chapped and painful nipple. He sucked greedily as he continued to stare over at Debbie. After he finished one breast, I switched him to the other.  Debbie and I talked about his habits and my expectations.

“If you can pump enough breast milk, then when
I get here, you can take a four-hour nap. That should give you some much-needed sleep. In fact, do you have any breast milk frozen?”

“There’s ab
out eight ten-ounce bags in the freezer.”

“Then when you’re done nursing, you go up and lay down.”

“But I—”

“No buts.  You look as if you aren’t fit to operate a dishwasher
, let alone take care of a baby.  You need sleep.  Now, go and lie down…I’ll wake you when I need you.”

I almost ran to my bedroom when Jack was done.  Debbie could have been there to rob me blind
, but as long as she fed and changed Jack while she was robbing me, I didn’t care.  She woke me six hours later with a perky, “Sorry, Marie, but I have to get going.  I’ve done the laundry and some picking up.  I didn’t vacuum because I didn’t want to wake you. I’ll do that on Friday when I show up.  I’ll be here Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. Okay?”

I nodded.

“Here’s my card with my numbers where I can be reached.”

I felt like a new person, the fog and pressure in my head had cleared
, and I found myself smiling for the first time in several weeks. Walking her to the front door, I patted her on the back.  “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

She smiled back.  “You don’t have anyone who can give you a hand?  A friend? A relative?”

“Not really. It’s a long story.”

I told her my story over the next few weeks
, and when I went back to work, I enrolled Jack in daycare Tuesday through Thursday.  On Monday and Friday, Debbie took care of him, and on Wednesday, when Jack was in daycare, she spent the entire day cleaning, doing laundry and cooking.  I had her freeze what she cooked so that I could pull something out of the refrigerator and nuke it in the microwave. 

I still had to be the one to get up and do the feedings at night
, but after a few months Jack started sleeping five hours straight and, to a sleepy parent, that was considered “sleeping through the night.”  He had weighed seven pounds when he was born and now, three months later, he weighed fourteen pounds and had grown five and a half inches.

Caden had traveled to Bakersfield three times to see Jack. Each time
, he had Debbie take Jack to see him at a hotel, where he played with Jack and spent time with him.  Debbie told me that Caden was very attentive and appeared to really love the baby, frequently lamenting the fact that he didn’t live closer to his son.

“I wish he did too, but that’s the breaks,” I said.

“Frankly, I’d love to have him nearby.  That man is a God!  Even in cargo shorts and a boring T-shirt he’s steaming. I’m sorry, Marie, but if he had wanted to marry me, I would have signed anything just so I could look at that face across the breakfast table,” Debbie gushed.

I have to admit that by this time, I was starting to think my romantic notion of a pre
nup-less marriage was a fool’s venture.  So what if the guy only wanted to give me a couple of million if we divorced and nothing if I cheated? Unfortunately, I’m not one who can admit when I’ve been wrong and I frequently hang on to untenable positions just to save face.

I became indignant.
“Well, you know he has a mole on his back.” Where the hell did that come from?

Debbie started laughing. “Gee, a mole?” Shaking her head, she snickered, “I think I can overlook the damn mole.  I’ll just let him ride me missionary style.”

I was going to comment that missionary wasn’t his best position, but in reality, anything Caden did in bed he excelled at. “You can have him.”

“You don’t mean that for one minute.  You’re so in love with the guy that you constantly watch his old movies and whenever I get back from his hotel
, you grill me.”

“I’m just a concerned parent who wants to know what he does with my child.”

“His child too.”

I sneered. “Yes, his child too.”

Christmas was only a few days away and Caden had informed me that he would fly down the day after Christmas.  I had asked him why he couldn’t fly down on Christmas, and it was as if I had pricked a festering sore.

“Damn it! I have a life too. I’m trying to be all things to all people.”

“Don’t yell at me.  I just thought you’d want to come for your son’s
first
Christmas! One you’ll never get back.”

