Hush Little Baby (4 page)

Kit did not really want to let go of her bland, boring self. It was a satisfying little person, easily managed, and she liked her small vocabulary, and her short range of expression. She did not want to count back nine months, or maybe ten, depending on how old Sam the Baby was, to figure out what her father and Dusty might have been doing.

She had charge of this kid now, this infant, this sweet sleeping creature, and she did not want him to be her half-brother. She did not want to have to get furious and shrieking over this — that her father had gone and had another kid, and not bothered with it? Or not even known about it? Or forgotten?

What was it with grown-ups?

They were so horribly, horrifically, constantly selfish.

This morning, Kit had felt even, as if she were balanced; and she had tonight with Shea and Row to think about; and she refused to have a raging fury at her various families take over her calm body.

So I will consider this calmly, she told herself, as if this were average and happened in all families.

Nine months back was January.

The new year had opened with new snow, and fresh plans, and high hopes. All came to nothing. Sophomore year had been so hard for Kit. It was just endurance, like entering the Iditarod without meaning to. When she arrived at the end of last year, that awful school year, still alive and able to talk, Kit had been amazed.

She was so relieved to be a junior this fall. Junior year was so civilized. Junior year she was a young woman with a future. She had not entirely figured out how to approach her future in a calm and reasoned manner, so she had decided against being in the drama production, but she did agree to be in charge of ushers. She played flute in the concert band, deep in the second row, and had agreed to be in the marching band, since there were so many flutes she was invisible in the crowd. She loved marching band: The uniform was flashy, even spectacular, like the personality Kit felt she would have if she ever decided to have a personality again. She joined the Winter Club, which took weekend trips (downhill, cross-country, skating, snowmobiling, and even ice fishing), because there was no parent there to observe her, and with several hundred miles between her and the parents, she thought she might let go of her calm. Privately, that is. Nothing to be exhibited at home.

Shea had become a best friend. Kit had pretty much accepted that dull people only had acquaintances, and so she was thrilled to have a close friendship again. As for dating Shea’s cousin Row, she was afraid of the whole thing. Shea insisted that just being in the same room, just sharing a bowl of popcorn, would allow Kit to slide easily and pleasantly into being a couple with Row.

Row had decided that Shea and Kit could not last another week without seeing three particular movies, films absolutely necessary to being real teenagers in a real decade. They’d have to stay up all night watching them.

Rowen’s mother said not at their house, and Kit’s mother said not at her house, but Shea’s mother said you can always party here. Everything was always okay with Shea’s mother as long as it happened while she was standing there. However, Shea’s mother was the kind of person you didn’t do anything in front of except eat popcorn.

Kit felt herself moving in the direction of tears, which were against all her rules. She wanted tonight to go just right. She wanted to be the Kit that Rowen Mason had a crush on. And what if Dusty didn’t get back in time? Well, that was ridiculous, Kit wasn’t going to Shea’s until dinnertime. Hours.

This isn’t crucial, she told herself. Figuring out Sam the Baby is. So. Think.

Last winter, Dad had been consumed by a three-night miniseries he was putting together when miniseries had gone out of fashion, so it was risky. It had been filmed in Canada. Except for forty-eight hours at Christmas, Dad had not been on the East Coast from mid-December till mid-February. And on Christmas Eve, Kit had yelled at him for being more involved with his work than with her, and he yelled back that she had a perfectly good stepfather for emergencies such as these.

She remembered hating Dad for implying that Malcolm could substitute for her own father; hating Dad for joking about it; hating all parents and grown-ups everywhere for taking divorce so lightly. She remembered that she had laughed in a friendly way and let it go, because that was how dull bland people handled distress.

“Anyway,” Dad had said, and Kit thought it had been during that same conversation, “being with Dusty gives me hives.”

So it seemed unlikely that Dad was the daddy of Sam the Baby.

On the other hand, Dusty had not
always
given Dad allergies.

The old Caddy tried yet another road along the golf course.

