Page 6 of After Hours at Dooryard Books
As Susan gives Nathaniel the baby, something shifts in her expression. Patrick knows this look all too well. It’s the “I’m dropping out of college and starting a band” look. It’s the “We’re getting married and you’re coming whether you like it or not” look. This look is the equivalent of an air raid siren. Patrick steels himself.
“Okay,” she mutters, digging in her pocket for something. She’s wearing the kind of dress that’s more a nightgown than anything else, with only a cardigan over it. It’s completely unsuitable for a snowy day in New York, and probably isn’t even warm enough for California. At least the baby is bundled up, wrapped in a woolly blanket, only her tiny pink face visible. “I’m not going to say it,” Susan says, and Patrick only has a second to notice that she sounds choked up before she shoves a crumpled piece of paper into his chest.
It takes him a few seconds to smooth it out, and then another few to identify it as a telegram. The words assemble themselves out of order. “Regret to inform” and “Department of Defense” and “Private First Class Michael Fitzgerald” all hang there in his consciousness before he’s able to understand that he’s holding the sort of telegram they send in movies to tell you someone’s dead. His brain stalls out for a minute before he grasps thatthe dead person is Michael. He reads it again, just in case he’s wrong. He feels, inanely, like he really ought to double check.
This time his gaze catches on the date: the telegram is dated today. Susan must have gotten it that morning, packed her suitcase, grabbed the baby and her guitar, and hailed a cab to the airport.
“Susan,” he says, without a single clue what to say next.
“I think I might be about to make some bad decisions,” Susan says, her voice wobbling. “And nobody I know in San Francisco knows how to look after a baby.”
Patrick opens his mouth to say that he doesn’t have the first fucking clue how to take care of a baby either, that he’s never so much as held one, that he’s only aware in the broadest terms how babies evenwork. But he knows about running away, and he knows about last resorts.
He gives the telegram one final look before folding it back into a lopsided rectangle and sticking it in his pocket, stowing it away with whatever he might be feeling.
“Come here,” he says, and he sounds steady, almost like someone you can count on. She’s in his arms instantly, like she was waiting for the go ahead. A memory slips in sideways, the last time he hugged her, the scratchy lace of her wedding gown strange and stiff under his palms, Michael’s arms around them both. He threatened to kneecap Michael if he hurt Susan, and threatened to kneecap Susan if she hurt Michael, and thought he was so amusing.
A few yards away, watching them, Nathaniel holds the baby against his shoulder. The baby is so small she’s nearly swallowed up by the bulk of Nathaniel’s too-big thrift store sweater.
There are three people counting on Patrick. They need a crib for the baby. Probably AA meetings or something along those lines for Nathaniel. God only knows what for Susan. Probablya dozen other things Patrick hasn’t thought of yet. It’s a relief, really, to have all that to think about.
“I’m glad you came,” he tells Susan, and he’s almost positive it’s the truth.
* * *
After the kind of night that’s so cold the radiators never stop clanging away, Patrick gives up on sleep. He wants to put on clean clothes but can’t figure out how to do that without putting the baby down. He isn’t sure where you put babies when you don’t have a crib. The floor is dirty. The bed feels unsafe. He’ll have to ask Mrs. Valdez.
Every time Patrick looks at Eleanor, he thinks: who the hell are you? Which isn’t what anybody’s supposed to think when they’re holding a baby. But right now the fact that he’s standing at his hot plate, sterilizing a bottle according to the instructions on the can of formula, feels about as likely a thing for him to be doing as piloting a spaceship.
He’s pretty sure he’s in shock, the kind of shock they treat with brandy or sugary tea in old movies, or maybe a brisk slap to the face, but there’s nobody to slap him or give him anything to drink. He wants to call Mrs. Kaplan, but this isn’t her problem and he’d only make her worry.
Before crawling into Patrick’s bed, Susan swallowed a frightening number of pills, washed them down with a swig of Ballantine’s she found on Patrick’s bookshelf, and nearly gave Patrick a heart attack in the process. He spent the night alternately checking that she was still breathing and staring at the baby, seeing traces of Michael all over her face.Eleanor.Christ. That’s Michael’s doing. What would they have named her if she’d been a boy?
For lack of any better ideas, Patrick carries Eleanor down to the shop as soon as she finishes her bottle.
The Hawthorne he was repairing is still on his desk. He’d been looking forward to finishing it today, then going to the gym and maybe letting himself get picked up by that fireman who keeps monopolizing the bench press. Now all that seems impossibly remote, a glimpse into the life of some other man.
It’s six o’clock in the morning. Over a week’s worth of accumulated garbage has been joined by heaps of snow, so the last thing Patrick expects is for anyone to knock on the door. He switched his desk lamp on when he came downstairs, and it’s pitch black outside, so all he can see in the shop door is his own reflection. Still, he slides loose the deadbolt and opens the door, reasoning that burglars don’t usually knock.
It’s Nathaniel, holding two cups of coffee in mismatched mugs. “I thought you might be up.”
Patrick takes one of the cups, angling it away from the baby. She hollers when he tries to take a sip, like she’s personally going to see to it that he suffers. Patrick sighs. “May as well open the shop.”
Somewhere in one of his pockets is the key to the cash register, but he has no idea how he’s going to reach it without putting down either the baby or the coffee. The question of how to get the key out of his pocket feels like the kind of riddle they print in kids’ magazines.
“I can hold her,” Nathaniel says.
“It’s okay.” Patrick puts down the coffee and juggles Eleanor onto the opposite shoulder so he can reach into his right pocket. Eleanor screeches into his ear. The key isn’t in that pocket, only the telegram. Patrick wants to kick something.
Wordlessly, Nathaniel takes the baby from Patrick’s arms. Eleanor immediately stops crying.
“How did you do that?” Patrick demands.
“Babies don’t like to be still,” Nathaniel says, and sure enough, he’s swaying a little while patting Eleanor’s back. She’s stopped crying, but now she’s banging her little head against Nathaniel’s shoulder. “She’s hungry.” There’s no mistaking the reproach in his voice.
“She just finished a bottle. She’s what, seven pounds? She can’t need a quart of formula in an hour.” Somewhere in this shop there must be a book about babies. It’s not the sort of book Patrick usually stocks, but neither are cookbooks and somehow there’s a whole shelf of them anyway.
“For heaven’s sake, make her another one,” Nathaniel says.
