The Secret Life of Ceecee Wilkes (16 page)

E
ve left Cory in the bassinet, then walked upstairs and knocked on Marian’s bedroom door, the
Richmond Times-Dispatch
clutched in her hand. She heard a catch of breath, then the rustling of blankets. In a moment, Marian pulled open the door, wearing a robe, her glasses askew.

Eve waved the paper in front of her. “How could you keep this from me?” she asked.

“Oh,” Marian said, as she realized the reason for the intrusion. “I’m sorry, Eve.” She sounded tired. “I…I just wanted to spare you from it. But maybe it’s better that you found it after all.”

“Do you know something about this…situation?” Eve asked. “Are you keeping things from me? You’re in SCAPE. Do you know what—”

“Shh.” Marian touched her arm.

“What do you
know?
” Eve asked. Downstairs, Cory started to cry.

“I don’t know a thing, Eve. Honest, I don’t. I’ve told you. We all keep each other in the dark.”

Eve lowered the newspaper to her side, suddenly deflated. “I can’t handle the dark anymore,” she said. “I have to…I need someone to help me figure out what’s going on.” She pressed a hand to her temple and closed her eyes. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”

“Okay,” Marian said. “Let me get my slippers and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

They were both silent as Marian brewed tea and Eve fed Cory. She knew she had to wait for Marian to begin this conversation. Anything she said would come out in a jumble of emotion, and that was not going to help.

Marian poured tea for both of them, then took a seat across the table from her.

“You can talk to me about this,” she said, as if laying ground rules, “but I’m only allowing it because I want you to get it out of your system so you don’t talk to anyone else. All right?”

Eve nodded.

“I’m a little concerned, Eve,” she continued. “You’ve got to have a better handle on yourself than this. You can’t be so impulsive, coming upstairs and pounding on my door like that. I understand you’re upset and my door happens to be a safe one. Others won’t be.”

Eve felt chastened. How many times had she been told not to utter a word about what had happened? “I know,” she said. “But I—”

“Here’s what I know,” Marian said. “I received a call from a woman who didn’t give me her name. They never do. She knew some… some facts that let me know she was part of SCAPE. She told me a young girl and her new baby were living in Charleston—which I recognized was probably a lie, but that was immaterial—and they’d gotten caught up in a SCAPE activity they didn’t belong in and needed a place to go underground. Could I help. I said yes. I didn’t ask questions. You don’t ask questions in this business.”

“You don’t know anything about Tim or this girl in the paper?” Eve nodded toward the newspaper on the table.

Marian shook her head. “I didn’t know anything at all about it until you reacted to that television piece the other day. If I’d been listening to that story about kidnapping the governor’s wife in order to get freedom for a death-row inmate…well, I would have thought SCAPE was involved in some way. Supporting the effort at the very least. But that was all.”

Cory had fallen asleep, and Eve sat her up on her lap to burp. “I’m so confused,” she said. “I
know
this girl. I mean, I know who she is. And nothing makes any sense.”

Marian hesitated. “Who is she?” she asked finally.

“Her name is Bets,” Eve said. “She waited on Tim and me in a restaurant once in…where we were living. It was obvious she knew him, but…not like
that.
” She shook her head, still trying to make sense of the article. “She didn’t act jealous of me or anything. Tim and I were even holding hands in the restaurant.”

Marian sipped her tea, listening in silence.

“I just don’t
understand,
” Eve said. “Was he seeing both of us at the same time? I mean, if
she
was his girlfriend when he disappeared and
I
was his girlfriend when he disappeared…I guess that’s the only explanation.”

“Maybe.” Marian’s tone gave away her doubt.

“Maybe she
thought
of herself as his girlfriend, but he didn’t,” Eve suggested. “Maybe it was all her big fantasy.”

Marian set her tea cup on the saucer. “How old was he, honey?” she asked.

“Twenty-two.” She winced at the realization that he was the same age as Bets.

“I think…he may have been using you,” Marian said. Eve could tell she was carefully picking her words. Just not carefully enough.

“I don’t want to hear it,” she said. Until that moment, she’d forgotten Genevieve’s warning about Tim being a “womanizer.”

“You’re only seventeen,” Marian said. “You’re a little…compared to a twenty-two-year old, anyway, you’re a little naive.”

“Only sixteen,” Eve said.

“You were sixteen when you met him?”

“I’m
still
sixteen.” Eve was suddenly angry, though whether it was at Marian or Tim or the world, she couldn’t be sure. “The
real me
is sixteen. Eve Bailey is seventeen.”

