The Kiss Principle (Hazardverse: Sidetracks)

3

The baby couldn’t have been more than a couple of weeks old, with a tiny swatch of dark hair, and still with that old man look that newborns have. I remembered Augustus when he’d been that age, so small I’d been afraid to hold him, convinced that as soon as I picked him up, I’d drop him, and he’d break like an egg. I’d gotten over that pretty fast, but I’d never forgotten it. This baby was pinker than Augustus had been, and as the baby screamed, the pink deepened to red.

Not a cat, a distant part of my brain observed. Chuy had left the door open, and a baby had wandered in.

But that wasn’t true, of course. The car seat. A diaper bag. Someone had brought this baby into the house. And then, apparently, left.

The infant’s screams penetrated the fog in my head, and I looked around. Someone had to be here, right? Somebody this baby belonged to. I jogged to the windows in the living room, but there was nobody parked out front. I opened the back door and stuck my head out. Nothing. The baby was still screaming, and I raced the length of the house and threw open Chuy’s door.

His bed was empty.

Drawers hung open, clothes spilling out of them.

I stared for a moment, as though Chuy might pop out and yell, Surprise! But this wasn’t the first time he’d packed a bag and bolted, and I recognized the signs. He was gone. The piece of shit junkie motherfucker was gone. And he’d left a baby.

It was like something out of a fairy tale, out of those Golden Books I used to read Augustus. Or something out of a nightmare.

“Mom,” I shouted, “I need you!”

She didn’t answer, but maybe God was being merciful because the baby was screaming too loudly for me to hear whatever was happening inside her room.

The baby’s desperate cries finally jarred me into action. Nobody was here. Nobody was going to do this but me. I went back to the kitchen. I unbuckled the car seat straps—I didn’t remember Augustus’s being this complicated, and it took me a few tries, but that also might have been because my hands were shaking. I got the baby out, caught a whiff of pee, and touched wet fabric. The plain white onesie was soaked through.

“Okay,” I whispered as I shifted the baby to one arm. My body remembered this, the movement that was somewhere between rocking and bouncing as I pawed through the diaper bag with my free hand. “You’re okay. Hey, somebody’s got a good set of lungs.”

Somebody was trying to puncture my ear drum.

By some miracle, the bag held not only a clean diaper and wipes but a bottle and a container of formula. Diaper first, I decided. I stripped the baby out of the onesie, tossed it on the floor, and threw the dirty diaper in the trash. That answered one question: the baby was a she. It took me a few fumbling tries to get the clean diaper on—I swear to God, they’d moved the little tape-tab things, because it definitely hadn’t been this hard with Augustus—and then, for lack of anything better, wrapped her in a clean towel. She was screaming even harder now, if that was possible.

I heated water in the microwave and, somehow, got most of it into the bottle. I scooped. I measured. It was starting to come back to me, and I even screwed the top of the bottle into place one-handed. I shook it, and then I tested it against the inside of my arm. Maybe a little on the cool side, if anything. Better than burning her mouth.

When I brought the nipple to her lips, she let out a final, whimpering cry and took it into her mouth. Then she ate like an animal, still shaking now and then as the force of her crying slowly drained out of her body. I held the bottle, rocking her slowly as I walked around the kitchen. It was easier than I remembered; I’d been a lot smaller when it had been Augustus, and he’d felt heavy even when he’d been a newborn. This little girl hardly weighed anything. I’d need to burp her, I thought, but it was like thinking through a haze. And she’d need to sleep. How long had she been in that car seat, wet and hungry? How long had she been alone? How long since Chuy had put her there like a sack of groceries and then shoved his shit in a bag and run?

The click of a door opening made me step into the living room. The boy toy emerged from Mom’s room first, his face and neck still flushed from his nut, a nineteen-year-old’s cocky grin plastered across his face, the kind of look teenage boys have, like they invented fucking. He spotted me, and his grin widened. A mop of blond hair under a Dodgers snapback, a white T-shirt, black shorts. His Vans looked new, but like he’d tried to make them look well worn. “What up, Fer?”

I looked past him. “Mom, get out here.”

“Yo, where’s my hug at?” the boy toy asked as he came toward me.

“Fuck off. Mom!”

She appeared a moment later. Gabby Lopez was beautiful; she ought to have been, considering how much of my money she spent to look that way. Out of all of us, Augustus probably looked the most like her; the little turd had good luck that way. Today, she wore a green romper, and she bent to adjust one strappy sandal, one hand on the boy toy to steady herself. When she straightened, she said, “What is that?”

“It’s a baby, Mom. You squirted three of them out of you, remember?”

The boy toy snickered. Mom gave me a look, and then one for the boy toy, and I wondered if he noticed how similar they were. “I meant, is it yours?”

“Yeah, it’s mine. Surprise. My imaginary girlfriend and I couldn’t wait to tell you.”

“Thank God. We have enough mouths to feed already.”

While I was still trying to figure out the we in that sentence, the boy toy said, “Bruh, babies are so dope.”

