Holding the job I do, you get used to guessing. It’s not always very satisfying, because you find yourself prone to assuming the worst. I work with babies. I’m a caregiver. I’m male. I’m a male caregiver who works with babies. To be clear.
Okay, sure, sometimes a baby will cry for no reason. Not because they’re hungry or sleepy or have gas or are bored, feeling anxiety, any of that. Sometimes it seems impossible to figure out. You start asking questions. First, obviously, with your coworkers. Then, if you’re really brave, the parents. Some of us, the parents will freely share any and all inside information. Some of us, we’ll get lucky now and again. Asking questions, you never know. Depends on the parents.
This one baby, we’ll call her Aria. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s an insanely popular name these days. Sometimes it seems like literally every other baby is named Aria. So calling this one Aria is not to evoke any particular baby so named. It could be any of them.
This Aria cried all the time. Completely inconsolable. Honestly, I was as worried as I had ever been. Cried all day every day. Weeks and months went by, never changed. Parents weren’t big talkers, to any of us. So we guessed a lot. It’s not gossip if it’s guessing. Listen to a baby cry long enough, you have to release the pressure. You just have to.
The Doomsday rampage had happened. That was recent history. Months in the past. Superman died. All those replacements showed up. Everyone assumed one of them was the real deal. You have no idea how competitive the betting got. I’d rather not say who I placed my money on. A little embarrassing, in hindsight. But it seemed reasonable, at the time. And that’s just based on what little us average joes got to learn about any of it. The Daily Planet, a solid job covering all of it. But there were only so many scoops Lane or Troupe could score.
I bring it up because eventually the guessing about what motivated all of Aria’s crying eventually, inevitably turned toward Doomsday. Trauma. Massive trauma. I’m mean, it is Metropolis, and the Doomsday rampage tore the whole city up. Sure, no physical scarring. Both parents confirmed very much alive.
That still left a wide gulf of possibilities. Aria was eight months old, when all this guessing occurred. During the Doomsday rampage, half that. People underestimate babies. They know what’s happening around them.
So I did some digging. Found her family living at Lex Towers at the time of the rampage. Of course her parents work for some division of Lexcorp. Practically one out of every three citizens of Metropolis does. Lex Towers has been undergoing massive reconstruction since the rampage, having been nearly leveled during it.
I made some calls. Seems Lex Luthor has been providing support to all former residents. He’s footing the bill for Aria at the center.
When all those Supermen were running around, it was Luthor who was this baby’s hero. I know what everyone says about him. Probably most of it’s true. But he’s one of the city’s most prominent citizens. One of the country’s. One of the world’s. Superheroes have one obvious conclusion about him.
What I know is that after those calls, Luthor dropped by the center and visited our room, and the minute he stepped foot into it, Aria stopped crying. He picked her up, and she actually giggled. I can’t make this up. There are pictures.
I don’t know. The world’s complicated. Sometimes people everyone says are evil do good things. Sometimes babies love them. Maybe tomorrow Luthor will, I don’t know, build a new deathray and attack Superman, try to kill him. Aria still cries, but now I know why, and all I can do is try my best to soothe her. Maybe she’s crying at the ridiculous state of the world she was forced to confront way too soon, where Lex Luthor is her legitimate knight in shining armor. (They say he actually has armor. For some reason he painted it purple and green. They say there’s big money if you can get a picture of that.)
What do I know? I’m a contradiction myself. That’s just the way it is sometimes.
