
Chapter 38
Portland native Matt Groening is the creator of
“The Simpsons” TV show, proving to audiences one and all that life
really is just a cartoon.
THURSDAY AFTERNOON, the girls
huddled over registration forms I’d downloaded from the local con.
Their lesson after lunch consisted of figuring out how to write the
correct information in the appropriate boxes.
I’d learned to read and write at the same time.
They’d only learned to read. Writing came hard.
I sat at my desk in front of the computer, adjacent
to the dining table. My concentration wandered from the view out
the windows, to the half-written page in front of me, to blatantly
eavesdropping on their whispers. Much as I wanted to jump up and
prompt them through the procedure, I knew they needed to figure out
as much as possible on their own with the help of a few writing
samples I’d left for them.
They seemed to have recovered from their
confrontation with their brothers and the dark elf’s minions the
day before. I hadn’t. My hands still shook when I thought about how
close we’d come to losing Phonetia.
Scrap sat on the balcony railing smoking a big fat
cigar. He could see all of us, the river path, and if he craned his
neck, around the side of the building, the parking lot.
Interesting, he said as he flew off.
“Scrap, what’s up?”
Oh, this is a good one, babe. Forget about
pretending to work and answer the door. He popped back into the
room and hung upside down from the wine glass rack. E.T. needs
some help here.
“Scrap, what is going on?”
Just answer the door. Your guest has her arms
full.
Her. That eliminated the Nörglein and his sons and
minions.
I heard clumping on the metal stairs. A bit of
anger and frustration was in those footsteps.
Then I heard a baby cry. Not the basic needs kind
of cry of a tiny infant. This was the full-blown temper tantrum of
a toddler. I flung open the door.
A roundly built young woman, barely out of her
teens wearing loose jeans and a purple sweatshirt, trudged up to
the last landing, a squirming Sophia in her arms. Lady Lucia’s
daughter protested as loudly as possible to the entire world that
nothing was right in her Universe. Nothing. And no one could ever
make it right. Ever.
The young woman looked up. A deep frown and extreme
anger turned her pink and white complexion into a parody of Little
Orphan Annie. Her short blonde curls no longer bounced. All her
energy went into confining Sophia and lugging her diaper bag.
“Are you Tess Noncoiré?” she demanded.
“Yes.” I stepped toward her and held my arms out to
Sophia.
She half turned in the woman’s grasp and held out
her chubby little arms to me. Her chin quivered and her cries
turned from angry to forlorn. Pleading with me to tilt her world
back on its axis.
“Ms. Continelli said I was to come to you in an
emergency.” The woman practically shoved Sophia at me.
“Where is Lady Lucia?” I cradled Sophia’s head
against my shoulder. She sobbed and beat her fists but did not
squirm.
“How the hell am I supposed to know? And she isn’t
any lady. At least not by my definition.”
“You must be the newest nanny.”
“Ex-nanny. I quit.” She unslung the diaper bag and
dropped it at my feet.
Phonetia scooted out of the doorway and grabbed the
bag. She and her sister stayed at my side, blatantly
observing.
“What happened?” I asked. “Look, why don’t you come
in and have a cup of tea. We’ll talk. I’ll call Lucia. I have her
emergency cell phone number.”
“I’ve already called it three times. She’s not
answering.”
“What’s your name?”
“Anita Madison. I’m a licensed nanny. I graduated
top of my class from the Northwest Nanny Institute. I love kids.
Kids love me. But not that one.” She pointed accusingly at Sophia.
“I’ve tried everything. And she won’t settle. And Ms. Continelli
gives me the creeps. She keeps blood in the fridge. She decorates
in skulls and swaths of black around pictures of graveyards. And
those teeth! She bares her fangs all the time.”
“Anita, it’s all stage dressing.”
“I don’t care. She gives her own baby nightmares.
