The year She Fell (53 page)

“No,” I whispered. And yet—

Mother’s eyes were blazing as she stared at Laura. “You—you’re wrong. You—” She swallowed, once, twice, convulsively, putting her hand back and finding the arm of a chair. She balanced against it and took a deep breath. “Don’t say anymore, Laura.”

Her face went very pale, and before I could react, Brian jumped up from his seat and took a few long strides to her side, and he was there to catch her when she fell.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Later, at the hospital, I found my way to a quiet place down the corridor from Mother’s room—an inner staircase, smelling of metal and cigarettes—and dialed the number I’d already memorized. And Mitch answered, his voice distracted but strong, and some part of me marveled at the thought of him standing over his medieval art, talking on a cell phone.

All in a rush, I presented him with the supposition. Perhaps I’d been the product of an affair between his father and my mother—Mother, I meant—and his mother agreed to raise me. And then, when Mr. Wakefield was dead, Mother took me back.

 
I heard something drop to the floor. His knife, perhaps.

“Mrs. Wakefield?” Mitch’s astonishment was answer enough. “Uh, no.” After a pause, he said, “Do you remember my dad? He was, you know, rough. He was a coal miner. His fingernails were always black. And when he shook his head, coal dust came out of his hair. She’d never have—” he stopped again, then resumed. “Anyway, he was all union. He wouldn’t mingle with management.”

“I believe you,” I said. I couldn’t imagine it either. It was an answer, but it couldn’t be the right answer. “I am just trying to make sense of it, and—”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

Simple. Direct. Impossible. “She’s in the hospital. Her condition is a little precarious now. I can’t upset her, just because I want to know.”

He was silent for a moment. A man accustomed to silence, up there in his solitary world. His own cloister. Finally he said, “Look, I’d like to help you. But I can’t come down there. I — I’m tired of that world down there, and all the troubles. I just—”

“Want to be left alone,” I finished. “Yes. I know. I understand.” I did, actually. It was another escape, his mountain refuge, but who was I to begrudge him an escape? “Thanks,” I said, and hung up. I dropped down on the cold ridged metal step and thought of Mother in that room, hooked up to the telemetry, her condition too fragile to risk. I’d have to find out the truth myself.

When I finally tracked
Laura down in the hospital cafeteria, it was late enough that it was almost full dark. Laura was sitting in a booth under a dark window, drinking coffee and staring at some baseball game on the television monitor. As I watched, the cashier came over with an order pad and a pen, and Laura smiled and signed her autograph. Even so late, she looked good. She was never as beautiful as I remembered Cathy being, but she was casually elegant, her hair tousled just so, her skin aglow in the harsh light.

I got a coke and sat down across from her. She raised her cup in some kind of welcome. “How’s Mother doing?”

Laura had been banished early on, because her presence made Mother more agitated.

“She’s asleep. They’ve decided it wasn’t a full-fledged stroke, but she’s got to be kept quiet.”

“So no more questions, huh?”

I fiddled with my straw and didn’t look at her. “What you said really upset her.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. It must have upset you too.”

“I want to know why you said it. Where you got that idea.”

Laura rose. “Can we walk somewhere? Hospitals make me nervous.”

So silently we walked out the emergency room door, past the little courtyard where patients snuck off to smoke, and through the floodlit parking lot. The river was two blocks away, and we headed for that. It wasn’t till we were on the sidewalk overlooking the 10
^th
Street bridge that Laura answered me.

“I always suspected it. It was so weird, the way she always showed such interest in you.” She started down the block away the bridge, and I had to walk fast to catch up. “Maybe you don’t remember, but when you were little and your mother would bring you to the house, Mother would walk you down to the Dairy Queen for an ice cream.”

“I don’t remember,” I said softly.

“Well, I do, because it annoyed me that she did that for you, and never for me. She didn’t like me, I know—it’s not like she wanted to spend time with me—but she was hardly the warm generous type.”

I had to protest. “She’s always been generous and warm to me.”

“Exactly,” Laura said. She put her hand gingerly on the metal railing that bordered the riverbank. The sidewalk was rutted here, strewn with gravel, and she was picking her way carefully in her expensive high-heeled sandals. “She isn’t that way by nature. And yet, with you, even when you were with the Prices, she would get all . . . fluffy.”

“You noticed,” I said, trying to sound skeptical.

“Well, of course. She was
my
mother, and if she was going to buy anyone ice cream, it should have been me. So I noticed. And I also noticed that when Daddy came home, she’d send you back to your mother, whatever room she was cleaning. Mother didn’t want him to see you, or see you with her.”

I took a breath of the cool evening air. It hurt in my throat, and hurt in my chest. “But there was more. You said she went away the year when I was born. But how could you remember that? You were just a little girl.”

“I remember because Ellen and I got to be alone with Daddy for months, and that was wonderful. We had so much fun.” She glanced apologetically at me. “I’m sorry. This can’t be easy to hear.”

“No. It’s all right. I want to know.” I considered what she had said. “You said she was away for months. What did she say she was doing?”

