Smooth Talking Stranger Page 8

  “You’re taking care of the baby until your sister is back on her feet,” he said rather than asked.

  I nodded.

  “How long?”

  “She said three months.” I tried to sound collected. “I’m going to be optimistic and assume it won’t be any more than that.”

  “You gonna take him to Austin?”

  My shoulders hitched in a helpless shrug. “I’ll call Dane. I’ll . . . I don’t know how this will work.”

  It wasn’t going to work. I knew Dane well enough to be certain that there was serious trouble ahead for us.

  It occurred to me that I might lose him over this.

  The day before yesterday, my life had been great. Now it was falling apart. How was I going to make room in my life for a baby? How was I going to get my work done? How was I going to hold on to Dane?

  A little cry floated from the bed. Somehow that sound brought everything into focus. Dane didn’t matter at the moment. Logistics, money, careers, none of it mattered. Right now the only important thing was the hunger of a helpless infant.

  “Call me when you decide what to do,” Jack said.

  Heading to the minibar, I rummaged for a bottle of chilled formula. “I’m not going to bother you anymore. Really. I’m just sorry I—”

  “Ella.” He came to me in a couple of relaxed strides, catching me by the elbows as I straightened. I tensed at the feel of it, being lightly gripped by those warm rough-cast fingers. He waited until I could bring myself to look up at him.

  “You’re not involved,” I said, trying to sound grateful but dismissive. Absolving him.

  Jack wouldn’t let me look away. “Call me when you decide.”

  “Sure.” I had no intention of ever seeing him again, and we both knew it.

  His lips twitched.

  I stiffened. I didn’t like it when someone found me amusing.

  “Later, Ella.”

  And he was gone.

  Luke squawked from the bed.

  “I’m coming,” I told him, and hurried to get his bottle ready.

  SEVEN

  I FED LUKE AND CHANGED HIS DIAPER. CALLING Dane would have to wait until Luke was ready to rest again. I realized I was already starting to arrange my life according to Luke’s patterns. His eating and sleeping and periods of wakefulness formed the structure around which everything else had to be interpolated.

  Settling him on his back, I hung over him, crooning bits and pieces from nursery songs, dredging them up from childhood memory. Luke bobbed and arched, following me with his mouth, his eyes. I took one of his waving hands and pressed it to my cheek. His palms were the size of quarters. He kept his hand on me, staring in absorption at my face, seeking the connection as much as I did.

  I had never been so wanted or needed by anyone on earth. Babies were dangerous . . . they made you fall in love before you knew what was happening. This small, solemn creature couldn’t even say my name, and he depended on me for everything. Everything. I’d known him for little more than a day. But I would have thrown myself in front of a bus for him. I was shattered by him. This was awful.

  “I love you, Luke,” I whispered.

  He looked completely unsurprised by the revelation. Of course you love me, his expression seemed to say. I’m a baby. This is what I do. His hand flexed a little on my cheek, testing its pliancy.

  His fingernails were scratchy. How did you trim a baby’s nails? Could you do it with regular adult clippers, or did you need some special tool? I lifted his feet and kissing the little pink soles, innocently smooth as kitten paws. “Where’s your instruction manual?” I asked him. “What’s the baby customer-service number?”

  I realized I had not given my married friend Stacy nearly enough respect or understanding when she’d had her baby. I had tried to work up some sympathetic interest, but I’d had no idea what she’d been faced with. You couldn’t until you faced it yourself. Had she felt this overwhelmed, this ill equipped for the responsibility of growing a person? I’d always heard that women possessed an instinct for this, some hidden cache of maternal wisdom that unlocked when you needed it.

  No such feeling was coming to me.

  The only thing I could identify was a powerful urge to call my best friend Stacy and whine. And having always believed in the therapeutic value of the occasional good, thorough whine, I called her. I was in new territory, the perils and pitfalls of which were entirely familiar to Stacy. She had dated Dane’s best friend Tom for years, which was how I’d gotten to know her. And then she’d accidentally gotten pregnant by Tom, and he’d done the expected thing and married her. The baby, a girl named Tommie, was now three. Stacy and Tom both swore it was the best thing that had ever happened to them. Tom even seemed to mean it.