Marian sat back in her chair. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Did he know your age?”

Eve nodded.

“Well, Eve.” Marian let out a heavy sigh. “I realize that he’s Cory’s father and that he was someone special to you, but I have to say, I don’t like this man at all.”

“He was really good to me, though,” Eve argued. “He appreciated me. He loved me. One day I got five thousand dollars in the mail, and I’m sure he sent it.”

Marian’s eyes were wide behind her glasses. “Cash?” she asked.

Eve nodded. “He wanted me to be able to go to school.”

“Where’s the money now?”

“I had to leave it when…everything happened.”

“Why are you so sure he’s the person who sent it?”

“’Cause he was rich.”

Marian made a sound of disgust. “He bought you in every way possible, then,” she said.

Eve lifted Cory to her shoulder and stood up to slip her into the sling. “I just can’t believe that,” she said. She reached for her untouched cup and saucer to carry them to the sink.

“Sixteen,” Marian said to herself. “You’re not even a high-school graduate, then?”

“
Yes,
I’m a high-school graduate!” Eve washed the cup and placed it on the dish drainer. “I’m a high-school graduate with a B-plus average and thirteen-sixty on my SATs.” It was definitely the world she was angry at. She felt the fury boiling inside her as she turned around. “This doesn’t make sense!” she said. “Why would he go to so much trouble to use
me
for sex if he had—” she pointed to the newspaper “—
her?
”

“Sex isn’t the only thing people use each other for,” Marian said. “Maybe he could get you to do what he couldn’t get her to do when it came to the kidnapping.”

Eve glared at her. The words
I hate you
rose in her throat and were ready to explode, but she forced herself to swallow them. She didn’t hate Marian. She only hated what she was saying.

“I just don’t understand,” she said again. “I can’t believe he didn’t love me.”

“You deserve so much better than this, Eve,” Marian said. “I want you to start believing that for yourself.”

From inside the sling, Cory let out a cry.

“I think my voice is upsetting her,” Eve said, lifting the baby from the sling. She rocked Cory in her arms, “shhing” her as she kissed the top of her ear and stroked her back. She looked down at the tiny face, and Cory stared back with eyes that touched her soul. Eve bent her head to nuzzle the cheek of the baby she loved. The baby she’d stolen.

She wasn’t sure anymore what she deserved.

Summer 1978

E
ve put on denim cutoffs and a white tank top, then checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her hair almost reached her shoulders now, and the humidity was making a dark frizzy mess out of it. She pulled it back, securing it with a long barrette at the nape of her neck.

She was only taking one class—Psychology 101—during the summer, but her financial-aid application had been approved and she would be able to take several more in the fall, with an eye to becoming a full-time psych major the following year. As it turned out, there was no school of social work at UVA, but she was not as devastated by that news as she would have predicted. Her confused feelings about Tim marred her desire to follow in his footsteps.

Marian had provided her with not only a transcript from a high school in Oregon, but SAT scores that rivaled those earned by CeeCee Wilkes. The documents appeared as if by magic one morning, much the way her birth certificate and driver’s license had appeared at Naomi’s. Eve asked no questions. She simply made copies of them and filled out her application for school.

She loved her class, reading far beyond what was required, devouring books on Freud and Jung and Erikson, and she’d completed the main textbook by the end of the second week. She read over breakfast in the morning and during her break at the diner and while she rocked Cory to sleep. She’d intended to be invisible in the classroom—she had no desire to stand out anywhere in her life—but she quickly became the professor’s clear favorite. Her classmates didn’t seem resentful in the least. Instead, they turned to her as a leader, asking her, “What was yesterday’s assignment?” or “What’s the difference between the sensorimotor stage and the pre-operational stage?”

She knew all about the sensorimotor stage, since she was witnessing it at home every day. Cory would try to grab the mobile hanging above the crib, and she delighted in turning the switch for the overhead light on and off, on and off. She could play a game of peekaboo for hours. On the down side, she was starting to show signs of separation anxiety, crying whenever Eve left for school or work. It was a normal stage of development, Eve knew from her studies, but she was awed by the knowledge that she’d become that huge and irreplaceable person in Cory’s life: her mother.

Downstairs, she found Marian in the kitchen making tuna salad, while the twins colored and Cory supervised everyone from her bouncy chair. Bobbie’s little girl, Shan, was in day camp for much of the summer, and Eve knew Marian was happy to have one less child to care for. The week before, she’d announced that she was retiring from the day-care business, although, she was quick to assure Eve, she would still watch Cory while Eve was in school.

