Toothpick Baby
by Matt Counte
My wife Katie and I arrived at her brother Bobby’s townhome along with my parents.
“Are you ready for this?” Katie said.
“I’m excited for this,” I said.
We had agreed to babysit Bobby’s toothpick baby so he and his wife Georgina could attend a gala for his financial firm. My and Katie’s unsuccessful attempts at having our own toothpick baby were well documented on her side of the family. From what I could tell, it was Bobby’s surface sympathy that had compelled him to extend his babysitting invitation to us—“us” being Katie and me, not my parents, who were visiting from out of town.
“Do they have cable television?” my dad asked.
We approached the front door. He always asked whether or not someone had cable because Katie and I didn’t have it at our place. Whenever we went anywhere with him, he made a point of calling out who did and didn’t have it.
Katie rang the doorbell.
“Won’t this be fun,” my mom said.
The door opened, revealing Katie’s brother Bobby, a blustery and vacuous salesman. On his arm he held Georgina, his big-breasted ornament with glistening lips. Bobby wore a navy suit with a big purple power tie, and Georgina wore a low-cut red dress that rode up too far on her beautiful legs.
“Hell-o!” Georgina said.
She hugged and kissed us all on the cheek. She held their toothpick baby in its miniature crib pressed against her prodigious bosom. A baby the size of the toothpick, he was like a super skinny chess piece wrapped up in blankets.
“And they are?” Bobby said.
“My parents,” I said.
He’d met them several times.
“Of course!” Bobby said, his eyes brightening with fake salesmen glow. He shook both their hands like they were the most important people on Earth. “Clark brought his parents,” he said to Georgina.
“They can help!” she gushed.
She handed the miniature crib to Katie, who accepted it with great care. Katie was quieter than her brother, almost a reaction to him. She was more emotional, more intellectual, substance over style.
“When’s my turn?” my dad said.
His eyes dripped at the sight of Georgina, all gussied up for the gala. Once fit and handsome, my dad had a pronounced paunch and vastly deforested scalp. Even back in his single days, he would’ve been no match for her.
“You hate kids,” my mom said.
“I love my son.”
He placed a hand on my shoulder. He’d never expressed any physical affection for me. On the few times I’d tried to hug him, he either maneuvered his way out of it or sulked in my arms.
“Well,” Bobby said, “come on in.”
He herded us into the entryway with his huge arms. He’d played football in college and had stayed in pretty good shape since. It helped that he and Georgina had a personal gym in the basement of their house. Shortly after I began dating Katie, he’d taken me down there and compelled me to lift weights, even though I’d admitted to never having lifted weights, and nothing about my short, slight build would indicate otherwise. I was everything he wasn’t. I was thin and bookish with a high-stress white-collar job in customer support. I ate a ton of shit from customers at work and jogged it off at night, sometimes for hours.
“Aren’t you so excited?” Georgina said to Katie.
We’d tried for years to have a toothpick baby. Meanwhile, Bobby and Georgina had cranked out toothpick baby after toothpick baby that quickly matured into healthy children, growing faster than normal humans.
“Not bad, huh?” Bobby said, gesturing at his living room. “Our new entertainment system.”
It was no different than their previous system, only newer.
“It’s astonishing!” my dad said, drooling over it as much as he had Georgina.
“You’re not in Mid City anymore, pops,” Bobby said.
Where he and Georgina lived in the wealthy neighborhood of Upper City, Katie and I lived in the more modest Mid City.
“When you going to make the move, Clark?” Bobby said. “You told me business was good.”
I’d told him no such thing. He never remembered the actual content of our conversations. He just made up whatever he wanted to hear.
“Oh, they’re fine,” Georgina said, leaning over toward me and exposing her cleavage. It attracted everyone’s attention but Bobby’s.
“Where are the rest of the kids?” Katie asked, still cradling the toothpick baby.
“I’m not exactly sure.” Georgina laughed.
