Lullaby and Goodnight (30 page)

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Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub

BOOK: Lullaby and Goodnight
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“Are you kidding? He would have been over here in a heartbeat.”
Or in two minutes,
Peyton thinks grimly.
“I just told him you were having some light contractions and I didn’t think it was a good idea to leave you here alone.”
“Was he upset?”
“Trust me, he’s used to my being gone all night. It goes with the territory in my business. And sometimes he takes off for a day or two himself.”
“He does? Where does he go?” she feels obliged to ask, wondering where Tom is now. Is he still standing outside? Or is he walking home? Did he believe her when she told him she wanted to be alone?
“Oh, we have a cottage out on Long Island,” Rita is saying. “We got it before the boys were born. I’ll take you out there sometime. You’d love it.”
Peyton nods, knowing Rita is trying to distract her from her fear.
As if she realizes it isn’t working, she says, “Listen, Peyton, I can call J.D. to come here if that will make you feel safer.”
“No, I think we’re okay for tonight. I just feel bad making you stay here and lie to J.D.”
“Not a big deal. And hey, I’m not complaining. This way, I won’t have to listen to him snore.”
At last, Peyton manages a smile, grateful for her friend’s presence. “You might have to listen to me snore instead. As far as I know I never did before I was pregnant, but Tom said—”
She catches herself.
The expression in Rita’s eyes tells her that they’re thinking the same thing.
Don’t believe anything Tom says.
Aloud, she merely commands, “Step aside, sugar pie, so I can move this desk.”
“But . . . it’s heavy.”
“Good.”
Rita gives it a mighty shove, sliding it securely in front of the door.
“There,” she says, brushing off her hands. “Safe. For tonight.”
“I’ll call a locksmith first thing in the morning,” is Peyton’s glum reply.
 