“You’ll be able to share toys,” I said. “How’s that fucking sound for dope?”

“Watch your language in front of the—” Mom apparently didn’t want to say the word. Maybe she was worried it was a disease and she might catch one herself. I made a mental sign of the cross; I couldn’t raise a second Augustus, I honestly couldn’t.

“You know what?” The boy toy’s eyes lit up. “You could, like, totally get a girlfriend with that baby. Bruh, then she wouldn’t be imaginary!”

I opened my mouth to tell him what I thought of that particular brain-fuck, but before I could, Mom said, “Cannon, my suitcases are so heavy.”

“I’ll get them!”

With zero regard for the fact that I had to witness it, the two of them gave each other a tongue bath. When they finally separated, Mom moved over to a mirror and touched up her lipstick.

“My suitcases are so heavy,” I said.

Mom made a dismissive noise. “He likes having something to do. Honestly, it’s a bit refreshing; his mother raised him right. I wish my own children were more like Cannon.”

“Sure, those three darling children you raised yourself: Bookshelf, Doorknob, and Wonder Bread. Mom, what the fuck are we going to do?”

She gave me wide-eyed dismay. “Well, I don’t know.”

“Someone has to stay here and deal with this, and it’s not going to be me.”

“I can’t cancel my trip, Fernando. The reservations are non-refundable.”

“Who cares? I paid for it. I’m telling you that as soon as I can get an Uber, I’m going to the airport, and I’m going to see Augustus.”

“No, dear, Chuy is driving us.”

“Chuy is gone!” It was a whisper-shout, one I barely managed to tamp down. “And he left us a fucking baby!”

The baby fussed, and I started rocking her again.

Mom cooed a little and came over and touched the baby’s head. “See? You’re a natural.”

“No. No way. I haven’t had a vacation, a real vacation, in years, because I’ve spent every minute either getting Augustus to college or from college or keeping him alive while he was at college. And I deserve a break. I deserve some time to myself. I am not going to be saddled with this.” I held the baby out in demonstration.

“But you’re only going to see August again. And you can go see him anytime, and we got such a good deal at the Bellagio, and you don’t know how hard it is to get into this little spa I found. Why don’t you call human services?”

“What the fuck is human services?”

“Call the police then.”

“No, you are—”

“I don’t see why I should be the one who stays.”

In a strangled whisper, I managed, “Because you’re this child’s grandmother.”

“Fernando!” She glanced at the hallway. “Keep your voice down. And anyway, we don’t know that. Not for a fact.”

Cannon chose that moment to stagger out into the hall, only to immediately get jammed when he tried to roll two full-sized suitcases through the doorway at the same time. He tried again. And then he tried a third time, making straining noises.

A hint of a blush rose in Mom’s cheeks, and she murmured, “He’s a tad enthusiastic.”

“I heard him being enthusiastic at three in the fucking morning. Dumbass! One at a time!”

Sure enough, Cannon got one of the suitcases through the door. He laughed and said, “No way.”

“Either you call them and cancel,” I said, “or I will. I am not giving up my vacation.”

The first changes were so small that it was hard to name them: the softening around her mouth and eyes, a slackness in her cheeks. Then she blinked rapidly. Turned her head away. Her eyes shimmered.

“Not going to work,” I said. “Augustus is gone, and I’ve got zero fucks left to give. I’m sure boy toy will help you unpack.”

The boy toy in question had gotten himself jammed again in the hallway because, again, he was trying to wheel the suitcases side-by-side.

“All right,” Mom said. She caught a tear before it could fall and stared at it on her finger. “All right. You’re right.”

“You’re goddamn fucking right I am.”

“I’m sorry we make your life so hard, Fernando. I’m sorry we’ve always been a burden for you.” She touched her eyes again. “I want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy; you’ve sacrificed so much for this family.”

The baby fussed some more, and I held her to my chest. Her little head settled on my shoulder, and she made a noise that told me I’d need to invest in some burp cloths sooner rather than later.

“And you’re right: you deserve to have a vacation. That’s something I can give you.” Her voice was thick as she added, “My perfect, perfect son. I don’t know where any of us would be without you.” She kissed my cheek. “Cannon, take those bags back into my room, please. We’ve got a change of plans.”

Somehow, she unwedged the jackass, turned him around, and got him moving again. I carried the baby into the kitchen, bouncing her slowly. Her breath was soft against my neck, and she had that newborn smell I’d forgotten. She was so little. And I remembered how it had been, Augustus crying for a bottle because Mom was too busy rehearsing or doing her makeup or talking to a “friend.” One time, she had lined a laundry basket with a clean blanket and put him in the closet. She had been doing her scales, I remembered tiredly. My back was tight as a motherfucker as I rocked the baby against me. That was when she was going to be a singer.

I dug out my phone, looking out the window at the deck, the haze of pollution over the valley, the hard little tin-stamped city. Lots of people wanted to be actors, I thought as I typed out the text to Augustus. Lots of people wanted to be singers. And somehow, the world kept turning.

Something came up , I wrote. Change of plans .