The Book of Baby Names Read online

  And have you seen the Albright sextuplets on any talk shows lately? At a promotion event in the Baby Town parking lot in Pikesville last January, the kids were so bundled up against the snow and cold that you could barely see their faces. Half of them must have been imposters borrowed from neighbors or from Rent-A-Tot or somesuch—maybe with dyed hair or a wig. Doesn’t matter: to most observers, they’re sextuplets simply because they’re all wearing the same outfit. They told us we “didn’t need” to take pictures, because Baby Town was giving away free 8 x 10” glossies.

  Yeah, right. Doctored up glossies with three Amandas and two Alberts on each sheet.

  Well, the family doesn’t go out much now, anyway. Jean-Marie says it’s difficult to travel with six two-year-olds, and who’s gonna disagree? Any parent can tell you, one two-year-old is handful enough. Photo shoots are done in their kitchen, or their backyard patio or garden. Better, she says, for the kids to spend their time at home, with family. They order stuff online, even have groceries delivered to their doorstep, like in the old days.

  Her excuses had started to sound weak, like the supposed death threats cooked up by those whacked-out fakers in Iowa.

  But it didn’t matter to me that the Albrights stayed mostly at home.

  I was local. I delivered.

  -5-

  I’m reminded of something my buddy Mosley once said. He compared me to a teenage boy collecting baseball cards, mad because I kept getting repeats: all these Adam, Albert, and Amanda cards, and I couldn’t find Alice or Andrew no matter how many packs I bought. But that’s not what this was about, and he knew it. I just wanted to find out the truth, what really happened to those missing babies.

  Shoving the proof in Mosley’s doubting face would be a nice side benefit, too, I admit.

  He could laugh about conspiracy theories all he wanted, say that too many other people would know—photographers, marketers, executives at Diamond, Health Mart, or Baby Town. Too many to keep a secret, Mosley argued. But I still say it’s in their best interest to stay quiet: they’re making money off the “sextuplets,” as much as the family is or more. So I’ve answered Mosley’s only objection, but he never made one dent in the case I’ve lined up here. Clear facts, with pictures and televised video as documentary evidence.

  I decided to get more evidence, since that’s what Mosley seemed to require.

  Think I couldn’t just waltz right in? There was another photo shoot scheduled at the Albright house: I knew, since they always placed a special lunch order for the crew. Those photographers eat a lot, let me tell you. Between the crew, and a week’s worth of groceries for two adults, a housekeeper, and however many of the sextuplets aren’t too ill for solid food (don’t think they really eat that canned Health Mart crap, do you?)—well, that’s a lot of trips back and forth from my delivery van.

  That big house, I knew it shouldn’t be too hard to get “lost” in some hallway after I set down the last of the grocery bags.

  -6-

  When I brought each bag into the kitchen, the housekeeper unloaded items into the cabinet or refrigerator. She also started to lay out a few sandwich plates for the photo crew, and emptied a one-pound bag of potato chips into a clear plastic bowl.

  Next to the bowl of chips, a baby monitor stood upright on the counter. A red light shone beside the speaker’s volume control.

  Through the sliding glass doors, I had a decent view of the cement patio and parts of the back yard. Photographers positioned tripods and held up light meters, while assistants emptied Hefty bags of “autumn leaves” into an artful pile beneath a lush, green oak. (Another bit of camera trickery: ads need to be placed and printed several months before magazines actually hit the stands, so they need to falsify the seasons, scratching over fresh leaves to uncover stiff bark and barren limbs). Mr. Albright sat with the toddlers in the garden gazebo, but I couldn’t see well enough to get a clear count. Jean-Marie spoke to one of the photographers, an angry finger alternating jabs at the gazebo, then at the pile of leaves. From her expression, it was clear she was yelling.

  None of the outside noise registered on the baby monitor. If all the kids were in the gazebo with their father, the other monitor should be with them, broadcasting the commotion to its paired speaker on the kitchen counter.

  The other monitor was somewhere else.

