It was a boy.
Pleased with himself, he kicked and flung his arms. Back to it, I used wipes to clean off his front, between his legs, and under his scrotum, wadding them up and putting them on the soiled diaper. Feeling pretty good about myself now, I folded the diaper in on itself to provide a clean surface, lifted his legs, and cleaned off his backside. That took another four wipes. Then I slid out the bad diaper, rolled it up, and, voila, he was safe and sanitary on the new one. I hooked the tabs and lifted him into my arms, which did nothing to stop his wiggling and crying.
“Better?” I smiled. The big baby head stopped crying for a moment, then started squealing again as if I were torturing him with hot pokers.
Instantly, the silent-but-deadly cloud of odor hit me. The new diaper was heavy again and I felt something oozing out onto my hands.
“Well, hell.”
I know a few things: the socio-economic issues of the Progressive Era, the revisionist arguments regarding the causes of World War I, how to prepare a class syllabus. I have some skills, including reloading the Python under pressure, properly tying a necktie with a dimple in the center, and effectively swinging a hammer. I know how to make a dry martini and make love to a woman. Here, I was over my head.
Muttering a lesson in profane oaths for the young master’s linguistic instruction, I carried him into the bathroom and deposited him in the sink. The din of his crying was magnified by a power of ten.
So much for my clever first attempt, filled with hubris and baby-shit.
It took another fifteen minutes, a facecloth protectively placed over his dangerous little penis, much clumsiness on my part, and two diapers, but the baby was finally clean, powdered, and back in his crib. I put a rattle in his hand and shook it. He looked at me with a surprisingly grown-up expression, dropped the rattle, and conked out. After what we’d both been through, it seemed like a good idea to me, too.
I wished that Lindsey’s face would stop flashing across my vision.
After I washed up and cleaned my tie, I retrieved Tim Lewis, who had slumped against the bedroom wall, silently watching my learning curve.
“Get up. We need to talk.”
“Have you been crying, dude?”
“No.”
“Thanks for the help.”
I said nothing.
A few minutes later, he was back on the sofa and I was sitting across from him on a dining chair.
He stared at me over an icepack that I had improvised for his traumatized nose. A nasty black left eye was also materializing. He started shaking.