The driver’s fury crawled into his hands and into his grip on the wheel, and sank through his body to the soles of his right foot, the one resting on the gas pedal, and he yearned to drive across the yards, and crush the perfect little flowers, maybe take out a pet if he could move fast enough.

He had been at the house of Dusty’s ex-husband just once. The front hall was open to the second floor, with stairs for a bride to come down, as Dusty had, and over the stairs was a peculiar cut-lemon-shaped window that Dusty thought incredibly beautiful and rare. If he could find the house with the lemon window over the front door …

A cat ran across the street in front of him.

He veered, trying to hit it, but missed.

It was a good thing he’d tried, though. From this angle, with the sun glinting against it, he spotted the flared lemon slices of glass.

He drove back down the short little dead-end road, smiling to himself.

There was no car in the driveway. That meant she had put her car in the garage and closed it, so it would look as if she had not come here. But he was too smart for Dusty; he had always been too smart for Dusty.

He could not let Dusty get away. Dusty always assumed that money problems would work out, and for her they always did. But for him they never did, and this was his chance at money, and she was in the way. She had to obey him. He was going to have that money, and he did not care what Dusty wanted.

He parked at an angle, filling the driveway so that she could not drive her car out of the garage no matter which door she opened.

When the phone rang, Kit knew it was her mother, checking to see why picking up a sweatshirt had lasted so long. Mom would have been expecting her to come in the screen-porch door ages ago.

I have to answer the phone, thought Kit. Otherwise Mom will fly into a panic. But if I answer it, what do I say?

Hi, I’m baby-sitting for a kid whose name I’ve made up, but don’t worry, he had his bottle, and Dusty is probably his mother, although she drove away, which is not a good sign, but don’t worry, she’s bound to come back eventually. Don’t worry, he’s probably not my half-brother, because I did talk to Dad twice this week, and if he had just become a father, wouldn’t he have mentioned it?

Kit felt jumpy, as if her very own mother were a threat to the baby.

“Hi, honey. I thought you were coming home right away,” said her mother. “Couldn’t you find the sweatshirt?”

She had the odd reaction of loving her mother very intensely, a feeling which did not come that often anymore. Her mother’s voice sounded very mellow and sweet; a woman who was a perfect mother, who cared wonderfully for babies, but who had gotten a little slack with a teenager.

“I’m just poking around,” said Kit in her cultivated dull voice. “I ended up reading a book I left here last time. I’ll be home in a while.” She felt a queer little pinch of pleasure that she still sounded so dull and boring when she was in the midst of a real mystery that might hugely disrupt their lives.

Sam the Baby, without appearing to wake up, snuffled a little and then croaked froggily. Then he sagged so far into his sleep it looked deeper than any sleep Kit had ever had. He was beautiful. His body and his sleep were both beautiful.

Kit walked to the far end of the kitchen, her hand muffling the receiver. She was in danger of wanting to keep Sam the Baby. She might do something stupid like beg Dad to remarry Dusty, or try to convince Mom and Malcolm to let Dusty and the baby live in the guest room.

“Okay,” said her mother. “Do you want to go to Lord & Taylor’s with me or not?”

There was a sale on their favorite brand of shoes. They had planned to go shoe shopping. There was nothing Mom liked more than trying on lots of shoes and not buying them.

“I guess not. Let me know what they have around.”

“Okay,” said Mom cheerfully. “See you later. Or are you going straight over to Shea’s?”

“Probably straight over to Shea’s. We’re watching movies all night and then tomorrow’s Sunday and we’ll sleep all morning.”

“See you tomorrow, then,” said Mom, “probably by noon, okay? Bye, darling.” Mom moved quickly. She would scoop up her purse and car keys and be out the door in twenty seconds. Nor could Kit change her mind about telling Mom, because Mom refused to have a car phone; she listened to mystery novels on tape and didn’t like the action interrupted.

Kit Innes, who had so carefully given in to all decisions of all grown-ups, had just made a large decision. She had kept the presence of Sam the Baby a secret.

Was she half protecting somebody? Dusty? Dad?