  Dane and Tom were still best friends, but I knew that privately Dane thought of Tom as a sell-out. Once, Tom had been a liberal activist and rugged individualist, and now he was married and owned a minivan with stained seat-belt straps and a floor littered with empty juice boxes and Happy Meal toys.

  “Stace,” I said urgently, relieved when she picked up the phone. “It’s me. Do you have a minute?”

  “Sure do. How are you, girl?” I pictured her standing in the kitchen of her small renovated arts-and-crafts house, eyes bright as lollipops in her smooth mocha complexion, intricately braided hair knotted up to bare the back of her neck.

  “Doomed,” I told her. “I am absolutely doomed.”

  “Problems with the column?” she asked sympathetically.

  I hesitated. “Yes. I have to come up with advice for a single woman whose younger sister had a baby out of wedlock and wants her to take care of it for at least three months. Meanwhile, the younger sister is going to stay in a mental health clinic and try to get sane enough to be a mother.”

  “That’s tough,” Stacy said.

  “It gets worse. The older sister lives in Austin with a boyfriend who’s already told her she can’t bring the baby back to live with them.”

  “Asshole,” she said. “What’s his reason?”

  “I think he doesn’t want the responsibility. I think he’s afraid it will interfere with his plans to save the world. And maybe he’s afraid this might change their relationship and the girlfriend will start wanting more from him than she has in the past.”

  Finally Stacy got it. “Oh. My. Lord. Ella, are you talking about you and Dane?”

  It was a pleasure to download on someone like Stacy who, as a loyal friend, automatically took my side. And even though I was changing the rules on Dane by trying to bring a baby into our lives, Stacy’s sympathies were entirely with me.

  “I’m in Houston with the baby,” I told her. “We’re in a hotel room. He’s right next to me. I don’t want to do this. But he’s the first guy I’ve said ‘I love you’ to since high school. Oh, Stace, you wouldn’t believe how cute he is.”

  “All babies are cute,” Stacy said darkly.

  “I know, but this one is above average.”

  “All babies are above average.”

  I paused to make a face at the baby, who was blowing bubbles. “Luke is in the top one percent of above average.”

  “Hold it. Tom’s home for lunch. I want him in on this. Tooooooom!”

  I waited while Stacy explained the situation to her husband. Of Dane’s considerable number of friends, Tom had always been my favorite. There was never any boredom or melancholy when Tom was around . . . wine flowed, people laughed, conversation coursed easily. When Tom was around, you felt witty and smart. Stacy was the taut and dependable clothesline from which the colorful Tom was free to wave and beckon.

  “Can you put Tom on the other line?” I asked Stacy.

  “At the moment we only have one phone. Tommie dropped the other one in the potty. So . . . have you talked to Dane yet?”

  My stomach lurched. “No, I wanted to call you first. I’m stalling because I know what Dane is going to say.” A stinging haze came over my eyes. My voice came out thin and
emotion-cluttered. “He won’t go for this, Stace. He’s going to tell me not to come back to Austin.”

  “Bullshit. You come right back here with that baby.”

  “I can’t. You know Dane.”

  “I do, and that’s why I think it’s time for him to step up to the plate. This is a grown-up responsibility, and he needs to handle it.”

  For some reason I felt compelled to take Dane’s side. “Dane is a grown-up,” I said, blotting my eyes on my sleeve. “He has his own company. A lot of people rely on him. But this is different. Dane has always been clear on not wanting anything to do with babies. And just because I’m being forced into a situation I didn’t see coming doesn’t mean Dane has to suffer as well.”

  “Of course it does. He’s your partner. And having a baby is not suffering. It’s—” She paused at a comment from her husband. “Shut up, Tom. Ella, when a baby comes into your life, you have to give a lot. But you get even more than you give. You’ll see.”

