James Siegel - Detour

“Uh, Galina . . . we were wondering about something,” he started.

“Yes?”

“This is going to sound a little silly, okay?”

“Okay.” Galina repeated his American slang with evident amusement.

“My wife . . . both of us, really, have noticed this difference. About Joelle.”

“Difference. What do you mean difference?”

“Well, I said this is going to sound silly, but the fact is, she kind of smells different. Than she did before.”

“Smells?” She looked over at Pablo, as if for confirmation she’d heard him correctly. Apparently, she had. Pablo looked as confused as she did.

“She had this kind of musky smell,” Paul blundered on, “and now she doesn’t. It seemed to change after, uh . . . when we thought she was . . . when you went to get her the thermometer.”

“Yes?”

“We were just wondering about it,” Paul said. “That’s all.”

“All right.”

Evidently, Galina still had no idea what he was talking about.

“We were hoping maybe you can account for it?”

“Account for what?”

“Why she seems to be . . . different.”

Galina put her cup of coffee back down on its china saucer. The sound seemed to echo unnaturally. Maybe because the room had suddenly turned uncomfortably quiet, the only sound a vague murmur emanating from the lowered TV. If the five of them were on that soap opera, Paul thought, there’d be a dissonant organ chord now to signify the portent of something dramatic. In this case, Galina’s growing realization that she was being accused, albeit clumsily, of something she still didn’t understand.

“What are you saying?” she asked now. “Are you suggesting . . . what? ”

“Nothing, Galina,” Paul said, a little too quickly. “We were just curious, that’s all.”

“About what ?”

“About why she smells different.”

“I don’t understand. What are you asking me?”

We’re asking you if you stole our baby, Galina. If you switched her.

“Nothing.”

“Then why are you here?”

Paul felt like asking Joanna that himself.

“We wanted to know . . . ,” and here Paul suddenly went blank.

“She had a beauty mark,” Joanna said.

“What?” Galina turned to look at Joanna.

“She had a beauty mark when we got her. It’s not there now.”

“Beauty mark?”

“My daughter had a beauty mark on her left leg. And she used to smell like . . . well, like her. The beauty mark’s gone. She smells different. I want to know if it’s the same baby. ”

Okay, Paul thought, Xena, warrior princess, was in full battle mode. The cat had been let out of the bag. Only it wasn’t a cat as much as a Tasmanian devil, something large, carnivorous, and repulsive-looking. Probably the way the two of them looked to Galina right at this moment. After all, her back had physically stiffened—one of those clichés that evidently rang true. Her gentle gray eyes had turned hard as glass.

Paul found himself trying to look anywhere but at her, searching for a hole he might be able to hide in.

There was a box of cigars sitting on her mantel.

It had a photograph of a man in a white panama hat.

Paul wondered if Galina smoked cigars. A pair of brown slippers nestled like cats on her front welcome mat. The dog, who’d roused itself from its semicomatose state, had picked up one in his mouth, then dropped it by Pablo’s feet, where it landed with an uncomfortable thud.

He forced himself to turn back to Galina. She still hadn’t said anything—Joanna’s accusation had turned her mute. She looked more or less horrified.

Later, much later, Paul would wonder if there’s such a thing as peripheral hearing. Something that impinges on the ear but only announces itself later on.

He was trying not to stare at Galina’s pained expression. He was wondering whether he should apologize to her. He didn’t notice the muffled sound emanating from the inner recesses of the house.

Galina did. Which accounted for her expression.

Joanna had noticed it too.

Because she reached out and dug her fingernails into his arm. He almost cried out. Which would’ve made it two people crying in the house instead of just one.

Him and the baby.

There was a baby crying in the house.

He’d finally heard it.

He’d finally processed it. Because when he looked down at Joelle, she was sleeping. Which meant that there was a baby crying in the house, yes, only it wasn’t this baby.

“Who’s that?” That’s the first thing he said. Stupid, okay, but then, he was obviously a little slow on the uptake today.

Galina didn’t answer him.

“Whose baby is that?” he said, even though he was starting to have a good idea whose baby it might be.

“Pablo. Can you go see who it is?”

Pablo didn’t move.

“Galina?”

She hadn’t changed expression. Or maybe she had. The hardness in her eyes was still there, and there was something else now, a scary sense of focus and fortitude.

“Galina, is that our daughter? Is that Joelle ?”

It took Paul a while to realize that Pablo still hadn’t moved. That Galina still wasn’t answering him.

Paul stood up with the baby in his arms—the question was, whose baby? He felt faint. “Okay, I’m going to see who it is.” Announcing his plan out loud as if seeking approval.

He reached out to give Joelle to Galina and then, of course, stopped himself. Galina wasn’t exactly his nurse anymore; it was possible this baby wasn’t Joelle. He felt as if he were teetering on the edge of a deep and dangerous abyss—physically and emotionally hovering right over the edge. The room itself seemed to be swaying.

Then things flew into motion.

Joanna stood up and said I’ll go look, and immediately began walking toward the sound of the crying baby. Pablo roused himself from his chair.

Paul offered up the baby in his arms so he could go join his wife, but it seemed to take an enormous effort to lift her.

“Sit down, Paul,” Pablo said gently.

He was offering to look himself. He was telling Paul to sit down and take care of the baby. Pablo was being Pablo.

Paul gratefully reclaimed his seat as Pablo followed Joanna into the hall. The baby was crying louder, screeching even. And Paul finally and completely acknowledged what Joanna had feared was true.

He recognized that crying.

He remembered it from the first day in the hotel room when their daughter had wailed endlessly for food. Until Galina had shown up and made everything all right again.

Galina was still stiffly seated in her chair—only she appeared to be physically closer to him than she’d been before. How was that possible?

For a minute or so nothing happened.

The baby continued to cry from somewhere in the house; Galina continued to stare at him with an odd and unsettling calm.

Then Pablo reappeared, walking back into the living room while supporting Joanna with one strong arm. She was leaning against him, her head laid back on his shoulder as if she were very close to fainting. Where was the baby?

Joanna clearly looked distraught, while Pablo appeared helpful. There was undoubtedly a causal connection between those two things, but Paul wasn’t sure what it was.

Something was wrong.

Look closer.

Her head on his shoulder. It took Paul a few seconds—seconds in which the world changed from A to Z—to understand that the reason it was lying back on Pablo’s shoulder like that was that Pablo had his wife’s dark luxuriant hair wrapped tightly in his fist.

Pablo was pulling Joanna into the room by her hair.

Her mouth was open in a half-muted scream.