They had five others, all fully grown.
“They’ll be back,” Bobby muttered.
“I bet,” my dad said, staring at Georgina’s jubilant jubilance.
A weather front of disgust swept across my mom’s face.
“You must be in a hurry,” she said to Bobby and Georgina.
Bobby checked his gaudy gold wristwatch. “She’s right.”
He grabbed their coats, his keys, and Georgina by the elbow.
“Freedom awaits,” he said.
“Have fun!” Georgina said.
They blasted out the door.
“I need a drink,” my mom said.
A retired school teacher, she was the once pretty girl who’d evolved into a sophisticated lady who’d then made a smooth transition into old age. By her own admission, she drank way too many vodka-tonics every day. Yet somehow, she still jogged five miles every morning.
My dad and I watched a badminton match on Bobby’s giant entertainment system with the toothpick baby, while my mom and Katie prepared dinner in the kitchen, lemon chicken with a side salad. My dad had fully engaged all the entertainment system’s sixteen speakers. He’d also switched the TV onto its highest resolution.
“Whoop,” the toothpick baby chirped from his crib.
I lounged on the love seat with it next to me.
Perched in the room’s largest recliner, my dad held the television remote in his right hand and the entertainment system remote in his left hand, ruling over the living room like some tyrannical double-sceptered lord from a darker age. He switched channels from one badminton match to another.
“Whoop,” the baby chirped.
“Shouldn’t that thing be in the kitchen?” my dad said. “It’s making a lot of noise.”
“He’s fine,” I said.
My mom ducked her head into the living room. “Isn’t that TV a little loud, Hoagie? We can hear it from here.”
“It’s fine,” he said.
He turned the volume up louder. An additional bar appeared on the screen.
“Whoop,” the baby chirped.
“That’s really loud,” I said.
“Don’t you want to hear the match? That thing is making too much noise for me to hear the match.” He moved from side to side on his hips, digging in for comfort. “Just wait until it starts moving around. Are you sure you’re up for chasing one of them?”
I often asked myself the same question. In my middle age, was I too old to be starting a family? Was my and Katie’s inability to do so a good thing? Should we have just accepted our defeat? Our limitations in life?
“Eventually,” he said, “you find yourself spending all your time chasing it around. Then one day you discover your own life is gone.”
“We’ll make it work,” I said.
“Your life is pretty great right now.”
“It’ll be even better.”
“You don’t know how great it is.”
My dad always complained of how he’d had to raise me, when my mom had done most of the work. She’d handled all the diapers, fed me, and stayed up late when I couldn’t sleep.
“Hoagie,” my mom called out.
He didn’t budge.
She called him two more times.
“Clark,” Katie said.
I had yet to grow numb to the sound of my wife’s voice. If anything, our quest to have a toothpick baby had brought us closer together than ever before. All the sex, fertility treatments, and inevitable rejection had forged us into something stronger.
“Can you handle this?” I said, gesturing at the crib. “For a few minutes?”
“Of course.”
“You sure?”
He glared at me.
I popped up from the love seat. As I made for the kitchen, the entertainment center’s volume rose behind me.
“The TV is really loud,” Katie said.
Sitting at the kitchen table, she painstakingly prepared baby food.
“Should I go out there?” she said.
“It’s fine.”
“Can you reach that?” my mom said.
She pointed at a serving bowl atop the super tall mega fridge. Like everything else in the house, it was way larger than necessary with more doors and sections than any other fridge I’d ever seen outside a restaurant kitchen.
The toothpick baby chirped in the living room again.
“Is he okay?” I said.
“The baby’s fine,” my mom said.
“I mean Dad.”
My mom shrugged and smiled.
I had about a foot of height on her and Katie. Standing up on my toes, and stabilizing myself against the mega fridge, I grabbed the bowl with my fingertips. Back in the living room, the toothpick baby shrieked.
My dad yelled.