  Luke had begun to blink slowly as the need for sleep crept over him. I kept my hand on his tummy, feeling the small digestive gurgle against my palm.

  “. . . had a terrific childhood,” Stacy was saying, “and he’s at the right age to settle down. Everyone who knows him thinks he’d make a wonderful father. You need to force the issue, Ella. Once Dane sees how fantastic it is to have children, how much they add to your life, he’ll be ready to make a commitment.”

  “He can barely commit to owning socks,” I said. “He has to have total freedom, Stacy.”

  “No one can have total freedom,” she pointed out. “The whole point of a relationship is to have someone there when you need him. Otherwise it’s just a . . . wait a minute.” She paused, and I heard a muffled voice in the background. “Do you want Tom to talk to him? He says he’d be glad to.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I don’t want Dane to be pressured.”

  “Why should he be spared?” Stacy asked indignantly. “You’re being pressured, aren’t you? You’re having to face a tough situation—why shouldn’t he have to help you with it? I swear, Ella, if Dane doesn’t do right by you, I’m going to give him such shit—” She paused at a comment from her husband. “I mean it, Tom! For God’s sake, what if Ella had gotten pregnant the way I did? You stepped up to handle the responsibility—don’t you think Dane should? I don’t give a damn if it’s his baby or not. The fact is, Ella needs his support.” She returned her full attention to me. “No matter what Dane says, come back to Austin with the baby, Ella. Your friends are here. We’ll help you with him.”

  “I don’t know. I’d be running into Dane . . . it would be weird living near him but not with him. Maybe I should just try to find a furnished apartment here in Houston. It’s only for three months.”

  “And go back to Dane when the problem is solved?” Stacy asked, outraged.

  “Well . . . yes.”

  “I guess if you got cancer you’d have to take care of it all by yourself, too, so you wouldn’t inconvenience him? Make Dane part of this. You should be able to rely on him, Ella! You’re . . . here, Tom wants to say something.”

  I waited until I heard his resigned voice. “Hey, Ella.”

  “Hey, Tom. Before you say anything . . . don’t tell me what Stace wants me to hear. Tell me the truth. You’re his best friend and you know him better than anyone. Dane’s not going to budge, is he?”

  Tom sighed. “It’s all a trap to him, anything that smacks of the house, the dog, the wife, and the two-point-five kids. And unlike Stacy and apparently everyone else we know, I don’t think Dane would make a wonderful father. He’s not nearly enough of a masochist.”

  I smiled with rueful sadness, knowing Tom was going to catch hell from Stacy for his honesty. “I know that Dane would rather try to save the world than try to save one baby. But I can’t figure out why.”

  “Babies are tough customers, Ella,” Tom said. “You get a lot more credit for trying to save the world. And it’s easier.”

  EIGHT

  “I’VE BEEN PUT IN A SITUATION I CAN’T WALK AWAY from,” I told Dane on the phone. “So I’ll tell you what I want to do, and after you hear me out, you can tell me what choices I have. Or not.”

  “My God, Ella,” he said quietly.

  I frowned. “Don’t say ‘My God, Ella’ yet. I haven’t even told you my plan.”

  “I know what it is.”

  “You do?”

  “I knew the moment you left Austin. You’ve always been the clean-up crew of your family.” Dane’s resigned kindness was only one step away from pity. I would have preferred hostility. He made me feel as if life was a circus and I had been permanently assigned to walk behind the elephant.

  “No one’s forcing me to do anything I don’t want to do,” I protested.

  “As far as I know, taking care of your sister’s baby has never been on your list of life goals.”

  “She only had the baby a week ago. I’m allowed to revise my list of life goals, aren’t I?”

  “Yes. But that doesn’t mean I have to revise mine, too.” He sighed. “Tell me everything. Believe it or not, I’m on your side.”

