The three drooling babies, roughly the same age, appeared happy and well-fed, so distinctions were going to be subtle. None of the mothers was breast-feeding, which would have provided a definite clue that they were not the bad one.
The bureau had identified a few other people with small kids on this flight, but the kids were too old or too young, or the father was along to help. They knew the target was traveling alone with a baby who was not yet crawling. They also knew the mom was white and that Daniel had to identify her before she left the terminal in San Juan so that the locals, who had been alerted by the bureau in advance, could help him grab her before she disappeared into the forgiving sunshine of the Caribbean. She could fly right out of their grasp from San Juan. She could run for Tortola, St. Croix, Nevis, any number of welcoming islands.
Daniel peered up the aisle.
Without tearing her eyes away from the airline magazine she seemed to be studying, Laura said, “That one's sitting up already. Six months old, I'd say. But then, our two were so precocious. Joey sat up earlier than Corinna. Hard to tell if it's a boy or girl, all wrapped up like that.”
The baby faced a second woman wearing a leaf-patterned yellow sundress, thin cotton, just right for the tropics. He wondered how she had managed in that dress. Must have brought a fur coat along to get herself on the plane in Boston.
She had long blonde hair twisted into a short braid that fell over her left shoulder, but most of it escaped, floating beyond her skull in a permanently windblown state. He code-named her “Fan.” When the baby slept, minutes at a time, she leafed through a movie magazine, looking irritated. If she had looked bored, he might have found her attitude significant; but she didn't. When the baby fussed, she was right there, kissing its cheek, letting it attempt to stand on her knees, generously supported by her.
“What a sturdy little neck,” Laura observed. “Remember how Cori's neck flopped?”
The flight attendant, a thin, graying man, asked if they would prefer lasagna or meat loaf. They both preferred lasagna.
“Meat loaf?” Laura scoffed. “What do you suppose they put into it?”
Laura made terrific meat loaf. She folded in bits of whole wheat bread with the low-fat turkey grind, fresh tomatoes, garlic, mushrooms, apple-chicken sausages, zucchini, yogurt cheeses. Somehow, the mishmash tasted great. He didn't expect the same from the airline.
Their red blobs of goo arrived. Dan couldn't eat his. Laura tucked in.
The third mother, “Mole,” black-haired and blue-eyed, with a flesh-colored mole at the tip of her chin that extended her face into an exact triangle, bottle-fed her baby throughout the meal, eating nothing. She sipped from a bottle of water she had stowed in the back of the seat in front of her. Whenever her child began to move even a little erratically, she picked through a big bag and stuffed a pacifier into its mouth, or dangled a toy provocatively above it. The move seemed to work, as the baby interrupted its near meltdown, satisfying itself by sucking hard on the rubber nipple. The target wore a pair of lightweight jeans with a baggy pink shirt over a tight white T-shirt.
“These young moms are so attentive,” Laura said, observing his focus, “which is good. It's a blurry time. You're afraid and confident all at the same time.” She put a finger to his cheek. “They're just so darling, such tiny angels. Remember Cori? How she slept for the first three weeks and I had to wake her up to eat?”
It was a blur. Daniel couldn't believe they had two children. The only way he could cope was to immerse himself in work. He was not cut out to change diapers. The smell nauseated him. He couldn't understand how Laura could pick up a steaming, reeking soggy pile and casually rinse it in the toilet. The process, so primordial, made him glad to be civilized, and after the first time he was left alone to cope, gagging with revulsion, he sprang magnanimously for paper diapers.
He was proud of the kids, of course. Symbolizing his success as a man, they were his seed. You only had to look at Joey to know that. Daniel supported them and their stay-at-home mother. He would put them through college, by God.
Laura pulled her hand back and her eyes looked inward. “I thought she might die of hunger. I cried. I was worried. Funny, huh? I mean, now I worry when she eats fast food. She's not thin like you might expect. She's sturdy-looking, even though she exercises constantly.”
Daniel crushed his napkin and put it onto his plate so that the flight attendant would get that he was done. They were firing up the movie, a comedy featuring Ben Stiller. Every time he thought he had seen every Ben Stiller movie, another one gushed along, about as entertaining as a broken water pipe. He put his headphones on, pretending to adjust the channels, but instead turned the volume down to nothing.
“He's not handsome,” his wife announced. “Why is he a movie star?”
Daniel tidied his tray.
“Well,” Laura went on, “it's that false vulnerability. He believes he's clued-in to what's happening. Truth is, he isn't. He doesn't understand that women need, first and foremost, his attentive regard.” She messed with her controls. “These Hollywood guys, what they care about is big breasts. Hence the over-endowed lead actress. If she has anything else going for her, Ben'll never notice.”
He felt irritated but forgave her. From what he could see, movies reflected life: women flitted along the periphery. Even his target was not the main player in this incident. She belonged to someone. She did what she was told.
Read history, he had said to Laura so many times. Women played support staff. Their memorable accomplishments related to raising heroic soldier boys.
The flight attendant came around with a plastic bag to collect trash. Daniel handed his plastic plate and tray to her, heavily loaded. Laura's tray was as clean as if she had licked it.
“That baby,” Laura said, pushing her tray table up, “see how he sticks his toes through the holes in that knit blanket? Just like Joey. His baby blankey? Still on his bed. Did you know that?”
Joe had always clung tightly to his mother, listening too intently to her, laughing at her jokes before she reached the punch lines. He went to her with problems. He avoided Daniel because, Daniel suspected, he found his father harsh and uncompromising.
Daniel found all forms of anodyne unpalatable. He didn't offer Band-Aids, he offered solutions which were painful and sometimes left you bleeding underneath. When would the boy get free of her soft umbilical pull? He was almost fourteen. Adulthood belonged to the hardy. Children and their mothers needed protection, loveys, comfort. Men required weapons. He needed to spend more time with the boy, let him know which side was up before he ended up as naive as Laura.
Four rows ahead of him, Fan sagged. The baby, toes tangled in a blanket as Laura had described, was pushing tight against Fan's right shoulder. It closed its eyes. Fan's mouth gaped. She snored.
Damn. No ideas occurred. What mom wouldn't take advantage of an unconscious baby to cop a snooze?
As the movie screen brightened and Curly's baby tired, the mother and baby stuck together like pages of a book, related, but individual. The baby's eyes closed so tightly its little face smoothed over like a marble sculpture. The mother rested her head against the hard curved portion of the seat that substituted for a travel pillow. She breathed fast when she slept. Was she pretending?