Tales of the City 05 - Significant Others

lowered the roll of towels, banging it angrily against her leg. “I specifically told Nguyet to make sure we had enough to—”
    “I’ll tell her,” he put in. “She understands me better.” She also liked him better, but he wasn’t about to say so. He’d shared a special rapport with the Vietnamese maid ever since he’d discovered she couldn’t tell the difference between Raid and Pledge. His pact of silence about the incident seemed the very least he could do for a woman whose uncle had been killed in an American bombing run over the Mekong Delta.
    “It’s just a language problem,” he added. “She’s getting much better. Really.”
    Mary Ann sighed and returned to the bathroom.
    He raised his voice so she could hear him. “Paper towels won’t kill you. Think of it as a learning experience.”
    “Right,” she muttered back.
    “Maybe there’s a show in it,” he offered, trying to sound playful. “A dreaded new medical condition. Like … the heartbreak of Bounty butt.”
    She didn’t laugh.
    He thought for a moment, then said: “Viva vulva?”
    “Go to sleep,” she told him. “You’re gonna wake up Shawna.”
    He knew what she was doing in there. She was reading USA Today, briefing herself for the show, learning a little about a lot to keep from seeming stupid on the air.
    He picked up the book again and studied the face of the world’s most beautiful fat woman. Then he switched off the light, burrowed under the comforter, and slipped almost instantly into sleep.
    He dreamed about a woman who had tits the size of watermelons.
    The next time he woke, his daughter was conducting a Rambo-style maneuver on his exposed left leg, propelling a green plastic tank up his thigh in an apparent effort to gain supremacy of the hillocks that lay beyond. Shawna invariably chose some sort of guerrilla theater over the simple expediency of saying, “Get up, Daddy.”
    He remained on his stomach and made a cartoon-monster noise into the pillow.
    Shawna shrieked delightedly, dropping the tank between his legs. He rolled over and snatched her up with one arm, tumbling her onto the bed. “Is this my little Puppy? Yum-yum. Puppy Monster eats little puppies for breakfast!”
    He wasn’t sure how this Puppy business had begun, but he and Mary Ann both made use of the nickname. In light of Mary Ann’s distaste for the child’s given name, maybe it was simply their way of avoiding the issue without being disrespectful to the dead.
    Connie, after all, had named the little girl, and Connie had died giving birth to her. They couldn’t just choose a new name the way people do when their pets change hands.
    Was that what “Puppy” really meant? Something that wasn’t theirs? Something they had picked out at the pound? Would the nickname hurt Shawna’s feelings when she was old enough to consider its implications?
    He seized his daughter’s waist and held her aloft, airplane fashion.
    The little girl spread her arms and squealed.
    He rocked forward, causing her to soar for a moment, but his butt made a graceless landing on the toy tank.
    “Goddamnit, Puppy. Mommy didn’t buy that, did she?”
    She managed to keep a poker face, still impersonating an airplane.
    He lowered her to the bed and reached under him for the offending war machinery. “It’s Jeremy’s isn’t it? You’ve been trading again.”
    The kid wasn’t talking.
    “I didn’t buy it, and Mommy didn’t buy it, and I know you don’t take things that don’t belong to you.”
    She shook her head, then said: “I’m hungry.”
    “Don’t change the subject, young lady.”
    Shawna sat on the edge of the bed and let her head dangle in a loose semicircle. The little charlatan was condescending to cute as a last resort.
    “What did you trade for it?” he asked.
    Her answer was unintelligible.
    “What?”
    “My Preemie, “ she said.
    She slid off the bed, hitting the expensive new carpet with a soft thud. “My Cabbage Patch Preemie.” Her tone indicated that this was a matter of simple laissez-faire economics and none of his goddamn business.
    He felt a vague responsibility to be angry, but he couldn’t help smiling at the inevitable scene in the condo across the hallway: Cap Sorenson, the ultimate Reaganite, returning home after a hard day of software and racketball, only to come upon Daddy’s little soldier playing mommy to a premature Cabbage Patch doll.
    Shawna tugged on his arm. “Dad-dee … c’mon!”
    He checked the