Chapter Four
I’ve seen the future and it’s much
like the present only longer.
— Dan Quisenberry, pitcher
Keely sat on the floor in the middle of the room picked for M and M’s nursery and wondered where to begin. Who said money didn’t buy you a lot anymore? Three-thousand-plus dollars ($3782.57, to be exact) still bought you same-day delivery and free setup, it turned out. And then there was 10 percent of almost four thousand dollars, and 50 percent of that.
Not bad for a half-day’s work. Not hot damn, we’re in the money—but not terrible, either.
In fact, things were going pretty well. Kind of well. Sort of well. Okay, so things weren’t entirely awful. It was a start.
M and M was a darling baby. That was for openers. She drank when you gave her a bottle, burped when you patted her on the back, filled her diaper, then went to sleep. This also was not a bad thing, especially since Keely had yet to crack open any of the child-care books, and she was pretty sure there was a lot more to this taking-care-of-baby stuff than she’d encountered so far.
M and M was taking another nap, downstairs, in the seat safely stuck inside the wash basket, because Keely needed to go through the dozens of huge plastic bags now sitting on the bedroom floor with her, to try to make some sort of order out of the chaos.
She reached into the first bag as she looked around the room, liking the placement of the pecan-wood crib, the matching dresser and changing table. Good traffic flow, allowing a clear path to the connecting bathroom. Good light, considering the room was on the east side of the house, to catch the morning sun. Nice color scheme, the green and beige muted plaid, the soft brown teddy bears that danced along the material.
The walls needed more than their existing basic coat of stark white paint, but that could wait. The wallpaper border and stuffed, puffy wall hangings could wait. More important now was finding some sort of order, planning some kind of system, some inkling of a schedule, for M and M, for herself.
Keely looked at the package she’d removed from the first bag. “Stupid thing, but it sure rattled Cousin Jack’s chain,” she said, looking at the step-by-step drawings of just how to take a plaster of Paris mold of M and M’s foot for posterity. She stood up, carried the box to the huge walk-in closet, stuffed it on the shelf above the hanger-bar, then promptly forgot it.
Then she really went to work, placing the diaper pail next to the changing table, loading drawers with pads and sheets she’d wash as soon as she could find the time, carrying all the bath accessories into the bathroom, finding them all homes.
Keely was a neat person. Not a neat freak, not exactly, but she did believe in putting everything in its place and keeping it there. Tabletops were for inspired choices of flowers, knickknacks, decorative accent pieces that each made their own statement about the owner’s taste and lifestyle. Closets were one of her near fetishes, and she could nearly drool over closet organizers, specially built-in shelving, color-coordinated shoe boxes.
Which is why, after about an hour, Keely was feeling pretty frustrated. She’d designed nurseries before, but that had been furniture and drapes—not the day-to-day, actually-living-with-a-baby type stuff.
There was no way to organize a baby, just no way. The powder and lotion containers, the jar of Vaseline, the baby wipes—all of it just sat there in the open, not adding a single bit of aesthetics to the decor. The huge pack of disposable diapers certainly could be stored in the closet, but she’d always have to remember to restock the drawer beneath the changing table, or else run the risk of having M and M bare-bottomed on the table and the nearest diaper twenty feet away.
“Babies are messy. They sprawl like a two-thousand-pound gorilla, taking up space everywhere and anywhere,” Keely concluded, hands on her hips as she looked around the room. The plastic bags were gone, most everything was put away, the crib was made up with all the new color-coordinated bedding, but the room still looked stuck together rather than put together. “And I’m beat,” she added, running a hand through her hair, pushing errant blond curls behind her ears. “Time for a little break, a glass of something cold, and a nice, soft chair.”
That’s when Keely realized that one morning, almost four thousand dollars, and another two hours of work had added up to partially settling M and M—but did nothing to furnish the rest of the house.
Other than M and M’s bedroom, the upstairs rooms were all empty, except for the master suite, which was... well, it was just pitiful, that’s what it was. The man might as well be living under a bridge.
Downstairs, there was only one old chair in the huge den, a chair that should have been given a decent burial long ago. One sixties-era pole lamp, and one humongous television set that would take all her skill to decorate around so that it didn’t look like the den was really a drive-in theater and the most logical furnishings would be a ’57 Chevy, a speaker pole, and an open box of condoms.
