Baby Talk (7 page)

Neal snickered. “I can see how much you want
to ‘hep out’ your fellow Georgia Tech students.”

This touched a nerve in the old man. “Now
you listen to me for a minute, you smart-mouthed college boy. You
don’t have a damn clue ‘bout how hard it is to make a profit these
days. I try to hep out students like you much as I can, but you got
to realize there’s...well, other economic forces at work here.”
Snell lowered his voice, cocking his head towards the loading door.
“Those nigra-boys are just happy as clams workin’ for less than
minimum wage.”

This had been the last straw—Neal turned
around and walked out, fighting an almost overpowering urge to tear
up the check and throw it in the old man’s face. But he couldn’t do
that—he and Annie needed the money too much.

Now, Neal sat in his car, parked in front of
his apartment building, staring down at the miserable pittance of a
paycheck in his hand, wondering how he was going to explain it all
to Annie. She was probably furious about everything that had
happened already.

Neal gobbled down another couple of pain
killers and swallowed them dry. He wanted to dope himself into a
stupor.

After staring into space another ten
minutes, he finally mustered up the courage to drag himself out of
the car and into the building. When he entered the apartment, he
was relieved to discover that Annie and Natasha weren’t home. He
then realized that he hadn’t noticed Annie’s car out in the parking
lot. Annie was almost always home when he came back from work.

When he went into the kitchen, he saw a
napkin taped to the refrigerator. There was writing on it, but he
couldn’t read it—his vision seemed blurry. It must have been
because of the pain killers. Everything seemed to be going in and
out of focus.

He tore the napkin free and held it close to
his face, squinting at Annie’s uneven handwriting.

Neal, gone to the grocery. Hope your foot is
better—Annie.

Neal stared dully at the note, leaning
against the refrigerator. After a moment, he hobbled his way into
the bedroom and lay down.

He soon fell into a deep, drug-induced
sleep.

C
HAPTER 7

Just as Annie was approaching the entry ramp
to I-75, she decided to buy some more diapers before she left
Atlanta. Her nose told her that Natasha already needed another
change, and she didn’t want to take any chances.

She considered trying to find a drugstore so
she could buy one of the brands she liked, but decided against
it—they were all too crowded this time of day. Plus, she would have
to unstrap Natasha and take her inside the store with her. Unlike
some mothers, Annie refused to leave
her
baby alone in the
car, unless she could see Natasha every second.

Annie decided to go to a mini-market
instead. They usually only had Pampers, she knew, but that would
just have to do for the moment. She could stock up tomorrow when
she and Natasha were safely in Chattanooga. The best thing about
mini-markets was that Annie could leave Natasha strapped in her car
seat and just run inside and be back in less than a minute, keeping
an eye on the baby the whole time. Whoever came up with the idea of
a mini-market was a genius, Annie mused.

Annie followed the creeping flow of traffic
along Windy Hill Road and across I-75. She spotted a mini-market on
the right-hand side, just past the exit ramp. Good. There was a
traffic light there, too. It would be easy to get back out of the
parking lot and onto the Interstate.

She searched for a parking place near the
door. Unfortunately, the lot was packed full of rush-hour
customers. In fact, there weren’t any parking spaces available at
all, near the door or otherwise.

Annie had no choice but to wait until
someone moved. She put the car in park and looked at Natasha. “Can
ooo help Mommy find a parking space?”

Natasha smiled back and wiggled her
arms.

“Sure you taaaan,” Annie said, patting the
baby’s fuzzy blonde head.

Annie saw an aging red-haired woman emerge
from the storefront. She walked over to a shiny blue sedan that was
parked only two spaces away from the front door.

“Perfect,” Annie said, waiting impatiently
as the woman unlocked her car door. Annie put her own car in
reverse and backed up a little bit, giving the woman plenty of room
to pull out. The parking lot was at a steep incline away from the
front door, and it made things a little awkward.

Annie smiled at Natasha again, waiting.

But after about thirty seconds, the blue
sedan still had not moved. Annie leaned forward and squinted
through the windshield. In the dim dusk light, she could barely see
the woman’s head through the sedan’s tinted windows. The head
didn’t appear to be moving.

“Come on, lady,” Annie moaned.

“Daaaaaa,” Natasha added.

Annie laughed. “I don’t think she’s going
anywhere, honey. Not before you start high school, anyway.”