Most of the photos laid out on the quilted turquoise bedspread are grainy, snapped from a distance and blown up, with branches and leaves visible around the perimeters of most. They were snapped in a schoolyard, the focal point a big wooden jungle gym with swings, ladders, slides, monkey bars. In the background is a painted sign whose letters are blurred, but that is inconsequential when one knows what they read.
Edgewood Elementary.
The girl with the hauntingly familiar features is in action in all but one of the pictures: climbing, sliding, swinging, her limbs and even her blond pigtails captured as they sail about in midair.
But in one snapshot, she is simply standing, looking straight ahead, almost as though she senses the camera.
“Did she notice that you were taking this?” Anne Marie asked the private investigator the first time she saw it, feeling sick at the possibility that the girl might have realized she was being watched.
“No way. I was in the woods, too far away for anyone to realize I was there.”
That’s probably true, judging from the few photos that weren’t blown up, in which she and the other children are mere specks on the horizon.
Regardless, the magnified photo in which she appears to be staring into the lens makes Anne Marie increasingly uneasy every time she sees it.
She has seen it often these past few months, surreptitiously removing it from its plain manila envelope every waking hour; seeing it even in her sleep, in her dreams, in her nightmares.
She’s seen it so often that this child’s face has irrevocably morphed with the one she remembers, the one she has carried in her mind’s eye all these years.
Now, trying to dissect the features she knows so well, she has no idea where one face ends and the other begins, no way of distinguishing past from present.
Yet it always comes down to the fact that this girl is still alive.
Although sometimes, even now, Anne Marie almost believes the impossible: that her predecessor might be, too.
“You can’t do this, Mary,” Javier Nueves pleads, pacing the length of the small living room and back again. “You
promised
me that you wouldn’t do this. That Father Roberto was the only person you would tell.”
“That was before I knew—” She catches herself, unable to say it, even now, a month after the shocking loss. “That was when I thought I would be able to tell him.”
“
Ay, por amor de Dios,
Mary! You aren’t thinking what can happen.”
“Yes, I am.” Again, she wipes her streaming eyes with a soggy tissue using one trembling hand, holding her swaddled infant against her breast with the other. “I know exactly what can happen.”
Javier stops in front of the sagging couch where she sits, lashing out at her as he never before has done. “You know what can happen? And you’re willing to do this anyway?
Usted esta loco!
”
Loco.
An apt description, perhaps, one that has crossed her own mind these past few weeks.
She can’t argue with Javier. Perhaps insanity is the only explanation for what they—what
she
—agreed to do.
She went out of her mind with grief every time she lost another baby; was crazed with anguish when the promised adoption fell through. Why else would she have accepted Rose’s offer, and the burden of guilt that now goes with it?
The weight of that remorse has grown too heavy to bear, threatening to smother all that now sustains her, including her marriage, even the joy borne of motherhood.
“I have to tell somebody, Javier,” she desperately tells her husband, begging his understanding, his forgiveness. “I have to.”
“But why? Who will you tell?”
The baby cries out at the sound of her father’s harsh demands.
“
Lo siento mucho, mi tesoro.
” Javier bends to kiss his daughter’s head, pressing his lips against the pink bow Mary tied around one silken tuft this morning. Pink, to match one of the beautiful dresses Javier brings home by the armload from the thrift store on the corner. Dresses for his little treasure.
How will I live with myself if I tell and destroy him?
Mary wonders in anguish.
Yet another, perhaps even more agonizing, question persists.
How will I live with myself—and my sin—if I don’t?
Kneeling before her, resting his clasped hands on her knees as though in prayer, Javier hoarsely repeats, “Who will you tell? Father Roberto is—”
“I know! I know what happened to him. Don’t say it, please.”
“Well, who will you tell?”
“I don’t know,” she wails softly. “The police?”
“The police?” Storm clouds obliterate what was left of her husband’s attempt at compassion. “You can’t tell the police. They’ll go to the mother and—”
“You mean the donor.”
“I mean the thirteen-year-old
perra,
” he amends crudely, and Mary winces.
This isn’t her gentle, loving Javier. This is a man blinded—no,
tainted
—by the delusion she herself once nurtured.
“Javier, please don’t—”
“No,
you
please don’t,” he flings back at her. “If you tell the police what happened, they’ll give our daughter back to someone who doesn’t deserve her. Is that really what you want?”
“That isn’t going to happen. She never wanted the baby, Javier. You know that. The police will know that, too. What makes you think—”
“She has a family, doesn’t she? Everybody has a family. What if they want the baby? They’ll take her away from us.”
“Maybe they won’t.”
“Maybe they will. We can’t take this chance!”
“We have to.
I
have to. Can’t you see, Javier? I can’t go on like this. I can’t live with this sin. I have to leave this in God’s hands.”
“God doesn’t want this innocent child torn from the only parents she knows!” His voice breaks, and he clings to her now, imploring, “Mary, can’t you see? You have to open your eyes and see the truth. Dawn was a gift from God.”
No,
Mary thinks dully, resting her tear-dampened cheek against the baby’s black hair,
Dawn wasn’t a gift from God.
She was a gift from a woman who had no right to play God.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The sudden ring of the telephone startles Peyton awake.
Reaching for the receiver on the bedside table, she glances blearily at the clock and sees that it’s six-thirty. The last time she looked, having watched the minutes tick by for the duration of the night, it was five forty-five.
That was right after she popped the two blue pills Rita handed over with sympathetic reluctance.
“Peyton, it’s me. Are you okay?”
“Tom?” Heart pounding, she struggles to shake off a numbing wave of grogginess. She sits up and looks warily around the shadowy room, almost expecting to see the unwelcome caller lurking in a corner.
“I’m going to go pick up bagels and come over.”
“No!” Tempering her panic, she manages to say, “I mean, don’t come now. Please. I didn’t sleep well all night and I need to rest.”
“I knew you wouldn’t sleep after all that. You’ll feel safer if I’m there. I’ll just hang around and keep an eye on things while you rest.”
“No, really. I just want to be left alone for a while. Please.”
He hesitates. “Do you mean left alone so you can sleep this morning? Or left alone for a while . . . period?”
She groans. “Please, Tom, I’m exhausted. I took some Tylenol PM and it’s knocking me out. I can barely speak right now.”
“You’re not supposed to take anything like that when you’re pregnant.”
Irked by the gentle scolding, she opens her mouth to tell him that she checked with Rita first. That will only require complicated explanations she isn’t prepared to give, and he doesn’t deserve.
“Look, just let me sleep,” she says wearily. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay. Call me if you need me.”
She mumbles an unintelligible reply and hangs up, collapsing against the pillow again.
“I knew he’d call first thing.”
She gasps at the sound of the voice and looks up to see Rita standing in the doorway.
“Sorry . . . I didn’t mean to scare you, sugar pie.”
“I know, I’m just jumpy. Did you sleep?”
“Not much.” Rita runs a hand through her disheveled gray hair, her eyes barely visible beneath her unkempt fringe of bangs. “Listen, I’m going to make some coffee. The locksmith will be here in a little while. You just rest.”
“Call me when he gets here, okay?”
“I will.”
Peyton closes her eyes, already drifting away on a billowing cloud of unconsciousness.
 
