Manhattan Lullaby (22 page)

“I'm sorry. I had to go to the opening for our new pet spa—PetUltimate. Do you like the name? It's going to be big, very big.” Janie fluffed out her hair with both hands. It shone with dark red highlights in the glare of the hall light. “We already have people clamoring for franchises. We're offering massage, psychotherapy and exercise as well as your basic grooming …” She realized that she was babbling, but it helped to keep her mind off other things. Such as being in the same room as a man she was still in love with.

“I don't care if you're offering cosmetic surgery!” said Bradley. “I've got a problem here.”

Janie regarded him with thoughtful silence for a second or two. It was a different Bradley who looked out from beneath the shining cap of brown hair. A Bradley who seemed to have grown older, or was it perhaps grown up? Anyway, she had the feeling that she was talking to a father now and not a son. Something about having the baby had changed him, and it unsettled her because she had not been part of his change. “Well, I'm here to help you with that problem, so the least you could do is let me finish a sentence.”

Bradley could see from the tension in her jaw that this was not the time to stick up for his side of things. Janie was here. She was willing. That was all that mattered at the moment. Their old conflicts had no bearing on his new problem. He apologized. “I'm sorry. The pet spa … sounds like a terrific idea. Really. I guess I'm just a little rattled tonight.” He took a deep breath. “I can't stand the thought that they'll take him away and put him someplace, with strangers …”

Janie softened a little. “That's O.K. I understand how you feel.”

“You do?” Bradley was surprised by the honest commiseration in her voice. He hadn't really expected anything like that under the circumstances.

Janie nodded. “I know someone who feels the same way about his kids.”

Now it was Bradley's turn to tense up. “That guy you've been seeing?”

“I'm not
seeing
anyone. And how did you know about him?”

“I just—” But before he could get any further there was another knock at the door. Loud, authoritative and very, very firm, as if the person who was responsible had a preconceived idea of what lay on the other side and already didn't like it.

“This is it,” cried Bradley, checking himself in the mirror and running a hand through his hair. “Try to act like a wife, O.K.?” he said to Janie, although he didn't really mean it the way it sounded.

“If it wasn't for your little escapade, I wouldn't have to
act
,” replied Janie, taking it verbatim.

And on that note, Bradley flung open the door.

There stood the brownest woman he had ever seen. She had brown hair, brown eyes, tan skin and she was wearing a brown no-nonsense business-type suit with a little brown bow beneath her Peter Pan collar. He could tell just by looking at her that her favorite season would be the two or three weeks between when the snow melted and the green and yellow promise of spring erupted forth. A time when the Earth was as brown and tan as she was and she could scuttle about the city on her missions of malice, blending in like a chameleon.

He also knew instinctively that she was the type of woman who went by the book. Even if the book was wrong. The type who dedicated her life—if you could call it that—to making the lives of others as difficult as possible, all in the name of helping those who were less fortunate than her. A very small minority indeed.

She peered myopically through her round horn-rimmed glasses, blinked her dead brown eyes and said, “I am Emmiline Crumm, from the Child Welfare Service.”

Meanwhile, Maxine was on her way down Lexington to the all-night drug store at the corner of 49th Street, which blazed away through even the coldest and darkest of New York nights fulfilling every need from emergency prescriptions that could be a matter of life and death, to emergencies of a more personal nature, which, though less serious, were equally impelling.

Maxine had long ago discovered that she was a drugstore addict. Where other women might have spent their free time in dress shops or movie theaters or bars, she gravitated naturally toward pharmacies. She could, if given the time and the money, spend hundreds of hours and an equal number of dollars just pottering around one of these prescription palaces, buying a jar of this or a tube of that, sneaking little spritzes of cologne and trying out new shades of lipstick or improved brands of hand cream. It was no accident, therefore, that given the fact that she had to be absent from her home, she zeroed in like a homing pigeon on her home away from home.

Cheered by the bright lights and the colorful packages, and warmed by the rush of hot air that gusted down from the heater above the front door, she wandered up one aisle and down the other, happily examining the various products and periodically putting one into her wire mesh basket. She took her time, because she wanted to give Bradley—and hopefully Janie—plenty of time to convince the social worker that they were indeed providing a proper environment for the baby and plenty of time to be with each other in case there was anything they wanted to say—like “I still love you.”

And so it was that after a while she found herself standing in front of the vitamin counter. She examined a few of the bottles, choosing finally a multivitamin and mineral supplement with calcium, and then edged farther along the display to the more exotic items such as Selenium, kelp tablets and Royal Jelly. Having no desire to eat bee food or seaweed, she moved over a little farther.

Lulled by the comfort of being in a familiar environment, her mind wandered as she tried to imagine what was going on right now in her apartment. It was a minute or two, therefore, before she realized that the brightly colored boxes showing pictures of sunsets or young men and women embracing upon which she was now focusing her attention did in fact contain not vitamins but condoms.

She looked quickly around to see if anybody was watching her looking at condoms, in case they misconstrued her being there as something more than accidental proximity. She was relieved to see that the nearest customer was across the store in the baby food section.

Casually, she looked back at the display. Not once in her entire life had she ever beheld one of these things during its utility. In fact, the only time she had come into close personal contact with one was at college. She had been walking past the men's dorm one day in her very first week and some overly lubricated freshmen had been filling containers with water and dropping them out of a third-story window. One of these water bombs had just missed her. And even though it had exploded on impact with the sidewalk, there had been enough of its tattered remains left for her to see that it was more than just a simple plastic bag. It didn't take much to put two and two together after that.

