Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [44]
Today the note on the front seat read, Needed: 1 pair wool socks, 1 heavy wool sweater or fleece, 1 pair warm gloves, 1 wool hat. All size Large. Shipley stuffed the note into her pocket. The car smelled like cinnamon buns. She turned the keys in the ignition. The gas tank was so empty the warning light was on.
Professor Rosen’s house was only a mile or so away from the farmhouse she’d happened upon the first night of college. It even looked a lot like Adam’s house, except less quaint. Weeds grew out from under the worn porch steps, and the screen door hung from the door frame at a jaunty angle. There were no animals, only a fenced-in vegetable plot that had already been dug up and mulched for winter, and a terrifying scarecrow with red button eyes and red yarn hair. The scarecrow was dressed in a billowing white sheet, with a black trash bag cape and a black witch’s hat.
Shipley mounted the porch steps and pulled open the screen door. The wooden door behind it was ajar. She knocked on it softly and pushed it open. The kitchen table was strewn with the remains of the baby’s mashed peas and brown rice dinner. Soothing strings played on a portable radio. The baby cooed in another room. A nervous lump formed in Shipley’s throat and she considered leaving.
“Hello?” she croaked.
Some woman who wasn’t Professor Rosen came into the kitchen with a fat baby slung over her shoulder. The baby had thick black hair, black eyes, tan skin, and wore a light blue terry-cloth zip-up footie suit. The woman was freckly and blue-eyed, with frizzy blond hair. She wore a multicolored crocheted dress and fringed suede moccasin boots.
“Shipley, thank God.”
“I meant to get here early, but I had to stop for gas,” Shipley explained.
“Don’t worry about it.” The woman put down her jam jar full of white wine. “Darren’s on campus rehearsing her play. I’m Blanche, otherwise known as Professor Blanche. I teach English at Dexter too.” She held the baby under his armpits and offered him to Shipley. “And this is Beetle. Beetle, Shipley. Shipley, Beetle.”
“Hello.”
Blanche frowned as Shipley clumsily laid Beetle down in the crook of her elbow and cradled him against her chest the way she’d held her dolls as a child. Beetle’s shiny black eyes glared up at her. His fat brown face was pinched and angry. He whimpered and hiccupped and thrashed his little hands and feet.
“Um, he prefers to be upright, you know, like looking over your shoulder when you walk around?” Blanche suggested.
Shipley hiked him up onto her shoulder. He didn’t feel anything like a doll. He felt like a furless, pajama-wearing puppy or a breathing bag of warm, wet sand.
Blanche stood behind her, talking to Beetle. “See? She’s a nice girl,” she crooned. “You big mama’s boy. You big fart machine. You big whatchamacallit.”
Shipley bobbed up and down, hoping Beetle wouldn’t fart on her.
Blanche walked around them so she was facing Shipley. “We’ll only be gone a few hours. Here’s the number of the restaurant. It’s in Hallowell. He’s had a bath and dinner. All you need to do is have fun for about an hour, change him into his pj’s, give him a bottle, and put him down. Bottle’s in the fridge. It’s shaped like a boob. He probably won’t drink it all though, since he was such a hungry man at supper.” Blanche pressed her nose into Beetle’s flabby cheek and breathed in, as if she couldn’t get enough of the smell of him. “Just make yourself at home with little old rubberbutt.”
Shipley wanted to ask what exactly Beetle liked to do for fun and what he was supposed to wear to bed, since he seemed to be wearing his pajamas already. Wasn’t that what babies wore pretty much all the time? She also wanted to ask if he still wore diapers, and how she was supposed to put him to sleep, but she didn’t want to seem unprofessional. Beetle belched and she felt something warm and wet seep into the cloth of her sweatshirt.
“Whoops!” Blanche handed Shipley an old stained dish towel.
Obviously this household didn’t use paper towels and recycled everything,