* * *
Jack stood under the pulsating spray from the shower—all six jets, randomly placed on three tiled walls—and swore until he’d run out of cuss words. That took at least three minutes. A man didn’t ride a bus in the minor leagues for a year and spend the next seven seasons traveling the country with professional baseball players and not grow his vocabulary. Jack could swear in English, in Spanish, and, thanks to the new reliever, Samo Akita, a fair bit of Japanese.
The cussing, unfortunately, didn’t help.
How could Cecily have done this to him?
No, scratch that. Of course Cecily could have done this to him. She was Cecily. She was the child who’d never grown up, Bayonne’s answer to Peter Pan, but with an unlimited trust fund left to her by her daddy, king of Bayonne’s dry cleaners.
She’d been married at seventeen, to a polo player from Brazil, divorced at eighteen, in drug rehab at nineteen, and a hopeful noviate at a Carmelite nunnery at twenty. At twenty-two she’d financed her lover’s internet company—selling Jersey tomatoes by mail, a plan that never had a chance of getting off the ground—and, the last Jack had heard from her (after the Creative Pyrotechnics fiasco), she’d been “finding herself” in that commune.
Now she was Moon Flower, on her way to Tibet with Blue Rainbow, leaving behind Magenta Moon, the inner child who had become the child outside—the child being yet another little experiment in life that just hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped. And it probably all made sense to her.
Jack wondered if strychnine didn’t taste too bad, or if he should just go up to the roof and jump off.
He slammed his hand against the knob controlling the shower and banged open the glass door, heading for the rack that held his two towels. Both were still damp. “Damn! First thing on that dame’s list—towels.”
Mention of “that dame” started Jack thinking about what he’d just done. He’d hired an interior decorator—a smart-mouthed interior decorator—to play nanny to Cecily’s kid. This was probably not a smart move, but he’d been desperate, beyond desperate.
Well, it would only be for a day or two. He’d figure out something else, somewhere else to put the kid. Sadie would be no help; she’d never had kids of her own, slept until almost noon every day, and would probably only like M and M if she had a key in her back and could be wound up to play “Edelweiss.” Other than that, Sadie would expect the kid to sit in a corner and shut up until it was time to play again.
Cecily had mentioned her brother, Joey. If Jack knew nothing more about Cecily than that she’d gone to Joey for help, it would have disqualified her for anything that required more thought than breathing.
Because Joey was a flake. Joey was an idiot. Joey thought he should be in the Mafia, thought he was in the Mafia, or at least acted like he was, dressed and spoke as if he was. He even wanted everyone to call him Joey “Two Eyes” Morretti. Probably so the idiot could remember how many he had.
See what happens when you die and leave your kids five-million-dollar trust funds? Better his aunt and uncle had spent it all on tango lessons, and maybe their very own platinum card at QVC.
Jack laughed silently at the thought, remembering that Aunt Flo and Uncle Guido had been pretty powerless to control their two offspring from aboveground. If they’d missed heaven and gone to hell, their punishment must be watching daily videos of Cecily and Joey on the loose with their hard-earned martinizing money.
So Joey was out. Jack couldn’t send M and M to Uncle Two Eyes and still be able to look at himself in the mirror.
Sadie was out. Definitely out—usually hovering about five miles into the ozone.
Tim? Jack hesitated as he pulled on his slacks. What about Tim?
“Yeah, what about Tim,” Jack said, walking over to the mirror to look at his bare chest, at the surgical scars along his left elbow, riding low on his shoulder. “Tim’s still at the big dance, Jack,” he reminded himself bitterly, hating himself for feeling sorry for himself, almost as much as he hated himself for feeling jealous of his twin.
Baseball. It had been both of their lives, for as long as he could remember. Oh, there’d been football and basketball in high school, but it was baseball that consumed them both. From the time they’d been five or six, it had been Jack throwing the ball, Tim catching; Jack throwing the ball, Tim hitting. Hour after hour, day after day, year after year. Their dad had built a pitcher’s mound in the backyard, constructed a batting cage out of iron pipes and chicken wire. He’d even drilled a hole in a baseball, suspended it from a chain in the garage ceiling, then put up an old rug for them to hit into in the off-season.
