The Babysitter at Rest Read online

  The man with the silver hair stays outside in the hydrangea bush. At least I think he’s still there, since I see someone’s eyes flash from time to time. It’s very late and I am drunk. I eat some apple salad. Around midnight Tyler Burnett comes through the door wearing his shiny gray suit and black sunglasses. His hair is slicked back. His lips are thin. His nose is sharp; all of his features are sharp. He looks as though his bones don’t fit in his skin. “I didn’t know you were coming,” I say.

  “I hear you look nice in a swimsuit,” he says.

  “Where did you hear that?” I say. I realize this is exactly the kind of question I should not ask. It’s the kind of question that makes everything here fall apart.

  I go to my room and put on my bikini. When I come out, no one seems to notice that I’m in my swimsuit; no one seems to notice me at all. Tyler Burnett is sitting on the burnt counter that is still smoldering and glowing hot under the ash.

  “You’re going to burn your rear ass,” I say. I sometimes say odd things here, but I forget quickly and no one seems to notice. Tyler Burnett seems not to have heard me and continues to sit on the burning counter.

  “How old are you now?” Tyler Burnett says.

  “Seventeen. But I might be anywhere from seventeen to twenty-two. I think I have a birthday soon. I heard talk of a cake at work. I may know more then.”

  “I am between forty seven and fifty two—I’ve just had a birthday—though some days I feel ancient, as the saying goes.”

  “I’ve not heard that saying. Anyway, you look younger.”

  “It’s the shoe polish I use on my hair. It’s the truest shade of black and it can only be achieved with shoe polish,” he says. “Now, child, would you like to get some ice cream?” I look around at our house, the party. Another fire starts near the television. The female firefighter runs out of the bathroom in only her helmet and boots and puts the fire out with a mini fire extinguisher that she has in her purse. “This is the last goddam time,” she says. “This is my job, idiots, and in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not on the clock right now.” Music continues to play from the boom box. Susan looks at me and makes a V with her fingers over her mouth, sticking her tongue out and gesturing toward Tyler Burnett.

  “Yes,” I say to Tyler Burnett. “I’d like some ice cream.”

  The beach is freezing. Tyler Burnett brings me an ice cream cone from the vendor at the top of the hill. Tyler Burnett watches me eat the ice cream in the moonlight. He pats me on the head. “You like that?” He nods his head. I nod along.

  “My house will fall into the ocean one day. Possibly soon,” Tyler Burnett says. He points to the cliff where his house is located.

  “What a beautiful home. It’ll be a shame when it goes.”

  Tyler Burnett takes a tennis ball out of his pocket and throws it to me. I throw it back. He throws it to me again. We play catch. “Use your whole arm to throw,” he says, “not just your wrist.” When we’re done playing catch, I see the lights go on in his home atop the cliff. Tyler Burnett pats the sand for me to sit next to him.

  “Did you get homework today?”

  “No. I’m not in school.”

  “If you ever get homework and need help with it, we can arrange something. It’s been a while, but I’m pretty good with homework. Arithmetic specifically.”

  I almost repeat that I have no homework but decide against it. “Thank you,” I say.

  “My wife,” he says, “is up there in the big house. She’s writing an autobiographical opera. I have no idea what it’ll be about. She’s an actress as well, and a painter. In the day she paints the interior walls and courtyards of the house in murals. In one of our courtyards she’s painted two hundred different versions of herself in various wedding dresses, different hairdos. The dresses can be described as ethereal. The hairdos can be described as fingers-in-an-electric-socket. There is no groom to be seen anywhere in the mural. It is called The Bride’s Courtyard. In our dining hall she’s painted a sea of wild horses, very life-like, called The Wild Horses Dining Hall. She’s considered a Great Artist in the town.”

  “She sounds lovely,” I say.

  Tyler Burnett sits closer to me. “Please take your top off,” he says. I take my top off. Tyler Burnett puts his head on my chest and kisses my breasts. The waves crash against the cliff below his house. As I lay down, I see pieces of earth falling from the cliff. Tyler Burnett pulls his erect penis out of his shiny gray pants. “Child, I would like you to suck my dick.”

  “Alright,” I say. I suck Tyler Burnett’s dick for a little while.

  “Child, I would like to titty-fuck you,” Tyler Burnett says.

  “Alright,” I say. Though it’s as if I’m coated in a thick layer of plastic, Tyler Burnett’s penis thrusting between my breasts is nice.

