The Baby

Everything was going so well. I am sure at least one person said that on the Titanic after they hit the iceberg. One person in the lost colony of Roanoke probably said that too before whatever happened to them happened. I bet Amelia Earhart cried it as her plane was plummeting to earth. So there I was standing in the foyer with a bottle of wine and a boquet of flowers in my hands when I caught a faint glimpse of "the baby" in the kitchen sitting in his highchair. I brought him a coloring book and some crayons, which were in a grocery sack, dangling from my arm. 

His mother was absolutely beautiful and smart — smart enough to be on Jeopardy smart. She was a nurse and things couldn't have gone any better between us since we started dating three months before. I thought she was the one for me. I had made it through the gauntlet and through all the usual obstacles. I met her parents and her friends. I met her eccentric and spastic brother, who kept asking, "Have you met the baby, yet?" She told him to shut up and he grinned at me like a sadist. But now it was finally time to meet her "little guy," as she often called him.  

"He isn't exactly a baby," she warned me, searching for the words and scouring my face for fires of panic to put out. "Well, what I mean is, um, he might strike you as being older in appearance than he actually is." I thought maybe he had that disease that makes kids look like senior citizens. I read about that in some magazine. I was prepared for anything, or so I thought.

I was excited to meet Charlie. I had heard so much about him. She said he was very smart and cultured — a word which I've never heard to describe a baby before. He is an artist, she boasted, he had been potty-trained since six months. He dislikes rudeness, and he has pecuilar apetites for a child. He sounded like the perfect little child and after I met him, his mom and I were going to start talking about moving in together. 

His dad wasn't in the picture. She never really explained exactly what happened to him, other than saying that the police believe he just ran off. Men do that, you know, she assured me. They run off all the time. I believed everything she said. She could have told me he was abducted by aliens and I would have believed it. 

She was perfect. She didn't care that I didn't make much money bwcause I was a social worker. She said she respected my work. She loved my writing style, she said so again and again, making insightful comments about particular passages she favored most. Characters she loved and others that she didn't. She sewed several pairs of my torn pants and hemmed the ones I complained that were too long. She loved to read. She gave good thoughtful gifts. And at dinner, in front of her family, she quoted a story I wrote several months ago. A tear welled in her eye as she reached for my hand. She said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever read. Better than Shakespeare, she added. 

But we hadn't made love yet. I was stuck on third base, waiting to be knocked in by fate or some better effort. I had attempted to steal home, a time or two, but was cut down at the plate. She explained, "You have to meet the baby before we go any further." So it all depended on how well the baby and I got along to determine if she and I would make love.  

So there I was, still in that foyer. Those flowers, a bottle of wine, and that bag with the coloring book and box of crayons in my clammy hands. Tonight could be the night, if it went well. What the hell was I so nervous about? What could go wrong? He was just a kid, after all. I could hear him in the background jabbering on about fava beans. His mom came out and gave me a nervous smile and wiped her hands in a dish towel. 

"Sorry! I was just feeding Charlie dinner real quick. I wanted to get him fed. He is so much more agreeable when he has eaten, you'll come to learn. When he is done, maybe you two could get to know each other. Hang out for a bit. See how it goes. Then we can put him to bed and open that wine and, well, who knows." She smiled and gave me a quick kiss. 

Then she led me into the kitchen where he was sitting in his highchair in the absurdly bright room. That highchair was more like a throne than anything else. Right off the rip, I couldn't help but to stare at him. My God! How was a thing like this even possible? The baby was an exact likeness of Hannibal Lecter, eating a tray full of spaghetti. 

"Is that chianti?" he asked me in clear English with the slightest hint of a British accent. "I prefer chianti in a fiasco. If you don't know what a fiasco is, I will explain. A fiasco is a squat bottle encased in a straw basket. They don't produce many that way anymore, unless you're in Tuscany where you will not be served chianti any other way, I assure you."

"Come on, Charlie. Eat your spaghetti for mommy," she encouraged him. "Be a good boy."

But Charlie looked at me and waited for my response to his prior question. I stared at him, still mesmerized by the likeness. More nervous than I had ever been before, yet, uttely captivated. 

"Well, what have you brought us?" he asked.

I cleared my throat before sheepishly replying to the baby. "It's — um — well, it's merlot." 

His mother bit her bottom lip and looked at him as though she hoped he would not get upset. 

"You come over to fuck my mother with cheap merlot and a ten dollar boquet of supermarket flowers? No chocolates, I don't suppose. Unless they're in that bag there. Are they in the bag, David?"

His mom was as mute and lifeless as the refrigerator. She put her face in her hand hoping to erase it. I fumbled with the bag and revealed it's contents. The coloring book and crayons, which I dropped on the floor in front of him before nervously picking them back up. No chocolates. He sighed, staring at me still. Reading me. He was locked in. His face and teeth stained with spaghetti sauce. His mom suddenly became foreign to me standing there. She betrayed me. It was as though she disavowed our entire relationship. But then in an unexpected and sudden reversal of fortune, Charlie took interest in the coloring book and crayons and asked his mom to clean him up and release him from the highchair so that he could color. 

Happily, she did, while giving me a quick yet exasperated smile of approval. I breathed a long sigh of relief. He took me by the hand and led me to his playroom, which was decorated in a horse theme, horses everywhere, where he sat the crayons and coloring book down on a table and flipped through the pages carefully until he found a picture of a puppy in a hot-air balloon that seemed to please him in some way. And there he stood in only a pull-up diaper and carefully colored that puppy, the balloon, the clouds, and the sun. He was a remarkable artist. We talked for a while and he colored a few more pictures then asked his mom for a bottle and to be tucked into bed. As I watched from the door, she put him in his crib, and turned on his mobile of lambs that played classical music. Then after she promised him liver for breakfast, he went straight to sleep. 

After she and I drank most of that red wine, we made love so passionately that I nearly forgot that the little devil slept in the next room. We lied there naked in bed afterwards and she put her head on my chest and sighed contentedly. The reality of it all was sobering and fast restoring order and good sense to my mind now that the lovemaking was over. 

"It went well," she proclaimed tickling my stomach with her fingers. "I really think he likes you!"

"He looks so much like Hannibal Lecter, I was just — taken aback for a moment or two. It is quite remarkable — the resemblance."

"What?! Hannibal Lecter?! He looks nothing like Hannibal Lecter. Are you saying that my Charlie looks like a serial killer, David?!"

"No! No! You're right, dear. He doesn't, really. I was just — making a joke. I'm sorry, darling. He's a lovely little boy. Really, he is."

"He just needs a father figure in his life, David. Some guidance. Thank you, for being kind to him. You're such a good man. But next time, bring the chianti. I don't want to upset him." 

"I will, darling. In the fiasco."

She smiled and we kissed goodnight. 

The next morning I left and never came back. 

Goodbye, horses.