Where is the Baby? (21 page)

‘How does it work?' she asked.

‘You mean what should you expect here?' She nodded again and he said, ‘What do you hope for, Faith?'

‘In general or from this place?'

‘Either, both. You're very young. Everything's in front of you.'

She wasn't sure what to say. ‘I'm only young in years. Is it safe to talk to you?'

He smiled, then took another drag on his cigarette. ‘I'm not going to repeat anything you tell me. Everything that's said here is treated as confidential.'

‘Really? For everyone?'

‘If you want to share information, it's entirely up to you. The Farm follows AA guidelines. And AA is an anonymous program. You don't have to attend the three meetings a day but you'd be missing out in a big way if you didn't.'

‘Missing out on what?'

‘On some sensible steps and a way of thinking that will make life easier in a lot of ways.'

‘So no one's going to be monitoring what I do?'

‘There's a little bit of that,' he explained. ‘We all keep an eye out for problem situations, like two guests getting romantically involved. Or someone smuggling in substances. But basically, this is a retreat, a place where people can get away from the craziness of their lives for a time, where they can calm down and start coming to terms with their problems.'

‘I see.' She wondered if Stefan had realized that when he'd chosen to send her here. ‘It does feel very calm here.' She paused for a few seconds, then said softly, ‘What I want is to be left alone.' Quickly, she added, ‘I don't mean you.' Looking away, she said, ‘I don't ever want to be watched and studied again, treated like a collection of symptoms, not like a person. I had to do some fancy dancing to get here and it's going to take time for me to get used to being free.' She couldn't bring herself to express her fear that she'd be discovered a fraud and sent away. It was a discussion for another time.

He busied himself snuffing out his cigarette, taking advantage of that brief time to consider the possible implications of her words, before saying, ‘Freedom is most often a state of mind.'

She regarded him sadly as she said, ‘For me, it's been a state of being, Mister Hayward, a kind of domestic prison. I've never been a free person.'

‘I'm sorry to hear that, Faith. I know a bit about different types of prisons. And, please, it's not Mister. It's just Hay.'

‘I'm sorry, too,' she said, understanding intuitively that he wasn't referring to any kind of penal institution. ‘Everything I've said and done for the last thirteen years has been watched, judged, and written down for publication. Aside from a few people I've been truly close to but don't get to see very often and the staff at the coffee shop where I have breakfast and study before class every weekday morning, you're the only other person I've had a viable conversation with since I was five years old. It's a long story, and the perfectly roasted chicken and buttery mashed potatoes with dill have made me sleepy.' She offered him an apologetic smile. ‘I hope you won't think I'm rude but I'm going to go to my room and have a nap.' She got to her feet. He followed suit and she looked up at him. ‘I've enjoyed talking to you, Hay. You listen but you don't push.'

‘It's mutual,' he said, with the strongest feeling that this girl and Tally had a lot in common. It had to do with their withdrawn aspects and their clearly superior levels of intelligence. They were two women who appeared to be looking outward from invisibly enclosing areas of isolation. Yet, most rewardingly, they both had unexpectedly well-honed senses of humor. ‘I don't have too many viable conversations either,' he went on. ‘Just one quick thing before you go. On Saturdays friends and families come to visit the guests. In the evening, there's a roast beef dinner followed by an open meeting. Will your family be coming to see you?'

‘I have a guardian, not a family. And no, he won't be coming. I asked him not to.'

‘Then if I may I'd like to talk to a friend of mine, see if she'd care to come. I can't help thinking the two of you would hit it off. She's a lovely woman.'

‘Okay. That'd be fine. If she's your friend, I'm sure she's someone I'd like to meet.'

‘Wonderful! Have a good nap, Faith. I'll see you later.'

‘Thank you, Hay.' She looked around, getting her bearings, then started off toward the house where the women guests stayed.