  “Child, I would like to fuck you vaginally or possibly anally. Climb on top of me backwards with your bikini bottoms pulled down to your knees so they’re stretched wide, lower your chest to my knees so that your ass is up high, then lower yourself onto me.”

  “Ok,” I say.

  At work Jimmy talks about his performance at the party, how everyone loved it, how he logged four solid hours of singing and playing guitar the night of the party and would now get offers to play other parties. Jimmy says, “My dreams are coming true.” I make copies, buy pens, and order lunches for the people with desks. I’m not sure what all this has to do with a career in the arts, but the people around me seem to be making progress.

  Whenever I am not at work, I’m in my bikini. It’s convenient for most of the activities I do outside of work, like fishing with Tyler Burnett. Or eating ice cream sundaes at the ice cream shop with him. Or playing catch with him. Or holding a balloon he’s bought for me. Or babysitting his baby. Or going to the swim club on weekday evenings. Tyler Burnett says I look like the cutest kid in my suit.

  Tyler Burnett buys me a stuffed animal, a pony. “What will you name him, child?” Tyler Burnett says. “Pony?” I say. “Wonderful, child. Excellent. You’re a beautiful child.” He gives me a bag of candy from the grocery store and pats me on the head. At times I forget if we’re lovers or if he’s my father. He does not feel like a father.

  Tyler Burnett buys me a pair of saddle shoes to wear on our walks. I think they look bad with my bikini, but Tyler Burnett thinks the saddle shoes are sexy. The shoes blister my feet. Tyler Burnett dresses the blisters with smiley-face band-aids. He kisses my feet. “That’s better,” he says. “The sores will heal and you can continue wearing the shoes.” He kisses my saddle shoes.

  At the beach, where we go at night to eat ice cream and have sex, Tyler Burnett looks up to the nursery window of his home. “My baby does not grow. He never will,” Tyler Burnett says. I had noticed something peculiar about the baby. “The baby will always remain a baby,” he says. “It is a curse to have a forever baby. The baby will not inherit my property, my good looks. I thought the point of having a baby was so you could age and die. You could be released after cursing someone else to this existence. With this baby sealed in infancy, I fear I may live a very, very long time. I age, but I’m not dying. I can think of nothing worse.” “Rotten pineapple cake,” I say. Pineapple cake is the favorite dessert in town. I’ve noticed that people are disgusted by the idea of rotten pineapple cake. “Yes,” Tyler Burnett says. He takes out his bag of ketamine.

  When I’m not with Tyler Burnett, I think about him often. His image comes to my mind and I have a fantasy. In the fantasy I am decorating his new mountain house. I imagine painting. I imagine becoming a Great Artist. The fantasy is in prime colored symbols: a star, a heart, a palette. He seems to enter my thoughts the same way logging hours doing anything else does. I wonder what category the hours I’m logging with Tyler Burnett go under: sex, sexual positions, sore buttholes, chaffed nipples, vaginal hickies, blisters. It could also be ice cream, or swimwear. Things that are not mine. Youth. Forever babies.

  Tyler Burnett’s wife speaks of the baby
when I babysit. “My baby does nothing but gurgle and shit all day,” she says. “Have you looked in his eyes?” I look in the baby’s eyes. They are quite pretty eyes. “At first it was like—great, a baby. But then the baby stopped growing, and it was like—whoa, a baby. Like forever. You’re supposed to give all of yourself to a baby if it’s going to grow up and use the things you’ve given him out in the world. The whole point is for your child to transcend what came before him with the benefit of your experience. But when you know there will be no adult form of the baby, it changes the relationship. For the first two years I worried a lot and then the doctor told me, ‘I’d say you’re lucky, many women want only a baby, not all that other shit that comes after.’ Then he said, ‘Look at it this way: your baby will probably never hate you because he won’t be able to feel things like disappointment or resentment that develop with memory and time. At least you don’t have to worry about damaging him in any way he’d be cognizant of.’ His words helped, but I was not one of those women who wanted a forever baby. Anyway, we’re used to it now, it’s been a long time. I’m making corn on the cob and pineapple salad when I get back from my archery lessons. You may stay for dinner if you’d like.”

