Perri O'Shaughnessy - Sinister Shorts

But here today, once again, Laura had shown her strong suit, intuiting correctly. He had, in fact, intervened with his mother, Olga, telling her she had to watch his children at their house in Lincoln for the very short time they would be away or Laura wouldn't feel comfortable going. He needed Laura, ergo, Mom had to comply, but Mom never gave in without a fight. He'd had to hire her full-time help for the duration, and had promised to pick up the cost of her housekeeper for three months.

Too bad he had to keep Laura in the dark about the brevity of this trip. She expected a week away; he planned to finish his business by the time they got off the plane in Puerto Rico. Guilt burned his stomach, a feeling so familiar he barely registered it. He would make it up to her somehow, which was always the follow-up thought, which didn't stop the pain but weakened it like drinking milk. He pushed hair off his forehead and felt sweat beading on his brow, so he reached up to twist on the plastic fan over his seat.

He wondered if he could declare Mom an expense. Picturing Curtis Patchett in the accounting office of the bureau scrutinizing his report, he felt as giddy as his wife sounded. Curtis, formerly a field agent like himself, would chop him into a hundred pieces and hang the bits on the wall as a decorative advance warning to any potential future jokers.

The plane ascended through a soupy, oatmeal-colored mass of cloud. Settling in, Laura said, “Olga had her hands full raising you, and you were only one kid, but I read ours the riot act and told them if they didn't behave, I'd make them stay until they got it right.” She giggled. “Not that they don't like your mother. But she can be a pill.” She pulled down her tray table, then pushed it back into place, clicking the lock in place with a satisfied, “Ah. I can't wait to eat.”

Daniel glanced around his newspaper at the woman with frizzy brown hair, whom he had already mentally named “Curly.” Tall and lean, her head way up on the seat headrest, she adjusted a pair of black corduroy slacks she was wearing that matched a fitted black blouse as she jiggled a baby's hand in her own. The baby made long, up and down sounds like the beginnings of a song sung off-key and minus rhythm. After a while, Curly pulled a windup musical toy out from her carry-on to amuse the child, then played peekaboo with a black and white killer whale puppet that resembled one his kids had when they were little that they had dubbed “Shamu.”

Laura bent over him to look. “A little over five months old,” she noted. “Good age for a traveler. They can smile and almost sit by themselves, but they're tied to Mama. They can't escape.”

Daniel pushed her gently back into her seat, resisting an urge to shout at her. “When was the last time you ate a meal on a plane, honey?” he asked her. “Don't expect gourmet. The food stinks.”

“If someone else cooks it and puts it in front of me, well, I call that delicious.”

He had a good view of the three women and their babies. Due to the arm-wrestling contest his boss had won with the airline, they sat in rows close by but in front of him. They all had the putative mom's own requirements: getting in and out to change or walk the babies would be easier. He could observe relatively discreetly, since the plane, an Airbus A300, held two seats on each side, four in the middle. There weren't that many places to look, and the movie would play soon, offering him unlimited, anonymous viewing pleasure.

The three drooling babies, roughly the same age, appeared happy and well-fed, so distinctions were going to be subtle. None of the mothers was breast-feeding, which would have provided a definite clue that they were not the bad one.

The bureau had identified a few other people with small kids on this flight, but the kids were too old or too young, or the father was along to help. They knew the target was traveling alone with a baby who was not yet crawling. They also knew the mom was white and that Daniel had to identify her before she left the terminal in San Juan so that the locals, who had been alerted by the bureau in advance, could help him grab her before she disappeared into the forgiving sunshine of the Caribbean. She could fly right out of their grasp from San Juan. She could run for Tortola, St. Croix, Nevis, any number of welcoming islands.

Daniel peered up the aisle.

Without tearing her eyes away from the airline magazine she seemed to be studying, Laura said, “That one's sitting up already. Six months old, I'd say. But then, our two were so precocious. Joey sat up earlier than Corinna. Hard to tell if it's a boy or girl, all wrapped up like that.”

The baby faced a second woman wearing a leaf-patterned yellow sundress, thin cotton, just right for the tropics. He wondered how she had managed in that dress. Must have brought a fur coat along to get herself on the plane in Boston.

She had long blonde hair twisted into a short braid that fell over her left shoulder, but most of it escaped, floating beyond her skull in a permanently windblown state. He code-named her “Fan.” When the baby slept, minutes at a time, she leafed through a movie magazine, looking irritated. If she had looked bored, he might have found her attitude significant; but she didn't. When the baby fussed, she was right there, kissing its cheek, letting it attempt to stand on her knees, generously supported by her.

“What a sturdy little neck,” Laura observed. “Remember how Cori's neck flopped?”

The flight attendant, a thin, graying man, asked if they would prefer lasagna or meat loaf. They both preferred lasagna.

“Meat loaf?” Laura scoffed. “What do you suppose they put into it?”

Laura made terrific meat loaf. She folded in bits of whole wheat bread with the low-fat turkey grind, fresh tomatoes, garlic, mushrooms, apple-chicken sausages, zucchini, yogurt cheeses. Somehow, the mishmash tasted great. He didn't expect the same from the airline.

Their red blobs of goo arrived. Dan couldn't eat his. Laura tucked in.

The third mother, “Mole,” black-haired and blue-eyed, with a flesh-colored mole at the tip of her chin that extended her face into an exact triangle, bottle-fed her baby throughout the meal, eating nothing. She sipped from a bottle of water she had stowed in the back of the seat in front of her. Whenever her child began to move even a little erratically, she picked through a big bag and stuffed a pacifier into its mouth, or dangled a toy provocatively above it. The move seemed to work, as the baby interrupted its near meltdown, satisfying itself by sucking hard on the rubber nipple. The target wore a pair of lightweight jeans with a baggy pink shirt over a tight white T-shirt.

“These young moms are so attentive,” Laura said, observing his focus, “which is good. It's a blurry time. You're afraid and confident all at the same time.” She put a finger to his cheek. “They're just so darling, such tiny angels. Remember Cori? How she slept for the first three weeks and I had to wake her up to eat?”

It was a blur. Daniel couldn't believe they had two children. The only way he could cope was to immerse himself in work. He was not cut out to change diapers. The smell nauseated him. He couldn't understand how Laura could pick up a steaming, reeking soggy pile and casually rinse it in the toilet. The process, so primordial, made him glad to be civilized, and after the first time he was left alone to cope, gagging with revulsion, he sprang magnanimously for paper diapers.

He was proud of the kids, of course. Symbolizing his success as a man, they were his seed. You only had to look at Joey to know that. Daniel supported them and their stay-at-home mother. He would put them through college, by God.

Laura pulled her hand back and her eyes looked inward. “I thought she might die of hunger. I cried. I was worried. Funny, huh? I mean, now I worry when she eats fast food. She's not thin like you might expect. She's sturdy-looking, even though she exercises constantly.”