Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter's Cradle

Christy was three, and Todd was thirty.

It’s funny how it takes just a few seconds to tell the story of what happened, because it feels like it goes on forever. At first I spent a lot of time in bed or staring at the wall. I didn’t eat and I barely slept—to be honest, I was a slobbering, filthy mess. Certainly, as anyone around here will tell you, I was unfit to be a police officer, let alone carry a gun.

I’m okay now, except that sometimes I feel like it’s all been a terrible play, and then the curtain comes down and the lights go up and I realize I’m not in the audience, I’m on the stage. And you don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to know that I’m a little commitment-phobic. That tends to throw cold water on the fire whenever somebody comes along that I might want to get a little committed to. Somebody like Ethan Crane.

I know Todd would want me to be happy and be with someone, and I know Christy would want the same. For a while I was happy, with Guidry, a local homicide detective I fell very hard for. But then he took a job in his hometown of New Orleans, and I didn’t want to follow him there, or I was afraid to. And that was that.

Judy returned with the coffeepot, and Tanisha, the cook, came out with my breakfast. Tanisha is built like a linebacker but has the heart of an angel. We’re good friends, even though we only see each other at the diner, mostly because she works nonstop. The thought of going away and letting anyone else in her kitchen drives her crazy. She runs a tight ship, and she doesn’t want anybody messing with it.

“Tanisha, when are you going to take a vacation?” I asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in here when you weren’t cooking away in that kitchen.”

“Oh, Lord,” she cried. “Plenty times I think I’d like to just walk out of here and keep on walkin’. Go to Tahiti or some fancy island somewhere and never look back.” She crossed her massive arms over the back of the booth and looked at me dreamily. “Lord knows they ain’t nobody gonna stop me. But you know what my problem is?”

“You’d miss me too much.”

She grinned. “Nope. I’m too nice. I’d be scared I’d hurt y’all’s feelings if I up and disappeared.”

“It’s true,” I said. “You’re about the sweetest person I know.”

“Oh, honey, I know it,” she continued. “You know if there’s even a fly in my kitchen, I don’t go swattin’ after it. I move him out the back door like a goddamn fool, like a dog steerin’ a herd of sheep!” She shuffled across the floor back to the kitchen, dodging around an imaginary fly. “Come on, mister fly sweetheart,” she said. “Get yo ass back home. Your fly friends is all worried ’bout where you been!”

I wanted to tell Judy and Tanisha what had happened that morning, but I was afraid they’d just tell me I was nuts to get involved, and I already knew that. Anyway, by the time I left the diner I had made up my mind. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to help Corina. I might be arrested, but I didn’t care. I had to look into my own eyes when I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, and I wouldn’t be able to face myself if I turned her in. I’m not sure what that made me in political terms, but I wasn’t thinking politics. I was thinking of all living beings and the fact that we’re all part of one enormous family. If we don’t help raise one another up, we will all go down together.

The question was: How could I help her?

4

I pulled my Bronco into the parking lot at Walmart and made a few slow circles before I found a good spot. I always get a little nervous in parking lots. Usually I’m totally unaware of it until I see my knuckles whitening on the steering wheel, the same color as those painted lines on the asphalt.

As I walked across the lot, I tried to imagine myself in Corina’s shoes. She had probably suspended any fear of being taken into a stranger’s house when faced with the alternative: alone in a strange world with a newborn baby, no medical help, no money. What could she possibly have been thinking? Where would she live? How could she hope to fend for herself and a newborn? I tried not to think of the possibilities as I pulled out a cart and headed over to the baby supplies aisle.

It suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea what to get. Before Christy was born, Todd and I had read every baby book under the sun. We could tell you which diapers were the most absorbent, and what brand of baby slings were 100 percent cotton and why you shouldn’t give a pacifier to a newborn. Surely I’d gone out and bought all this stuff before, possibly in this very store, but I couldn’t remember it to save my life. It’s as if I’d blocked it all out.

There was a woman balancing a package of disposable diapers and a can of powdered infant formula in one arm and a towheaded baby boy in the other. The girl was young and pretty, in pale-washed jeans and a light pink tank top, with straight blond hair and clean skin. On her shoulder was a tattoo of a bird, perched atop a cross of thorns.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I was wondering if you could help me a bit?”

“Yeah,” she said, shifting the baby to her other arm, “if you’ll get this .”

She lifted one leg up to reveal a white paper napkin stuck to the inseam of her jeans just above the ankle.

“Just realized I’ve been walking around like this all day,” she said. “It’s stuck on there like glue, and if I put him down now he’ll start wailing.”

I peeled the napkin off her leg and tried to brush away as best I could whatever had held it there. I hoped it was baby food.

I said, “My friend has a baby, and I want to help her out, and I was wondering if you could help me with what kind of stuff she needs.”

The girl wrinkled her nose, stuffing the napkin into her back pocket. “You mean, like food stuff? Or clothing stuff?”

“Well, what would be the basics?”

“Depends,” she said. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl.”

“How old?”

I hesitated. “Well, my friend is one of those health-nut types, you know, so she hired one of those home birth people and—”

“A doula,” she said.

“Yes, that. And she had the baby at home, because she…” I cleared my throat. “Because she doesn’t really believe in doctors and everything.”

The girl tilted her head. “Uh-huh. And how old is the baby?”

“Ummm, an hour?” I said, looking at my watch. “Two hours tops.”

The girl pursed her lips together and looked at me with one cocked eyebrow, like I was perhaps the most moronic creature she had ever laid eyes on.

“Oh,” she said. “Wow.”

I raised my shoulders as if to say “What are you gonna do?” and made a face that was half apologetic smile, half tormented grimace.

She sighed. “Go get a cart.”

You wonder how anybody ever had a baby before the invention of Walmart, plastic, and the assembly line. Disposable bottles, wet wipes, pacifiers, panty shields, rubber nipples, baby powders, booties, syringes, gas drops, burp cloths, Onesies, crib pads, cotton swabs, nursing bras, diaper pails, bottle warmers, breast shields, bottle brushes, bumper shields—the list goes on and on. I nearly had one whole cart filled and was ready to go get another when the girl finally said we were done.

Since I wasn’t sure if Corina would choose to breastfeed her baby, I had to cover all my bases and get some powdered formula as well, not to mention eye drops, aspirin, rash cream, a bulb syringe, and an aspirator. I could barely remember what half the stuff was for, but between me, Joyce, and Corina I was sure we could figure it out.

“You can use this as a crib for now,” the girl said, sliding a bright pink car seat onto the rack under the cart. “And you can never have too many baby blankets.”