Leaving Haven (2 page)

1

Alice

June 19, 2012

A
lice had no desire to see the baby, really. Tiny infants made her uncomfortable, with their scrunched-up faces and inexplicable cries and terrifying vulnerability. And even though she had had one of her own, she had felt nothing but relief with each passing year of her daughter's life, each step forward into some semblance of physical competence, verbal communication, rational thought. But when John called and told her Georgia had disappeared from the hospital and left the baby behind, he sounded—for the first time in all the long years she'd known him—completely confounded and lost.

When the phone rang, Alice was standing in her kitchen making meatballs, which were arrayed in neat symmetrical rows on the baking sheet in front of her. She had rinsed her hands quickly and picked up the phone, and at John's words her heart had started to race, and she could feel it now, beating a rapid tattoo against her rib cage.

“Did you call the police?” Alice said. “Never mind. Of course you called the police.”

“Right. They're looking for her. The theory is postpartum depression.”

Alice closed her eyes, stroked her left temple with a damp hand. “Where's the baby now?”

“Here, at home with me, which is not going too well at the moment.”

Oh, Lord. Alice heard whimpering in the background. She noticed that her hands were shaking.
Georgia left the baby?
It was inconceivable. Alice sat down abruptly on one of the stools at the kitchen counter, pressed the phone more firmly against her ear, and took a deep breath. “Did you talk to Polly and Chessy? Do they have any idea where she is? Did she leave a note?”

John sighed. “Polly and Chessy haven't heard from her; I didn't talk to them, but they both talked to the police. They have no idea where she is. The nurses at the hospital were shocked; no one saw her leave. Her car is still in the parking lot. She left a note on the windshield saying she was fine and not suicidal, for what that's worth.”

“She would never kill herself. Because of Liza.” Alice said this with absolute certainty. Georgia had been her best friend for thirteen years, since they'd met at that Wiggle with Me class when the girls were less than a year old. Alice, twenty-two and the youngest mom in their upscale suburb, had felt so inadequate in those days—fumbling her way through breast-feeding, propping up her worn copy of
What to Expect the First Year
on the counter next to the kitchen sink so she could follow the step-by-step instructions for bathing the baby, as though she were following some kind of recipe. One day the book toppled over into the baby bath just as Alice was about to lower the baby into the tub. She had fished it out in a panic, holding a crying Wren against her shoulder with one arm, frantically trying to separate the soaking pages so she could read what to do next. She had ended up not even giving the baby a bath, and called Duncan at work and asked him to stop by the bookstore and bring home a new copy of
What to Expect the First Year,
actually
two
copies, in case something like that ever happened again.

Then Alice met Georgia, the magical baby whisperer, who could take a screaming infant, hold the baby's face close to hers, and smile and coo in some secret language that would calm the unhappiest baby within seconds. Meeting Georgia had been the biggest relief of Alice's life. Sure, Georgia was as anxious as any first-time mother, but she also had some instinct Alice lacked. Alice was a big believer in acting the part even if you didn't feel it, and had become adept at displaying a confidence she never possessed. “Don't worry about plastics,” she'd scoff when Georgia expressed fears about giving Liza a teething ring, while inside she was thinking,
I'd give my child steel wool to chew on if I thought it would get her to stop screaming.
But Georgia had an easy, natural way with babies that Alice couldn't fake. After her first lonely, terror-filled months as a new mother, Alice felt as if she'd stumbled across a clearing in the jungle when she found Georgia, a place that said,
See? You weren't as lost as you thought you were.

“I don't know what to do,” John said. Alice could hear the baby's high-pitched, hiccuping cries in the background. She thought of how much Georgia had wanted this baby, how she had looked forward to holding her son, to the intimacy of nursing, to every exhausting, delightful moment of these early days with a newborn—delightful, at least, to Georgia. Alice felt sick, deep-in-the-pit-of-her-being sick.

“I'm really worried about her,” John said. “I feel so helpless—I can't even try to search for her because I've got to take care of the baby, and I haven't even
held
a baby since Liza was an infant, and that was thirteen years ago. He won't take a bottle—and he's been screaming and screaming—can you hear him?”

“Yes, I can hear him,” Alice said. “I'd have to be deaf not to. But Georgia—to think she'd leave the baby—she must be, she must be so—” Alice felt her throat grow tight.

“I believe Georgia will come back in a day or two. She'll come back,” he repeated, as though saying it might make it true. He cleared his throat. “She's very, very upset—she wouldn't let me in the delivery room. I didn't even see the baby until after she left. I think this is her way of making sure I understand exactly
how
upset she is.”

“But you can't
know
she'll come back. She's never—” Alice's throat grew even tighter, and she paused.

“I've known her for more than twenty years, and I know she will come back. We've been part of each other ever since we met. That's like saying my
arm
will never come back, Alice, like my
spleen
will never come back. She can't not come back.”

Alice absorbed this.

“Liza comes home from camp in three weeks,” John said. “She's not going to leave Liza, too. You know that. Georgia will be okay, and she will come back.”

Alice was silent. She didn't know if Georgia would be okay, really. Ever.

The baby continued to scream, and John raised his voice. “I brought him home three hours ago. The doctor said there was no reason not to—he's healthy, and the nurse at the hospital said he'd take the bottle when he gets hungry enough, but I'm not so sure. He won't take a bottle
from me
. Nothing I do gets him to stop crying.”

Alice bit her lip. The least she could do for Georgia now, she thought, was to help her son. “You've got to hire a home nurse, John. Someone to help you with the baby until . . .” Alice let the sentence trail off. Until what? Until Georgia returned to claim her son? Until John figured out how to handle this on his own because she was never coming back?

