Note: Well, here I am, back at last. But it turns out that this isn't the last chapter after all! My apologies for that, and for keeping everyone waiting so long. I hope you won't have to wait too much longer for the conclusion.
Feedback, as always, will be much appreciated.
Chapter 23:
The front door slammed behind Betty and Mariana. Sabrina stared at her offspring in shock. She had absolutely no idea what to do.
She'd been so excited about having a baby. It was what all her friends had been doing, and she'd loved the idea of it, of having something small and sweet to call her own, something that would look adorable in the cute little outfits she would buy for it, and would sleep peacefully in the enormous crib in the beautiful nursery she would decorate for it. She'd imagined the pictures: her own lovely face smiling adoringly down at the baby, while the baby smiled adoringly up at her. It was an accessory every woman she knew simply had to have.
Pregnancy hadn't been so bad at first. She'd always been careful to keep herself slim and fit, and her habits served her well during the first few months. She gained very little weight, and was able to continue with all her usual activities: exercise classes, and lunches out with friends, and shopping. Giving up alcohol and cigarettes had been an annoyance, but she'd never been a big smoker-it did such dreadful things to your skin-so that hadn't really been so hard. And if she'd cheated once in a while, everyone did that, didn't they?
But then everything had gone wrong. Her ballooning body had horrified her. She'd had no idea that she'd get that big; she'd thought only women who couldn't control themselves around food got as fat as that. Max, who'd been through other pregnancies with other wives, hadn't said anything, but she'd felt his interest slipping, and that scared her. Her body was her best asset; what would she do, if she couldn't get all the weight off again? What if she ended up fat for life? What if she ended up with stretch marks?
She'd thought she was safe. Max was at the time of life when men got tired of the dramas and expenses of divorce, and craved stability. But if she lost her looks, anything might happen. He might find someone else. She might have to live with the indignities of being the second-string woman. Or worse-the other woman might persuade him to make her wife number five. Sabrina knew Max too well to think she'd come out ahead in a divorce: he'd done it too many times not to know how to protect his assets and screw the departing wife over.
And then, just when she thought she couldn't bear the pregnancy any longer, the labor had begun. And that had been awful beyond anything Sabrina had ever imagined. It wasn't supposed to have happened at all; she'd scheduled her C-section as soon as her due-date was confirmed. But her water had broken three days early, when her doctor was still on vacation in the Caribbean and his partner and back-up was down with the flu, and the emergency-room doctor had refused to do a C-section that he'd claimed was medically unnecessary.
After that, Sabrina had had to endure the most dreadful twenty-six hours of her entire life. The pain had escalated to levels she'd never imagined were even possible, and no matter how hard she screamed the nurses had kept making excuses not to bring her the drugs. She wasn't dilated enough. She was too dilated-the drugs would just slow things down. "Just push now," they'd kept saying. "Just push." She hadn't had the slightest idea what they were talking about. She hadn't taken a pre-natal class. What point would there have been in doing that, when she had her C-section scheduled already?
And then, at the end of it, there was a red-faced, pug-nosed, ugly little boy, instead of the pretty little girl she'd imagined. She'd been torn and sore for days; she couldn't even go to the bathroom properly without shrieking from the pain. Her breasts were swollen and painful and dripped. She'd tried to breast-feed Tyler, because everyone expected her to, but he had clamped down so hard she'd screamed, every time. She'd been sure there must be teeth poking through those gums, even though the nurses swore there weren't. One of them had laughed at her. Sabrina had never felt so miserable or so humiliated in her life.
Fortunately, she had Mariana to fall back on. The woman had been their live-in housekeeper for years. Max liked having someone to make his coffee first thing in the morning-Sabrina didn't do mornings-and Sabrina liked the status a live-in gave her with her friends. Mariana had always been a bargain: they'd got her from one of Max's business connections, when he and his wife were moving to Beijing. Sabrina had no idea how they'd found out that the woman had no papers, but they had. That and the child meant she was willing to work for less than most dailies would, and of course they could take her room and board off her wages.
Mariana had stepped in. Sabrina had stepped back into her old life. And the result was that the thirty-six-year-old mother of a sixteen-month-old baby had never changed his diaper, even once.
"You'd better change him," Max grunted at her. "He stinks."
He lit a cigar, and ambled off towards his study, where he started looking through the papers the Secret Service had dumped out of his desk. His main feeling was relief. He wasn't under arrest. None of his business ventures had gone south after all.
Tyler stared at his mother, red-faced and angry. Drool ran unappealingly down his chin. He opened his mouth and howled. The smell grew stronger.
Sabrina held him at arms' length as she made her way upstairs to the nursery she had decorated in a style reminiscent of Versailles. The gigantic crib was in fact rarely used: Tyler actually did most of his sleeping in Mariana and Cat's room, where a portable mesh playpen did double-service as a bed, and Mariana could look after him easily when he woke in the night. Sabrina knew this, in a vague way, but it would never have occurred to her to take the baby to the room where he usually slept. His room was upstairs, so that's where she went.
The vast diaper-table was well-stocked with everything Tyler had needed when he was born. Sabrina sat him down on it, and investigated. Wipes. Powder. Zincofax-what was that for? Oh, rashes. All right. But where were the diapers? If only he'd stop howling!
