Chapter Twenty-Six
TWENTY-SIX
Ted is interrupted by a sneeze. Not his own this time, but from a baby. The train has stopped at a small station and a young mom has carried the little snot machine on board.
“Bless you!” Louisa calls.
“Thanks,” the mother smiles with the exhaustion that only a new parent or someone who’s survived in the jungle for three months after a horrible plane crash can exhibit.
“What a cute baby!” Louisa says when they sit down on the other side of the aisle, then she turns to Ted: “Isn’t it, Ted?”
“Really cute,” Ted says, more or less the way you might say about a shark.
Louisa stares at him.
“Don’t you like babies? Come on! Everyone likes babies, Ted!”
Ted feels like replying that that’s the silliest thing he’s heard since one of his colleagues at the school where he used to work once said she loved going to the gym. But instead he says: “I don’t have anything against babies.”
Dear Lord, he hardly likes people, and of course babies are the very worst-functioning versions of people. What exactly does she want from him?
“Everyone likes babies, Ted!” Louisa repeats, as if that would make it any more true.
Ted folds his arms, worried that if he doesn’t, she might make him touch it. Louisa, on the other hand, leans across the aisle and makes faces at it, causing it to laugh.
Obviously the artist would have done the same thing if he’d been here, because he liked children too, the lunatic. One time he told Ted that even wild animals were careful with newborns, that it’s a biological instinct, because babies are what remind us that life goes on. “Babies teach us not to be scared of death. That’s how we realize we can’t wish for eternal life. Because if no one died, we would have to ban new people from being born. And when the playgrounds are empty, when the last pair of rain boots has been grown out of, when the last puddle has been jumped in… What would we want eternity for then, Ted?”
He had drunk a fair amount of wine the evening he said that, Ted recalls, but he has to admit that the artist probably had a point nevertheless.
“Don’t you think?” the mother suddenly says in Ted’s direction, as if he’s part of the conversation.
He looks up and realizes to his horror that everyone is looking at him: the mother, the baby, Louisa, and the conductor, who has appeared to check tickets and is evidently extremely fond of human beings of all sizes.
“Sorry?” Ted mumbles.
The mother’s eyes sparkle so that the dark circles beneath them are hardly visible. She nods first at the conductor, then at Ted, and repeats:
“He was asking if traveling with a baby was difficult, and I said that my mom told me that all parents feel the same: the days pass slowly but the years fly by. Don’t you think?”
Ted gawps as if he doesn’t understand what she’s insinuating.
“You’re asking me?”
The mother looks at him in surprise, then at Louisa.
“Oh, sorry, I thought that… that you were… Aren’t you father and daughter?”
If anyone was asleep on the train at that moment, even if they were seven carriages away, they were woken by Louisa’s shrieks of laughter. It comes so abruptly that the baby starts laughing too when it hears it.
“No, no, we’re just friends!” Louisa says.
“Oh,” the woman says, more uncomfortably now, looking a lot like someone who’s trying to figure out the age difference.
“I mean, not friends -friends,” Louisa declares immediately. “We’re just ordinary friends! Ted doesn’t even like girls, he likes conductors!”
“Louisa,” Ted hisses to shut her up, but obviously there’s no hope of that, her mouth has a longer braking distance than the train.
“And even if it looks suspicious, you should know that he hasn’t kidnapped me! Or has he?” Louisa goes on, winking merrily at the conductor and the young mother.
“LOUISA!” Ted snaps, and quickly adds in despair: “She’s joking! She’s joking! Tell them you’re joking, Louisa!”
Louisa turns to him in a sudden attack of teasing that he certainly doesn’t appreciate.
“Oh, am I? Are you an expert at humor now, all of a sudden? Tell us a joke, then!” she demands.
“I… Oh, stop it…,” Ted mutters.
Somewhat unexpectedly, the conductor steps in to rescue him.
“I know a joke! My nephew told it to me yesterday! Do you want to hear it? Okay: you shouldn’t get angry with lazy people. They haven’t done anything!”
Louisa laughs, the mother laughs, the baby laughs. Ted smiles.
“I mean… lazy people, not doing…,” Louisa immediately explains considerately.
“I get it,” Ted says.
“It doesn’t look like it,” she points out.
“I get it!” Ted insists.
“So tell us a joke, then,” Louisa suggests.
Then Ted feels so crowded by everyone’s stares, perhaps by the baby’s most of all, that he actually does as he is told. He clears his throat, collects his thoughts, then says:
“Okay. Okay. The police stop a car for a routine check. Inside the car are one man and four penguins. The policeman asks the man: ‘Why on earth have you got penguins in your car?’ The man replies: ‘They don’t like being home alone.’ The policeman says: ‘But you can’t do this to penguins, surely you understand that? You really should take them to a zoo!’ The man looks surprised, but promises to do as the policeman says. The next day the policeman is standing in the same place when the man drives past again. The policeman stops him and sees that the penguins are still in the car with him, only this time they’re all wearing sunglasses. The irritated policeman says: ‘Didn’t I tell you to take these penguins to a zoo?’ The man nods happily and replies: ‘I did! And today I’m taking them to the beach!’?”
Ted falls silent. He clears his throat again. Louisa and the mother and the baby definitely aren’t laughing. But the conductor? Oh, he’s laughing, so hard that he drops the little machine that he uses to check people’s tickets.
“Seriously?” Louisa says, looking at him accusingly.
“That’s really funny!” the conductor exclaims.
Then Louisa turns to Ted and sees that he’s giggling too, at his own joke.
“God, you two really would be a good match,” Louisa says, but it definitely isn’t a compliment.
Ted blushes and the conductor lowers his gaze.
“New passengers?” he mutters toward the other end of the carriage and walks on.
The mother hesitantly leans across the aisle and asks Louisa:
“Sorry, this is really nervy of me, but could I ask you for a big favor? Would you mind holding her while I go to the bathroom?”
All the color disappears from Louisa’s face for a moment.
“Me?”
“Yes?” the mother says, holding out the baby.
“You’re going to let me hold her?”
“If it isn’t too much trouble?”
“It’s no… no trouble,” Louisa tries to say, but her voice cracks, as thin as a soap bubble.
Then she sits there with the baby in her arms, hardly daring to breathe, the way you do when someone has said the nicest thing one person can say to another: I trust you. I trust you so much that I trust you with the start of life. Louisa glances at Ted and looks so proud that even he admits:
“It is cute. For a baby.”
“Can you tell me the rest of the story about the janitor now? But hurry up!” Louisa says, with her forehead close to the baby’s smile.
“Why should I hurry up?” he asks.
“Because it sounds like a story that isn’t going to end happily for everyone. And it’s easier to cope with sad endings if you’re holding a baby,” Louisa replies.