When it’s over, I look across at Liliana. ‘You ready?’
I pull a couple of kitchen towels, and as I’m walking toward Tommy, he manages to spin his bowl and it flies in the air and crashes dramatically to the ground, breaking and spilling ice cream everywhere. Christ! Liliana covers her mouth with both her hands. Over her hands, her eyes are round and full of an ‘oh, oh, look what you’ve let happen now’ expression.
‘Want i cream,’ Tommy bawls.
Jesus. This is turning out to be much harder than it looked.
Liliana uncovers her mouth. ‘Uncle Shane always uses Tommy’s plastic bowl.’
‘Great. Thanks for the early tip,’ I mutter.
I stop for a moment. I need to think. And I can’t think with all this noise. These kids are doing my head in. First: stop that kid from howling. He wants ice cream. She says plastic bowl. Right.
Ice cream.
Plastic bowl.
I open the cupboard and find a green plastic bowl. I show the kid the bowl and he stops howling. I toss a couple of scoops into it and plonk it in front of him. He sticks his spoon into it and shovels it into his mouth.
‘He’ll be sick,’ a small, knowing voice says.
‘No he won’t,’ I snarl.
‘You shouted at me, Uncle Dom.’ Her lower lip starts trembling.
Oh no. Oh no. ‘No I didn’t,’ I deny, while plastering a big, fake smile on my face.
‘Yes, you did,’ she wails and scrunches up her face.
For fuck’s sake! I start walking toward her. ‘That was just a joke, sweetie. I wasn’t shouting. Look, do you want more ice cream?’
She sniffs and nods.
I grab the tub and put four generous scoops into her bowl. I look at her, and she stares at me with her spoon lifted meaningfully above her bowl.
‘More?’ I ask incredulously. This is the drama queen who claimed sugar is bad for children.
She nods vigorously.
I don’t believe this. I throw another couple of scoops in.
‘Thank you, Uncle Dom,’ she says solemnly, and drops her spoon into the ice cream. While they’re eating, I pick up the broken pieces from the floor. The ice cream is melting fast, but I manage to mop up the largest blobs with paper towels. However, I can see that I’m going to have to settle them in the other room and come back to clean this mess.
SEVENTEEN
After they’ve eaten, I clean Tommy’s face and hands, pick him up, and, with Liliana following behind, carry him to the spare room. It’s a surprise to see it done up colorfully with two cots in it. They must stay with Shane often.
I put Tommy on his back on the table with the plastic mat spread on its surface.
Liliana wrinkles her nose. ‘Tommy stinks.’
‘You bet he does.’
There’s a pile of nappies, and I take one and unfold it, and place it on the table. I undo the straps on the sides of Tommy’s diaper and lift the front flap away from his tummy. The sight and stench of the kid’s shit just makes me want to gag. I mean, seriously gag. I actually start to retch. And I would have been sick too if I’d not very quickly re-closed the diaper and taped it back on.
‘That’s not how you change it,’ Liliana says.
‘I know that,’ I say, turning my head to the side and taking deep breaths of clean air. I pick up my phone and dial Ella’s number.
She answers on the third ring. ‘Hey, sexy,’ she breathes into the phone.
Not feeling sexy right now. ‘How do you feel about changing a very smelly diaper?’
‘Um … Is this a trick question?’
‘No.’
‘It sounds like one.’
‘Look, I need to change a diaper, and I can’t get past the gag reflex.’
She begins to chuckle. ‘I’ll be right over. Where are you?’
‘I’m at Shane’s apartment. I’ll text you the address.’
My phone rings again. It’s Lily. Oh fuck! ‘Hey, Lily,’ I say too brightly.
‘Hey, Dom. Shane called to tell us you’ve taken over. How’s it going?’ she asks casually, but I can hear the thread of panic in her voice.
‘Great.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah,’ I insist confidently.
‘Er … Can I speak to my daughter, please?’
‘Sure,’ I say, and, looking at Liliana, put my finger on my lips to warn her not to say anything about the ice cream.
She nods conspiratorially. I smile at her approvingly and show her the thumbs-up signal.
She takes the phone, listens for a moment, then says, ‘Yeah, but Uncle Dom gave us ice cream. Tommy had some, but I didn’t have any.’
I stare at the little lying rat in shock. What a bare-faced liar! She drops me in the shit and saves her own skin. Even I wouldn’t have lied like that at her age. Hell, her belly is still stuffed full of undigested ice cream.
‘And, Mummy’—she looks up at me before continuing sanctimoniously—‘Tommy’s diaper is full of poop, but Uncle Dom doesn’t know how to change nappies. He called someone to come and help him.’ She listens for a bit more then she says, ‘Nope. Nope. OK, Mummy. I love you too, too much too.’ The little minx then hands the phone back to me. ‘Mummy wants to speak to you.’
I bet she fucking does. You little rat, you. I glare at her as I snatch the phone from her.
‘Hi, Lily.’
‘Is Ella coming round, Dom?’ Lily asks crisply.
Bloody hell. She’s sharp. ‘Yeah,’ I admit.
‘Oh! Good … er … when?’
‘Fifteen minutes tops.’
‘That’s fine, then. We’ll be back in an hour’s time. Is that OK?’
‘Yeah, that’s just fantastic.’
‘See you later. Oh, and, Dom … Don’t give my daughter any more ice cream,’ she says, and I can fucking hear the laughter in her voice.
‘Not a drop,’ I say, and kill the call.
‘Is my Mummy mad at you?’ Liliana asks innocently.
Un-fucking-believable. ‘What do you think, you little troublemaker, you?’ I ask as my phone goes again. I glance down. It’s Layla. I groan. Now what?
‘Hey, Layla.’
‘Dom, where’s my son right now?’
I turn around to where I saw him last, and to my horror he is nowhere to be seen. I feel a flash of panic. The flat is eerily silent.
‘Oh fuck,’ I curse.
Layla’s voice is deliberately calm. ‘He’ll be in the kitchen, Dom.’ I start running toward the kitchen. Layla is right. He is. He’s sitting by the bowl of cat food. And … Oh! Damn! He’s fucking scooping up handfuls and eating it.
‘I found him,’ I say, lifting him up with my other hand.
‘What’s he doing?’ Layla asks.
‘Nothing,’ I say, as I stuff him into the highchair.
‘What did you call for, Layla?’ I ask, while I try to hook pieces of cat biscuit out of Tommy’s mouth.
‘Just to tell you to put the cat bowl up where Tommy can’t reach it.’
‘Yeah. I’ll definitely do that.’
‘Call me if you’re unclear about anything, OK?’
‘Right, will do.’
‘Bye.’
I press the disconnect button and throw my phone on the table. Jesus, kids and their crap. How do people put up with this shit? I clean his mouth out while he tries his best to swallow the brown mush down. I wipe his hands.
‘Uncle Shane doesn’t allow Tommy in the kitchen because he likes eating the cat’s food,’ Little Miss Perfect says.
‘Yeah?’ I have a new respect for Shane. I had no idea kids were such a handful.
‘You have to watch him or he’ll drink out of the toilet, too,’ Liliana chirps, nodding her head sagely.
I turn to look at her. She’s enjoying this. Well, she’s not going to win. A fighter can’t be afraid of anything.
I pick up the cat bowl from the floor and put it on the counter. Then I lift Tommy up and stalk into the living room. The truth is, I feel quite distraught. I don’t know if cat food will make the kid sick. I put him on the floor. I want to Google the effects of eating cat food, and I realize my phone is still in the kitchen. I go to get it, and come back to find Liliana standing in the middle of the room with her hands on her hips.