“I'm
trying
to get a home nurse,” he said, his voice petulant. “It's not like Mary Poppins, where one just appears in your living room the moment you need her.” The baby's cries grew louder. “Hold on.”

Alice heard fumbling, patting, more crying, a muttered curse. She sighed. True, John was in a terrible situation, but this tendency of his to get peevish—which he was just as likely to do over a fallen soufflé as over a disappearing wife—was one of the things Alice liked least about him.

“Could you come over?” he said. “Please? Just for a few hours, until I can get a home nurse? I am
desperate.
”

“John, I can't.”

“Alice, this is about
the baby,
” John said. “It's not about anything other than taking care of this baby, who needs someone
right now
. If Georgia were here asking you for help you would drop everything and come over.”

Alice thought about this. It was true. She would do anything for Georgia and her baby. But Duncan— “I can't,” she said.

“Alice, I am begging you. Thirty minutes, that's all. Please: come help Georgia's baby.”

Georgia's baby.

“All right,” Alice said. “I'll be there in ten minutes.”

W
HEN
JOHN
OPENED
the door, the house was quiet behind him, his arms empty.

“He
just
fell asleep,” John said. “Finally. I brought him home from the hospital at two and it's what—five o'clock now?
Three hours
of nonstop crying.”

Alice stood on the front porch, the familiar faded gray boards under her feet. She hadn't seen John in two months, since before the baby was born. John's hair was longer, curling up at the nape of his neck, and a multiday stubble covered the fine lines of his cheeks and jaw. Dark, puffy circles of fatigue bloomed under his eyes, but they were the same John eyes—rich brown, with those heavy, sensual lids. “Bedroom eyes,” Georgia said. Those eyes were what had attracted Georgia to him, back when Georgia and John had first met while working at that restaurant in Albany. “He didn't say much,” Georgia had told Alice, “but he'd look at me with those eyes and I'd be wet in thirty seconds.”

Alice, of course, had been a little shocked that Georgia would talk about something so intimate. But that was Georgia—open, honest, direct. She was, to Alice at least, the quintessential earth mother, with her comfortable, rambling old Victorian house and the bright-colored skirts she wore (which she sewed herself) and her tendency to call everyone “darling” or “sweetie.” Why, even her work—making wedding cakes—involved mothery things like warm kitchens and fresh-baked smells and tears of joy. Georgia's own mother had died when she was twelve, and Georgia had become a mother to her younger sisters and then a mother to Liza, her firstborn, and then a kind of mother to her friends and her friends' children. Alice often thought that if she died and came back around in another life, she'd want to come back as one of Georgia's children, beloved and nurtured and understood.

“Did you hear from the agency about the nurse?” Alice said. She still stood on the porch, not quite ready to cross the threshold into Georgia's house.

“They'll have someone here tomorrow morning,” John said. He stepped back and held the door wide. “Come on in.”

Alice hesitated.

“If the baby's settled now, I should go home,” Alice said. “Wren's home and I was in the middle of making dinner . . .” Her voice trailed off. She twisted her wedding ring back and forth on her finger.

John looked at her. “Do you want to see the baby?”

Alice's heart thumped hard against her ribs. She ignored the question. “I'm more concerned about Georgia. I can't see her leaving a baby, any baby.”

John ran his hand through his hair, which made the cowlick on the back of his head stand straight up. “I filed a missing persons report with the police. I gave them photos. Honestly, they believe she'll call within the next twenty-four hours—maybe not me, but one of her sisters. She'll come back. She had that postpartum depression after Liza was born. I just didn't think—”

“I didn't know her then,” Alice said. By the time she had met Georgia, Liza was already six months old and Georgia was aglow with baby love. Georgia had referred to some “dark days” after Liza's birth, but had brushed them off as typical new-mother moodiness. Alice had no idea it had been anything more, that there had been any possibility of something like
this
. Alice's eyes filled, and she turned her head so John couldn't see.

“
Alice
.” John put his hand under her chin and turned her face toward his. “She'll be okay. I promise. I know Georgia.”

Alice pressed her lips together firmly and shook her head, shaking his hand away from her face.

“Listen,” John said. “I'm sorry I called. I knew you'd want to know about Georgia, but I shouldn't have asked you to come over. I've been up all night the last two nights, and I got a little crazy with worrying about Georgia and the baby crying and crying, and then the agency saying they didn't have a nurse—I didn't know who else to call.”

Alice cleared her throat. “It's fine. I'm fine. I've got to go.”

“Okay,” John said. “I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything about Georgia.”

Alice turned to leave.

“He's beautiful,” John said. “Are you sure you don't want to see him?”

Alice felt exhausted, as though the weight of her very bones was too much for her weary muscles to hold up. Of course she was curious about the baby, but—

“Come on,” John said. He stepped inside and stood back, so she could walk past him. “Just take one peek. He's asleep in the bassinet in the living room.”

Alice's curiosity—or something deeper, more primal—overwhelmed her, and she did as she was told. She walked into the house, past John, and through the hallway, into Georgia's sunny, yellow-walled living room, where she had spent countless hours with Georgia, dissecting men and marriage and motherhood over countless glasses of wine, watching Liza and Wren play with blocks and Polly Pockets and their Playmobil guys. Alice stood on the Tibetan rug, with its intricate pattern of blues and reds and golds, rested her hand on the back of the blue armchair, gazed at the little porcelain statue of a laughing child in a yellow dress that sat on the cherrywood mantel. The room and its contents were as familiar to her as the sight of her own face in the mirror every morning. All at once she missed Georgia so much that the missing felt like a physical thing, a hollow ache throughout her body. Alice closed her eyes and sighed. She took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and tiptoed over to the corner of the room and the simple white bassinet where the baby lay sleeping.