She walked past the empty dining room, into the near-empty kitchen, gratified to see that M and M was still asleep. If there wasn’t any furniture, at least there might be some food in the house that she’d overlooked earlier.
Keely had her head stuck inside the refrigerator, trying to figure out what she could make with ketchup, mustard, the last three Cecily-prepared bottles of formula, and what she hoped wasn’t a very old egg, when Jack spoke from mere inches behind her. “Heads up,” he said quietly. “Sadie’s on her way over to check us out.”
Keely didn’t mean to take him literally, but he’d startled her, so that the back of her head definitely did come up, then sharply collided with the refrigerator door. “Damn it, Trehan!” she exploded, rubbing at her head.
At which point M and M woke up. Began to wail.
“Now look what you’ve done!” Keely pointed at M and M, whose face was rapidly turning fiery red. “You woke the baby.”
“I woke the baby?” Jack said, both eyebrows raised in a way that made Keely want to smash the egg into his annoying face. “How? Did I slam the door when I came in? No. Did I stomp my feet? No. Did I yell? No–o–o–o, that wasn’t me, was it? Me? I was baby-sitting, much against my will, while you played house upstairs for two hours. Then I take one small break, to go see my aunt and tell her what’s going on, and I come back, tiptoeing in the door, tiptoeing across the floor, whispering—and you go ballistic.”
God, he was smug. The man was just... smug. Keely decided she really hated smug in a man, even if his eyes were the most beautiful cobalt blue. Especially because his eyes were that beautiful cobalt blue. Doubly especially because, damn him, he was right
So Keely took refuge in indignation, rightful or not, and stayed on the attack. “You left the baby alone again? How could you do that?” she asked, opening the car seat strap and lifting M and M into her arms. “What kind of cretin would leave a child alone? First in the car, and now again here. If you don’t want the responsibility, Trehan, call your cousin Joey. He couldn’t do any worse than you are.”
Jack threw up his hands. “Five minutes. I was only gone for five minutes. Ten, tops. Christ, she was sleeping—she was snoring.”
Keely shot him another dirty look, then opened the refrigerator, pulling out a bottle. “Here,” she said, handing it to Jack. “Squeeze the air out, like the kid said. I’ll change her diaper here on the floor. Then I’m calling the store and having them deliver another changing table and diaper pail, for somewhere downstairs. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.”
“I told you we needed two diaper pails, if you’ll recall. However, that being said, I have a question for you.” Jack held the bottle out in front of him. “Refresh my memory, Ms. McBride. Where in our contract does it say I take orders from you?”
M and M had settled down in Keely’s arms and was now contentedly pulling Keely’s hair, trying to stuff a few locks into her mouth. “Forgive me, Mr. Big Baseball Star used to everybody bowing down in front of him,” Keely shot back, glaring at Jack. “Ple
ase squeeze the air out of the liner like the kid said. There, is that better?”
“I don’t like you, Ms. McBride,” Jack said with some feeling. “I mean, I really, really don’t like you.”
“Ah, did you hear that, baby?” Keely said, trying to disengage M and M’s chubby fingers from her hair. It had been a long day, one way and another, what with her new and unexpected job, Gregory Fontaine’s news, and all the rest of it. Keely’s temper suddenly outstripped her common sense and the memory of her checkbook balance. “Daddy doesn’t love Mommy anymore. But he still needs her, and it’s driving him crazy. Isn’t that nice?”
“That’s it! I mean, that... is... it. You’re fired, Ms. McBride, and this time it sticks. I’ll mail you a check for services rendered, but you’re gone. Three strikes—hell, about six—and now you’re out of here. My Aunt Sadie can watch M and M until I figure out what else to do, but I’ll be damned if I’ll have you in this house another minute. Got that?”
“Yoohoo! Here I am. Where’s the alien baby?”
Keely, who had belatedly realized that she hadn’t eaten all day and her low sugar had made her suicidal—why else would she have mouthed off to her only chance to reline her pockets?—turned to look at the woman who’d just entered the kitchen through the back door.
Jack had turned as well, and now spoke to his aunt. “Not an alien baby, Sadie. Cecily’s baby.”