He watched her go, head down, hands jammed into her coat pockets. Her words were echoing inside his head. That tiny girl was the repository of some terrible tragedy. And he felt an immediate kinship with her, intimately acquainted as he was with the elements of tragedy. Its dimensions were acid-etched on his brain, permanent and only intermittently escapable.

He telephoned Tally the next morning after the breakfast clean-up was completed and asked if she'd like to come to the Saturday night dinner.

‘I thought I might persuade you to take some time off from stripping the wainscoting,' he said, which got the laugh he'd hoped for. ‘The food's very good and there's an open speaker meeting after. I think you'd enjoy it.'

‘I'm not a terribly social person, Hay,' she said carefully.

‘You don't have to be. It's just about eating and listening. You don't need to talk to anyone beyond saying hello. Not even that, if you're not up for it. The atmosphere is always pretty festive, a whole bunch of folks feeling optimistic for the first time in a while because people they care about are getting well again, finding themselves. They're starting to resemble the people they used to be and that's a special thing; it seeps into the air.'

‘You make it sound like a party.'

‘Well, not a party per se, but a celebration of sorts. I'll be more than happy to pick you up and bring you home again, so you don't have to worry about finding a new place in the dark.'

‘Good food and a good speaker, a festive mood, plus complimentary pick-up and delivery. How could I resist such an invitation? I will accept. Thank you for thinking of me.'

‘The downside of the invitation is that you'll be on your own for about forty minutes while I do the dinner service. I'm covered for the clean-up afterward, but I'm needed at the serving window for the main event. You could bring a book and read, if you like. Or you could just relax and people-watch. I'll be happy to swing by and pick you up around five thirty. Will that be okay?'

‘Okay,' she agreed. ‘I'll see you on Saturday. Just please don't expect me to be the life of the party.'

‘I have no expectations, Tally. I'm happy you're willing to come. I really do think you'll enjoy it.'

‘If I don't,' she said with a laugh, ‘I foresee some paint stripping in your future.'

‘Fair enough,' he said, then hung up the office phone and headed out to the truck. He was going to drive over to the Westfalls Mall in Farmington to buy a new shirt or two, maybe some slacks. Then he'd get a haircut, have the beard trimmed. It'd been too long since he'd paid any real attention to his appearance and all at once how he looked mattered again. He wasn't going to revert to the fellow who'd bought his clothes at Brooks Brothers and fit right in with his classmates at Princeton. That poor bastard was long gone. Sometimes that guy felt to him like a close friend who'd died. He was never coming back. And that was sad.

As he drove down the long driveway toward Route 7, he had a powerful sense of occasion. Nothing specific, but it was very real. Things were about to change.

T
hree days into her stay at The Farm, Faith was no longer worried about being sent away as an interloper but she remained self-conscious, uneasy. After all her years with the Lazarus clan she knew her anxiety level wasn't going to start diminishing in a mere matter of days . . . if ever. She accepted that reality and sat alone for meals, bringing along her copy of
Alcoholics Anonymous
, which everyone referred to as The Big Book to read while she ate – a successful ploy to discourage people from trying to engage her in conversation. Beyond an exchange of greetings with other guests in passing and attending the three daily meetings, she kept to herself. Having learned that she wasn't obligated to speak at all during the meetings she was able to listen – and to read – with genuine interest, absorbing the basics of the program and finding it all very sensible, very well-conceived.

She was nervous about the Saturday night dinner and meeting Hay's friend. Her instinct was to stay away. There'd been a couple of occasions at school when classmates with whom she was on speaking terms suggested she might like to read this hilarious book they'd just loved. Each time, without fail, Faith had found the book in question not only not funny but unreadable. She suspected that being introduced to someone with whom she'd ‘hit it off' was going to be the human equivalent of the highly recommended unfunny books.

