Give Me Your Heart (15 page)

Lydia recalled the birth pains. Excruciating labor that had lasted nearly ten hours. She had wanted, she’d thought, a natural childbirth, what’s called, bluntly,
“vaginal.” Her obstetrician and her husband had not thought this a very good idea. And so it had not been a very good idea.

In the end, Lydia had had a C-section. An ugly razor scar in the pit of her now sagging belly, which she might show to the detectives if they were skeptical of her credentials as a biological
mother.

“Alva asked if she’d been adopted. We told her no. Yet the fantasy persisted. Except as an adult she should have grown out of it.”

They were asking Lydia if she’d adopted another child. A younger child. Or had she had another child, younger than Alva?

A younger sister to Alva. Who had died.

“No. I did not.”

It was bewildering to contemplate the shadow figure who was somehow Mrs. Ulrich in Alva’s imagination. Mrs. Ulrich, whom the detectives were pursuing.

While she, Lydia, recalled through a haze of pain someone bringing her a squirming wet red-faced baby,
hers.
The astonishment of this baby so naturally in her arms, sucking at her
milk-heavy breast. It had seemed to transpire in a dream. The dream could not have been her own, for it was too wonderful for Lydia to have imagined. Out of the massive labor, the exhilaration of
the baby, the nursing. The eager young father who’d loved her then.

Detectives’ questions are circular, tricky. Another time Lydia was asked if she’d adopted a child, any child, and Lydia explained no, never. And another time she was asked if
she’d had any other children apart from Alva, and she said no. Any other children apart from Alva who had died.

“No. I’m sorry.”

In their marriage it was Lydia who had wanted more children and Hans who had not. All marriages are fairy tales,
Once upon a time there was a man and a woman,
and the Ulriches’ tale
was of a man who’d pursued a career and a woman who’d delayed her career to be a devoted mother to a difficult daughter who would repudiate her and break her heart. In fact, Lydia
hadn’t really wanted another child. She had allowed Hans to think so; in a way it was flattering to Hans to think a woman would wish to have a second child with him after the stresses of the
first, perhaps a son this time, to perpetuate the Ulrich name, but truly, in the most secret recesses of her heart, Lydia had not wanted another child, not a son, certainly not another daughter,
after the first.

Wishing in secret, in weak moments,
If Alva had never been born.

Lydia’s own mother had suggested an abortion when Lydia was newly pregnant. Before Hans had known. For Lydia and Hans weren’t yet married. They had not even been living together.
Hans was finishing his doctorate at Penn; Lydia was only midway in her graduate studies. She was twenty-three. She was a very young twenty-three. She was a brilliant but self-doubting student whose
professors had encouraged her to continue, but she’d fallen in love with Hans Ulrich—how difficult not to fall in love with Hans Ulrich, though her mother warned her she was too young
to be a mother, she had so much life before her, children might wait, marriage might wait, to another man perhaps, for Hans Ulrich was not a man to give comfort but only to take comfort—and
in the spell of sexual enchantment she’d defied her mother, married Hans Ulrich and had his child.

He had loved her then. Lydia, and their daughter.

For Alva had been a beautiful child at first.

The child of Lydia’s destiny. That seemed clear.

Really, Lydia couldn’t imagine her life without Alva. Never!

Very easily she could imagine her life without Alva. The life she was living now, if you subtracted all thoughts of Alva in the way that, despairing over being able to wash clean a grimy wall,
you simply painted it over.

Lydia’s friends who were mothers like herself, some of them grandmothers, never spoke of such things. They spoke of other things but never this. No one dared to acknowledge a lost life, if
she had not married and had children exactly as she had. You did not speak of it. You dared not speak of it. In fact, it was pointless to speak of it.

You did not even think of it, with children near. For children hear what is not said more keenly than what is.

Only a doll, Alva. Like you.