The bowl clanged to the ground.
My mom, Katie, and I raced back into the living room. Frozen in place, my dad stood next to the overturned crib. A terrified expression overtook his face, like someone had cut the cable TV cord.
“I was trying to quiet it down,” he said.
Dread flooded into me like liquid concrete. My mom, Katie, and I tiptoed to where my dad stood on the shag carpet. He made to move his right foot.
“Don’t,” my mom said.
My dad remained frozen in place. His skinny chicken legs trembled, unused to such activity. My mom, Katie, and I scoured the shag carpet for the toothpick baby, running our fingers through its fluff and listening for the sound of the baby crying. We should’ve been able to hear it, even though it was the size of a toothpick, but we couldn’t.
“Oh my gosh,” Katie said.
Breathing deep panic breaths, she searched the carpet more frantically. She even searched the part of the carpet I was searching. Either she no longer saw me there, or she no longer considered me capable.
“I knew this was a mistake,” she said, choking up. “This was all a huge mistake.”
The words gutted me like knives.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered.
“What were you thinking? What was I thinking?”
“It wasn’t his fault,” my dad said.
“You called me into the kitchen,” I said.
“Your mom called you into the kitchen,” Katie said.
“Honey,” my mom said. “You called him into the kitchen.”
Exploding into tears, Katie gave up the search. I tried to console her, but she wouldn’t let me touch her. She charged off into the bedroom area.
My parents and I just stood there.
“I need a drink,” my mom said.
She wandered back into the kitchen.
“Can I watch the match?” my dad asked meekly.
Sighing, I nodded.
He returned to the recliner. I returned to searching the fluffy shag carpeting, hoping by some miracle to find the toothpick baby and make everything alright again. I wasn’t sure anything could be made alright again.
By the time Bobby and Georgina returned home a few hours later, I still hadn’t found the baby in the shag carpeting. Katie and my mom still hadn’t emerged from the bedrooms and kitchen, respectively. Bobby and Georgina burst into the room, alcohol-fueled and talking loudly like they’d spent the last few hours in a big room full of people where everyone was talking loudly. Katie emerged from the bedrooms, and my mom joined us from the kitchen.
Georgina’s expression fell when she spotted Katie’s tear-stained face.
“What’s the matter, sweetie?” she said, her lips glistening.
Bursting back into tears, Katie hugged Georgina with all her might.
“He’s gone,” she said. “The baby!”
Georgina held onto Katie tighter, like she was more upset that Katie was upset about losing the baby.
Bobby shuddered with his whole body. I couldn’t tell if it was in disappointment, relief, or some mixture of the two.
“How?” he said.
Katie disengaged from Georgina, as if mustering the courage to explain.
She said, “It was—”
“I dropped him,” my dad interrupted her. “Into the carpeting.” He hugged onto Georgina with both arms. “I’m so sorry!”
She pressed his face to her considerable bosom. She stroked his bald head, like he was a full-grown toothpick baby. I could see the side of his face. He was smiling.
“It’s okay,” she consoled him. “We’ll just make another one.”
Bobby shuddered again. This time, not in relief.
Katie’s expression dropped, like we’d lost the baby all over again. She started crying once more, and I opened my arms wide. She accepted my embrace this time.
“You were right,” Georgina told Bobby.
“About what?” my mom said.
She glared at Georgina, veins bulging out of her neck, a raptor on the loose.
“None of you were up to this,” Georgina said.
“That’s it,” my mom said.
She tore my dad away from Georgina’s embrace.
“We’re leaving,” my mom said.
I grabbed Katie by the hand. We left with our heads down, worse off than before we arrived. My parents followed us out the door. It slammed shut behind us.
Debut author, Matt Counte, lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter where he writes, works, and occasionally surfs. He has obsessed over all things fantasy, technology, and humor since a very young age (as early as he can remember). He's always searching for the perfect balance of all three in everything he reads, writes, and watches.