"You know, I've been meaning to say I'm sorry," Al said. His dark eyes were kind. "For whatever happened to your baby's father."
Caroline had half forgotten that she'd made up a husband, so she was surprised to hear in his voice that Al didn't believe she'd ever had one. He thought she was an unwed mother, she marveled. They ate without speaking much, passing remarks now and then about the weather and the traffic and Al's next destination, which was Nashville, Tennessee.
"I've never been to Nashville," Caroline said.
"No? Well, hop aboard, you and your daughter too," Al said. It was a joke, but within the joke was an offer. An offer not to her, not really, but rather to an unwed mother down on her Juck. Still, for a moment Caroline imagined walking out the door with her boxes and her blankets and never looking back.
"Maybe next time," she said, reaching for the coffee. "I've got some things to settle here."
Al nodded. "Gotcha," he said. "I know how that goes."
"But thanks," she said. "I appreciate the thought."
"My infinite pleasure," he said seriously, and then he stood up
to go-Caroline watched from the window as he went to his truck, climbing up the steps into the cab and turning once to wave from the open doorway. She waved back, happy to see his smile, so ready and so easy, surprised by the tug in her heart. She had an impulse to run after him, remembering the narrow bed in the back of the cab where he sometimes slept and the way he'd touched Phoebe's fore?head so gently. Surely a man who lived such a solitary life could keep her secrets, contain her dreams and fears. But his engine caught, and smoke billowed up from the silver pipe on his cab, and then he was pulling carefully out of the parking lot and onto the (]uiet street and away.
"Isn't she beautiful?" she asked, sitting down next to Lucy.
"Oh, she is. She's lovely!" Lucy said, touching one of Phoebe's tiny hands.
Caroline smiled, feeling an unexpected surge of pride and plea?sure. The features she had noted in the delivery room—the sloping eyes, the slightly flattened face—had become so familiar that she hardly noticed them. Lucy, with her untrained eye, didn't see them at all. Phoebe was like any baby, delicate, adorable, fierce in her de?mands.
"I love looking at her," Caroline confessed.
"Oh, that poor little mother," Lucy whispered. "Do they expect she'll live?"
"No one knows," Caroline said. "Time will tell."
"They must be devastated," Lucy said.
"Yes. Yes, they are. They've completely lost their appetites," Caroline confided, thereby heading off the arrival of one of Lucy's famous hot dishes.
For the next two days, Caroline did not go out. The world came to her in the form of newspapers, grocery deliveries, milkmen, the sounds of traffic. The weather changed and the snow was gone as suddenly as it had come, cascading down the sides of buildings and disappearing into drains. For Caroline, the broken days blurred to?gether into a stream of random images and impressions: the sight of her Ford Fairlane, its battery recharged, being driven into the lot; the sunlight streaming through cloudy windows; the dark scent of wet earth; a robin at the feeder. She had her spells of worry, but often, sitting with Phoebe, she was surprised to find herself com?pletely at peace. What she had told Lucy Martin was true: she loved looking at this baby. She loved sitting in the sunlight and holding her. She warned herself not to fall in love with Phoebe; she was just a temporary stop. Caroline had watched David Henry often enough at the clinic to believe in his compassion. When he had raised his head from the desk that night and met her eyes, she had seen in them an infinite capacity for kindness. She had no doubt that he would do the right thing, once he got over the shock.
Every time the phone rang she started. But three days passed with no word from him.
On Thursday morning there was a knock on the door. Caroline hurried to answer it, adjusting the belt of her dress, touching her hair. But it was only a deliveryman, holding a vase full of flowers: dark red and pale pink in a cloud of baby's breath. These were from Al. My thanks for the hospitality, he'd written on the card. Maybe I'll see you on my next run.
Caroline took them inside and arranged them on the coffee table. Agitated, she picked up The Leader, which she hadn't read in days, slipped off the rubber band, and skimmed through the articles, not really taking in any of them. Escalating tensions in Vietnam, social announcements about who had entertained whom the previous week, a page of local women modeling the new spring hats. Caroline was about to throw the paper down when a black-bordered square caught her eye.