As a research psychologist, Dr. Ulrich had tested numberless subjects. She was particularly interested in the relationship between consciousness and the brain: “self-identifying.”
There is a magical period of self-recognition in two-year-olds, utterly missing in younger children. To recognize the self (in a mirror, in reflective surfaces, in photographs) is taken for granted
in normal individuals. Self-identity resides in a certain region of the brain that, if destroyed, can’t be replaced. The self is in the brain: the soul is in the brain cells. To be an
academic scientist is to test hypotheses. You perform experiments, you tally results, you publish papers; by degrees you accumulate a public career. Dr. Ulrich, the psychological tester, was
without affect. In her role as tester she smiled cordially, to manipulate and comfort. But no one could read her heart. Subjects are to be manipulated; otherwise there is no experiment and there is
no accumulated wisdom. Now the detectives from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, were the testers and Dr. Ulrich, seated on an ottoman in her own living room, was the subject. She understood the
detectives’ cordial expressions. The steely calculation in their eyes.

To be innocent of wrongdoing is to be as vulnerable as one whose skin has been peeled back. To stand so naked, exposed. Every word sounds like an admission of guilt.

But guilt for what, Lydia had no idea.

Forty minutes into the interview—forty minutes! it had seemed like hours—as the detectives were asking her another time to tell them what she could remember of her daughter’s
medical record as a child living in Upper Darby, the telephone rang. Lydia had intended to remove the receiver from the hook but had forgotten. Now she was grateful for the interruption. This
summons to another life.

Within earshot of the detectives, she said, in a voice her friend would not have identified as anxious, “Dolores, I’m sorry, I will have to call you back in about twenty
minutes.”

Wanting the intruders to hear. Twenty minutes. No more.

Wanting them to hear.
My life. My real life. To which you have no access.

It was then that they told her.

Why they’d come to speak with her. Why her daughter had called the Upper Darby PD. What claims her daughter was making that involved her and her husband in the smothering death of the
unidentified child found in Rock Basin Park.

Stunned, Lydia looked from one detective to the other. Their names were lost to her now. Their faces were as blurred as faces reflected in water.

Lydia began to stammer. “I don’t understand—my daughter has accused my husband and me—”

Smothering? Murder? A baby sister? The child in the tightly swaddled blanket, the soiled jumper said to be decorated with a row of pink bunnies?

“. . . the murder? That murder? The little girl? In Rock Basin Park? My daughter Alva has . . .”

Now the net was tightening around her, she could not breathe. A band tightening around her forehead. She was stammering, trying to speak. To deny, to explain.
My daughter is sick. My daughter
has blamed me. I don’t know why.
But she could not explain. She could not speak. One of the detectives caught her arm—she’d begun to faint. The other went quickly to bring her
a glass of ice water.

Ice water! At such a time, the detective had brought her ice water. Seeing that Lydia had, in her compact kitchen, a refrigerator that dispensed ice cubes.

“I . . . don’t believe this. Can’t . . .”

She would not recall afterward what they’d said. What they’d said next. She had assured them she was fine, she would not faint. She could hear their voices, at a distance. She could
see them as if through the wrong end of a telescope. Her vision was bizarrely narrowed, edged in black. For part of her brain, its visual field, had darkened.
My daughter hates me. Blames me.
But . . . I am blameless.

Her voice was begging. Her voice was near inaudible.

“Please, I want to speak with her. My daughter. Please

But she could not speak with her daughter, for her daughter did not wish to speak with her. So it was explained to Mrs. Ulrich another time.

“. . . a misunderstanding! My daughter isn’t well. If you’ve spoken with her, you must know. Alva has a history of . . .”

But she could not accuse her daughter, could she?

These men on a mission. Regarding her steely-eyed, assessing.

A sixty-one-year-old woman. A professional woman. Accused of having smothered a child thirty years before. A child who’d possibly been her own daughter. Unless an adopted daughter.
Two-year-old younger sister of the seven-year-old daughter. Unless the seven-year-old was also adopted. Unless Mrs. Ulrich had not herself smothered the child but had aided and abetted Hans Ulrich.
Conspired with Hans Ulrich to commit the murder. Thirty years ago.

“Why? Why now? Why on earth now? I’ve just sent her a check, Alva cashed. For five hundred dollars. I have the canceled check, it’s one of many. I can show you. I’ve
saved all the checks. Thousands of dollars. Why would she turn on me, her mother? Why now . . .”

She was terrified to think,
These are men on a mission. Mrs. Ulrich is their prey.

