Baby Talk

completely unaware of any danger, past, present or future. A rivulet of spittle ran down her chin and onto the orange baby jumper that Annie’s mother had given her, with Natasha’s name embroidered across it.

Annie kissed the child’s little forehead, then glanced at the telephone. It was, of course, still off the hook, just the way she had left it.

Cradling the baby in one arm, Annie picked up the receiver and listened. It was completely dead, just like it always was after the beep-beep-beep noise stopped. The sound must have just been in her dream, only—she had been leaving the phone off the hook almost every day since Natasha was born, and it had never made that raucous beep-beep-beep noise twice. It only did that for a minute or two after she took it off the hook, and then became silent. Like it was now.

Annie placed the receiver back in its cradle and carried the baby into the kitchen. When she saw the time, she gasped. It was almost one o’clock! She thought she had only been asleep for a couple of minutes, and it had been almost an hour.

As she prepared lunch, she decided that her unconscious mind had created the sound, as well as the dream surrounding it, to wake her up so she could go check on Natasha. Some part of her knew she had slept too long and decided to get her attention, and with a sound that she associated with the baby.

Wasn’t the human mind interesting?

* * *

It was almost 6:15 when Neal got home from work—it took him over an hour to drive what should have been a half hour commute, maximum, from the flower shop in Buckhead to the apartment on Roswell Road. The Atlanta rush hour traffic was appalling, and fighting his way through it, after spending an entire day on the road, always worsened his mood.

When he came in the front door, he found Annie sitting on the couch, reading some women’s magazine, and, as always, munching on potato chips and drinking chocolate milk. Natasha was asleep, sitting beside Annie in her baby seat.

Neal slammed the door shut behind him. “What you did today was very, very stupid, Annie.”

The baby’s eyes opened. She immediately started crying.

“Neal!” Annie hissed. “Why did you have to slam the door? You woke her up!”

Annie quickly set the potato chips and chocolate milk down beside the couch, out of Natasha’s sight, and then picked up the wailing baby. “There, there sweetie...shhh...everything’s o-tay.”

Natasha was soon quiet, looking up at Neal, her eyes locked on his face.

“I don’t appreciate it, Annie,” Neal said. “I don’t appreciate it one damn bit!”

Natasha made some gurgling sounds, but Neal ignored her.

“What in the world are you talking about, Neal?”

“As if you don’t know,” Neal laughed. “You’re on my fucking back all the time about getting a good job, and then you do something that could get me fired!”

“Don’t use language like that around Natasha.”

Neal motioned angrily to the baby. “She can’t understand a damn thing I say.”

Natasha made another gurgling noise.

Neal slung his jacket and the afternoon paper into one of the easy chairs. The paper slid off the plastic covering and onto the floor, which only made Neal more furious. Annie didn’t want to remove the protective plastic from the shoddy furniture they rented, afraid the company wouldn’t take it back later, when she and Neal had enough money to buy their own furniture. That was a laugh! Neal was certain that all of the rented junk would be worn out—plastic and all—long before then.

“She can too understand,” Annie said. “Babies can understand a lot of things, even from inside the womb. My books say so.”

“Your books,” Neal said sulkily. “You wouldn’t know how to wipe Natasha’s butt without those damn books.”

Annie’s face turned pink. “What’s the