“Same thing,” Sadie Trehan said airily, shrugging her shoulders as she walked across the room, approaching Keely and M and M. “Oh, look at that. Isn’t she sweet? Just like a little doll. Looks nothing like my late and unlamented brother-in-law, thank God, and rest his dry cleaning soul. Nothing like Florence, either, which is also a blessing, considering Flo and I were identical twins. I still think Florence tricked him, and both her kids belonged to the milkman. Who are you?” she asked Keely.
Good question. Keely wasn’t sure anymore. She hadn’t been sure since she’d first seen Jack Trehan’s head popping out through the doorway early this morning. Everything after that had been a rather surreal experience; spit-up, paper towels, slippery infant, slipperier Gregory Fontaine—the bastard—her employer turning out to be a famous baseball player.
But Sadie Trehan put the topper on all of it. Short, pudgy in a way that looked good on her, Sadie was one of those apple-cheeked women who could be forty or eighty, because they never really aged. Her hair was a curly silver-white halo, her eyes huge and blue, her teeth the too-perfect white and straight of full dentures.
That was all okay. Just fine. But when you took all of Sadie Trehan and added in her navy blue Mickey Mouse shirt, her bright green-and-yellow-plaid Bermuda shorts (and dimpled knees), and her pink, fluffy kitty-cat slippers? Well, it was getting more than a little strange here at Happy Trehan Acres, that’s what.
“I... I’m Keely McBride, Ms. Trehan. We spoke on the phone last week, when you hired me,” Keely managed at last, pushing M and M into Jack’s unwilling arms. “And your nephew just fired me, so I’ll be going now, straight back to sanity, if I have any luck at all. Nice to meet you.”
“John James Trehan, what did you do?” Sadie asked, grabbing at Keely’s arm as she made to head for the nearest exit. “I thought you said she did a wonderful job this morning, taking care of the baby, furnishing a nursery. I also thought you finally were getting over your sulk and your bad temper. So you can’t play baseball anymore? So what? That doesn’t mean you can go around like some growling bear, biting everyone’s head off. There is a child here who needs your help. There is a house here so empty I can hear my own voice echo, which isn’t pleasant. Can’t you see that there are things more important than a game?”
Keely watched, amazed, as Sadie Trehan turned big Jack Trehan into an itty-bitty little boy, a shamefaced child who still wanted to punch something but knew he’d be punished if he tried it. “I’m sorry, Aunt Sadie,” he said, walking over to Keely, handing M and M back to her. “And I guess I do owe you some kind of apology. I really do need you around for M and M, you know, at least for a few days, until I can figure out something else to do,” he admitted. “It’s not your fault you’ve got a smart mouth and a lousy attitude.”
“Gee, thanks,” Keely said, rolling her eyes. “Remind me to ask you to write a letter of recommendation for my prospective clients once this is over. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll take M and M upstairs to change her. And after that we need to find some food around here, or we’ll literally be biting each other’s heads off.”
She got as far as the doorway when she stopped, sighed, shrugged her shoulders. Man, it was the pits having a polite upbringing, being saddled with a conscience.
“Okay,” she said, heading back into the room, “here it is. You said you were sorry, so I’m going to say it, too. I’m sorry. I’ve been a first-class bitch. I need this job, Trehan. Worse, I need this job so badly I’ll pretty much jump through any hoop I have to jump through to keep it, which is really, really torquing me, you know? I didn’t go to school to be a baby-sitter. I had my own shop, in Manhattan, but it went belly-up. The guy you heard on my answering machine was my old boss, and my once lover—big, big mistake there—telling me he’s taken over the lease on my shop and offering me the chance to work for him again, the bastard. So this hasn’t been one of my better days, you know?”
“No, I didn’t know. That’s a tough one,” Jack interrupted. “I’m sorry I teased you about that pumpkin thing. Really.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry I didn’t punch Gregory Fontaine in the chops before I left Manhattan, too, but that’s the way it goes, and that part of my life is over, soon to be forgotten. So here’s how it is now: I’ve come back home to Allentown, my tail between my legs, to help my aunt at her shop while she cruises the Greek Isles or whatever, on her honeymoon. I’m in debt up to my ears, I’m lucky to have a roof over my head, and I know it, but I get fifty percent of her commission on any jobs I get while she’s gone. Take care of M and M, walk your dog, clean your pool—you name it and I’ll do it, just to keep this job. I’ll hate myself, and you, but I’ll damn well do it. I’m just trying to tell you that I wasn’t cut out to be Little Miss Domestic Tranquility and I think I’ll bake cookies from scratch today—not even when things were going well, okay?”
