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“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” she said, giving him a glance that said that she wasn’t sure whether or not he should be allowed to be alone with children of any age. He liked that glance. Because he agreed with it. Maybe she’d take the baby home.
Alice. He had to start thinking of her in terms of her name. Alice.
“As for that, there’s nothing complicated about changing a diaper. You just want to make sure that you get the diaper area wiped clean, including in all the wrinkles, and there’s lots of wrinkles in the baby, without irritating her skin. Some babies have sensitive skin.”
“I sure hope Alice doesn’t. She needs to take it easy on me.”
“We’ll find out soon enough. I didn’t get any kind of diaper rash ointment or anything like that. But if you need it, I can.”
“I feel like you’ve done more than enough.”
“I just want you to know this is counting on my time that I owe you,” she said, and there was humor in her voice. Neither one of them were going to actually make her serve that time. She would spend the time with him whether she was forced to or not. Still, it was fun to tease her about it.
“All right. Got it. You’re on the clock.”
“Good. I hoped I was getting credit for this.”
She went on to show him how to change the diaper. It was obvious she was an old hand at it, since she didn’t stumble and fumble around the way he was sure he would.
“All right. This outfit seems like it’s clean, so I’m putting it back on her, but there were several changes of clothes in the bag. I...didn’t even think about getting clothes. What kind of girl am I?”
“The kind of girl who likes dogs and cows and has a lot of compassion in her heart for her friend when he’s in a bind.”
“All right. I can go with that.”
“Good. Because it is true.”
Alice had woken up, but she lay with her eyes blinking, looking around.
“I always heard that some babies are more attached to their mothers than others. I would say that if she’s fed, with a clean diaper, and you’ve burped her, and she’s still crying, then maybe there’s nothing more you can do other than to hold her, although if her crying gets irritating, you can just set her down. It’s not going to hurt anything for her to cry.”
She lifted her shoulder. “Ashley used to say that to me. When the baby was crying, she would usually hold them, but every once in a while, she would set them down in their crib and walk away from them. She said that she’d done everything she could and maybe he was just overstimulated and needed a little bit of breathing room. Almost every single time, he’d be asleep within ten minutes.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Yeah. There’s a lot of baby things that you can get—a swing, bouncer seat, they even have a vibrating bouncer seat now I saw at the store when I was grabbing the formula. But lots of people have raised babies without any of those things.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to be one of them. It feels like maybe I’m going to need every gadget known to man.”
“That’s one way to do it.” She smiled and then held Alice out, careful to balance her head on her hand while supporting her bottom with the other. “Here you go, Dad,” she said softly.
“Wow. I don’t think I’m quite adjusted to that.”
“I’m sure it’s going to take a bit.”
He looked up at her, not wanting to ask, but scared to death, and so the words came out. “Will you stay?”
She nodded immediately. “Of course.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “If you’re here, I know I can do it.”
“That’s so funny. You go clear to the underside of the world and spend five years in Brazil, and yet a night in your own house... If I didn’t know better, I would think you were making up an excuse just to continue to see me.”
“That’s possible,” he said, very seriously. But she just laughed.
Alice started to whimper, and he was scared that she was going to start wailing again, so he didn’t say anything more to Ellen but just tried to bounce the baby gently the way Ellen had been doing.
“I’ll make a bottle. Did you use hot water out of the tap?”