  I explained what had happened, the conversation with Tara, and I finished with a defensive, “It’s only three months. And the baby’s hardly any trouble at all.” Unless you happen to like sleep, I thought. “So I’m going to look for a furnished apartment in Houston, and stay here until Tara gets better. I think Liza might help out, too. And then I’ll go back to our apartment in Austin. To you.” I went for a brisk finish. “Sound like a good plan?”

  “It sounds like a plan,” he said. I heard the soft, slow expulsion of a pent-up breath, one from the bottom of his lungs. “What do you want me to say, Ella?”

  I wanted him to say, Come home. I’ll help with the baby. But I told him, “I want to know what you’re really thinking.”

  “I think you’re still locked in all the old patterns,” Dane said quietly. “Your mother snaps her fingers or your sister screws up, and you put your own life on hold to take care of everything. But it’s not just three months, Ella. It could be three years before Tara is able to screw her head on straight. And what if she has more kids? Are you going to take them all in?”

  “I’ve already thought of that,” I admitted with difficulty. “But I can’t worry about what might happen in the future. Right now there’s only Luke, and he needs me.”

  “What about what you need? You’re supposed to be writing a book, aren’t you? And how will you keep the column going?”

  “I don’t know. But other people manage to work and take care of their children.”

  “This isn’t your child.”

  “He’s part of my family.”

  “You don’t have a family, Ella.”

  Although I had made similar comments in the past, it rankled to hear him say it. “We’re individuals bound by a pattern of reciprocal obligation,” I said. “If a group of chimps in the Amazon can be called a family, I think the Varners qualify.”

  “Considering the fact that chimps occasionally cannibalize each other, I might agree with that.”

  I reflected that I shouldn’t have confided quite so much about the Varners to Dane. “I hate arguing with you,” I muttered. “You know too much about me.”

  “You’d hate it even more if I let you make the wrong decision without saying anything about it.”

  “I think it’s the right decision. The way I’m looking at it, it’s the only decision I can live with.”

  “Fair enough. But I can’t live with it.”

  I took a deep breath. “So where does it leave us if I go ahead and do this? What happens to a four-year relationship?” It was hard for me to believe the person I had depended on more than anyone, a man I trusted and cared for deeply, was drawing such a definitive line in the sand.

  “I suppose we could consider this a hiatus,” Dane said.

  I considered that while cold distilled worry seeped through my veins. “And when I
come back we’ll pick up where we left off?”

  “We can try.”

  “What do you mean try?”

  “You can stick something in the freezer and thaw it out three months later, but it’s never exactly the same.”

  “But you’ll promise to wait for me, right?”

  “Wait for you how?”

  “I mean you won’t sleep with someone else.”

  “Ella, neither of us can promise not to sleep with someone else.”

  My jaw dropped. “We can’t?”

  “Of course not. In a mature relationship there are no promises and no guarantees. We don’t own each other.”

  “Dane, I thought we were exclusive.” I realized that for the second time that day, I was whining. A new thought occurred to me. “Have you ever cheated on me?”

  “I wouldn’t call it cheating. But no, I haven’t.”

  “What if I slept with someone else? Wouldn’t you feel jealous?”

  “I wouldn’t deny you the chance to experience other relationships freely, if that was what you wanted. It’s a matter of trust. And openness.”

  “We have an open relationship?”

  “If you want to label it that way, yes.”

  I had rarely, if ever, been so stunned. The basic assumptions I had made about Dane and me were being casually overturned. “My God. How can we have had an open relationship when I didn’t know it? What are the rules for that?”

  Dane sounded vaguely amused. “There are no rules for us, Ella. There never have been. That’s the only reason you’ve stayed with me this long. The minute I tried to confine you in any way, you’d have been out of there.”

  My head was filled with arguments and demands. I wondered if he was right. I was afraid he was. “Somehow,” I said slowly, “I’ve always thought of myself as a conventional person. Way too conventional for a relationship with no structure.”

  “Miss Independent is,” he said. “The advice she gives other people follows a definite set of rules. But as Ella—no, you’re not conventional.”