Memorial Service
For Our Beloved Daughter
Phoebe Grace Henry
Born and Died March y, 1964
Lexington Presbyterian Church
Friday, March 13, 1964, at 9 a.m.
Caroline sat down slowly. She read the words once and then again. She even touched them, as if this would make them clearer somehow, explicable. With the paper still in her hands, she stood up and went to the bedroom. Phoebe slept in her drawer, one pale arm outflung against the blankets. Born and died. Caroline went back into the living room and called her office. Ruby picked up on the first ring.
"I don't suppose you're coming in?" she said. "It's a madhouse here. Everyone in town seems to have the flu." She lowered her voice then. "Did you hear, Caroline? About Dr. Henry and his ba?bies? They had twins after all. The little boy is fine; he's precious. But the girl, she died at birth. So sad."
"I saw it in the paper." Caroline's jaw, her tongue, felt stiff. "I
wonder if you'd ask Dr. Henry to call me. Tell him it's important. I saw the paper," she repeated. "Tell him that, will you, Ruby?" Then she hung up and sat staring out at the sycamore tree and the park?ing lot beyond.
An hour later he knocked at her door.
"Well," she said, showing him in.
David Henry came in and sat on her sofa, his back hunched, turning his hat in his hand. She sat down in the chair across from him, watching him as if she'd never seen him before.
"Norah put the announcement in," he said. When he looked up she felt a rush of sympathy despite herself, for his forehead was lined, his eyes bloodshot, as if he hadn't slept in days. "She did it without telling me."
"But she thinks her daughter died," Caroline said. "That's what you told her?"
He nodded, slowly. "I meant to tell her the truth. But when I opened my mouth, I couldn't say it. At that moment, I thought I was saving her pain."
Caroline thought of her own lies, streaming out one after the other.
"I didn't leave her in Louisville," she said softly. She nodded at the bedroom door. "She's in there. Sleeping."
David Henry looked up. Caroline was unnerved, for his face was white; she had never before seen him shaken.
"Why not?" he asked, on the edge of anger. "Why in the world not?"
"Have you been there?" she asked, remembering the pale woman, her dark hair falling into the cold linoleum. "Have you seen that place ?"
"No." He frowned. "It came highly recommended, that was all. I've sent other people there, in the past. I've heard nothing negative."
"It was awful," she said, relieved. So he hadn't known what he was doing. She wanted to hate him still, but she remembered how many nights he had stayed at the clinic, treating patients who couldn't afford the care they needed. Patients from the countryside, from the mountains, who made the arduous trip to Lexington, short on money, long on hope. The other clinic partners hadn't liked it, but Dr. Henry had not stopped. He wasn't an evil man, she knew that. He wasn't a monster. But this—a memorial service for a living child—that was monstrous.
"You have to tell her," she said.
His face was pale, still, but determined. "No," he said. "It's too late now. Do whatever you have to do, Caroline, but I can't tell her. I won't."
It was strange; she disliked him so much for these words, but she felt with him also at that moment the greatest intimacy she had ever felt with any person. They were joined together now in something enormous, and no matter what happened they always would be. He took her hand, and this felt natural to her, right. He raised it to his lips and kissed it. She felt the press of his lips on her knuckles and his breath, warm on her skin.
If there had been any calculation in his expression when he looked up, anything less than pained confusion when he released her hand, she would have done the right thing. She would have picked up the phone and called Dr. Bentley or the police, and she would have confessed it all. But he had tears in his eyes.
"It's in your hands," he said, releasing her. "I leave it to you. I be?lieve the home in Louisville is the right place for this child. I don't make the decision lightly. She will need medical care she can't get elsewhere. But whatever you have to do, I will respect that. And if you choose to call the authorities, I will take the blame. There will be no consequences for you, I promise."
His expression was weighted. For the first time Caroline thought beyond the immediate, beyond the baby in the next room. It had not really occurred to her before that their careers were in jeopardy.
