Read Online Baby Talk by Mike Wells - Free Book Online Page A

imagined
that Natasha had spoken to him, and the telephone message (he sure
wished he hadn’t thrown the message slip away). And maybe he had
sleepwalked and put the trophy out in the middle of the floor
himself. Who could say? There were probably lots of other rational
explanations he hadn’t considered.
    The guard was standing in front of the
building’s entrance, eyeing him again.
    Neal quickly put his sneaker back on,
leaving the laces untied as he had before (not that he could tie
them even if he wanted too—his foot was just too swollen), and got
out of the van. He stepped onto the pavement with the utmost care,
but a twinge of pain shot through his left foot and lurched all the
way up his leg to his testicles. Grimacing, he limped his way
around to the back of the van. As he opened the double doors, a
wave of nausea rolled over him that was so debilitating he thought
he might pass out right there in the parking lot. But after a few
long seconds, it subsided.
    He finally got the box of roses out of the
van and headed into the building. Luckily, the office where the
flowers were to be delivered was located on the lobby level, only a
short distance from the front door.
    When he came back out to the parking lot,
the guard approached him.
    “This is none of my business, pal, but you
don’t look so good.”
    “Oh?” Neal made an effort to walk without
limping, even though the pain was almost unbearable. “What do you
mean?”
    The guard laughed. “You look like death
warmed-over. You’re white as a sheet.”
    Neal touched his face self-consciously, then
opened the door of his van.
    “You better see a doctor. I don’t think you
should be driving.”
    “I already saw a doctor,” Neal said,
slamming his door shut. “Why don’t you mind your own damn
business?”
    The guard shook his head. Neal glanced at
his own face in the rearview mirror and noticed that his forehead
was beaded with sweat. His skin seemed colorless. Yeah, he did look
like “death warmed-over.” That was a good description.
    But he had to keep working.
    Avoiding any more eye contact with the
guard, he revved up the van’s engine and pulled away.
     
    * * *
    Cradling a sleeping Natasha in one arm,
Annie picked up the telephone and punched in the same long distance
number that she had called at least 20 times that day. On her first
few attempts to reach her mother, she was almost relieved there was
no answer. They hadn’t spoken in months, since Annie had, in so
many words, told her mom to butt out of her life.
    “Mrs.” Paula Crawford still lived in
Chattanooga and had been dating a guy named Doug for the past sixth
months or so. Annie didn’t care much for Doug—he was a kind of a
dimwitted truck mechanic who only seemed interested watching
football and wrestling on TV. But he was “hard-working,” and “very
loyal,” to use her mother’s words. Annie supposed that if Doug made
her mother happy, that was all that mattered. She just wished her
mom had the same attitude about Neal.
    But the breakdown in the mother-daughter
relationship wasn’t Annie’s fault—she was sure a lot of girls would
have done the same in her situation. Didn’t her mother realize what
a double-bind she created for her daughter? She hadn’t wanted Annie
to marry Neal, but she hadn’t wanted Annie to be an unwed mother,
either. What choices did that leave? Have an abortion, or give the
baby up for adoption. That was it. Annie would
never
do
either of those things, and she knew her mother wouldn’t have,
either, had she been in Annie’s shoes. But she offered Annie no
solution to the dilemma. “It’s not my problem, Annie,” is all she
would say. “You’ll have to make this decision yourself.”
    The worst thing about all this was her
mother’s hypocrisy. The prim-and-proper “Mrs.” Paula Crawford
couldn’t bear the thought of having a daughter who was an unwed
mother, worried about what all her friends and everybody else in
Chattanooga would