2 #3
“You’re holding her like she’s an undetonated grenade. Who wouldn’t cry? Let me,” Nathaniel says, extracting the baby from Patrick’s arms. Patrick watches as Eleanor drains the bottle and goes limp.
“I think she hates me,” Patrick says.
“Some babies hate everything,” Nathaniel says. “Some people are born knowing the world is a terrible place.”
This is heartening. Maybe he and Eleanor have something in common.
“Your friend should have the empty apartment,” Nathaniel says after carefully placing the sleeping baby in Patrick’s lap. “I can find someplace else to stay.”
There’s no way Patrick’s turning this man onto the streets after less than forty-eight hours. The whole point is to get him on his feet. But Patrick can’t say that, because forcing charity on people is a great way to get them to head for the hills.
“That apartment is too much space for one person,” Nathaniel goes on. “And your apartment isn’t nearly big enough for three people.” He’d seen Patrick’s apartment—all five hundred square feet of it—yesterday morning when Patrick fed him cornflakes.
Mrs. Kaplan meant for Nathaniel to have apartment 3F.
But if Patrick called her right now and explained the situation, she’d tell him to give Susan the apartment and ask Nathaniel to stay in Patrick’s minuscule spare room—after scolding him for wasting money on a long distance call, that is.
I don’t have stock in the phone company, Patrick.
She might also remind him that some people, before they can let themselves be helped, need to do something to balance the scales. Patrick still changes the oil in Mrs. Kaplan’s 1957 Ford Fairlane station wagon and goes out to Queens to put on snow tires whenever she needs them.
“All right,” Patrick says. “Thank you. I do have a spare room. It’s tiny and kind of awful, but you’re welcome to it.”
At least he has sheets for the narrow bed, purchased last year when Michael was in town without Susan, and was too cheap to pay for a hotel.
They’d spent the entire visit sniping at one another about Michael’s deranged refusal to wait out the war safely enrolled in graduate school, finishing his degree.
He kept saying things like this is my country and it’s my duty but also if I keep deferring they’ll just send some kid.
Patrick had never wanted to strangle someone so badly.
And what’s insane is that Patrick still wants to strangle him.
The door chimes ring, and Patrick looks up to see a figure swathed in a huge gray coat. The smell of garbage wafts in along with the cold.
“That’s a relief,” she says, and Patrick doesn’t know if she means the heat or the fresh air.
“Professor,” Patrick says. Vivian stops by the shop nearly every Wednesday and Friday morning on the way to teach a poetry seminar at NYU, but she hadn’t come in earlier this week.
If he’s honest with himself, he’s relieved to see her.
Most customers are a pain in the ass but he starts worrying when he doesn’t see the regulars.
Even though he knows they’re all avoiding the streets because of the strike, it still makes him uneasy.
“What on earth.” Vivian stares at Eleanor. “I didn’t know you were married, Patrick.”
Patrick snorts. Sure, if a man is walking around with a baby, there’s a good chance that baby belongs to him, and that he has a wife nearby.
But Vivian has salt and pepper hair short enough that she must get it cut at a barbershop.
She wears men’s shoes and used to come in with a woman who wore a fedora and smelled like cigar smoke.
Patrick thought they were on the same page about the likelihood of either of them getting a baby the old-fashioned way.
“Haven’t gotten knocked up yet,” he says dryly. “Can’t figure out why.”
“Well,” Vivian says. “She looks just like you.”
Patrick’s stomach drops. “She’s—not,” he says.
“She’s, ah—” He swallows. “Her mother’s visiting and her father isn’t around.
” God, Michael would be so offended, but going off to die in a war is the pinnacle of not around .
“She was my brother’s. Is,” Patrick corrects.
“Vietnam.” That’s the fewest syllables it could possibly take to get the point across.
A few yards away, he hears Nathaniel make a sound. Patrick doesn’t know if in the confusion of last night anyone told Nathaniel who, exactly, Michael is. Was. Shit.
“Oh dear,” Vivian says. “I’m so sorry. He was only a bit younger than you, wasn’t he?”
“Irish twins,” Patrick says, something he’s said dozens, hundreds of times to explain how he wound up with a younger brother in the same grade. “This is Nathaniel, the new clerk,” he adds in a rush, an obvious bid to change the subject, but Vivian takes it.
Vivian leaves without buying anything. No surprise there—every few weeks she’ll buy something, but usually she picks up a book, hums consideringly, then puts it back on the shelf, muttering coals to Newcastle.
“Someone in my building moved out and left behind their baby carriage,” Vivian says before leaving. “I nearly trip over it every time I go downstairs. If you’d like it, I’ll give you my address.”
Patrick thanks her and writes down where she lives.
As soon as the door shuts behind her, Patrick glances at his watch. “I need to check on Susan. I’ll be back in five minutes.”
Susan’s fast asleep, which is good, and breathing, which is about as much as anyone could hope for under the circumstances. He takes his time going back downstairs, and when he gets there he pointedly doesn’t count the cash in the till until Nathaniel’s in the bathroom. Again, nothing’s missing.
He keeps an eye on Nathaniel for another reason. Unless Nathaniel is a lot denser than he seems, he picked up on the subtext of Patrick’s conversation with Vivian. If he has misgivings about sharing close quarters with a queer man, he’ll bolt, and he’ll do it soon.
But he doesn’t. That night, after Susan wakes up long enough to eat a peanut butter sandwich and fall back asleep in the bed of apartment 3F, Nathaniel moves his toothbrush into Patrick’s bathroom and proceeds to use up the last of Patrick’s shampoo.
Patrick spends the night snatching sleep in five minute increments, except for when Nathaniel comes in at two in the morning, says, “For the love of god ,” and picks the baby up. Patrick passes out almost immediately.
The rest of the night, Eleanor’s either in Patrick’s arms or asleep in a dresser drawer, which Mrs. Valdez assured him is perfectly safe for the next week or two. Even asleep, she somehow looks furious. It’s the only trace of Susan he can find on her face.