"I don't know," she said slowly. "I have to think. I don't know what to do."
He pulled out his wallet, emptying it. Three hundred dollars— she was shocked that he carried this much with him.
"I don't want your money," she said.
"It's not for you," he told her. "It's for the child."
"Phoebe. Her name is Phoebe," Caroline said, pushing away the bills. She thought of the birth certificate, left blank but for his signature in David Henry's haste that snowy morning. How easy it would be to type in Phoebe's name, and her own.
"Phoebe," he said. He stood up to go, leaving the money on the table. "Please, Caroline, don't do anything without telling me first. That's the only thing I ask. That you give me warning, whatever it is you decide."
He left, then, and everything was the same as it had been: the clock on the mantel, the square of light on the floor, the sharp shad?ows of bare branches. In a few weeks the new leaves would come, feathering out on the trees and changing the shapes on the floors. She had seen all this so many times, and yet the room seemed strangely impersonal now, as if she had never lived here at all. Over the years she had bought very few things for herself, being naturally frugal and imagining, always, that her real life would happen else?where. The plaid sofa, the matching chair—she liked this furniture well enough, she had chosen it herself, but she saw now that she could easily leave it. Leave all of it, she supposed, looking around at the framed prints of landscapes, the wicker magazine rack by the sofa, the low coffee table. Her own apartment seemed suddenly no more personal than a waiting room in any clinic in town. And what else, after all, had she been doing here all these years but waiting?
She tried to silence her thoughts. Surely there was another, less dramatic way. That's what her mother would have said, shaking her head, telling her not to play Sarah Bernhardt. Caroline hadn't known for years who Sarah Bernhardt was, but she knew well enough her mother's meaning: any excess of emotion was a bad thing, disruptive to the calm order of their days. So Caroline had checked all her emotions, as one would check a coat. She had put them aside and imagined that she'd retrieve them later, but of course she never had, not until she had taken the baby from Dr. Henry's arms. So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She could leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else. She would have to do that, anyway, no matter what she decided to do about the baby. This was a small town; she couldn't go to the grocery store without running into an acquaintance. She imagined Lucy Martin's eyes growing wide, the secret pleasure as she relayed
Caroline's lies, her affection for this discarded baby. Poor old spinster, people would say of her, longing so desperately for a baby of her own.
I'll leave it in your hands, Caroline. His face aged, clenched like a walnut.
The next morning, Caroline woke early. It was a beautiful day and she opened the windows, letting in the fresh air and the scent of spring. Phoebe had woken twice in the night, and while she slept Caroline had packed and carried her things to the car in the dark?ness. She had very little, as it turned out, just a few suitcases that would fit easily in the trunk and the backseat of the Fairlane. Really, she could have left for China or Burma or Korea at a mo?ment's notice. This pleased her. She was pleased with her own effi?ciency, too. By noon yesterday she had made all the arrangements: Goodwill would take the furniture; a cleaning service would han?dle the apartment. She had stopped the utilities and the newspaper, and she had written letters to close her bank accounts.
Caroline waited, drinking coffee, until she heard the door slam downstairs and Lucy's car roar into life. Quickly, then, she picked Phoebe up and stood for a moment in the doorway of the apart?ment where she had spent so many hopeful years, years that seemed as ephemeral now as if they had never happened. Then she shut the door firmly and went down the stairs.
She put Phoebe in her box on the backseat and drove into town, passing the clinic with its turquoise walls and orange roof, passing the bank and dry cleaners and her favorite gas station. When she reached the church she parked on the street and left Phoebe asleep in the car. The group gathered in the courtyard was larger than sheM expected, and she paused at its outside edge, close enough to see the back of David Henry's neck, flushed pink from the cold, and Norah Henry's blond hair swept up in a formal twist. No one no?ticed Caroline. Her heels sank into the mud at the edge of the side?walk. She eased her weight to her toes, remembering the stale smells of the institution Dr. Henry had sent her to last week. Re?membering the woman in her slip, her dark hair falling to the floor.
