Leaving Haven (25 page)

“And you went.” Duncan said it as a statement, not an accusation, but Alice flinched nonetheless.

“Yes, I went. I tried to call you first, Duncan, to let you know, to make sure you would be okay with it, but I couldn't reach you. And I swear to you I went for Georgia,
not John,
because Georgia wouldn't want her baby to be crying and crying and inconsolable. I thought it was the least I could—one thing I could—,” she faltered.

“You did promise Duncan you wouldn't have any contact with John,” Dr. Jenkins said.

“I know,” Alice said. “I'm sorry. And I didn't mean to—I didn't recognize his number when he called, and when I heard the baby—” Her damn tears rose again and she pressed her lips together, cleared her throat. “I went for Georgia, as one little thing I could do to make it up to Georgia, even though she would never know about it.”

“I understand you wanted to do something for Georgia,” Dr. Jenkins said. “But you need to understand that Duncan may have a hard time if you don't make his need to be able to trust you your top priority.”

Alice nodded. “You're right.” She looked at her husband. “I'm sorry.” Dear God, had she ever said any words more often in her life?
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

“He's a beautiful, beautiful boy,” she said. “And it's just—I don't know what's wrong with Georgia, but I don't know that she'll ever want him, given—given everything.” Alice looked down at the floor, her face burning with shame. But the thought of the baby and his wide-open innocence calmed her. She looked up at Duncan. “And John can't raise him alone, and I don't think he'd want to raise him on his own. And we could do a good job with him; I know we could. But it's a lot to ask, and I have no right to ask.” She waited.

Duncan looked at Dr. Jenkins.

“Tell her the truth,” Dr. Jenkins said. “She's told you what she wants; you can tell her what you want.”

Duncan turned his face sideways, toward the wall, where another cloud painting hung. He turned back to face Alice.

“I think,” he said, his blue eyes on hers, “it's time you got a lawyer.”

Hope flickered in her chest. “To figure out if we have a right to the baby?”

“No,” Duncan said. “To figure out the divorce.”

17

Georgia

June 19–20, 2012

A
s soon as Georgia slipped out the front door of the hospital, she pulled a black baseball cap from her purse and put it on, as well as her sunglasses. She walked into the parking lot to find her station wagon, still parked where she'd left it when she'd driven herself to the hospital the day before yesterday, so furious with John that she wouldn't get in the car with him, even in the midst of a contraction. She slipped a note under the windshield on the driver's side. Then she walked across the lot to the metro station, and sat down on a bench to wait for the next train.

She was not a planner. Polly was a planner; Alice was a planner. For the last ten years, Alice had started planning in May for their annual summer trip to Georgia's cabin—outlining all the dinner menus, buying up suntan lotion and bug spray and Band-Aids on sale, making cookies and casseroles and freezing them. It was all Georgia could do to remember to pack a bathing suit. And inevitably, at some point during the vacation, Georgia would get frantic because she had forgotten something critical—like Bananagrams, which the girls played over and over on vacation—only to have Alice say, “Don't worry. I brought it.”

But something about her anger had sharpened Georgia's focus, and turned her into a very good planner indeed. From the second she had figured out the affair, she thought about how she would leave the baby,
Alice's
baby.

She knew where she would go. She knew she wanted to be alone, for a few days at least. She knew she didn't want anyone to think she was crazy or suicidal, hence the carefully worded note she left on the windshield of her car. She had planned every step with precision.

Two weeks ago, she had driven down to Union Station, parked, and waited on a bench inside, watching the ticket line. When she saw a young woman with a toddler at the end of the line, Georgia had approached her.

“Do you mind getting a ticket for me?” Georgia had asked. “Standing in line these days, you know—” She had gestured toward her enormous belly.

“Sure,” the woman said.

“I'm going to upstate New York,” Georgia said, “to visit my mom after the baby comes. Could you buy a one-way ticket for this date?” And she had handed her a piece of paper with info about the train and some cash. No one would remember the woman with the toddler buying a ticket. Georgia was too likely to stick in someone's memory, with her gigantic pregnant belly, her face blotchy and swollen from crying for days on end.

She had picked the date—June 19—out of the air. Her baby was due June 18, but might come early, she thought. And she could always change the date of her ticket. But, miracle of miracles, her labor had started the evening of June 17, and the baby had been born after midnight. So her ticket for today, June 19, was right on the money.

It would be a long day and night of travel. The metro she waited for now would take her to Union Station, where she would catch an Amtrak train to New York. In New York she would take another train, along the Hudson to Albany and then north to Westport. From there, she would take a mountain taxi to the cabin on Lake Condundrum, where she could stay undisturbed for a few days, and think about what she wanted to do next. She was paying for everything in cash.

She had researched the law so she would know what it meant to leave the baby behind. Because she had left him at the hospital, warm and well fed and in his bassinet, where a nurse would find him as soon as he cried, Virginia's safe haven laws would protect her, and she couldn't be prosecuted for abuse or neglect or cruelty. But it also meant the state could “terminate her parental rights,” a phrase that pierced her very soul with its finality.

She thought of the baby, up there on the third floor of the hospital in his bassinet, his belly full of her milk, his face relaxed in sleep. Tears stung her eyes.
The baby
. She loved him; she didn't want to, but there it was. She had imagined over these long last six weeks that the minute he was released from her body she would feel released from the grief and white-hot anger that had plagued her since she found out about the affair. The baby was John and Alice's baby, not her baby. She could not,
would not,
love him. But when the nurse had lifted him into her arms after all those hours of labor, he had opened his eyes at the sound of her voice, squinting in the strong light of the delivery room. And she had gazed back into his eyes and felt, to her astonishment, the same kind of fierce, pure love for him that she had felt for Liza.