  I mumbled at the housekeeper, a vague “I’ll let myself out.” She barely responded, busy spooning cole slaw onto each sandwich plate.

  Easy enough for me to detour up the staircase instead of out the front door. My feet tread silently on plush carpeted steps. I ducked into the first room at the top of the landing, a darkened bathroom that faced the back of the house.

  My heart was beating pretty fast, and I took a second to catch my breath. I reached for the plastic rod to twist open the mini-blinds covering the small window. Through the slats I saw the yard below, Jean-Marie still yelling directions at the main photographer. Four kids were now carefully positioned in the pile of artificial leaves. I unhooked the latch and lifted the window a few inches.

  Her voice carried: “I’m not bringing Alice or Andrew down from their nap until you set this shot up right. I know the best angles for them. That’s Adam, you idiot! Amber, smile for mommy. Good girl.”

  Four kids down there. I wondered if my count had been a little off, if Amber was still healthy and presentable, unlike her two “napping” siblings.

  Was that how Jean-Marie operated? Did she maintain the pretense of six simply with a constant stream of references to Alice and Andrew—perpetually off-stage in the nursery, but never, never ready for their close-up?

  I knew where to find out. Last November’s Home Decorator Digest did a spread on the Albright nursery. The accompanying story explained how they’d knocked out walls between three adjoining bedrooms to create a wide-open colorful space for their sextuplets. The boys’ cribs were evenly positioned in one end, the girls’ cribs in another, with a large, carpeted play area separating the two. In the pictures, mobiles of butterflies and birds and ladybugs hung from the ceiling; wooden chests, overflowing with toys, were parallel parked against the long wall. In keeping with the family name, the color scheme was bright pastels, from lime sherbet wallpaper to a dreamsicle orange sofa and lemon end tables.

  According to the article, the nursery was upstairs in the south-west quadrant of the house, to maximize exposure to natural light. I slipped out of the bathroom and turned left.

  All three doors were closed, but I didn’t hear anything when I placed my ear against them. I slowly opened the door on the right—the girls’ section of the nursery.

  The bottom of the door whispered against the tufts of carpet, then hit a dull thump after I’d barely opened it a crack. I peeked inside to check if anybody was watching the kids, but the room was mostly dark. I nudged the door with my shoulder, and heard the muffled scratch of wood against cardboard. I pushed harder, and something buckled, giving me barely enough space to slide inside.

  I thought I’d blundered into a storage closet. Boxes filled the room, some of them open, bubble wrap and gift bows tossed aside to reveal stuffed bears or rattles or tiny sets of matching clothes. Other boxes were stacked, unopened, in perilous towers.

  Between these towers I saw familiar butterflies and birds and ladybugs. I brushed the closest mobile away from my head and stepped carefully into a make-shift aisle between boxes. I shut the door behind me, losing the faint illumination from the hallway. Eventually my eyes adjusted.

  The center play area was clogged with junk—although I saw a thin trail that might eventually connect with the boys’ side of the nursery. Cardboard towers blocked most sections of window, but a few patches of sunlight filtered through. Next to the doorframe I found a panel with three switches, and a metal rod with a missing dimmer knob. The middle switch powered a faint bank of overhead lights on this side of the room, and by twisting my fingernail into the end of the dimmer rod I was able to g
et a little extra wattage.

  Enough to help me locate the cribs. I counted five on this side of the room. Three were the same size, and empty. Another was missing its front legs, as if abandoned before the assembly was complete. A wooden rocking chair sat near the foot of the fifth crib, and a long low box served as a coffee table holding two issues of People magazine, a Kleenex box, and the missing baby monitor.

  I reached down and clicked the monitor to “off.”

  The fifth crib was the largest, its sides reaching nearly to chest height. Dark cloth padded the support bars, pressed so close together I couldn’t see through the sides of the crib. I had to step closer to look over the rim.

  Then I discovered what must have made Alice and Andrew sick. I felt like throwing up, myself.

  Because something else had come out with the six. Something awful…

  (-7-)

  Septuplets.