Sophia wakes up so frightened, her muscles clenched so tight she
spasms. That’s not right. I’m out of here. Even without a
reference. Just keep the kid safe until that . . . that vampire
comes and gets her.” Anita turned abruptly and stomped down three
flights of stairs. “And tell her that I’m keeping the car she gave
me. I’ll leave the baby seat and stroller at the foot of the stairs
along with that hideous black uniform she insisted I wear. Straight
out of Jane Austen!”
Having exhausted herself, Sophia laid her head on
my shoulder and stuffed her thumb in her mouth. Then she spat it
out and began whimpering again.
“Hmm,” I mused. Something about the way she worked
her jaw reminded me of my sister Cecilia’s youngest.
“Back to work, girls. I think I know the baby’s
problem.”
“What?” E.T. asked, fascinated by the tiny
child.
“Teeth. She’s got new teeth coming in. Probably
crooked. A tiny bit of scotch rubbed on her gums ought to
help.”
“You’d get better results putting the scotch in her
bottle.” Phonetia turned and stalked back into the condo. But she
took the diaper bag with her. She rummaged around in it until she
found a soft pink flannel blanket with a worn satin binding. She
wrapped it around Sophia, making certain the little girl could
clutch the edges.
The baby immediately rubbed the satin against her
cheek and settled. But her mouth still hurt.
An hour later, as the sun neared setting, Lady
Lucia blew in. Her pencil slim, black suit skirt that teased her
ankles was slit to the top of her thigh. The short-waisted matching
jacket strained to close beneath her breasts with a single jet
button the size of Sophia’s hand. I’d seen that red blouse before,
or its twin, with silk ruffles on the deep v-neck and French
cuffs.
She’d had her hair touched up since I’d last seen
her. The glossy blonde length was twisted into an elegant chignon
complete with antique mantilla comb scintillating with jet and
rubies.
“What now?” She tapped her foot impatiently just
inside my door. She rocked back and forth on her black four-inch
stiletto heels. “I was in a very important meeting.”
“Your latest nanny quit and left Sophia with
me.” I caressed the baby’s dark head where she slept on my
lap. “Too bad, Anita might have been a good one. She might even
have figured out that your daughter hurt when she cut a new tooth
if she hadn’t been so spooked by your décor.”
I took a good-sized sip of single malt. Sophia had
only needed a few drops to numb her gums enough to get some relief
from the troublesome tooth that had poked through red and swollen
tissue about ten minutes before. It looked twisted. If the adult
tooth followed the same path, she’d need braces in about ten
years.
“What is wrong with the servant class these days?”
Lady Lucia flung herself into the armchair set at an angle to the
sofa. She didn’t reach for her child. “Phonetia, I need a drink.
Bring me some of that.” She pointed toward my scotch.
Phonetia looked to me for instructions.
I shook my head slightly. My daughter went back to
the problem of figuring out how to write her birth date.
“That’s part of the problem,” I said curtly.
“Nannies aren’t servants to be exploited. They are highly trained
professionals to be respected. You owe her a good reference. She
could have just left Sophia with a hotel maid or someone totally
unsuitable.”
“I paid her twice the going rate and gave her a car
so that she could take Sophia with her on errands and such.” She
threw up her hands, completely forgetting her order for
Scotch.
“You still treated Anita like she should cower
before you and obey your whims without question. Society has
changed since you had a nanny of your own, Lucia.”
“Unfortunately, you are right.”
“Anita said Sophia has nightmares. Bad ones. The
kind a baby shouldn’t have.”
“Anita? Is that her name?”
I grunted my disgust.
“Will you please keep Sophia a little longer? I
must get back to my meeting or I will lose a great deal of money
and much respect from my associates.”
I looked at the clock. Five-thirty. “Sophia may
stay for a short time. I hate to disturb her now that she’s fallen
asleep. I’ll feed her when she wakes. But I need you to fetch her
by eight. My daughters and I have things to do before we go
to the con tomorrow.”
Lucia opened her mouth to protest my restrictions.
Then closed it, thought a moment, and heaved a sigh of resignation.
“Very well. I shall return at eight. I should be able to conclude
my business by then.” She left without so much as looking at her
daughter.
And she didn’t come back until nine.