“Tail, ears, head, sunshine, no cookies. Got it. But fifty percent of what? I probably should have asked. I mean, I’ve already seen the damage you can do in one morning. By the time this place is furnished, I could be cashing in my pension to pay you.”
“I doubt that. Cy Young? I’ll bet your contract had more zeros in it than I can count—and I’m counting on at least one of those zeros being mine. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. You were a gift from heaven, Trehan, and my salvation, and then you handed me this kid as a condition to my employment. I know nothing about babies that I haven’t learned either from the movies, TV shows, or commercials. Nothing! But that doesn’t mean I don’t need your money, or that you don’t need my help. You don’t like me? Fine. I’m not all that cracked up about you, either. The way I see it, you’re too damned used to getting your own way, being treated like the big shot, the sports hero. Well, whoop-de-doo. I’m all impressed. Not. I just want to do my job, all of my job, and take as much of your money as I can get, so that I can get out of Allentown and back to where I belong. You can understand that, can’t you? I mean, you weren’t the only one sent back to the minor leagues, damn it, and you’re not the only one with an ax to grind. Oh, and if you don’t stop calling this poor abandoned child M and M I think I’m going to have to hurt you. Are we clear here now?”
“Clear as crystal. And don’t swear around the baby.”
“Oh, Jack. Jack, Jack, Jack,” Sadie said, her grin as wide as the one on Mickey Mouse’s cartoon face. “Keep her, boy. You’ll never find so much honesty in one package again.”
“Put a sock in it, Sadie.” Jack shot his aunt a look that only made her smile wider, then grabbed his car keys from the counter, heading for the do
or. His hand on the doorknob, he looked back at Keely. “Take care of M and—the kid, okay? I’ll be back when I get back.’
“Well, wasn’t that unpleasant?” Sadie asked as the door slammed. “I’d offer to help you, dear, but I know absolutely nothing about infants and have steadfastly refused to learn for sixty years. I don’t want to jeopardize my record. Besides, my ceramics class starts in twenty minutes, and I still have to pick up Mitzi. I’ll be late if I don’t leave now. Jack said something about pumpkins. Do you like pumpkins? That’s a coincidence, isn’t it? We’re starting on our holiday decorations, and today it’s pumpkins for Halloween. Mine are going to be pink. I mean, why do it if you’re only going to do the obvious, right? How boring. And I adore pink.”
“Pink pumpkins?” Keely said as Sadie paused to take a breath. “Why, I guess... I suppose...”
“Never mind. I’ll make you one. It’s the least I can do. I don’t remember the last time I saw Jack so completely incensed. He’s been miles down in the dumps ever since he retired, and it’s nice to see a little fire in his eyes again. Even Timothy couldn’t get him to do anything except sit and sulk, feel sorry for himself, and make nasty remarks. I’m surprised he and Timothy didn’t end in a fist-fight; I mean it. But now he’s alive again, I can see it, although if you’ll take an old lady’s advice, you might want to tone it down a little now that you’ve made your point, just so he doesn’t fire you again. You’ll be good for him, I know it. You and this little thing both. Oh, and I wonder: Aren’t you supposed to warm the milk for a baby? Never mind. I’m sure I don’t really want to know. Well, gotta go!”
Keely opened her mouth, held out her hand, one finger raised, about to call Sadie Trehan back, then thought better of it. Some things are just better left alone.
“Warm the formula? That does seem to make sense, but how do I do it? Wait a minute—the microwave we bought. How could I have forgotten that? Man, am I ever in over my head. Come on, baby,” she said, heading for the stairs that led from the kitchen to the rear of the upstairs hall.
She stopped at the top landing and looked out the window in time to see a small red convertible literally peeling down the drive, Sadie at the wheel. “Guess it’s a good thing I didn’t try to stop her, huh? What a strange, silly woman. By and large, sweetheart, you’ve got some pretty weird relatives. Yeah, well, we change you, we dust a little powder on your tush. We’ll read the directions on the new bottles we just bought, and then we’ll see what Mr. Spock says we do after that. I’m a college graduate, after all. I can read directions. Now, is that a plan or what?”