Pink Baby Bunny was a high-profile cold case. Suddenly you are hearing of “cold cases” revived and solved everywhere in America. As crime rates decline. As old unsolved cases are
reactivated. Older detectives, some of them coming back from retirement, are reactivated. Reinspired. Mrs. Ulrich was in their gun sights.

“If I could just talk with Alva, if you could arrange for me to talk with her, please. In person . . .”

“Your daughter doesn’t want to talk with you, Mrs. Ulrich. We’ve explained.”

“But . . .”

Men with a mission. Pitiless, professional. You could see.

Or did they pity her? The trembling sixty-one-year-old woman whose life was shattering around her.

Yet she was in their gun sights, she was their prey. Mrs. Ulrich. A trophy.

They had driven in pursuit of her this morning from Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, to Bethesda, Maryland. As they’d flown, last week, to Carbondale, Illinois. To interview her accuser. To tape
the accuser’s statement.

Her life shattered. Her professional life destroyed. Now she would retire: forced to retire. Even if not arrested, not formally accused. Her photograph in the papers, on TV.
Lydia Ulrich.
Director of. Questioned by police. Smothering murder, 1974. Two-year-old victim. Body left in park.

Was she arrested? She was not arrested. Not yet.

Should she call a lawyer? That was up to Mrs. Ulrich.

Still her vision was radically diminished: a tunnel rimmed with black. The detectives’ blurred faces at the end of the tunnel. If one day you open your eyes and can’t see one side of
the room, it’s a brain tumor you have. Tunnel vision, it’s panic.

Panic that your life is being taken from you. Tattered and flapping like flags in the wind.

Body left in park. Believed younger daughter of. Smothered.

The detectives were saying that they would play the tape of her daughter’s statement, recorded the previous week in Carbondale. If Mrs. Ulrich wished.

Yes. No. She could not bear it.

She would call a lawyer, she would save herself. As Hans would have fought to save himself.

Her life passing before her eyes, something tattered and torn flapping in the wind. Pitiful.

The detectives were regarding her with pity. Suspicion, but also pity. Perhaps they would be kind. Perhaps they did not want to destroy her. In their mission to solve the notorious cold case, in
their zeal for TV celebrity, they would not want to destroy an innocent sixty-one-year-old woman.

Not arrested. Not arrested. Not yet!

Her heartbeat was rapid but weak. It could not pump enough blood to her brain.

If Hans were here! It was Hans they sought. The smotherer.

If Hans were here, as soon as the detectives entered the apartment, even as he was shaking their hands, he would allow them to know
This is my home; I am the authority here.

As a mother she’d taken the sorrow of her life and transformed it into love for her daughter. By an act of pure will she’d transformed it. Evidently it hadn’t been enough.

She would explain. She could explain.

There were no words. Language was being taken from her.

The infant greedily sucking at her breast. Tugging at the raw nipple. Oh! it had hurt, as if the infant girl had teeth. But how lovely, the most sensual experience of Lydia’s life.

A woman’s secret, erotic life. A mother’s life.

Hans had not known. Hans would have been astonished and revulsed if he’d known. But Hans had not known.

“. . . the tape of your daughter’s statement, Mrs. Ulrich? Would you like to hear?”

She could not accuse her daughter, could she? Her daughter she loved; she could not.

Could not plead,
She is cruel, she hates me. Blames me, I don’t know why. My only child. She is evil.

The history of her nightmares. The history of her fantasizing. Delusions, hallucinations. Accusing others. Blaming others. Sexual molestations, rape. Threats against her life. Stalking.
Plundering of her soul.

She wasn’t sure she could bear it, hearing her daughter’s voice. The voice she hadn’t heard in years. Gripping her daughter’s thin clammy-cold hand in the hospital room
in East Lansing. Vowing to save her. Not to abandon her, as Hans had done.
Trade my life for yours if I could.

History of nightmares. How was it the mother’s fault?

History of accusations. Causing wreckage in lives, then moving on. How was it the mother’s fault?

Not under arrest. Her name would not (yet) be released to any news media. Certainly she might call an attorney. Cooperation with the investigation was advised.