Melanie sniffled. “Well, maybe Lick ain’t the father. Maybe it is your brother.” She looked off into space. “See… I’m sure I specifically remember him bein’ in my face with those gorgeous eyes that’re like yours while he was inside of me.”
God, this chick. I shook that off with a grimace.
Wait.
“Wait. Did you say two weeks from the last day of your last period? It’s two weeks from the first day of your last period. You’re out by a week.”
She looked at me blankly. Then she blinked, got a faraway look in her eyes, and then she twitched. “No. It lines up. That’s what I meant.”
She was lying her face off; I was sure of it.
I stared a minute. She stared back without flinching. Dad always said that when someone stared into your eyes for a long time trying to convince you of something, it often meant they were a practiced liar. Dad said to look and look hard and you’d know. I knew.
“I don’t know what to tell ya, sister. If you want a DNA test to rule out either of them, I’m sure we can do that and that’d help you at least know for sure. We can ask Mrs. Hanson if there’s anything left that can be used to test. A hairbrush maybe. Or wait… I think nowadays, if she takes a test they can tell her if your son is related to her.”
“Maybe I oughta go see him. Talk to him.”
She was obviously talking about my brother. Her words had given me a pretty clear perspective of what’d gone down in that threesome and if Rider said what he said, it was likely true.
First off, my father drilled it into my brothers that you do not ever go ungloved. Clearly, that was a lesson for Dad because my mother wound up a Valentine and she wouldn’t have otherwise, though the four of us were also here because of my dad’s weakness for her. Clearly, with four kids and the number of times they split up between all of us and throughout my childhood he’d had a weak spot for her.
Dad kept a box of condoms in a cabinet behind the bar in the basement and they all knew about it the minute they sprouted their first pubic hair. Not joking. I took the box once to keep in case I ever needed them, and two days later there was a new box with no questions asked.
My brother would’ve for sure worn a rubber whether he was having sex in front or in the back.
Second: I knew babies didn’t 100% always look like their dads, but this baby didn’t look remotely like Ride. He also didn’t look like Luke. Melanie’s hair was dirty blonde. Her son’s hair was strawberry blond. And his skin was very fair. Rider had medium brown hair closer to Mom’s natural shade than the rest of us that had very dark hair like Dad, but Ride wasn’t fair-skinned like this. Lick had dark hair and dark eyes with more of an olive complexion.
“My opinion… get a DNA test. That’ll do the talking.”
She got a faraway look in her eyes. “I just really need to fuckin’ sleep. He’s teething and he just cries n’ cries.”
“He’s napping now. It’d probably be a good time to get home and take a nap, too,” I suggested. “We can talk later if you want my help getting a DNA test.”
“Actually, any way you can come n’ sit with him so’s I can do that? Nap, I mean? I swear, the minute I close my eyes, he’ll be cryin’ and if I don’t get some sleep I don’t know what I’ll do. Just hang for a few hours so I can sleep just a bit?”
I considered it a moment. She looked rough.
“Please,” she said. “He might be your nephew.”
“Yeah, okay. Let’s go,” I said. He wasn’t my nephew, I felt that in my bones, but she clearly had no support system at all.
I followed her two blocks to a shabby low-rise apartment building, leaving my car where it was, parked near the park.
***
Her ground-floor apartment was small, and it was filthy. It smelled like a combination of dirty diapers, dirty laundry, ashtray, and dust. My nose actually tingled with the amount of dust in the place. The apartment was a room with a kitchenette that took up one wall plus a bedroom and bathroom. The counters were covered in stuff. She pushed the stroller against the wall and adjusted the seat so the still sleeping baby could recline and fixed an unconvincing smile on her face, saying, “Thank you. I’m just…beat.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Grab a nap. I’ll sit here for a bit.”
“I need it bad. I can’t remember the last time I got more than an hour or two. If he wakes up, there’s bottles in the fridge. Wake me up if you have to go, but really, if you could hang a few hours it’d mean the world.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said softly, looking around at the apartment. “I’ll tidy up for you a bit while he sleeps.”
She gave me a look of thanks, putting her hand to her chest as if what I’d said had touched her heart, then went to her bedroom, closing the door behind herself.
The shabby couch was covered in clothes. There was an old television on a TV tray in the corner, so I nabbed the remote from the arm of the couch and set my bag there. When I turned it on, noise assaulted my ears with a kids’ TV show and I frantically pressed buttons to turn it down. The baby boy stirred but didn’t wake. I decided to tackle the dirty dishes first.
When those were done, I swept the floor with a broom but found no dustpan so used an old newspaper to gather up all the dirt on the floor. I also scooped up all the dirty clothes into a pile that I tossed into the bathtub to get out of the way. The bathroom was pretty dirty, too, though. The apartment had likely been painted white sometime probably a decade ago and the place had clearly been chain-smoked in. There were no drapes and the space had zero charm.
Whether this was Luke’s baby, Ride’s baby (I doubted it) or someone else was the baby daddy, this little boy didn’t deserve to live in a dirty and dingy place like this. I tried not to be an overly judgmental person as a rule, I was raised with a live and let live philosophy. Dad provided for us, but there had definitely been some lean times, too, particularly when he was away, and Mom would burn through whatever money he’d left her. And when Mom neglected us when Dad was away, there were others in our lives who made sure we were okay. If it weren’t for women like Delia, Connie, and Sheila from the club I don’t know what I would’ve done for a positive female role model. So, I couldn’t help but feel anger rise in me at Melanie. Having no money was one thing, but he was dirty, the place was dirty, the little stroller he was in was filthy. This wasn’t a day or two of mess. This was bad. Melanie clearly couldn’t handle her responsibilities. One look at this place and a social worker would take that baby from her.
I stewed on those thoughts as I cleaned and cleaned until I caught sight of his little feet up in the air kicking up a bit of a fuss. He tried to sit up, but he was belted into the stroller.
I dried my hands and went over to him. He immediately started wailing.
“Shh, it’s okay Trevor. I’m Jojo. Here. I’ll pick you up and get you out of there. You want a bottle?”
I lifted him up into my arms. His fingers immediately went into his mouth and then he was screeching, seeming like he was in pain. He was for sure teething. I worked in a daycare center the summer after I finished high school and had my fair share of experience with babies. It got me the job as a nanny before Dad summoned me home. I put my wrist to his forehead. He felt feverish, too.