Last night’s delightful little stunt was never part of the plan.
Unlike the Bible, the meaningful gift
all
the donors receive, this was an afterthought. Peyton Somerset won’t learn anything from it, other than that she isn’t in charge of every element of her life.
It’s an important lesson, one they could all have stood to learn. But Peyton, more than anyone else. She exudes an inner strength of character that most donors either conceal, or lack entirely. She isn’t the least bit leery of the prospect of raising a baby without a loving father to share the blessing.
No, she thinks she can do it all, have it all. She’s brazenly claimed as her own the God-given right denied to scores of deserving couples.
For that, she must be punished. This is no longer about the work: the methodical inverted process of take-and-give.
No, and I’ll be the first to admit it.
This has become a personal vendetta.
Peyton Somerset is the epitome of the self-indulgent donor, manipulating the natural order of the universe to suit her own greedy needs.
That’s why this time, particularly from here on in, things are going to be different.
Of course there was a momentary lack of organization. First, the unforseen elimination of the Cordells as adoptive parents, then the Khatirs’ refusal to accept the proposal. Then there’s the cloying recollection of holding a pillow over an innocent man’s face until he ceased to breathe.
And a priest, at that.
But you do what has to be done for the greater good. You do whatever it takes to preserve the clandestine nature of the work, do it all without flinching, and then you move on.
As I have.
Everything is under control once again.
Perhaps Peyton Somerset will be the final donor. Perhaps there will be more, but chosen, in the future as in the past, at random once again.
Live and learn.
In any case, the Somerset baby will come into the world to find both a mother and father waiting.
He’s going to be so thrilled, and so surprised. I can’t wait to tell him . . .
But I will. I’ll wait until the time is right.
And in the meantime, there’s plenty to do. The bloody gift in Peyton’s handbag was the perfect way to knock the infuriating Ms. I’ve Got It All Under Control off balance.
It was so satisfying that it’s tempting to do it again . . . and again . . . if only to banish the impatient boredom that always sets in during the last trimester, when everything is in place, and there’s nothing to do but wait.
 
Mary opens her eyes abruptly to see the sun seeping into the crevices around the perimeter of the drawn aluminum blinds. Slashes of its rays even manage to push through a few of the slats that didn’t close all the way, caging the bed beneath the window in strange bars of light.
The angle is all wrong, Mary thinks vaguely, in the moment before it occurs to her to glance at the clock.
No wonder. It’s late.
Past ten, already.
A frisson of panic takes hold, and she bolts from the bed, racing for the baby’s room.
Dawn has never made it through the night without waking to be fed. Three o’clock, seven o’clock . . .
She should have awakened Mary at least twice by now. Unless Javier got up with her . . .
But he leaves for his Saturday job at the loading dock well before six. Even if he’d given her that first feeding . . .
A frantic, sick feeling washes over Mary as she steps over the threshold into the baby’s room, where the blinds are still drawn and the night-light still shines.
How many tragic crib death accounts did she hear about in the bereaved parents’ support group she went to for a short time after her first stillbirth? She still recalls the ravaged expressions on the faces of women who described oversleeping, then rushing to check on their babies, only to find them stiff and cold.
Mary remembers thinking, even then,
At least you had them for a little while. At least you got to hold them, feed them, feel like a mother . . .
I was denied all of that.
Now, as she approaches Dawn’s cradle, guilt courses through her. This loss is more terrible, even, than the crippling losses she’s already suffered. She’s held Dawn, fed her. . .
I’m her mother. And I’ve lost her.
She closes her eyes as she takes the last few steps, whispering a prayer, asking God for a miracle she doesn’t deserve, for strength to face what lies ahead if there can be no miracle.
Then she leans over the cradle, where the white crocheted blanket she tucked securely around her daughter last night lies rumpled at the bottom . . .
And she realizes the cradle is empty.
 
