"It’s Just Pretend, Babe" by Grey Traynor
- Mar 29
- 6 min read
Melinda screamed, hot, forceful breath scraping her teeth. She was doing what she was supposed to, that’s how aggrieved mothers behaved.
“You want your baby to die, asshole?!” The voice on the other end of the call was deep, distorted–a deadbeat Darth Vader.
Offended, Melinda wanted to scold Scott for taking things too far, his inclusion of “asshole,” but much like her screaming, there was a protocol to follow; he was just doing his part. A “fuck” would most certainly be coming next.
“You want your fucking baby to die?!” Scott’s warbled voice got high, his words overlapping, stapled together in an audial slap.
Melinda wanted to nod, having guessed the raised verbal stakes. Still, instead, she looked to the officer sitting on her chewed-up ottoman, its stuffing spilling out, reminded Melinda of certain girls in Daisy Dukes, skin sneaking free.
The cop made a swiveling motion with his hand, keep talking. She wondered if he might also like to tack on an “asshole” to this gesture, emphasizing the importance of her essential part in solving such a lurid crime.
“Are you still there, shithead?!”
Man, Melinda thought, Scott was nailing his role as kidnapper. They had spent the last two weeks practicing, every night after they finished closing, turning the lights out at their respective jobs, him at Shakey’s and Melinda at Chester Cheeseums. They’d come home, more tired than a dog after pushing out a litter, and go over the minute details of the plan, finishing their nightly preparations with a little game of kidnapper-victim improv. Sans profanity, Scott had been consistently strong during rehearsals and though Melinda had been weak at the start, trying to force tears rather than staying in the moment (“Babe, that’s, like, improv rule number one,” he’d remind her), she got stronger as the nights wore on.
But what were the specific tweaks Scott told her to implement, Melinda wondered with that deep voice stabbing her brain.
Touch myself! she remembered, wanting to snap in ascertainment, but she tamed this urge because moms of kidnapped children ain’t snapping, they’re holding themselves, looking for comfort like a bleary-eyed pup searches for the teat.
“I want my baby!” Melinda cried and shot a hand up toward her neck. Her aim was off and she accidentally dragged her fingers up across her right breast.
The surveying cop squinted, bemused.
Melinda saw this out of the corner of her eye and course-corrected by pulling at her throat.
“You gotta sell the anguish, baby,” Scott had repeated during their rehearsals, stinking of grease and sharp cleaning agents.
“Please, sir, please! Just tell me what to DOOO!” Melinda said, beginning to rub her neck. There was a hunger in her voice that sounded sexual, the kind of tone meant for fumbling across soft rugs, but she figured that as long as it was impassioned, it would work.
“Here’s what you’re gonna do…” The deep voice cooed.
Hearing indecipherable crunching sounds, Melinda brought the device closer to her ear despite the loudness of the speakerphone, rapt, as if she had no idea what was coming.
She felt proud of her sharpened performance, proud of her husband for being such an instructive, guiding teacher.
“You’re gonna hand over $10,000 and leave it in the arcade of the San Sarita Mall, by the pinball machines in a white trash bag. Got it?!”
“Yes! Yes!” Melinda’s performance was getting more raw and primal, so much so that the officer turned his gaze to the floor. But she couldn’t help it. This was the closest she had felt to Scott since the arrival of their child, Scooter Jr., now barely 12 months.
It had bothered Scott that his son’s name practically rhymed, but Melinda got the privilege of naming him after her father, Scooter Senior, since she’d be doing most of the rearing while Scott provided and spent most of his off-hours rehearsing.
“Any craft is a muscle,” Scott’d say, calling her late at night, telling her that he and Clifton, his theatre buddy, were working out their violent and visceral interpretation of Coriolanus, honing their breath-work. “You won’t believe this stage combat,” he’d say, his grin stabbing through the phone.
