“Sorry,” I say to Stan. “I have to get this.”
He puts up his hands in an “Of course, no problem!” gesture, and I turn away, into the booth and toward the window, and focus on a tree in the distance. I take a deep breath.
“Hey, Pop!” I say. It’s important, when misleading your parents, to appear cheerful yet vaguely callous.
“Hello, daughter of mine! We have landed! How goes the sister-watching?”
“Swell,” I tell him. “So far no fits.” Totally true. “She’s had a lot of garden time.” Counting the way she’s been crouching down and examining the ground at rest stops, that’s maybe not a total lie. “Overall, things are good here!” They are, mostly.
“Well, okay then. Glad to hear it. We just wanted to check in and let you know we’re here safe,” says Dad.
“How’s Mom? How’re the Galápagos?”
“Hot,” says Dad, and I can hear him smiling at himself. “And the weather is pretty warm too.” There it is.
“Ugh, yikes,” I say, pretending to be grossed out by the affection my parents have for each other.
“In all seriousness, your mother’s doing well, and the islands are beautiful, except I’m mostly staring at the ground and at readouts. So it’s great, for me. And it’s too hot for a suit, so, again, having a great time!”
“Good!”
“Uh-oh, sport, it looks like I need to go check on something. Your mother sends her love! Can I say hey to Callie?”
“Sure,” I say, immeasurably relieved. I only barely had to lie.
I pass her the phone, which she doesn’t take—never has—so I just hold it there up to her ear and give Stan the “shh” sign with my finger to my lips to let him know he still needs to keep quiet. I hear Dad’s goofy voice through the speaker and watch Callie’s eyelids flutter—in response to Dad, I tell myself slash need to believe. Dad’s voice hums on for a few minutes, then cuts off. I wait about thirty seconds for Callie to offer some kind of response, knowing she won’t, and then take the phone from her ear. The home screen is up, meaning either Callie hung up on Dad or vice versa, but I’m happy either way not to answer any more of his questions.
I put my phone away and sink back into the booth with a sigh of relief—but this feeling lasts for about two seconds, because then I hear what I can only describe as a kerfuffle coming from the direction of the bathrooms. A baby starts wailing, and everyone in the diner turns to look.
“What the hell’s the matter with you? Watch where you’re going!” A man is yelling at Ted, who looks to me like a cross between scared and sorry and furious, and while I’m trying to come up with a name for what I think I see in his eyes, there’s Stan right there in the middle of it, and I didn’t even see him get up from the booth.
“I’m so sorry,” says Stan to the guy. He’s gesturing down at something, and that’s when I see the stroller and realize where the baby screams were coming from. From the way Ted is standing and the position of the stroller, which is pressed flush against the diner counter in what looks like a tight squeeze, I conclude that Ted must have bumped the stroller into the counter, upsetting the baby and the baby’s dad even more.
“Can’t he say he’s sorry?”
“No, no—he can’t speak.” Stan looks at Ted, sadly, and then reaches out to him and claps his hand on his shoulder. Ted’s face twists into this sad kind of smile-grimace. The man looks on, and the look on his face almost changes. Almost.
“He needs to learn to look where he’s going.”
“Yes. Totally. I agree.”
“Because he could have killed my baby!”
“You’re totally right, sir,” Stan says, and I’m surprised he’s conceding to everything so coolly—especially since it doesn’t seem plausible at all that Ted even came close to hurting, let alone killing, that guy’s baby. But then I realize Stan’s not done talking yet. “If my brother had paid better attention to his surroundings, he’d totally have seen the stroller with an infant in it parked right in front of the bathroom door, where lots of people frequently pass through at high speeds.”
“Are you serious with this right now?” says the guy, and now the baby is wailing even louder. Me too if he were my dad, I think, sending waves of pity over to that poor kid.
“Yes, absolutely. And I will personally make sure that the next time my brother goes to the bathroom he checks at least three times for strollers with babies in them parked directly in front of the door.”