“I can think of a hundred places I’d rather be,” Detective Sam Basir says wistfully.
“I can think of a thousand,” Detective Jody Langella replies. Chief among them, down at Breezy Point with her firefighter husband and kids at the annual August beach party.
“Yeah? You’re probably wishing you were down at Breezy with Jack and Mandi and Jackie Jr.”
Okay, so her longtime partner has the uncanny ability to read her mind. Jody shrugs. “Drunken firemen, burnt hot dogs, jellyfish stings . . . who needs that?”
“You do,” Sam tells her. “Maybe you’ll get down there in time to have a cold one and see the fireworks.”
“I doubt it.”
Leaving behind the blazing afternoon sunlight, they walk into the towering Co-op City building.
Jody flashes her badge at the building manager she met last month, and learns that nobody has been picking up mail for the Cordells’ apartment.
“What am I supposed to do? Just let it keep piling up?” the manager asks, wringing his hands.
“You could always just open it.”
The swarthy little man’s eyes shoot toward his receding hairline at Sam’s brazen suggestion.
“He’s just kidding.” Jody shakes her head at her partner, wondering why he insists on riling the innocent.
Moments later, they’re being escorted to the fourteenth-floor apartment where Linden Cordell lived with his wife Derry.
After unlocking the door, the manager asks, “Do you need me to stay here this time? Because I have to get back—”
“Go, go.” Jody is already in the living room, intent on looking the place over with a fresh perspective.
Nothing has changed in the month since she was here, aside from a staler smell, more cobwebs, a thicker layer of dust. Particles are stirred to dance in the air wherever she walks, glinting like glitter in the sunlight streaming in.
The place is stuffy; Sam swiftly opens every window.
Glancing over a stack of CDs beside the stereo in the living room, he plucks a few off the shelf to examine them. “Check it out, Langella. I haven’t even heard of most of these bands since high school. AC-DC? Rush? Hey, I’d love to hear—”
“Come on, we’re not here to relive our youth, Sam.”
Obviously still convinced they’re wasting their time investigating a random murder, he tosses the CDs aside and asks, “So what is it that we’re looking for?”
“Whatever we can find.”
“I’d like to find something cold to drink.” He steps into the kitchen, opens the refrigerator, and makes a face, quickly closing it. “God, that reeks.”
“What did you expect? Nobody’s cleaned it out in over a month.” Jody shakes her head and leaves him there, heading to the bedroom.
The closet isn’t full, despite the fact that there is only one, and it contains both a man’s and a woman’s wardrobe. Jody is no fashionista despite her thirteen-year-old daughter’s efforts, but even she can tell by the labels and fabric quality that the Cordells’ clothing budget was limited.
There are a number of empty hangers on the woman’s side. Plastic hangers, unlike the wire ones that hold all but two of the remaining garments: inexpensive summer blouses that still have tags on them. One is blue with ruffles, the other peach with a wide collar. Both are from Strawberries, marked down with final clearance prices, probably from the end of last season. Thanks to Mandi’s obsession with clothes, Jody recognizes the style as having been popular last summer.
“What’d you find?” Sam asks from the doorway.
“She must have packed a lot of her stuff.” Jody stares at the blouses. “But not everything. Wouldn’t you think a woman who was leaving her husband—a woman who had very little clothing in the first place—would take everything? Or at least, almost everything?”
“Not necessarily. Maybe she wanted to travel light.”
“But she left behind stuff that’s new. Why would she do that? Wouldn’t she want to bring the new stuff with her, at least?”
“Maybe she had other new stuff.”
Jody shakes her head, lost in thought.
Something definitely isn’t adding up.
 
“I still can’t believe you forgot to tell me about Wanda last night,” Peyton can’t help chiding Rita as they step out of an air-conditioned cab into a blast of humid midday heat.
“Yeah, well, we were both a little preoccupied, remember?” Rita struggles to balance a large bouquet in one arm as the driver hands her the gift-wrapped boxes from the trunk.
“Here, give me the roses.” Peyton reaches for them.
“No, the vase is heavy. I’ve got it.”
“I’m not an invalid, Rita. I can help. At least give me a couple of boxes. They’re not heavy, and it was my idea to buy all those little pink outfits, so it isn’t fair that you have to lug them all.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ve got them.” Rita shakes her head good-naturedly. “I should have known better than to take a pregnant woman to the layette department at Lord and Taylor.”
“You’re just lucky I didn’t buy stuff for my own layette.”
“Oh, I think that saleswoman figured you’ll be back.”
Peyton can’t help smiling.
Rita was right earlier when she said shopping for baby gifts would be therapeutic. It was just what Peyton needed this afternoon to sweep away the bitter aftertaste of last night’s trauma. She knows it’ll come rushing back later, when at last she’s forced to go home again, but for now, she has other things to think about.

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