Annie put her own car back in drive and
inched forward, eyeing two handicapped spaces that were directly in
front of the store’s entrance. She had already learned her lesson
about parking in those. The year before, she had gotten a $150 fine
for parking in one at Lenox Mall. But this wasn’t Lenox Mall, and
she would only be in the store a second or two.

“Mommy shouldn’t do this,” she said as she
pulled into the nearer handicapped space, “but Mommy is going to do
it anyway.” She put the car in park and turned to Natasha. “Now you
just sit right here and be good while I buy you some more
diapers.”

Natasha smiled again. Annie touched her
little nose playfully. “No loud music or smoking until Mommy comes
back, o-taaay?”

Natasha stuck one finger in her mouth and
looked out the window.

“O-tay,” Annie answered for her.

Before Annie got out of the car, she pressed
the emergency brake as far down as it would go, to the floorboard.
The lights were still on, but that was okay—it was safer.

Annie went inside and searched for the
diapers, keeping a sharp eye on Natasha through the store’s large
plate glass windows. When she found them (they only had Pampers, of
course), she picked up two packages and quickly headed for the cash
register, snatching up a few candy bars along the way. There were
four people in line, two mud-caked men in yellow hard-hats; in
front of them, a boy of no more than ten; and in front of him, a
bald-headed man who was buying two six-packs of beer. The man had
just set the two six-packs on the counter when he noticed Annie
holding the Pampers.

Annie gave him a friendly
I’m in a big
hurry
look, hoping that he would notice what she was buying.
She had discovered that many people, particularly men, were
sympathetic to young mothers.

This particular man took the cue. “Would you
like to go ahead of me, young lady?”

“If you’re sure you don’t mind...”

“Not at all.” The man slid his six-pack over
to one side of the counter to make room for her.

Annie glanced at the men in the hard-hats,
who were giving the man dirty looks, and smiled apologetically. She
set the Pampers and candy down on the counter and looked outside.
From this angle, she could make out the silhouette of Natasha’s
little head against the car’s rear window.

A gum-popping teenage clerk rung up Annie’s
purchase. “That’s eight forty-two.”

Annie reached into the pocket of her jeans
and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. As she did this, she
accidentally dragged out a big clump of change along with it. The
coins scattered all over the floor. Before she had left the
apartment, she had gathered up all the loose change she could find
and filled her pockets with it.

Annie felt stupid and clumsy. She handed the
girl the twenty and squatted down to the floor to pick up all the
money. The little boy behind her in line dropped to his knees to
help her.

When Annie finally stood up, the clerk was
waiting with her change from the twenty, looking annoyed.

“Sorry about that,” Annie said, taking the
change and stuffing it in her jeans. She glanced back out the front
window.

Natasha was gone.

It took a moment for this information to
register in Annie’s brain. Then, she realized that it wasn’t just
Natasha that was missing—the whole
car
was gone.

For a half-second, Annie was completely
frozen, unable to come to grips with the data that was being fed
from her eyeballs to her visual cortex, thinking that maybe she was
looking out the wrong window or that her eyes were playing tricks
on her. But it was the same window she had just looked out a moment
earlier, and her eyes were just fine.

Her child—her
baby
—had
disappeared!

“
Natasha!
” Annie broke into a sprint,
flying towards the front door.

After a few strides, she could see her car.
It was backing out of the parking space. No, it wasn’t backing out,
it was
rolling
out by itself—there was no one in the
driver’s seat.

“Oh my God!” she gasped, as she burst
through the front door. She could still see the silhouette of
Natasha’s head against the car’s rear window. The front wheels
weren’t straight, so the car was rolling at an angle, picking up
speed, headed towards the street.

In a split second, Annie estimated the
trajectory and knew there was a good chance the car would make it
out of the entrance to the parking lot and into the heavy rush hour
traffic. She shot like a bullet across the pavement, fueled by
blind protective maternal energy, towards the right side of the
runaway vehicle. She would throw the door open, jump inside, and
jam her foot on the emergency brake (
hadn’t she already put on
the emergency brake?
) before the car could roll out into the
street.

During the next few seconds, the world
seemed to slow down like a frame-by-frame sports replay. Each
moment infinitely short and infinitely long at the same time. There
seemed to be minutes, hours, even days to reflect on her whole
life—her childhood, her high school days, her first period, her
first job, her pregnancy, the endless fights with Neal about having
an abortion, even Neal’s paranoia about Natasha during the past few
days. Yet, during those fleeting flashbacks, the car seemed to be
inevitably hurtling towards the traffic.