“You are not Dad’s son,” she told Sam the Baby. “You are not my half-brother. I am not going to call up Dad in California and say, ‘So, Dad? How should I handle this interesting situation?’ ”

Anyway, it wouldn’t be a situation for long. Dusty would drive around, get lost, get found, forget what she’d been planning to do, and come for the baby.

The doorbell rang.

It was the kind of bell that kept going as long as you leaned on it, and Dusty leaned on it. Kit left the sleeping baby safely in his slant and went to the front door to let Dusty in.

K
IT WAS THINKING THAT
this time she would let go, and she would tell Dusty exactly what she thought. This gave Kit a hundred things to yell at Dusty. Maybe a thousand.

“What kind of mother are you?” she would start. “You tell me one thing so important you had to drive away without even telling me how to take care of him! Or when to feed him! Or even what his name is! And I demand to know who the father is. Is it my father? Don’t you fib to me, Dusty. I’ll see right through you. I know you. You can’t —”

Why was Dusty ringing the doorbell?

Dusty had a key.

She never rang doorbells, anyway, because she could never find the button, and she believed any electronic communication was unfriendly. You should just pound on the door, calling, “Hi, it’s me, it’s Dusty, I’m here!”

So even as Kit was releasing the door, she knew she was a fool.

But the door was already open and a foot was already in it. A large dark brown shoe was halfway into the hall, the kind of shoe that was meant to be shiny leather, but this shoe had not been polished in a long time and was scuffed almost through to the sock.

Kit squared her foot on her side of the door, preventing it from opening farther. She was nose to nose with some man who had expected just to walk in. Some man who was stunned to see her. He had expected someone else to open this door.

She knew him from somewhere. But she could make no connection. For all she knew, she recognized him from
America’s Most Wanted.

He was grotesquely sweaty and in need of a shave. The collar of his shirt was so worn that frayed cotton laced his neck. His hair was bristled and sharp, as if he’d had his hair cut only a minute before. He’d had a bad complexion as a boy, and deep pock-marks were spattered across his face.

There were some good things about Dullness Training. Kit’s expression did not change and her face did not show fear. As a matter of fact, she didn’t feel fear; she just knew that she ought to.

“Dusty here?” he said. He was breathing hard, as if he’d been running but his car was in the drive. An old scary car; a car so long and low it seemed to have driven through other times.

He tried to see past her into the house. She had a sick sense that he knew where to look; that he had been here before. Perhaps this awful man and Dusty had been here when Dad was not. Perhaps this house really
was
a hotel and there really
were
strangers staying in the same rooms, sleeping in the same beds, using the same towels.

Not fear but nausea crawled over Kit.

“Dusty!” he yelled into the house when Kit didn’t answer him.

She could taste the beer he’d had when he breathed in her face. “Dusty?” she said, as blandly as possible. It worked with him the way it worked with all grown-ups. He became uncertain. But he did not take his hand off the doorknob. His body was scrawny, but the hand was fat and puffy, the heavy yellow fingernails ridged and torn back into the quick.

They were both leaning against the door, he trying to open, she trying to close.

“You mean my ex-stepmother?” Kit shifted to prevent him from seeing anything. But there was nothing to see. The decorator had not been able to think of much to do in the big front hall, except glossy black and white tiles set at angles, and one long skinny table with no purpose.

“She should be here.” The man couldn’t stand still, but was peering to the left of her, peering to the right of her. His eyes darted separately, as if he were coming apart. Kit thought he must be on something; some drug was separating his seams.

Dusty, too, had been coming apart.

How did Sam the Baby fit into this? Two frayed, frantic, coming-apart grown-ups — and a newborn?

Now she felt the first edge of fear. Fear for Sam.

“Dusty’s my cousin,” the man said next, and now Kit remembered him; he had appeared at the wedding, a deeply upsetting event nobody could believe was happening. After three or four months, Dad couldn’t believe it had happened, either. Kit had perfected her dullness by then, and so had stood calmly with her flowers, calmly observing that every single grown-up except Dad thought this was insane. She could not remember what the cousin’s role had been.

She didn’t want to ask his name; they might have to shake hands. She did not want to touch him.