Behind the bars of his crib at night, the prisoner overhears the husband and wife argue. They talk of babies and who wanted and who didn’t want the one they had. The woman says that it is tradition to take the one you get, and if you don’t love it right away, you learn to love it. The husband says that’s all right for her to say, but that he’s never been able to love a stranger.
The former baby decides that it is time to move on and tells the woman of his decision when they’re alone together the next morning.
“If that’s the way it has to be, that’s the way it has to be,” she says. “Promise me one favor, one itsy-bitsy favor before you go.”
“One and no more,” says the former baby.
“I want you to promise to stay with me until you grow up.”
The former baby throws off his disguise. “I’ve grown up,” he announces.
The woman shakes her head in astonishment. “They grow up so fast,” she says, blotting a tear with the back of her hand.
The overaged baby is given his unconditional release and is on his way. It is a little disappointing. In the old days, she would have blocked the door or screamed or thrown herself to the floor.
On his return, the true baby finds the usurper in his room, messing around with his toys. “Those are mine,” he says.
“Those are mine,” the usurper says.
“How can they be yours if they’re mine?”
The question seems to baffle the imposter, who mumbles something in reply and hugs the toys to his chest. As a further insistence, he lets out a scream.
In a moment — how fast they are — the mother sticks her head in the room and says, “Please don’t make him cry. How many times do I have to tell you not to make him cry?”
The true baby answers her in his mind after she has gone. He makes an eloquent case against the unplayable lie of appearances.
Wherever the true baby goes, the image of his former self occupies space formerly reserved for him.
The next night, our hero redisguises himself as a baby and leaves the house, pursuing the pleasure of old adventures.
“What a nice baby,” someone says, and he turns to accept the compliment. In the middle of his turn, he stops himself (the remark might have been meant for someone else) to avoid disappointment. Then curiosity gets the better of him and he turns fully around, confronting the landscape behind. If there was anyone there before, there is no one now.
Later that night, he accepts the hospitality of an older couple, who are seeking to add to their scrapbook of memories.
“We’ll give you a little time to settle down,” the old man says, “and then we’d like to see you do some charming baby things.”
The former baby has difficulty remembering what he used to do that old people found charming. He says that he’ll take requests. But his hosts have that faraway look that comes from willful misunderstanding or obliviousness.
“Just enjoy yourself,” each says to him in private as if such advice had to be kept secret from the other.
The former baby has no easy time stimulating pleasure. He sits on the floor and smiles, then stands up and smiles, then jumps up and down and smiles. It is not the most fun he ever had.
“That’s so cute,” one or the other of the older ones says, but then they begin to yawn and fall asleep.
The baby-in-disguise can see that they are trying to please him, and he makes every effort, short of succeeding, to experience pleasure. The stares of these people unnerve him, their unspoken demands. He speeds up his playing, strives for feverish gaiety.
“Are you having fun?” they ask him.
“Fun,” he repeats as he remembers the imposter doing.
After a while, a certain amount of disappointment sets in on both sides. The old couple feel only the barest stirrings of lost youth, the breath of forgotten distaste, and the former baby experiences an incompetence unlike any other failure he has known before. The full and easy gesture of babyhood eludes him. Still, he continues to play, to throw himself around the room as he imagines he had at an earlier, more reckless time.
The old man, peering out of one eye, is the first to give voice to the obvious. “This is not working out,” he says. “It exhausts me just looking at this baby.”
The old lady defends the former baby’s behavior at length and without conviction. A parting of the ways is arranged, under which the stigma of fault is avoided on all sides.
“You’ll visit us, won’t you?” they say for the sake of form as he leaves. “There’ll always be a place for you here.”
The old couple give him a stale fortune cookie as a parting gift.
The message, which he reads at earliest opportunity, is: “Appearances may be deceiving.”
Disguise apparently deceives itself. The former baby works at reestablishing his former sense of babiness, studies the imposter for clues. The imposter uses repetition to extraordinary effect, reciting the same name or word over and over again until it becomes other than itself, until it becomes a flower of sound.
Reciting his name to himself at the dinner table, the true baby discovers that his mother and father are deceptive appearances, expert imitations of the real thing. He confronts them with his recognition.
“You’re not my real mother and father,” he says, then watches them dance their awkward denial. “I want my real parents,” he says.
“Dear,” says the false mother, “we are your real parents. What can we do to prove it to you?”
Several tests are set up for the imposter parents, which they pass but in a way that makes their success seem in itself a deception.
The true baby pretends that the false parents are no different from the real ones; he must be careful not to create dangerous suspicions.
“Do you think I’m not your mother?” the woman asks the next day.
“I’m not saying,” he says.
“Well, I am.” she says.
Later, the true baby takes the imposter aside and says, “You’re going to have to help me. This is an emergency.”
“Help me,” the imposter echoes.
“This baby is all right,” he says to no one in particular.
An alliance between them, an arrangement of mutual interest, enters the first stages of negotiation. They play the rest of the day together as if they were both imposters.
The apparent parents are in their bedroom when the baby that is lets himself in the door. The other, the author of the plot, hides himself outside.
“Mommy. Mommy. Mommy,” the baby chants.
The woman raises her head. “Yes, my sweetpie?”
“Mommy. Mommy. Mommy. Mommy.”
“What is it, darling?”
“Mommymommymommymommymommymommymommy. “
“What do you think is the matter with him?” the woman says to the man.
“Maybe he wants you to pick him up,” the man says.
When the woman gets out of bed, the baby runs screaming from the room.
“What’s bothering him, do you think?” the woman asks.
At first the man doesn’t say anything. Then he says. “Maybe the baby’s on to you.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that the baby knows you’re not what you pretend to be.”
After that the woman closes the door.
It is hard for the former baby to believe that what he knew to be true is actually so. Still, the evidence is inescapable.
There is nothing for him to do with his information except live with it in swollen silence.
The two of them share the secret now, although the presumptive baby has a limited understanding of its implication and that frail awareness will become the shadow of itself in time.