Baseball, baseball, baseball.
It had been their lives.
It was still Tim’s life, his brother now in his eighth season as catcher for the Phillies, leading the club in both doubles and triples and probably heading for yet another Golden Glove award.
But it wasn’t Jack’s life. Not anymore. Not since the last rotator cuff surgery last winter, and one hellishly lousy spring training camp, culminating in his retirement before the Yankees could cut him loose. He’d cried during his press conference on ESPN, damn near bawled like a baby, then crawled into his condo and hid. Now he was hiding in Whitehall, of all places, still licking his wounds while his twin was second in the over-all voting so far for the All-Star game.
Tell Tim he’d stupidly inherited Cecily’s baby for God knows how long? Oh no. Not hardly.
“Which leaves the smart-mouth downstairs,” Jack told his reflection before turning away, heading for the walk-in closet and a clean shirt. “What’s her name again? Kathy? Karen? No... Keely. That’s it. What the hell kind of name is Keely?”
Jack pulled the tan shirt over his head, his head popping free as he realized that he knew nothing about this woman. He’d left M and M downstairs with a stranger who had been handpicked by Aunt Sadie, queen of the silly fairies.
And he said Cecily was nuts? What did that make him?
Desperate. Definitely desperate.
He looked at the clock sitting on the box beside his stacked mattress and box spring. Nine-thirty. Shouldn’t it be at least noon? Or maybe September? Because this had been the longest two hours in his life.
But it was only nine-thirty, and he couldn’t hide up here all day. He had to go back downstairs, see the woman, see the baby. Figure out what to do with the woman, do with the baby.
He’d rather be facing Mark McGwire in an interleague game, in the bottom of the ninth, with the score tied and the bases loaded.
Jack loped down the back stairs that led directly into the kitchen, stopping dead when he saw the baby in the sink, the woman holding the sink’s power spray over the baby’s head. “What in hell are you doing? Trying to drown the kid?”
Keely, clearly startled by Jack’s bellow, turned quickly, losing her grip on the wet, slippery infant—who then sort of slowly slid down lower into the sink. “Oh God! Oh God, look what you made me do!” she yelled, grabbing at M and M with both hands, pulling her upright again. “She’s so damn slippery.”
M and M was wailing again, her blond hair stuck to her head, her long eyelashes all spiky and clumped as she opened and closed her eyes and water dripped off her nose.
“Is she all right?” Jack asked, reluctantly approaching the sink.
“Yes, she’s all right... I suppose. She’s yelling, isn’t she?” Keely responded, holding M and M’s upper arm with one hand, using her free hand to blot the baby’s face with paper towels. “And she was liking it, too, until you showed up.” She threw the damp paper towels on the counter and lifted Keely out of the sink, a hand under each arm. M and M’s arms and legs were wiggling, her smooth buttocks riding above chubby legs marked with at least four fat creases. “Here,” Keely said, shoving those buttocks at Jack, “hold her until I get more towels.”
“Hold her?” Jack backed up rapidly. “Are you frigging nuts? You just said she was slippery.”
Keely held on as M and M laughed
, and wriggled, and reached for Keely’s hair. “Well then, if you won’t hold her, you get the paper towels. And may I add, it’s a poor kitchen that has no proper dish towels. Old Mother Hubbard had a full pantry, compared to you. One mug, one can of coffee grounds, half a loaf of bread, and some Chinese take-out that died in the year of the dog. It’s pitiful, that’s what it is.”
He ignored her complaints, concentrating on his new job as paper towel-getter. He could do that. He’d won two Cy Young awards—he could fetch paper towels. He quickly slipped past Keely—literally, as the floor was wet—and snagged the roll from the countertop. “Now what?”
“Dry her off,” Keely said, rolling her eyes. “And hurry up—this kid should be on a diet.”
Dry her off. Jack hesitated, holding a length of paper toweling he’d stripped from the roll. Dry her off. How could he dry her off? He approached from behind, one end of the paper toweling in his hand, and began wrapping it around M and M’s bare bottom, her wriggling legs.