  Even more miraculous a number, of course. But having seven perfect babies is almost astronomically impossible. Openly claim the six. Six is enough to amaze and charm the public. Better to hide the other one.

  Couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl. The thing had dark hair where it shouldn’t, on its neck and on the crescent of stomach where its T-shirt lifted slightly above the waist. Its arms and legs were hairy too—if you could call them arms and legs. More like flat, ridged paddles of flesh.

  The head was too large, the size of an adult’s, and oh God, its face…Staring into its concave face was like looking down into a big bowl of rotten strawberries. Lots of pulpy bumps, a pinched newborn redness aged and spoiled into mush. Dotted with yellow-white seeds, black bristles, leafy green mold. And a juicy wet shine over the whole nasty bushel.

  I cupped my fist over my mouth to hold back a scream.

  A wilted leaf fluttered, and something like a filmy, pink eye blinked open beneath.

  In that instant, I knew what I had to do to help the other children.

  I reached into the crib and grabbed the creature by the throat. That single eye bulged, and a line tore open and hissed from the side of its head, awful grey teeth gnashing. Hairy limbs flapped at the air in angry circles.

  Near the end, that thing tried to trick me. It showed me Alice, cute little Alice struggling sweetly beneath me. The trick was fake, though, like in a low-budget 50s movie when a dead werewolf dissolves cheaply into human form.

  I concentrated on my tightening hands instead, the way my forefingers turned white and red, and how my thumbs overlapped and pushed into the fake smooth neck the monster showed me.

  I heard a muffled baby’s cry. Andrew, I’d guess, wailing across the maze of boxes from the boys’ side of the nursery. His cries gave me strength. I thought of how the Albrights must have allowed this monster to play with its siblings, terrifying the weakest of them, or infecting poor Alice or Andrew with some awful contagious deformity.

  I put a stop to it.

  The housekeeper came running in. Maybe she got some kind of warning beep when I turned off the baby monitor. Didn’t matter. She was too late.

  She took one look in the crib, then ordered me out of the nursery, out of the Albright house—and you can bet I didn’t wait around for Jean-Marie or her fireman husband to show up.

  Never did get a glimpse of Andrew or Alice.

  This would be what you call a confession, I guess. Except nobody’s ever come to ask me what happened.

  Which goes to show you, all along, the Albrights have only cared about money. No need for them to have the police hunt me down and charge me with trespassing. No need for the family to hold a funeral for an inconvenient, monstrous baby that the public never knew existed. The Albrights covered it up. All they ever cared about was keeping the advertising deals.

  Another bit of new proof I had, for Mosley, is that the Albrights stopped having groceries delivered from our store.

  And one more update. The Albright sextuplets just landed an account with Toy Castle. Six toddlers are pictured on a huge new billboard they slapped up over Route 83.

  I can’t bear to look at it.

  * * *

  Cheryl Ann

  The Covered Doll

  Her father told her it was an antique doll that rich folk would put on a fancy shelf behind glass. The doll’s body was a soft pillow shaped like a baby, and the hands were made of porcelain that poked out beneath frilly sleeves. When she’d pinched Miss Rose’s arm hard enough, Cheryl Ann could feel where the porcelain hand ended inside the pillow limb, cut off at the wrist but with a thin rod at the end that kept the hand in place, like a bone that extended halfway up the forearm. The legs were like this too, but with white ceramic shoes instead of feet. When she held the doll by its waist and shook it, the weighted arms and legs would dangle, limbs scrambling in the air as if Miss Rose wanted to be set down to crawl across the carpet.

  The little doll’s dress was prettier fabric than Cheryl Ann ever got to wear. Her clothes were one or two colors, and she wore them until they got too tight or too dirty, and then she’d get some new outfit, too big, but Daddy insisted she’d “grow into it soon enough.” Miss Rose had a faded dress that fit her perfectly, yellow with patterns of green vines and red roses. At the hem, around her neck, and at the ends of her sleeves was a thin white lace, like doilies or the trim on a pretty decorated cake she knew from one of her picture books.