But she liked and trusted Hay. It was instinctive. In the same way she'd entrusted herself all those years ago to Brian, letting him wrap her in a towel and carry her through the store, looking for Wolf and Toadman, she was truthful with Hay, letting his kindness serve as a kind of protective blanket. It was safe to talk to him and she had the feeling that, as with Brian, this man could become an ongoing presence in her life.

They'd had two more conversations since that first afternoon outside on the bench – once after the evening meeting that same day, and once the previous afternoon. He was consistently soft-spoken, thoughtful and good-humored. He took her seriously, gave weight to what she had to say, and laughed with her over things she found amusing. He was fatherly, protective without being overbearing. And given that some part of her was always in search of her parents, he qualified as someone worthy of considering in parental terms.

The dinner was obviously so important to him that he'd visited a barber and as a result looked much younger and no longer like a lumberjack, more like a gentleman farmer. She hadn't had the heart to refuse him.

She was standing just inside the door to the barn when he asked, and she agreed to come a bit early that evening, even though the thought of it made her stomach muscles clench.

‘Just so you know,' he warned, ‘every table will probably be occupied. It's a big night and there's usually a full house.'

‘Okay, I've been warned,' she said seriously. ‘Do people get all dressed up?'

‘Not at all. Wear whatever you want. It's not formal.'

‘That's a relief. I don't do formal.'

She sounded like Tally, and he was more and more convinced that introducing the two of them would be a good thing – for both of them.

‘Thank you, Faith. I appreciate it.'

‘You're welcome. I'll see you and your friend later,' she said, pulling her pack of cigarettes from her pocket and heading for the door.

He returned to the kitchen to help with the clean-up, praying he hadn't misread these women. He'd never done anything like this and there was always the possibility – however remote – that they would take an instant dislike to each other and the evening would be an utter failure.

‘You got your hair cut,' Tally observed when she opened the door to him that evening. ‘And trimmed the beard, too.'

Touching a hand to his goateed chin, he said, ‘My first visit to a barber in years. I'm still not used to it.'

‘It's most becoming. You look very civilized.' She smiled and stepped outside, pulling the door closed.

‘Less of a wild mountain man,' he offered.

‘Exactly. I don't think you'll be frightening any little old ladies.'

‘Well, I'm glad to hear that,' he said wryly, as they descended the porch steps and headed to his truck. ‘It's good to see you, Tally.'

‘And you,' she said, as he held the passenger door open and she climbed into the warm cab. Typically considerate, he'd left the car running. It was their third meeting since the night of the snowstorm and she'd come to recognize that his civility was ingrained. He was a well-bred, considerate man; gentle and thoughtful. Good company.

Faith sat alone at her usual table turning a glass of water on the tabletop, something to do with her hands while she waited for Hay and his friend. She was grateful for the echoey emptiness of the barn that allowed her to gather her thoughts, seeking to remain calm. The only sounds came from the kitchen where the dinner preparations were well underway. The smell of roasting meat was so heady she wanted to close her eyes, put her head down on the table and go to sleep.

She'd eaten more in the past three days than she had in years. She could feel the weight-gain. It was as if a hidden switch inside her had been turned on and she couldn't wait for mealtimes, no longer staying back to be the last in the food line but moving forward, often to be the first. Which prompted Hay to offer a big smile before he recited the offerings to her, usually with French descriptions.

Now, dreamy in the rich aroma drifting through the huge space, she thought about the place of her own she planned to get once she had access to her money. She wanted to learn how to cook. She'd take classes somewhere or buy videos that would lead her step by step through food preparation. She didn't care if she got to be the size of a Sumo wrestler. So her first thought about a home of her own was of a kitchen with well-stocked cupboards and a crowded refrigerator; a brightly lit room with every conceivable appliance where she'd produce headily aromatic meals to eat at a leisurely pace; meals to share with Connie, or Brian and his family, possibly even Stefan, once he'd settled into his new place. Maybe a party with all of them. She could envisage that. She wanted to eat with friends. One of the new rules for her life would be her refusal to eat with people who made her uncomfortable.