She didn't want to love him. She thought of John and Alice and their skinny bodies intertwined on a bed of fine linens in some posh hotel. She had no idea where or how they had consummated their affair, but imagined it had been someplace like the Hay-Adams, all white and cream and gold, with custom Italian bed linens and plush down duvets and a fireplace. The idea that they were doing
that
while she was sitting at home with her swollen ankles up on the coffee table, rubbing cocoa butter into the stretch marks on her belly and gestating
their
biological child—no. She did
not
love this baby.

The lights on the metro platform flashed; the train was arriving. Georgia stood up. She stepped onto the train and the doors closed behind her. Being on the train was just like being pregnant, she thought. After a certain point, you were absolutely committed, and there was nothing you could do but finish the ride.

A
T
UNION
STATION
she purchased a few things—toiletries, a lightweight cardigan, a scarf. She bought a card, so she could write to Liza, and a book, something to take her mind off her life. She boarded the train, wrapped herself in her new cardigan, put on her sunglasses, and went to sleep. She slept as the train headed north through Baltimore and Wilmington and Philadelphia. Just outside of Philly, the pain in her breasts woke her up and she went into the bathroom and tried to express some milk, but it was so impossible—leaning over the tiny sink, trying to brace herself with her legs as the train swayed from side to side and lurched around curves—that she gave up and resigned herself to being in pain until Albany. She had to switch trains in New York, so she wandered into a deli in Penn Station and bought tea and a turkey sandwich, but the sandwich turned her stomach so she left it untouched and just drank the tea.

She watched the broad waters of the Hudson River out the window of the train as it moved north to Albany, watched the landscape roll through farmland and low-slung hills and the soft peaks of the Catskills. She was heading north, her favorite direction. She used to say that every time they got in the car to drive to the Adirondacks in July: “I love going north. It's my favorite direction.” John thought it was a silly thing to say, and they had the same back-and-forth every year, with John saying things like “What? So if you have to drive south or east it ruins your day? What if you lived at the North Pole? Would you just stand still?” It was a conversation they had for Liza's benefit, because it always made her laugh and because it had become tradition.

Georgia sighed as she thought of Liza, whose well-being was the most difficult, painful part of this entire ordeal. Right now Liza was at camp, where she would be until mid-July, when Georgia was scheduled to pick her up and bring her to the cabin. At that point Georgia would have to tell her
something
.

The timing of Liza's camp had been the one bit of good luck Georgia had had over the last few months. Every summer for the last four years, Liza had left for a month at camp the day after school got out, which this year fell on June 15. They had registered her for camp a year ago, long before Georgia knew she was pregnant. Liza loved Camp Pokomac (shorthand for Pok-O-MacCready), a haven of High Peaks sunsets and crisp Adirondack nights nestled on the edge of a clear, cold lake. They'd discovered it one rainy day during their vacation at the cabin, when they'd driven north to explore antique shops and eat pie at a local diner. Liza had gone to Pokomac for two weeks the summer she turned ten, and had loved rock climbing and tromping through the woods to find salamanders and bonding with the other girls. She'd been back every year since, and this would be her final year as a camper; next year she would be a counselor-in-training.

Liza had offered to give it up as soon as Georgia had told her there would be a new baby, but Georgia had wanted her to go. After all the stress and drama of middle school, she needed to go be a kid for a month, Georgia said. Georgia also did not put much stock in the idea that entire families should be present to watch the miracle of birth; it was bad enough to have your husband present, witness to some of the most undignified moments a human could experience. So Liza was off at Pokomac now for three more weeks, climbing mountains and paddling kayaks and smelling like campfire smoke, which meant that Georgia had three more weeks to figure out what she was going to tell Liza about relinquishing the baby.

She couldn't say, “I can't handle being a single parent,” because now she was a single parent to Liza. She couldn't say, “The baby really belongs to Alice and your father,” because Liza didn't know about the egg donation—or the affair, for that matter. She would have to tell Liza
some
version of the truth, because there was no other way to explain—to Liza or anyone else—why she would abandon the baby she had wanted for more than ten years.

“You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step,” her father used to say, quoting someone she couldn't remember. Georgia decided to adopt that as her life's philosophy, starting today. She took a long slug from the bottle of water she had bought in D.C. and pressed her hands against her aching breasts. Soon the train would pull into Albany and she would get on the next train, and then, sometime around midnight, she would finally be at the cabin, where nothing ever changed.

I
N
FACT
IT
was almost 1:00
A
.
M
. by the time the mountain taxi turned onto the long dirt drive that wound through the woods to the cabin. Georgia had realized about forty miles before that Glenn Dobbs, who checked on the cabin throughout the winter and “opened” it for them each summer, might not have gotten around to opening it yet, which meant that she would arrive to a cabin full of dust and dead insects and mouse droppings and no running water. She had tried to still that thought, but now it pushed back.
What will I do?
Finally she saw the dark outline of the cabin's peaked roof against the blue-black sky, the sharp silhouette of the pines. She paid the driver in cash, and asked him to stay long enough with the headlights on so she could see her way along the path to the front door. Tree frogs trilled out their crazy songs from the trees at the edge of the lake, cutting through the stillness of the night. The key was on the ledge in the rock of the chimney, as usual, and as she turned it in the old metal lock she said a little prayer.