  The thing about forever babies is that you know they will never get older, so you must treat them differently than other babies. You have to suppress your natural urges to point to your nose and say nose or teach them anything like language since they’ll never speak. You don’t say no or don’t do that to a forever baby because there is no lesson they can learn from it. No knowledge is retained. You have to remember to do stuff like tickling and peek-a-boo and cuddling—loving, comforting stuff. Mostly I say, “What a good baby,” or, “What a beautiful baby you are,” and, “I get paid ten dollars an hour to watch you,” to remind the baby that I am not his mother. I hug the baby all day, I kiss him and tickle his belly with my eyelashes, but I often catch a strange look in the baby’s eyes.

  At dinner, Tyler Burnett watches me as I eat corn on the cob. A corn kernel falls into my bikini top and Tyler Burnett stares at my chest. He eats his pineapple salad. The baby looks at me from his high chair. He looks very much like any baby. “Ooh,” I say from across the table. The baby coos. “You are a sweet baby. I get paid ten dollars an hour to watch you. I love you baby.” I detect cynicism in the baby’s eyes and wonder if even when you’re a forever baby, cynicism develops over time, after hours logged watching people and seeing the things they do.

  “Child, please don’t pursue obscure aspirations of becoming something, though I know you wouldn’t know how to even if you wanted. It’d spoil you. You are better the way you are,” Tyler Burnett tells me before I leave for the night.

  I decide to log hours at reading places or art places because I’ve learned my comprehension level is basic. At the library, the silver-haired man watches me between the shelves as I read Being Regular in Town and How To Spot Irregularities. At the art gallery the man with the silver hair watches me from behind a large nose sculpture. I am used to the silver-haired man’s presence, but it is better not to say hello. At the grocery store he’s inside the freezer as I go down the freezer aisle, at the coffee shop he sits under a bench with binoculars pointed in my direction.

  Diana has become very pale and watches television most of the day. She’s unemployed and I’ve seen her eat rancid food from the refrigerator. An almost visible stench comes off of her. I suspect Allen is the pyromaniac among us, lighting the fires around the house. Lorry has become a chronic masturbator and keeps me up all night with his moaning and grunting. The smell of semen is heavy in our room so I need to keep the window open. Allen has moved into my and Lorry’s room, and Susan has taken the big bedroom since she makes the most money. Susan is excelling in her career as a businesswoman; she gets a raise almost weekly and has the type of personality at work that makes her colleagues like her. She’s also a party animal and can drink like a fish. She’s seeing a widower named Johnny whose wife died in a localized mall earthquake, but she says it’s non-exclusive since she has the type of personality that likes to play the field. The house is a mess. There are pizza boxes everywhere, the bathtub is covered in dead skin and several spots in the house are blackened because of the small fires. Susan’s bought a new TV and a new oven and a new toilet for the house. The new things look odd amongst the mess of the house.

  Tyler Burnett’s wife has gone to give a public lecture on how to write autobiographical operas and she’s asked me to babysit for the day. I show up in my bikini and take the baby to the beach. At the beach, the baby eats sand and rocks. The baby picks up a crab and the crab pinches the baby’s nose with its claw. The baby then crawls into the ocean and gets pulled out to sea. I go in to get him and the baby coughs up water once we’re on the shore. “Funny baby,” I say, “you might drown!” The baby giggles then his face turns red. Flies begin to buzz around the baby, so I change his diaper. Inside his diaper there is an enormous shit that is composed of a good deal of sand, some string, and a large crab claw.

  “There was a major meltdown at the plant,” Tyler Burnett tells me when he returns home from work. His wife is still giving the public lecture. “It’s pretty much a disaster over there. There was a localized earthquake and it launched the security-setting thing into annihilation mode or whatever. Luckily an engineer knew how to shut it down, but the radiation that leaked may cause some serious damage. Or it might not. But I think these types of things are generally serious.” He looks at the baby in the crib.

  “Welp,” I say. I think this is one of those things that should not be discussed. I know questioning him will be wrong. “That’s the way the pineapple cake crumbles,” I say. Here this is the only thing to say.

  “Precisely,” Tyler Burnett says. Tyler Burnett pulls the strings on my bikini bottoms and they fall to the floor. Tyler Burnett gets on his knees and sticks his head between my legs. The baby watches us from his crib. He keeps his eyes on his father.

