Mike Wells - Baby Talk

* * *

By noon that day, Neal was certain that he had taken a wrong turn somewhere on the Interstate. “TRAFFIC BOUND FOR HELL—EXIT ONLY,” the sign must have said.

He sat outside a hi-rise office building in Sandy Springs, trying to work up enough courage to struggle his way out of the van and carry the order of roses he was supposed to deliver into the lobby. He had stopped at a drugstore on his way to work and picked up his pain killers, but they didn’t seem to help much. He had taken six already, two more than he should have, but they only dulled the throbbing in his foot. The pills also seemed to have the unpleasant side-effect of making him nauseous. And the doctor had been right about the swelling getting worse before it got better. Now, the skin on the sole of his foot was stretched so tightly it felt like the whole appendage was about to burst. The only positive thing was that his shoulder was staring to feel better—at least the pain killers seemed to work on that part of his body.

He had worn a pair of old, faded sneakers to work, the only shoes that were halfway bearable to wear under the circumstances. This had allowed him to hide his injury from the Snells, though just barely.

Neal glanced at the office building again, dreading the seemingly vast distance that separated him from the lobby. He started to open the door, then shut it again. No, he had to rest for another couple of minutes. He decided to take another look at his foot.

He grunted and carefully removed his right sneaker, then slipped off his sock. The top of his foot looked a bit red to him, particularly around the bandage. It also felt “hot to the touch,” as the doctor had said.

He pulled up the bottom of his pants and inspected his ankle and calf, but he didn’t see any red streaks. Yet, his instincts told him that his foot was well into the process of becoming infected. But how could he know for sure? It seemed to him that it might be hot and red just from walking around on it all morning. Plus, didn’t it take longer to get an infection?

Neal wished he had asked the doctor how long it would take for the symptoms to appear. Then again, he would have sounded like a hypochondriac. But hadn’t the doctor said that it was “likely” that an infection would develop? Well, no, he didn’t say “likely.” He said there was a “chance” that an infection could devel—

“Hey, pal,” somebody said, tapping on his window.

It was a heavyset black man with a mustache. A security guard.

Neal rolled down the window.

“You’re gonna have to move. This is a fire zone. No parking or standing.”

“I have to make a delivery.” Neal realized that the man was staring at his foot, which he had propped up on the lower part of the dashboard. He quickly moved it down to the gas pedal.

“What happened?” the guard asked.

“Nothing,” Neal said. “Just sprained my foot a little bit yesterday. Playing tennis.”

“Looks pretty bad.”

Neal just shrugged. He hoped the guy would just leave him alone.

“If you’re gonna make a delivery,” the guard said, “then get on with it. The police will give you a ticket if they see you parked here.”

Neal nodded.

The guard eyed Neal for another couple of seconds, then walked off.

Neal watched him, wondering how the truth—or what he perceived to be the truth—would have sounded.

What happened to your foot?

Oh, my five-month old daughter set a trap for me and screwed me up pretty good.

A trap? What the hell are you talking about?

Well, she’s pissed off because I almost made my wife abort her, and now she’s trying to get even. She’s pretty advanced, too, for a five-month old kid. She can already talk, move things around the room. And she’s shrewd as hell. Left a broken tennis trophy of mine out in the middle of the floor, so I’d step on it when I got up to go to the bathroom. Smeared her own feces all over it, too, just to make sure an infection would develop.

Uh-huh , the guard would say, glancing around, wondering if a real policeman was around to take this nut away and lock him up somewhere, in some nice, quiet place with soft, padded walls...

Neal closed his eyes and let out a ragged sigh. Maybe this infection (if he indeed had an infection) was a good thing—it would keep his mind occupied and off the unpleasant subject of how it had come about. The rational part of himself simply could not accept the thoughts he was having about Natasha—they were obviously the thoughts of a lunatic. Hell, maybe Annie was right. Maybe it was just some kind of out-of-control guilt complex that had taken over. Maybe he had completely imagined that Natasha had spoken to him, and the telephone message (he sure wished he hadn’t thrown the message slip away). And maybe he had sleepwalked and put the trophy out in the middle of the floor himself. Who could say? There were probably lots of other rational explanations he hadn’t considered.

The guard was standing in front of the building’s entrance, eyeing him again.

Neal quickly put his sneaker back on, leaving the laces untied as he had before (not that he could tie them even if he wanted too—his foot was just too swollen), and got out of the van. He stepped onto the pavement with the utmost care, but a twinge of pain shot through his left foot and lurched all the way up his leg to his testicles. Grimacing, he limped his way around to the back of the van. As he opened the double doors, a wave of nausea rolled over him that was so debilitating he thought he might pass out right there in the parking lot. But after a few long seconds, it subsided.

He finally got the box of roses out of the van and headed into the building. Luckily, the office where the flowers were to be delivered was located on the lobby level, only a short distance from the front door.

When he came back out to the parking lot, the guard approached him.

“This is none of my business, pal, but you don’t look so good.”

“Oh?” Neal made an effort to walk without limping, even though the pain was almost unbearable. “What do you mean?”

The guard laughed. “You look like death warmed-over. You’re white as a sheet.”

Neal touched his face self-consciously, then opened the door of his van.

“You better see a doctor. I don’t think you should be driving.”

“I already saw a doctor,” Neal said, slamming his door shut. “Why don’t you mind your own damn business?”

The guard shook his head. Neal glanced at his own face in the rearview mirror and noticed that his forehead was beaded with sweat. His skin seemed colorless. Yeah, he did look like “death warmed-over.” That was a good description.

But he had to keep working.

Avoiding any more eye contact with the guard, he revved up the van’s engine and pulled away.

* * *

Cradling a sleeping Natasha in one arm, Annie picked up the telephone and punched in the same long distance number that she had called at least 20 times that day. On her first few attempts to reach her mother, she was almost relieved there was no answer. They hadn’t spoken in months, since Annie had, in so many words, told her mom to butt out of her life.

“Mrs.” Paula Crawford still lived in Chattanooga and had been dating a guy named Doug for the past sixth months or so. Annie didn’t care much for Doug—he was a kind of a dimwitted truck mechanic who only seemed interested watching football and wrestling on TV. But he was “hard-working,” and “very loyal,” to use her mother’s words. Annie supposed that if Doug made her mother happy, that was all that mattered. She just wished her mom had the same attitude about Neal.

But the breakdown in the mother-daughter relationship wasn’t Annie’s fault—she was sure a lot of girls would have done the same in her situation. Didn’t her mother realize what a double-bind she created for her daughter? She hadn’t wanted Annie to marry Neal, but she hadn’t wanted Annie to be an unwed mother, either. What choices did that leave? Have an abortion, or give the baby up for adoption. That was it. Annie would never do either of those things, and she knew her mother wouldn’t have, either, had she been in Annie’s shoes. But she offered Annie no solution to the dilemma. “It’s not my problem, Annie,” is all she would say. “You’ll have to make this decision yourself.”