“Oh, it was when she and Cathy were doing the equestrienne thing. She was going to horse shows, supposedly, driving from one city to another, being a judge. But she dropped Cathy at a horse school in
Virginia
, to polish her skills.”

“But if it was only few months—”

“They left here before school ended. Cathy missed a whole grading period. But she made it up at the
Virginia
school.”

“You think Cathy knew.”

“No. I don’t know. I can’t believe she did. But Mom was using her as an alibi, I think. They weren’t even together that spring.”

“Was my—Mrs. Price cleaning the house all that time?”

Laura frowned. “Yes, I think so. The house was cleaned, anyway, and I think I’d remember if we had a new housekeeper while Mother was gone. And,” she added, “I would have noticed if the housekeeper were pregnant.”

I’d already accepted Mitch’s assertion that his mother had not borne me. But the rest was hard to accept. “You think Mother concealed her pregnancy for months, and then went away and had me and—and what? Gave me to the housekeeper?”

Letting go of the railing, Laura stopped under a streetlamp and reached into her purse. She brought out a little foil square and ripped it open, and pulled out a wet-wipe and fastidiously washed her hands. “I don’t know. I think they must have worked it out ahead of time, and she delivered the baby— I mean you— and met your parents somewhere and handed you over.”

“But—” I took another deep breath. “But why would they take me?” Before she could answer, I said, “Mitch—my . . . their elder son—told me he always thought they were paid to give me up. But maybe they were paid to take me.”

Laura dropped the foil and the wet-wipe into the litter can hanging on the railing. She didn’t reject what I had suggested. She didn’t even react. That probably meant she agreed. Finally she said, “I didn’t figure this out till a lot later—till Daddy died and the first thing she did was adopt you. I mean, it couldn’t have been two months after his funeral that you came to live with us. And all she would say was that your parents needed help, and so she adopted you to help them.”

“You hated me. I remember that.”

She shrugged. “I lost my father and my position in the family, all at the same time. It wasn’t your fault, but I guess I took it out on you.” She gazed over at the bulk of the hospital, gray in the twilight. “We should probably get back. Ellen’s going to worry if she can’t find us. And maybe she’ll remember more for you. She’s four years older.” Her mouth twisted in an ironic smile. “And she’s a lot more objective about Mother than I am. Maybe she’ll have a different perspective.”

The street was deserted except for a couple of parked cars. We crossed it and walked back to the hospital. Ellen was sitting in the waiting area outside of Intensive Care, making notes in a journal. She closed it as we came in. “I’m trying to write a sermon for when I get back to work. But my thoughts keep scattering.” She gestured towards the closed door to the unit. “They said we should go home for the night. She’s sleeping.”

We were just entering the main lobby when a man rose from one of the waiting room chairs and came towards us. It was the college president, Dr. Urich, in casual clothes as if he’d come off the golf course. “I just heard,” he said. “How is your mother?”

It was a small town, and bad news about an important citizen traveled fast. Ellen said politely, “She’s sleeping. But she’s doing better.”

Laura said, “Don’t worry. She’s not in real danger.”

And I heard myself chiming in, “Yes, don’t worry. She’ll live long enough to sign that new will for you.”

As he opened his mouth to protest, Laura grabbed my arm and dragged me out the hospital door, Ellen close behind. They collapsed into laughter against the railing.

“You are so
bad
.” Laura looked back through the glass door into the lighted lobby and started laughing again.

“Well, it’s true,” I said. “That’s what he’s worried about. That she’ll die without signing the new will.”

Ellen, shaking her head, led the way back to her car. “You know you stole Laura’s line. That’s what she was dying to say.”

“But I was way too polite,” Laura said, opening the door. “Unlike Sister Marie John here.”

She was grinning at me as if she approved. As if we were kindred.

And then, serious again, she said, “So go ahead. Ask Ellen.”

So as we started home, I explained to Ellen what Laura and I had been supposing— that Mother was my mother in truth. Ellen was silent until she pulled to a stop in our driveway. “That’s pretty wild.”

“I know,” Laura said. “But so is Mother grabbing up Theresa like that, just after Daddy died. She wanted her badly. And she had to have some way to make the Prices give up the child they were raising. Like Theresa was hers by right.”

I wanted to believe it. It would mean I was wanted—wanted by Mother, and wanted by the Prices. This way they wouldn’t have given me up for money or because I was too much trouble, but because they had no choice.

It was too tempting. It played too close to my fantasy.

And it meant Mother had strayed from her marriage. And given up her own child. But maybe it was enough that she’d taken me back—

Ellen turned off the engine and we went into the house. It was silent enough that we could hear the crickets calling in the garden through the open parlor windows. Laura led the way to the kitchen, flipping on the lights as she went. Ellen and I sat down at the table while she opened the refrigerator and studied the contents.

“But wouldn’t we have noticed?” Ellen said. “Wouldn’t Daddy have noticed?”

Laura looked back from the refrigerator. “We were just kids. And anyway, the reason I always suspected was that was the spring and summer you and I spent alone here with Daddy. Remember? Mother was doing her show-horse judging tour while Cathy was in equestrienne school. Or so she said.”