As she streaked across the parking lot, she
was unaware of any physical sensations. She had one and only one
goal: to save the life of her child. Every cell in her body was
relegated to accomplishing it, as if her body was on some kind of
automatic pilot, with no conscious direction on her part.

But after sprinting full-speed for few more
seconds, she began to slow down. At first it was only a slight
hesitation, but after two or more of her long, frantic strides, she
made a decision to change her course. The front end of her car was
swinging around towards a pickup truck that was parked near the
entrance to the street. The front of her car would make solid
contact with the back of the pickup truck. And if Annie didn’t
alter her course appreciably, she would be caught between the two
vehicles on impact.

But her motherly instincts overtook her
reason. She continued on her previous course, resuming maximum
speed. After two more strides, she had caught up with the front
bumper of her own car; after another stride, she was in between her
car and the truck, with the front end of her car approaching
fast.

Now there was only a couple of feet between
the two vehicles.

Annie’s hand flew out towards the handle of
the door on her car, even though she was too far away to actually
reach it.

At that instant, she caught another glimpse
of Natasha, smiling at her mother with childish glee, waving her
hands in the air at whatever imaginary things babies wave their
hands, perhaps thinking that this was all some kind of fun game
that Mommy had made up to amuse her.

That was when Annie went down.

The front of her car slammed against her
left hip. A split-second later, both she and her car smashed into
the side of the truck. Although she felt like she was flying
gracefully through space, Annie was in fact spinning wildly, like a
rag doll discarded by an angry toddler. She was only dimly aware of
her own bones cracking.

The next second or so was filled with the
smells, textures, and tastes of tire rubber and concrete.

And then...blackness.

* * *

Neal awoke in the bed with a start.

He sat up, gazing out into the darkness. His
mind felt like mush. What time was it? What
day
was it?

His foot was throbbing...and his
shoulder...

Neal remembered the note on the
refrigerator, then peered over at the door to the living room. It
was open, but the entire apartment was dark.

Where the hell were his wife and
daughter?

Gritting his teeth in pain, Neal eased
himself out of bed and fumbled around in the blackness until he
found the light switch. His foot throbbed as if about to
explode.

“Annie?” he called out into the living room,
thinking maybe she and Natasha were asleep on the couch. But he
could see that they weren’t there.

Neal sighed miserably. His mind was still a
little fuzzy from the pain killers, but most of the effects had
worn off. He turned around and peered across the room, at the night
stand. The clock said 11:38.

“Damn,” he muttered, holding his hand to his
dully-aching head. He hadn’t meant to sleep so long.

Then noticed something else—the phone was
off the hook.

Maybe something had happened to Annie and
Natasha. With the phone off the hook, nobody could get
through...

Feeling a groggy sort of panic, Neal limped
back across the room and clumsily placed the receiver back in its
cradle. As he did this, he noticed something else...things were
missing from the room. All of Natasha’s toys were gone. The
fish-mobile above her crib, some pictures of Natasha that were on
the dresser, Annie’s small library of baby books...

Maybe someone had broken in...

Annie left you a note, Neal. Remember? She
went to the grocery store.

The phone rang.

Neal turned and stared at it, confused. With
an unexplainable sense of dread, he slowly reached for the
receiver.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Neal limped through
the main entrance of the Sandy Springs hospital, almost unaware of
the pain in his foot, and asked where intensive care was
located.

“Sixth floor,” a nurse told him.

Neal limped down the long hallway in a
semi-daze, feeling as if he were still dreaming. The bright
fluorescent lights and white uniforms and wheelchairs and medicinal
smells made him only think of catastrophe and death. Why hadn’t he
noticed that the phone was off the hook before he had fallen
asleep? The hospital had been trying to call him since six o’clock,
when the ambulance had arrived at the emergency room.

He stepped onto the elevator and punched the
“6” button, then leaned against the panel to give his foot a rest.
At least Natasha was all right, that much he knew. But they would
only say that Annie was in a “guarded” condition and that he should
come to the hospital right away. The doctor in charge of her would
give him more details, they said.

When the elevator doors finally opened, Neal
limped out onto the sixth floor, now painfully aware of his own
injury. He nearly bumped into an attendant who was pulling an IV
cart down the hall.

“My wife’s in here somewhere,” Neal said,
“and I don’t know which—”

“Nurse’s station,” the man said sharply. He
continued on his way, the IV rattling behind him.

Neal limped down hallway and stopped in
front of a desk where three nurses were sitting, one talking on the
phone and the other two fussing with file folders.

“I need to know where my wife is,” Neal
said. “And my baby daughter.”