Once, twice, three times around, until M and M was in a cocoon of paper towels and Keely finally said, “That ought to do it, thanks. Now you can hold her and she won’t slip.”
“She’s still dripping wet,” Jack pointed out, ripping off another section of toweling and draping it over M and M’s wet head. The infant giggled, shook her head, and the towel fell to the floor. “And she’s not cooperating, damn it.”
“Don’t swear in front of the child,” Keely bit out, shoving M and M at him, so that he was forced to take her. She then took a deep breath, stood up straight, smoothed down the front of her once crisp white blouse. “I’ve got to find something for this kid to wear. There has to be something in one of those bags in the wash basket.”
“What was wrong with what she had on?” Jack asked, carefully sitting down on the floor, figuring that M and M would have less distance to fall if he lost his grip on her.
“Are you kidding? She was all wet... and stinky. What didn’t come out the top end when she spit up on me made its way out the bottom end right after you deserted me. I couldn’t do anything else but give her a bath.”
Jack shifted his eyes right, then left. He’d noticed a new smell when he’d entered the kitchen, not a pleasant smell, and now he looked at a small pile of discarded clothing on the floor and saw what looked like a disposable diaper—a full disposable diaper—perched right on top of the mound. Then he looked across the room at the sink.
“Let me get this straight,” he said after a moment. “M and M sh—, er, did something in her pants, and your answer to that was to stick her backside in my kitchen sink? My sink? I might want to put dishes in that sink, woman!”
Keely had pulled two large, tightly packed pink plastic zipper bags out of the wash basket and was rummaging through them, selecting small garments. “Oh, shut up,” she said, otherwise ignoring him as she pulled a disposable diaper out of a box of them and placed it with the clothing. “Diaper, shirt, dress, socks. That ought to do it. Oh God, look how small this stuff is. Just like a doll’s. So cute!”
“Having fun, Ms. McBride?” Jack asked, trying to hold on to M and M as the damp paper towels began to come apart and the baby tried to reach up, destroy what was left of his bottom lip and gums. “That’s good. Because I’m not. Trust me in this. I’m not. I don’t like babies. Not even cute babies.”
“She is cute, isn’t she?” Keely said, spreading the pink blanket on the floor, then gingerly lifting M and M out of Jack’s arms and laying her down on the blanket. “And pretty much like one of the dolls I used to play with, except she moves more, of course. I think I can dress her. I remember how.” Then she picked up the disposable diaper, turned it one way, then another, and frowned. “Okay, maybe not all at once. But I’ll figure it out.”
“Good. You do that,” Jack said, easing himself to his feet. “I’m going to go catch last night’s ball scores on ESPN.”
“Figures,” Keely said, but she was talking to M and M, not Jack. “Make the baby, zip up the pants, and go watch ESPN. Remember this, sweetheart: men. They’re all alike.”
“She... is... not... my... baby.” Jack pronounced each word slowly, distinctly. “She is my cousin’s baby. And what the hell should I be doing?”
Keely redid the tapes on the disposable diaper, then sat back, admiring her work. “There, that ought to hold her.” She pushed a lock of honey blond hair out of her eyes and looked up at Jack. “What should you be doing? Well, if I could make a suggestion, Mr. Trehan, I’d say you should be figuring out how to strap that little seat in the backseat of your car, so we can go shopping.”
He eyed her warily. “Shopping for what?”
Keely rolled her eyes. “For M and M, of course. I mean, you can wait for new furniture, but M and M can’t. Or were you planning to have her sleep in her seat? And have you decided which is to be her bedroom? I should know, take a few measurements, and then we can be on our way. We can stop at my aunt’s shop—I can change clothes, because we live above the shop—then pick up the van, and be able to bring everything home with us. I have decorated a nursery before, you understand. I was thinking about a cherry wood crib with a canopy top—with a white eyelet canopy—and a matching dressing table, and a rocking chair, of course, and—”
Jack bent down, grabbed the car seat, and headed for the door, practicing his Japanese.