“We need to talk,” Lady Lucia said before Phonetia
had finished opening the door for her.
“You bet we do.” I entrusted a wide awake Sophia to
my daughters. They seemed delighted to entertain her by stacking
brightly numbered and lettered blocks together. Sophia was more
interested in knocking down the teetering towers, clapping her
hands as she made new patterns of the colored squares.
I heard more than a few whispers over the
similarity between the numbers on the toys and on their daily math
sheets.
“Five and three equal eight!” E.T. whispered
excitedly. “They equal eight!” she chortled louder.
“I don’t see it,” Phonetia murmured.
Her embarrassment that her younger sister figured
it out before she did burned on my nape.
Hmmmm . . . building blocks; back to kindergarten
again. Whatever worked to get the girls thinking in twenty-first
century terms. Or even nineteenth century terms.
Lucia perched on the comfy armchair like she would
a board of director’s chair, or a throne. “I have been thinking for
some weeks now that I am not a fit mother for Sophia,” she
said.
I could almost see the clipboard in front of her as
she mentally ticked off items on the agenda.
“You think?” I still steamed at her offhand
treatment of the child earlier. And her deliberate intimidation of
her nannies.
“Therefore, I have decided that since you are my
closest blood relative, you should adopt my daughter,” Lucia
announced. Her eyes tracked Sophia’s every move. A drop of bright
moisture glistened in the inside corners of her eyes.
Oh, yes. Yes, we have to do it, babe, Scrap
said. He flitted about the room three times before taking up a
perch on the wine glass rack where he could oversee
everything.
“What about her father?” I asked, not daring to
hope, not daring to breathe.
A baby! Lucia offered me this charming baby as my
own. I’d never have one of my own, but, oh, how I longed for
one.
Our baby, Scrap reminded me.
“Donovan is an adolescent. I do not trust
him.”
“Adolescent?” I choked. “He fell over fifty years
ago. He was a teenager then. That’s a very long adolescence.”
“When Donovan fell, he was a teenager because he
was barely into adolescence in gargoyle terms when he took form
inside a statue. He has barely had time to mature by Damiri
standards.” Lucia dismissed my objection with a wave of her
hand.
“I wonder if all of his faux pas are just teenage
posturing?” I mused.
“Besides,” she continued as if I had not spoken,
“if Donovan ever obtains a home world for the Kajiri, he will take
his children there and he won’t allow them to know their humanity.
I want my child here, in this dimension, learning her full
potential.”
“Lucia, you are asking a lot. As you noticed, this
place is barely big enough for me and my daughters. To add a baby
would complicate things beyond measure.” My middle began to ache
with longing.
A baby to call my own!
“Details. We can figure out the details later. Will
you adopt Sophia?”
Do it, do it, do it, Scrap pleaded from his
perch on the wine glass rack. He flew down beside Sophia and rubbed
his cheek against her arm.
She patted him idly and went back to destroying
more block towers.
“I need time to think about it. It is an honor, but
a huge responsibility.” I twisted my hands inside my sweatshirt to
keep from reaching for Sophia and holding her close, never letting
her go.
“A responsibility you are equal to.”
“You are the one who told me never to take on
emotional entanglements that will interfere with my work as a
Warrior of the Celestial Blade.”
“Perhaps I spoke prematurely. Perhaps I merely said
the words you needed to hear in your moment of great loss.” She
shrugged.
“Of course,” Phonetia whooped. “Three plus five
equals eight.” I almost heard the click in her brain as numbers
began to make sense.
“Sophia will help Phonetia and E.T. learn more
about their own humanity,” Lucia reminded me. Her voice—devoid of
the Italian accent she affected with strangers—sounded
desperate.
“Let me get through the convention this weekend.
I’ll be very busy with my own schedule as well as monitoring two
teenage girls. We’ll talk again on Monday.”
A baby! Lucia was giving me a baby. I had no doubt
I’d agree to almost any terms to bring Sophia into my family.
A baby of my own. And not my firstborn, so the
Powers That Be could not take her away from me.