She cuddled James Henry. “Mama!” he said mournfully. He got snot on her shoulder even though she’d put a cloth diaper there to try to block that mucus. One more blouse she’d have to wash. At least snot didn’t stink the way spit-up did.
Her phone rang. James Henry jerked. He wasn’t as jumpy about the phone as a cat was, but he didn’t like it. The phone made her pay attention to something besides him, and he didn’t like that, either.
She fished the phone out of her purse. Marshall’s number was showing. “Hello?” Louise said.
“Yo.” That was Marshall’s way of talking, but it didn’t sound like him. It was too deep and too slow, and punctuated by a sneeze: “I better not come over there tomorrow. I’m-ah-choo! — sick.”
“So is James Henry,” Louise said. She didn’t quite remember how she’d got into the habit of always using both his first and his middle name, but she had. “Did you give him the cold, or did he give it to you?”
“Probably,” Marshall said. Again, the answer sounded like him even if the voice didn’t. Again, he sneezed. This time, he blew his nose right afterwards: a long, sorrowful honk. I wish James Henry could do that, Louise thought. Her older son went on, “Either which way, I feel like dog shit.”
Unlike his father, he wasn’t shy about swearing where women could hear. Chances were he hardly noticed he was swearing; to people of his generation, it was just the way they talked. Louise wasn’t offended. As far as she was concerned, Marshall’s casually foul mouth only proved Colin had wasted time and temper smacking him for cussing.
Right this minute, that was beside the point, no matter how gratifying it might have been some other time. Louise didn’t want to think about Colin, not when she could-and needed to-think of herself instead. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked. “How can I go to work tomorrow if James Henry’s sick and you can’t come take care of him?”
“Beats me, Mom.” Marshall sounded nearly as chilly and indifferent as his father might have. Maybe the cold helped, or maybe it was the triumph of one heredity over another. Then he added, “Don’t forget-I’m sick, too.”
Lost in her own worries, Louise had forgotten. She was briefly embarrassed, but only briefly. “What am I going to do?” she said-not quite a repetition, but close enough.
“Whatever it is, don’t put me in it.” Yes, Marshall could sound too damn much like Colin. And he’d always blamed Louise for walking out and getting free. He got only the first part, not the second. He took care of James Henry for money. He didn’t really care about his little half-brother. As if to underscore that, he went on, “I’ll check with you when I’m not so rancid any more. ’Bye.” Silence echoed in Louise’s ear: the Zen sound of a seashell that wasn’t there.
“Shit!” she said, most sincerely.
James Henry looked at her. “Shit,” he echoed, the way babies will.
She laughed so hard, she almost dropped him. He laughed, too, till he coughed and choked and sprayed boogers all over his cheeks. She wiped him off, saw he could have more of the worthless decongestant, and spooned it into him. He made a horrible face. It all seemed so unfair. If the crap didn’t do any good-and it didn’t-couldn’t it at least taste halfway decent?
She still didn’t know what she was going to do tomorrow. She couldn’t take James Henry to the ramen works. He’d only make everybody else sick. That’d thrill Mr. Nobashi, wouldn’t it? But she didn’t want to stay home, either. Waste a vacation day? She didn’t get enough of them to be happy squandering one on a sick kid.
Which left. . what? Anything? The Yellow Pages weren’t worth shit those days. She wouldn’t find a babysitting service there. She went online instead. She came up with several in the area. All of them said Se habla espanol. Which was great, no doubt, but how about ingles? Well, the only thing she could do was start calling and find out.
So she did. Sure enough, most of the people she talked with had accents flavored with Spanish. You got used to that in Southern California. What she had more trouble getting used to were the prices they wanted. If Marshall ever found out what they were asking, he’d yell for more himself.
“That’s just about what I bring home!” she yelped to one service that was particularly outrageous.
“Sorry, ma’am. We got to make a living, too,” replied the woman on the other end of the line. That might have been politer than Fuck you, lady, but it amounted to the same thing.
She ended up burning the vacation day. The professional babysitters were too goddamn professional for a mere human being to afford. Then she had to burn another one, because Marshall was still sick the next day. That got her through Friday. She dared hope things would be at least near normal by Monday.
Back when she first found out she was pregnant, her OB had asked her if she would take it out on the baby for blowing up the life she’d had. She’d denied the possibility-denied it indignantly, in fact. Now. . Now she would have been a liar if she said the idea of punting James Henry didn’t cross her mind.
She didn’t do it. By Saturday afternoon, the baby was pretty much his old cheerful self again. . and Louise had a scratchy throat and a tickle in her nose. You couldn’t win. The way things looked, you couldn’t even break even. That crossed her mind just before she started sneezing.
* * *
There were times when Marshall Ferguson felt as if he’d never gone to college. Here he was, in the house where he’d grown up-in his old room again, for God’s sake! He had more money in his pocket than he’d enjoyed before he went up to Santa Barbara, but not enough more to move out on his own. If his mother hadn’t had her little bastard, he wouldn’t even have had that. The economy had fallen, and it couldn’t get up. He wondered-and wondered seriously-whether he’d die of old age before it managed to climb to its feet again.
And there were times when he thought he’d fallen into the looking glass, just like Alice. Dealing with his mother as a near-enemy would do that to him. However much he tried, he couldn’t think of her any other way now. She’d blown up the family. What else was he supposed to think about her?
His dad’s new wife. . He liked Kelly. He liked her better than he liked the woman who’d given him birth. But she didn’t seem like a mother to him, or even like a stepmother, however a stepmother was supposed to seem (what he knew about stepmothers was a weird mash-up of fairy tales on the one hand and friends and acquaintances whose folks had divorced and remarried on the other).
What she really reminded him of was a new older sister. He also liked her better than he’d ever liked Vanessa, though. Why not? She didn’t try to boss him around the way Vanessa always had. She didn’t make as if she knew everything there was to know, either. She just. . got along with him. He wasn’t remotely used to that.
He would have liked to talk it over with Dad. His father was the one unchanged point in his life. Dad might be a little grayer, a little jowlier, than he had been when Marshall was in high school, but how often did you notice that? His style hadn’t changed, not a nickel’s worth. And wasn’t the style the man himself? Somebody’d said that. Marshall couldn’t remember who. So much for the bachelor’s degree they’d finally made him take.
But, because Dad was Dad, Marshall couldn’t imagine talking to him in any serious way. Dad would listen. He’d listen hard, like the cop he was. And then he’d give forth with something that might as well come from Mars. Which was one reason Marshall didn’t try talking with him: he’d had that happen before. The other reason, of course, was much older and more basic. Marshall had expended a lot of time and testosterone gaining such flimsy independence as he had. Was he going to risk that for the sake of conversation? Like hell he was.