She finally found a small stack of disposable diapers in a drawer. She looked at them doubtfully-they looked very small. Where did Mariana keep the ones she put on him now?
She pulled open all the drawers, and felt on the shelves above the table, but couldn't find any more diapers. Well, she'd have to make these do. Maybe they would stretch. Or maybe she could use two together somehow.
Tyler nearly flung himself off the table several times while she was looking, but she was able to catch him each time before he actually plummeted over the edge. Then she had to get his pants off. He was in overalls, Osh Kosh, very cute but not particularly easy for a first-time diaper-changer to manage, especially on a child as strong and oppositional as Tyler. He didn't have many words yet, but he knew what he wanted and what he didn't, and he did not want to be changed by Sabrina. He struggled and screamed. It was all she could do not to slap him, but she managed to control herself, and kept going.
She'd just gotten the bib unfastened and pulled down and was wrestling with the snaps over his hips when one of his flailing feet caught her in the face, hard. She screamed, and jerked away.
"All right, you nasty little thing," she gasped. "That's it! Keep your horrible diaper on, if that's what you want!"
She pulled him off the table and dropped him unceremoniously into the crib, then turned and ran. His howls pursued her down the hall.
"Mah-mah!" he screamed. "Mah-mah!"
Her heart twisted inside her and she was suddenly flooded with emotions she didn't usually let herself feel. She knew he didn't mean her. It was his name for Mariana.
She ran to her bedroom, sobbing uncontrollably.
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Half an hour later, Sabrina emerged from her room, showered and changed, with her eyes dried and her make-up freshly re-applied. At the top of the stairs she hesitated, then went to Tyler's door and put her ear to it. He'd stopped crying. Everything was quiet.
She cracked the door open a little and peeked inside. She'd left a lamp on near his bed. In the soft, warm light of it she could see him curled up on his side in the crib. He had his face turned towards the door and his fist in his mouth. His eyes were closed. He was sleeping.
She tiptoed towards him, and stood by the crib rail, looking down. His face was pink and white and tear-streaked, and his long dark lashes were wet. Her heart turned over again: he looked so different like that, not angry and howling, the way he usually seemed to be whenever she was with him, but innocent and sweet. Helpless. Vulnerable.
She wanted to pick him up and wipe the tears away from his cheeks, put his face next to hers to feel its softness and warmth, and kiss him. But she was afraid to wake him. She didn't think she could cope with his screaming and flailing, or with that awful diaper.
She wondered if any of her friends were better than she was with things like that. They all had nannies, too. She couldn't ask Max; he'd had three other children, all more or less grown up now, but she was sure he didn't know any more about babies than she did. And he wouldn't like being asked. He'd always made it very clear that Tyler was her business-hers, or Mariana's.
Mariana would be back soon. She'd said "an hour," and that had been half an hour ago or more. Sabrina tiptoed back to the door. She stood for a long minute looking back at him. Then she pulled the door closed softly, and went downstairs to Max.
"Let's get some dinner," he said.
"All right." Sabrina was hungry. "Do you want an omelette?" It was the only thing she knew how to cook.
"I called Amoretto's. They said if we can get there now they can fit us in."
"But what about Tyler?"
"He's asleep, isn't he? He'll be all right. Mariana'll be back soon."
Sabrina hesitated, but only for a moment. Amoretto's was almost as good as Gagnon's. The house was a mess; she was longing to get away from it. And she had built her life on never saying no to Max when he suggested doing anything together. Even with her other attractions-and she had got her figure back quite well in the end, after the baby-she knew it was the only way to keep a man like him.
"All right," she said. "Let's go."
Max stubbed his cigar out and got to his feet.
"We'll have to take the Mercedes," he said.
"That's fine. I'll have to wear another coat, too; the sable's soaked from all the snow those men tracked in."
"Let's go."
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Upstairs, Tyler heard the car start and woke up. Engines always woke him. He sat up and looked around, blinking at the light of the lamp Sabrina had left on next to the crib.
"Mah-mah?" he said, querulously, but he didn't feel like crying anymore. Instead, he stood up. He was a big boy, strong, and he'd been climbing on and over things for months. It wasn't long before he was over the bar and down on the floor. His foot almost knocked the lamp off the table coming down. It rocked precariously for a moment, then steadied itself, leaving the shade tipped at a rakish angle, almost perpendicular to where it had been.
The room was full of stuffed animals and toys. He spent a little while playing with them. Then he smelled something that reminded him that he was hungry.
"Mah-mah?" he said again. "Mah-mah?"
Where was she? She always came when he called.
"Mah-mah!"
He toddled to the top of the stairs. All the lights were on, and the baby gates at the top and bottom were open. Holding onto the rail, he made his way down the stairs, his unhooked overalls bagging around his waist and the straps trailing behind him. Halfway down, he caught his foot in one sagging pants' leg and nearly fell to his doom, but he managed to stop himself just in time. He kept going stubbornly in the same way, even though Mariana would have told him to sit down and scoot on his behind if his feet weren't steady.
"Mah-mah!"
Here was the kitchen. But it was quiet and empty-feeling, and he knew at once she wasn't in it. But he could still smell that warm, hungry smell, like cooking.
Upstairs in the nursery, the lampshade he had kicked as he climbed out of his crib lay pressed against the hot bulb Sabrina had forgotten to turn off when she left the room. It was turning brown.
To be cont'd. . . .