James Henry wiggled aimlessly while Marshall got him out of the soiled Huggy and cleaned crap off his bottom. Eventually, Mom said, he’d be able to fight back when he got changed. He hadn’t figured that out yet, though. Something else I get to look forward to, Marshall thought gloomily.
What he did look forward to was getting paid. He was still writing. He hadn’t sold anything since he graduated, though. His father wasn’t on his case about it. Dad didn’t need to be. Marshall was on his own case.
Before he could even close the new diaper’s tapes, his half-brother peed in it. Marshall kept a piece of cloth over his middle. He’d got it in the face once, but only once. He learned fast, if not quite fast enough.
“Well, piss,” Marshall muttered. Piss it was, all right. He rolled up the new diaper and chucked it into the plastic pail after the other one. The sack inside was filling fast. The reek of stale urine got him in the nose again. Baby poop didn’t stink as much as what grown-ups produced.
One more diaper went onto James Henry’s bottom. The kid didn’t ruin this one before Marshall could get it all the way on to him. A good thing, too, as far as Marshall was concerned. There was talk the authorities would stop letting disposable diapers come into L.A. They took up room that could go to food and fuel instead.
Marshall eyed the baby. “What do I do then?” he asked, not altogether rhetorically. Oh, he knew the answer: cloth diapers and safety pins, right out of Ozzie and Harriet and The Lucy Show. But how were you supposed to fasten those without sticking the kid who was wearing them? If the disposables stopped coming, he’d damn well find out.
He picked up James Henry. The baby had a lot of coal-black hair. He was swarthier than Marshall or Vanessa or Rob-swarthier than Mom, too. Anybody would think his father was Mexican or something.
Changing him changed the note on which he cried, but didn’t shut him up. Marshall pulled out his phone. Yeah, now it was feeding time at the zoo, all right. He carried James Henry into the kitchen. Mom had expressed-that was the word she used for it-enough breast milk to keep the little bugger from starving before she got home.
Marshall heated it in the microwave, waited till it cooled down some, and poured it from measuring cup to bottle. James Henry ate, but he wasn’t enthusiastic about it. Marshal didn’t figure he would have been, either. Given a choice between a rubber nipple and the real thing, he would have taken the McCoy every time.
But his half-brother didn’t have the choice, not with Mom back at work. He didn’t refuse his bottle; he just didn’t like it as well as a tit. After he finished, Marshall got a hell of a burp out of him. If James Henry had known the alphabet, he could have made it at least to R. A guy who’d chugged a couple of cans of Coors would have been proud of this one.
After chow, the baby showed signs of sacking out again. Marshall stuck his finger inside the diaper. James Henry was dry. “Yesss!” Marshall said. Changing him again might have perked him up. This way. .
Settling in a rocking chair, Marshall went forward and back for a while. His half-brother’s eyes sagged shut. He rocked for a few minutes longer to make sure the kid was good and out. Then he rose and carried James Henry back to the crib.
Down the baby went, on his back. Marshall and his older brother and sister had gone into their cribs on their stomachs. That was what the experts back then had said you should do. Now they said this. By the time James Henry was raising his own kids, they might change their minds again.
Getting him into the crib was always the tricky part. If he woke up and started to scream. .
But he didn’t. Marshall breathed a sigh of relief. Now he had his own life back till James Henry woke up again. The first thing he did was make himself a sandwich. He thought Blondie was one of the lamest comics in the paper, a relic from the days when Hearsts and Pulitzers and other dinosaurs roamed the earth. No matter what he thought, the monster he concocted out of leftovers, lunch meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, jalapenos, and anything else in the fridge that looked interesting would have turned Dagwood Bumstead green with envy.
He attacked his creation like an anaconda engulfing a half-grown tapir. For a few anxious seconds, he wondered if his first bite would go down. It did, and he used a little more restraint with the ones that followed.
After the sandwich disappeared, he wondered if he should fix another one. He contented himself with potato chips, and washed them down with about a liter of Coke. He’d talked Mom into getting some of the real stuff for him. She might worry about her weight, but he stayed skinny without effort.
Once he stopped feeling peckish, he fired up his laptop and started noodling on a story. He didn’t know how much he could do before his half-brother woke up again, but anything was better than nothing. He’d already saved in the middle of a sentence more than once.
When he started trying to write stories, he’d counted on red-hot inspiration to sweep him along to the end. Inspiration was great. You needed it to get ideas to begin with. It could sweep you along-for a while. But you had to keep going even after it ran out. Otherwise, you wouldn’t finish very much.
And you had to polish what did come out of the mill. It wasn’t just about art. It was about craft, too. They talked less about craft in creative-writing classes than they should have. It was like cooking, except you had to figure out all the recipes for yourself.
He worked till he got tired of staring at the words on the monitor. Then he worked another twenty minutes on top of that so the Colin Ferguson he carried inside his head couldn’t growl Quitter! at him. His actual flesh-and-blood father was a good deal more easygoing than the virtual one who ordered him around. Maybe his construct was tougher than the genuine article. Maybe Dad had been harder on him when he was younger. Or maybe marrying Kelly had mellowed his father out. Who the hell knew?
Whatever the answer was, Marshall would have worked longer yet if James Henry hadn’t started crying again. Marshall checked him. He was wet but not poopy. Into the pail went the Huggy. Marshall got the new one on him and closed up before he could ruin it.
After that, Marshall went back to the rocker and held him for a while. His half-brother wasn’t smiling yet. He just stared up at Marshall. He looked confused, the way he did a lot of the time. Who could blame him, either? Babies didn’t have to figure out anything so comparatively simple as how to be a writer. They needed to work out how they were supposed to turn into human beings. Even if there were manuals explaining it all, they couldn’t have read them.
“If you start squawking again, I’m gonna feed you early,” Marshall said. Mom would get bent out of shape at him for screwing up James Henry’s schedule. Marshall didn’t care. A wailing baby drove him battier than fingers on a chalkboard. If Mom didn’t like it, she could damn well hire somebody else.
But James Henry didn’t squawk. He kept looking at Marshall. Nobody’d ever thought Marshall was that interesting before. The baby made little squeaky noises.
Marshall didn’t even notice the door open. There stood Mom, looking tired but smiling. “Aww,” she said.
That broke the spell. James Henry might be able to charm Marshall. His mother didn’t stand a chance. “He hasn’t had dinner yet,” Marshall said, all business now. “He’ll probably want it pretty soon, though. He did okay with lunch. I changed him whenever he needed it.”
“Thank you,” Mom said. “Do you want to stay for dinner? I’ve got enough ground round to make us both hamburgers.”
“That’s okay. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” Marshall got out of there as soon as he politely could, or else a little sooner. He’d take Mom’s money and help her out of a tight spot. Past that, though, he didn’t want anything to do with her.