And all the while she was married she had never given any thought to these things because she had accepted it as part of her responsibility as a wife to take care of
that
side of married life. But since her experience with the safety-conscious Jeffrey, she had found herself wondering now and then what she would have done if her evening with Jeffrey had gone on to its natural conclusion. Jeffrey had obviously felt that she was safe enough for him. But would he have been safe enough for her? To protect or be protected, that was the question.

She glanced around once more and then reached out and selected a box with a picture of a glorious sunset on it. She turned it over, read the back and found out that the product of this particular sunset was lubricated and that each of the individually wrapped contents came in a different color.

“They come in
colors
?” said Maxine out loud to herself. “What difference does it make what color it is?” She put the sunset box back on the shelf and selected a plain medicinal-looking blue box.

She turned it over and read the description. Lambskin with nipple. She pulled a face. “I'll never feel the same way about lamb chops again.” And she put that box back next to its contemporaries.

The next box was the one showing the couple embracing. They looked young, they looked happy. They looked Japanese? No, wait. Maxine took a closer look. You couldn't really tell what nationality they were. In fact, she wasn't even sure now that she was really
looking
at them that they were even of opposite sexes. She turned the box over. On the back was an artist's rendition of the contents, underneath which was the word
textured
. “They make them like panty hose?” said Maxine in disbelief and slipped the box back onto the shelf. She was just about to move on to the next box to see what else it was she didn't know about condoms, when she heard someone coming. Quickly and without looking back she walked away in the direction of the baby food and the diapers. Now
that
was something she understood.

For the next few minutes she busied herself selecting diapers and handiwipes and oil, lotion and powder. But all the while at the back of her mind a little argument was going on. Part of her was saying that, with the world being the way it was, rather than leave anything up to chance she should go back to the condom counter, select the color, texture and material she found most appealing and buy a box.

Another part of her was arguing that to buy a box of condoms was tantamount to declaring her bedroom open for business. She was, after all, a single woman. And a single woman of her age didn't really need to worry about sex. Unless she met a single man. But even if she did meet someone at some point, maybe, how would it look if things got to the point of no return and she brazenly whipped a package of rainbow-colored rubbers out of the bedside table? What would he think of her? What
could
he think of her except that she was “ready.” And the obvious corollary to that was that she was also “easy.”

She carried on with this internal struggle for a few more minutes. Both sides presented their cases well, and in the end she decided to mediate the decision herself. It was very simple. She would buy a box, but she wouldn't use them because she would probably never need to. Her little coats of many colors would stay in the bedside table as a safety supply. It would be like having a fire extinguisher in the kitchen or a spare tire in the trunk of the car. It was just a little reassurance that in case of a sexual emergency, she would be prepared. Her mind could therefore rest easy in the knowledge that she was “ready” and her conscience could be salved by the understanding that she was not “easy.” And besides, she wouldn't be wasting her money because one day, when Rogue was older, they could always make little rainbow water bombs and throw them out the window.

Satisfied that she had made the right decision, she marched back to the rear of the drugstore, rounded the corner at the end of the aisle that held the shampoo and cream rinse and tripped over a stroller.

She only managed to stop herself from falling by grabbing onto an arm that seemed to come out of nowhere. She staggered and regained her balance and looked up into a pair of worried blue eyes that rested beneath heavy salt and pepper brows in an open, intelligent face.

“Are you all right?”

Maxine continued to cling on to the arm. “I'm fine. Really. I should have been looking where I was going.”

“No, it's my fault. I should be more careful where I leave this thing.” He gestured at the stroller.

Maxine looked inside. There was a small blond-haired baby, fast asleep. She looked up at the man again. He was about Harry's age, maybe a little older. The baby looked like him. Another case of an older man taking one more shot at the gene pool. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

“A girl. Her name's Amanda.” And he looked lovingly down at the tiny pink face.

Maxine nodded. Everywhere you went lately there were babies.

“Any my name is Vincent. Vincent Taylor. Dr. Vincent Taylor, if you're impressed by titles.” He smiled warmly and stuck out one ungloved hand. Automatically, Maxine took it. He had a lovely deep mellow voice, and she couldn't help responding to his cheerful demeanor. He was the type of man that her own mother would have labeled “nice.”

“I'm Maxine. Dear Maxine, if you're impressed by titles.”

Vincent Taylor frowned for a minute and then it dawned on him. “You write that advice column?”

“That's me.”

He smiled again and she noticed he had great teeth. Had probably been flossing for years. You could tell a lot about a man by his teeth. “My students are always bringing your column in to show me some of the letters you get.” He gave a little chuckle. “Amazing.”

“Students?”

“I'm a doctor of psychology. I teach at NYU.”

“Oh.” Maxine nodded again. This was the point of the conversation where it either ended or progressed to the next level. But, since Dr. Taylor obviously had a wife and family, there would be no next level. She looked around, wondering how to break off the conversation, since he didn't seem inclined to. In any event, she couldn't proceed on her original course because Vincent Taylor and his daughter were positioned right in front of the sunset boxes. And she wasn't about to ask him to move so she could take one off the shelf. Oh, no.

He followed the line of her vision. “Am I in your way?”

“No, no,” lied Maxine. “I just came to get some of those.” She pointed to the row of multivitamin and mineral supplements with calcium.

But Vincent, who hadn't spent twenty-five years teaching human behavior for nothing, looked into her basket. “I think you've already got some,” he said, pointing at the bottle of vitamins and suppressing a smile.

Reluctantly looking down at the contents of her basket, Maxine felt her face growing pink. She had been caught being “easy” and she wasn't even “ready” yet!

“I … uh …”

“Why don't you try these?” asked Vincent, picking up a box of plain latex condoms. “They're not as fancy as some of the others, but they do the job.”