Mike Wells: Baby Talk

Somewhere hidden deep down inside of him, there was another Neal, a Neal who was vulnerable and caring and loving, a Neal who desperately needed her and Natasha just as much as they needed him. She had glimpsed that part of him only a few times, mostly at the beginning of their relationship (how could she have fallen in love with him otherwise?), but now it had almost disappeared, buried somewhere inside him. And now, that hidden part of him had gained such strength that it had projected itself onto Natasha, making him believe that the little infant had actually told him that she loved him!

Annie started to feel sick. She sat upright in the bed, afraid she might throw up. The room seemed to spin around and around.

This wasn’t a marriage...it was a nightmare.

Annie touched her hand to her queasy stomach. She needed some Pepto-Bismal. Natasha was still sleeping peacefully, so Annie quietly got up out of the bed. She paused at the door and gazed at her lovely child again, then looked up at the telephone. It was only inches away from Natasha’s head, on the night stand, but the receiver was still off the hook, so it couldn’t ring and wake her up.

Satisfied that all was in order, Annie padded through the living room and into the kitchen. She took a swig of the pink stomach settler out of the bottle. It had become her breakfast of choice during the first few weeks of her pregnancy, when she developed morning sickness and didn’t want Shellie, her nosy roommate at that time, to know about it.

Annie wiped her mouth and put the bottle back in the cupboard. In a matter of minutes, her stomach had stopped gurgling. Then he realized she was hungry. She opened the refrigerator door. There was a half-full carton of chocolate milk on the middle shelf. Annie eyed it with such lust it felt almost sexual. What had happened to her willpower?

She glanced down at her flabby figure, hidden underneath her tattered yellow housecoat. Her appearance now was disgusting, she knew. It was no wonder that Neal didn’t seem interested in having sex with her anymore. Her breasts were shriveled and sad-looking, from constantly nursing Natasha. But they had never been very big. This not only made her feel unattractive as a woman, it made her feel inadequate as a mother. They were so small she had to use store-bought formula as supplement most of the time.

Before she had gotten pregnant, though, she had felt comfortable with her body—she was in almost perfect shape. She had even won second place at a “best suntan” contest at the Buckhead Beach Club. In fact, if she hadn’t participated in that fateful contest, she and Neal probably wouldn’t have met. Neal had approached her afterwards and made some small talk, obviously trying to pick her up. One thing led to another, and she’d ended up spending the night with him. This was something that she had never done before, sleeping with someone so quickly, but with Neal, everything just “clicked.” Until she had found out she was pregnant, at least.

Annie stood in front of the open refrigerator for several minutes, trying to control herself, but finally grabbed the carton of chocolate milk and took a few hungry gulps. As soon as she took the carton away from her lips, she was angry with herself.

She plopped down on one of the squeaky dinette chairs. As she did this, she noticed that her hind quarters seemed to cover a little more of the seat than it had a month ago. Annie had always been a little pear-shaped, a fact Neal seemed to like (he used to say he liked her “bubble butt”). But now, she looked a little like her mother. No, that wasn’t true—Annie couldn’t insult her mother like that. Her mother looked better than she did. At 48!

But what could Annie, or anyone, expect? Now she was living her life for her baby daughter, not for herself. She had no time for nightly workouts or Weight Watchers or spending any time making herself “beautiful.” The most important thing in her life was Natasha—her precious baby was all that mattered. She wanted to make sure that her daughter grew up in a healthy environment and didn’t get messed up like so many other kids she had known. And like she’d been messed up herself.

Annie glanced down at the chocolate milk carton in her hand. There was no doubt in her mind that her weight problems were her mother’s fault. Who wouldn’t have problems with obesity, growing up in a house like that! Her mother drank chocolate milk like it was water, packed the kitchen full of potato chips and cookies and crackers and all kinds of other fattening (but oh so tasty!) goodies. She honestly didn’t know how her mom managed to keep her weight halfway under control eating like that all those years.

Unable to resist the urge, Annie finished off the last of the chocolate milk. Maybe she had weight problems, but Natasha wouldn’t. She would be careful not to set such a bad example for her own daughter.

When she got up and opened the cabinet under the sink to throw the empty carton away, she gasped.

A little brown mouse had darted past her and then disappeared under the refrigerator.

“Damn!” Annie hissed, clutching the empty milk carton to her racing heart.

She glanced uneasily around the tiny kitchen, her skin tingling. What a poor excuse for a home! She had called the apartment manager twice already about the mice, but the lazy woman hadn’t done a thing about it. Neal had bought some little boxes of rat poison at the grocery store and left them out under the sink and behind the refrigerator, but they didn’t seem to do any good. Living in these conditions was just plain unacceptable. She would call the manager again as soon as Natasha woke up. And she would give the lady a piece of her mind!

Annie sat back down in the dinette chair, shaking. Through the doorway to the living room she could see her broken up reflection—her fat reflection—in the tile mirrors some previous tenant had glued to the wall in a vain attempt to make the tiny apartment look bigger. The tiles were supposed to look fancy—they had fake gold veins running through them to give a marble-like effect—but she thought they just looked cheap. Like everything else in the depressing place.

Annie crossed her arms on the little dinette table and set her head between them, the way she used to back in high school.

And she began to weep.

CHAPTER 3

Neal returned to the flower shop just after one o’clock to pick up his afternoon orders. Grammy was still out to lunch, but she had left his stack of delivery slips on her desk. On top was a pink WHILE YOU WERE OUT telephone message sheet, as usual. Annie called him at least once each day to tell him what to buy at the grocery store on the way home. It always humiliated him to receive such messages at work—he would never be comfortable with this “young husband” routine.

Neal didn’t bother to read the message, quickly shoving it and the rest of the stack of paper into his jacket pocket. As he began to load the van with the deliveries, Mildred appeared at her desk and gave him an odd little smile, as if they shared some juicy secret.

What was that all about? Neal thought, as he carried his next load of flowers out to the van. He glanced down at his shirt, then his pants, wondering if maybe his fly was open.

Then he remembered the pink message slip.

Maybe it hadn’t been from Annie after all. But who else could be calling him at Snell’s Flowers? He hadn’t worked there long enough to give anyone but Annie the phone number.

He dug the pink paper out of his jacket pocket. His eyes were immediately drawn down to the MESSAGE portion of the note.

As he read the words that were written there, his eyes widened.

I love you.

Neal looked back up at the FROM line.