“I can’t do this. I’ve got you and Brooke both breathing down my neck! For God’
s sake, I can only be in one place at a time.”

“And so you chose Brooke over Jack.”

The line went dead, and I felt a chill go down my spine. I had really pissed him off.

He showed up on Christmas, the first time I had seen him since Jack was born. I had just opened a few presents that I had purchased for Jack
, who was now almost four months old.  We played a little, and then I nursed him. I was in the middle of changing him when there was a knock on the door. Not expecting anyone, I was curious as to who would be knocking on my door on Christmas morning.

“Who is it?” I yelled as I approached the door.

“Caden.”

I opened the door and stared up into his distressed blue eyes. “I’m here—I hope you’re happy.”

I grinned. “You do love our son!”

He glared and growled, “Don’t get me started.”

We walked back into the living room to find Jack rocking back and forth trying to grab his toes with his naked butt airing out to keep from getting a diaper rash.

“What’s going on?” Caden asked
, as he looked at my rather pathetic little tree and his half naked son amusing himself by touching his toes.

“He’s been a little red on his bottom
, so I’m just letting it air out before I put a diaper on it.” I turned and grinned at him.

“What?”

“Merry Christmas, Daddy.”

He sighed and motioned to Jack. “Can I hold him?”

“Do you want him in a diaper?”

“Yeah, last time I held him up without one he peed on my chest.”

“Okey-dokey, one diapered baby coming up.”

“I’m going to go back out to the car I rented and get the gifts while you’re putting him in a diaper.” Caden jumped back up and reappeared a few minutes with four bags of presents, one of which was for me.

“Brooke let you buy me a gift?”

“She doesn’t know.”

“You didn’t tell her?”

“I didn’t want a fight. Here.” He handed me a rectangular box with children’s Christmas wrapping and a bright bow.

“I have something for you from Jack, as well as a present from me.”

“Really?”

I went to my tree and pulled the boxes out and handed them to him. “That one is from Jack.”

He started to open it but stopped and gave me a look. “Hey, you have to open yours up too.”

I put Jack in his bouncing chair and started opening my gift.  “Oh, thank you!” It was an e-reader from a national book chain, one that doubled as a tablet.  Inside the leather case holding it was a gift card to the online book store for a hundred dollars.  “Wow, this is great.”  I appreciated the gift, but, in reality, I wasn’t sure when I was going to have time to read.

He opened Jack’s and nodded to himself. It was a photo of Jack with a plaster impression of his hand and foot in the same frame. I had one hanging up in my bedroom and loved it
, but I wondered if it would be too cheesy for Caden.  Looking up, he burst out laughing.

“Too Ozzie and Harriet?” I asked.

“No, no…it’s just that it screams, ‘Dad.’  I never thought I’d ever be receiving something like this.  I’m embarrassed that I like it so much.” He wrapped it back up and then opened my present.   “Oh, an iPod?” It was a little iPod Shuffle, the kind you can attach to your clothing when you go for a run, the smallest of iPods.  His confusion indicated to me that he was underwhelmed by it. 

“I know you have an iPod at your house, but this one is so portable I thought you could use it out on the range when you’re moving cattle or baling hay. I put one hundred songs on it that I thought you might like.”

              He gave me a half-assed smile. “
You
put a hundred songs on this iPod for me to listen to?”

“Hey, you don’t think I know what you like?”

“I know what you like, and there were times I wanted to blow my brains out if I heard another Abba song.”

“Abba isn’t the only thing I listen to!”

“No, your tastes are eclectic.  I remember that trip to Las Vegas listening to opera, hip-hop, country, folk, Rat Pack…my head was spinning.”

“Well, you’re a one-
note wonder…country, country, country. Even when you were in your twentie,s you listened to country!”

“Is there any other genre?  I don’t think so.”  His grin was infectious.  “Now, you have to admit, I
also like some of the old rock bands—Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin—”