Melinda had wanted to ask what that meant and why the San Sarita Community Theatre had yet to announce a production of Coriolanus. But when Scott came to her with this plan, his big blue eyes pleading, Melinda forgot all about that, for once feeling included, and her questions ran down the drain, much like the speckled mop water after chipping away the hardened cheddar off the Chester Cheeseums floor.
The “kidnapper” continued his demands. “And you’re gonna do it tonight, you got that, you fuck?!”
Hurt, Melinda flashed her eyes at the verbal assault, and she thought to protest until realizing she was naturally reacting as someone in distress would, shrinking under cruelty.
“Is-Is my baby alright?!” She was going off-book.
In the outline, at this point, Melinda was supposed to have agreed then hung up. But wasn’t that improv, allowing for the unexpected? Plus, Melinda wanted to know about Scooter Jr.’s well-being.
“Uh, he’s fine, but this little bitch will be deader than a Christmas tree in July if you don’t pay up!”
Melinda turned to the cop with a grimace, big and “cheesy”–one of embarrassment rather than fear–but what could she say, the acting bug had never properly bit down upon her.
And that was why Scott had come to her, waking her in the night with his hair mussed and his eyes wild. Scott explained that there was this prestigious acting workshop he’d been admitted to, the hallway light cutting across his face, making him as beautiful as the day she met him in that parking lot–defined features, particularly the jawline–asking Melinda if she needed help carrying her super-sized bundle of toilet paper. (“It was on sale.
I don’t have a medical problem,” she had added.)
Cause her real “problem” was just how much she loved Scott.
And that night of pleading, in their cramped bathroom, Melinda’s love held and Scott utilized a “stage whisper,” shower running, as he described the kidnapping, the burner phone, the $10,000 ransom coming from his parents, middle-class retired folk who hoarded their life’s earnings should a medical emergency arise not because their middle-aged son might attend some silly acting workshop in Albany.
“They’ll shell out for Scooter, though,” Scott had said.
Melinda barely knew her in-laws. They were quiet around her, but also quick to critique her physical appearance.
“Is that…” Scott’s mother once said, sniffing around Melinda. “Muenster cheese in your hair?”
It was. Melinda often left work with a morsel stuck somewhere.
But it didn’t bother her that Scott’s parents cared little for her. Instead, she understood their chillness and frugality and why their son would sooner hatch a dummy plan to kidnap his own wriggly baby instead of asking them and their cutting glances outright for money.
Melinda screamed again, this time to release, feeling more tense every second, especially with the officer right next to her. Next came the sought-after, scene-selling tears she had hoped for.
“I’ll do whatever you say! Just don’t hurt my baby!”
She couldn’t wait to hold her son again, cradle him in her brawny arms, the constant cleaning her main source of exercise.
Then the tears became a product of joy as a feeling of congratulations swelled within her.
Melinda was part of a family unit, a mother and a wife, and when it counted, when she was needed, she proved she could show up.
The tears were also because of her pride in Scott, who was succeeding in achieving his dreams.
It would be hours before they secured the bag of cash from Scott’s parents and even longer before Scott, pretending to have to go to work despite the kidnapping, picked up the money at the mall. He had been employed there years ago and knew to enter and exit through hallways rarely used, adorned with antiquated security cameras that collected more spider eggs than any real footage.
And Melinda, the horrified, distraught mother, would be driven to the entrance of their town to find baby Scooter Jr., snug in a basket, dressed warmly by his mother. But no one would put that together; the San Sarita police were under investigation for snorting speed faster than they confiscated it.
Once Scooter Jr. was back home and Scott returned early from “work,” their fictitious hell would be over, and maybe it would make for a sensational, captivating story, tragedy with a happy ending.
“Are you still there, asshole?!”
“I’m here! I’m here!” Melinda was giving the terrorized performance of a lifetime: clutching herself at the biceps, squinting through dripping tears. She only hoped that money and the acting workshop would help Scott feel fulfilled, as fulfilled as she felt screaming for the well-being of their baby.
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