Class - Cecily Von Ziegesar [45]
“Just so you know, that’s regurgitated baby formula all over your shoulder, not breast milk. Can’t breastfeed when you adopt,” Blanche explained, tossing back the dregs of her wine. “So we’ll see you around eleven or twelve.” She gave Beetle one last kiss on his little forehead and swished out the door in her fringed boots. “Help yourself to anything in the fridge if you get hungry!”
It seemed like a lot of trouble for only $40, especially an hour later, after fun time. Fun had consisted of Shipley putting Beetle down on his feet so he could walk around, and watching him topple over onto the carpet like a badly made toy. It hadn’t occurred to her that he wouldn’t know how to walk. Of course Beetle had begun to cry, and he’d been crying ever since. She carried him around for a while, walking from room to room, opening cabinets and drawers, reading the spines of books, checking out the contents of the fridge and generally snooping. She learned that Professor Rosen and her partner, Blanche, liked to eat things like tahini, tempeh, and quinoa. She learned that they used something called Dr. Bronner’s Magic Liquid Soap to wash everything—their dishes, their clothes, their hair—and that instead of Advil and Tylenol their medicine cabinet was stocked with little vials of homeopathic remedies with names like Nux Vomica, Belladonna, Gunpowder, and Cypripedium Pubescens. She learned that they slept on the floor, on a futon covered in natural-looking cream-colored sheets, and that they owned only six dresses between them. She learned that they used organic bleach-free tampons. There was no caffeine in the house and no television, but the pantry was stocked with case upon case of wine. Their favorite authors seemed to be Virginia Woolf, Shakespeare, and Jeanette Winterson. A Clinton-Gore banner was displayed in the living room window. They had two large Maine coon cats who ignored Shipley completely. The house was cozy, full of plants and pillows and throws and furniture salvaged from thrift stores, but it was so completely alien Shipley wasn’t comfortable enough to sit down.
How had they come to live this way? she wondered as she paced the dusty wood floors with the crying baby in her arms. Were they raised in a house like this? Had they always eaten tempeh? Had they always preferred women to men? And if not, when did it happen? When did they know that they wanted to be mommies together and raise a little boy without caffeine or television or meat or bleach? How did they know they preferred Clinton-Gore over Bush-Quayle or Ross Perot? Was it something they learned in college?
She couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to her after four years of exposure to such people. She might experience a slight alteration, or she might be completely transformed. Would she stop shaving her legs and using deodorant and write the word “women” with a y? Would she forgo leather and refuse to eat meat? Would she grind her own wheat and get fat and grow a mustache?
Beetle kept on crying. Finally she laid him down on his back in his crib. His face was no longer tan, but red. His diaper needed changing—it had been swelling by the minute—but she couldn’t very well change him when he was so hysterical. Maybe he’d wear himself out soon and fall asleep.
But the baby continued to cry.
Shipley stared at him. She reached through the slats of the crib and poked his spongy arm with her finger.
“Hush. You be quiet now,” she murmured and stuck out her tongue, as if this were only a game they were playing and her helplessness was just an act. Beetle’s shiny jelly bean eyes widened and the intensity of his howls increased. She left the room, hoping he would cry himself to sleep.
Downstairs she lit a cigarette and poured herself a glass of white wine from the open bottle in the fridge.