  Miss Rose’s red hair was in stiff curls, almost like Cheryl Ann’s own hair that tangled like wire after she hadn’t washed it for a while. But Miss Rose’s hair kept its shape. The curls shone like painted glass.

  That was the doll her Daddy gave her, along with a plain blue dress so big Cheryl Ann could fit her head through one of the arm holes. She was surprised he’d found such a nice doll at the second hand store. “Well, dear,” he’d said, “people aren’t always so smart. They’ll get rid of nice things just because they’re bored with them. Or maybe they got something a little nicer and need to make room.”

  Sometimes her father didn’t make sense. Like when he told her to leave the doll on her dresser rather than carrying it around the house. “You’re just gonna get it all dirty.”

  No, she said. She’d be careful.

  When he found her sleeping with the doll, he was furious. She had Miss Rose’s scratchy hair tucked under her chin, which couldn’t have been comfortable. One of the hands was in her mouth; while she slept, she’d sucked on the porcelain fingers like they were a pacifier.

  “You can sleep with your teddy bear, but not with that doll. I’m sorry I ever gave it to you.” They were in the kitchen when he started yelling at her again. She covered Miss Rose’s ears so her feelings wouldn’t get hurt.

  Cheryl Ann cried and stood her ground. Miss Rose was the right shape, and Teddy wasn’t. She kept her doll clean. What was the harm?

  Daddy eventually slumped into a chair. “I’m tired of fighting.”

  Cheryl Ann knew what that meant, from when he used to fight with her mother. She’d won.

  For a while, at least. Unfortunately, her father’s predictions sometimes had a way of coming true. She thought she’d been so careful, but one day she noticed a scuff mark on Miss Rose’s face. The doll’s cheeks were painted with a rosy blush. In the middle of one, a faint black line marred her complexion. Cheryl Ann licked a finger and rubbed at the spot, but the line wouldn’t come clean. She scraped at it with her fingernail: that always worked when she got ink on her arm. Or, if she had a scratch that crusted over, she’d lift off the scab and the pink skin underneath would soon heal, good as new.

  Dolls didn’t heal like people did. The scratch got wider, and a fleck of paint chipped off leaving a white circle, almost like a piece of Miss Rose’s skull showing through her cheek.

  The bone color went gray and dirty, and she was afraid to touch it. Despite her caution, the crack spread across Miss Rose’s face; more paint chipped off, more of the skull showed through.

  Cheryl Ann would never have dropp
ed her doll on purpose, but an even bigger crack appeared in Miss Rose’s forehead. One morning she woke up and realized she’d bitten off a red clump of wire in her sleep.

  Miss Rose was falling apart.

  Luckily, her father fixed things. That was his job.

  One evening when Daddy’s truck rattled home from town and he pulled his heavy toolbox from the back and scuffed across their gravel driveway, wiping mid-summer sweat off his brow with his free hand, Cheryl Ann made sure she was on the stoop waiting for him and crying.

  “What is it, honey?”

  Cheryl Ann held the doll close to her chest then, as had been her habit, Miss Rose’s ruined face hidden in the loose folds of her blue dress. Miss Rose was shy, and didn’t want anyone to see what had happened to her.

  “I need you to fix something.” She wouldn’t show him. Not until he agreed to help. Cheryl Ann pouted and waited.

  “Whatever you need, sweetpea.”

  That was enough. She turned Miss Rose toward him.

  She expected her father to be horrified. Her own attempts to fix things hadn’t worked well at all: Elmer’s glue to bring back the missing glaze, but falling off like peeled skin; Scotch tape to hold the remaining hair in place, but the tape clumped into peaks of sharp crystal; red crayon over the cracked cheek, which mutated the lines into deep scars and bloodshot veins.

  “I told you not to drag that doll everywhere. It wasn’t made for that kind of treatment.”

  No need to tell Daddy he was being unfair. He knew it already. She cried some more.

  “Oh honey, I can fix toasters or lamps, lawn mowers or air conditioners—good as new. I can’t fix a delicate thing like that doll. It needs a sculptor. A painter, too. Not a barn painter like me—an artist.”