  “Child,” Tyler Burnett says with his face half immersed in my vagina, “when I was young, I didn’t fully appreciate young, beautiful pussy. Though I liked it very much, pussy was just pussy. But as men age we are given the gift of young women being attracted to us, before we are decrepit, while we are still able to get decent erections so that we can fuck them.” He takes his head out of my crotch and stands on the little podium the baby uses to balance himself when attempting to stand. “We come to love screwing more than ever before and we screw young girls a special way, with the intention of forgetting everything we’ve ever been. We fuck with a potent desperation that makes us good lovers. We know it’s a frantic stab at immortality in attempt to destroy everything before it, but it’s still wonderful. At least for a while. Thank you for the gifts of your young pussy and your tight ass. It’s as though I’ve had a mind-erasing serum or a vibrancy elixir or like a really strong energy drink.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say. The baby’s face turns red. Flies begin to swarm around him.

  “Please change the baby,” Tyler Burnett says. “The smell is nauseating.”

  Everybody has started to leave dishes or trash on Diana’s bed. Diana does not seem to notice. She sleeps on top of the dishes when she is not watching television or eating spoiled pineapple cake. The garbage, rotten food, fart, and semen odor, along with the now permanent smell of burnt plastic, permeates the house. “Diana,” I say. “Would you like to go with me to the farm for some fresh air?” Invitations are acceptable forms of questions and rarely create confusion. Diana declines the invitation with a shrug then takes a nap.

  It is Susan’s birthday soon. Her birthday seems to be a guarantee. She speaks about her birthday party. She wants it to be big; she wants everyone in town to come. I suspect she has ambitions at being popular, but maybe she’s just a naturally social person. She talks about balloons and banquet tables and samovars and candles. “I’d like it to be a pool party. I’ve been honing my masonry skills and I’m thinking of building a pool in the baseme
nt.”

  “We have a basement?” I ask. No one answers since this is a question I’m not supposed to ask. I wonder where she’s logged hours doing masonry as I’ve not heard of masonry practiced anywhere in the town, but I know better than to ask.

  At the farm, I put manure on the tomato plants that are starting to come up. I don’t know what I’m doing. There’s a scoop in a pile of manure next to the tomato plants, just as there were seeds the first time I came, so I think I’m just supposed to dump more manure on every time I come and that way hours are logged.

  Through the corn stalks I see the silver-haired man from the pool. “Ah, there you are,” he says. “All I want is to be with you.” I assume he’s talking to me since I’m the only person at the farm. Urine streams out from the corn stalks. “Ah,” the silver-haired man says, “relief.”

  Tyler Burnett’s wife buzzes around the house finishing her latest mural on the back terrace. The mural depicts the Burnett home after it’s fallen into the ocean. It’s called The Fall of the Burnett Home. She has buckets and rags and rollers and brushes. She wears her long hair down. Her face is splattered with paint, which is something I think every artist should have on them whenever they’re working. Tyler Burnett’s wife is full of purpose. It comes across in everything she does. She says, “Child, the baby needs to be washed today. Have you smelled him? I can smell him from my wing of the house. It’s putrid.” “Yes,” I say, “what a stench,” though I never smell the baby, I only know he smells because of the flies that swarm around him. She says, “Tonight I’ll be debuting my new mural. We’ll be dining in the cliff gazebo with guests—intellectuals and artists, as well as my husband’s colleagues from the plant. I’d like the baby to be quiet. Quiet and clean.”

  I cover the baby in baby powder. I spray perfume on the baby. I stick lavender and rose petals in the baby’s diaper. I rock the baby. I give the baby warm bottles with a thimble of brandy mixed in. I remain in the baby’s wing as the guests arrive. From the nursery window, I watch Tyler Burnett sit at the table inside the gazebo. Big men in gray suits like Tyler’s gesture with their arms and speak loudly. The artists watch the men in suits. Tyler Burnett’s wife drinks heavily. Caterers serve food to the guests. After dinner, Tyler Burnett snorts ketamine on the dining table. The men in suits nod and gesture and snort ketamine off the dining table as well. Tyler Burnett’s wife drinks more. One of the artists knocks over a wine bottle. The bottle rolls off the cliff from the gazebo and lands in the water. The baby sleeps. The men in gray suits put stacks of money on the table. The artists take the money and stuff it in their pockets. Dessert is served. Pineapple cake. After dessert, the artists begin to throw their plates off the cliff into the ocean. They light their napkins on fire and toss them over the side of the gazebo, then they light the tablecloth on fire. They begin to smash glasses. One of the artists lights the gazebo on fire. Everyone laughs as though they are wild. Tyler Burnett doubles over, slaps his knee, then falls on the grass and begins to roll around. His sunglasses stay on perfectly. We all watch the fire. The baby sleeps.