“I want to take painting lessons,” Marian had said. “Maybe cello lessons. I’ve always had a yearning to play the cello, if these gnarled old fingers will let me.”

Eve lifted Cory out of the bouncy chair and spun her around, and the little girl squealed and giggled, the sound as light and tinkling as wind chimes.

“Do you want your lunch?” Eve asked her. She lowered Cory into her high chair. “What would you like? Peas? Carrots? Chicken?”

Cory grinned her toothless grin. She was a skinny little thing, though very long: ninetieth percentile, according to the pediatrician. “She’s a natural ectomorph,” he said when Eve asked if her low weight was a problem. “We should all be that lucky.”

Marian spread the tuna salad on white bread for the boys. “There’s mail for you on the table,” she said.

Eve picked up the small envelope. The only mail she ever received at Marian’s was from the university, but this looked more like a wedding invitation, the envelope thick and cream-colored. Her name and address were typewritten, but there was no return address, only an Oklahoma City postmark. A little unnerved, she opened the envelope and gasped.

Inside were three folded hundred-dollar bills and a small typed note.
For the baby,
it read.

She dropped the money as if it burned her, then looked at Marian. “Is this from you?” she asked.

Marian bent over to pick up the bills and set them on the table. “Of course not.” She looked at the note. “I’d just give you money. I wouldn’t mail it.”

Eve thought of the customers she’d met at the diner who knew she had a child, and of Lorraine, with whom she’d become good friends but who couldn’t possibly spare three hundred dollars. She thought of her psychology professor, who admired and encouraged her and who knew she had a baby to care for. But Oklahoma City?

And then she thought of the last time she’d received unexpected money in the mail.

Marian read her mind. “Cory’s father?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Eve sank into a chair, touching the money she’d imagined Tim had held in his own hands. She still looked for Tim in every white van she saw. When she was being honest with herself, she knew she was still waiting for him as well. She wanted to see him, to have him explain away the idea that Bets had been his girlfriend. She still talked to him in her mind as she waited for sleep, telling him what she was learning, knowing he’d be happy for her that she was finally in school. Sometimes she dreamed about him. They were good dreams—not like the nightmares about Genevieve that continued to jolt her awake in the middle of the night. Some days she could barely remember what he looked like. Other days, she found him in the face of every man she saw.

She felt happy these days, yet there was always an undercurrent of sadness just below the surface. Sometimes she would feel it there and not even know its source. Then she would remember: A dead woman. A kidnapped baby. She couldn’t even list the charges that would be brought against her if she were ever caught. There had to be fifteen or twenty of them now.

“Spend the money on Cory,” Marian said, touching the bills where they rested on the table. “It doesn’t matter where it came from. It’s hers now.”

At work that evening, two police officers came into the diner. It wasn’t unusual to see cops there, and Eve’s heart no longer skipped a beat when she spotted a few of them seated among the customers. The first time she saw a policeman walk through the front door, though, she’d dropped the coffeepot she was carrying, sending coffee and shards of glass all over the floor. Nothing like attracting attention. But the officer was only there for coffee and pie, and if he wondered why her hands shook when she served him, he didn’t say anything about it.

This evening, though, the police officers looked like they meant business. Eve watched as they approached an older woman sitting at the counter. She listened in as they arrested her for buying beer for minors, slapping handcuffs on her and hustling her out the door. The woman reminded her a little of Marian, and watching the cops lead her away made her feel fiercely protective of the woman who was doing so much for her by risking her own neck. She would never, ever, do anything to put Marian in harm’s way.

One hot morning in August, Eve was upstairs getting a hat for Cory, so that she and Marian could take the baby and the twin boys to the park. When she walked back into the kitchen, Cory was in the high chair, Marian cleaning the little girl’s hands with a washcloth. Cory saw Eve and pulled her hand from Marian’s to reach toward her.

“Mama!” she said.

Eve caught her breath. For weeks now, Cory had been babbling to herself, saying “mamamamama” among other things, but this was the first time she seemed to equate the two syllables with her.

Marian laughed. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said to Eve.

She had.
Genevieve.

“That’s right, Cory,” she said, moving forward to lift the little girl out of the high chair. “You’re so smart.”

“Mama, Mama, Mama,” Cory repeated as Eve tugged the hat over her red curls.

“Okay, let’s go,” Eve said, and she held Cory’s hands as they walked outside. It wouldn’t be long before she was walking on her own. Eve pulled the stroller from the shed at the side of the house and Cory tried to climb into it herself.

“She’s going to be into everything soon,” Marian said, taking a hand of each of the boys.

“I know,” Eve said. “And I noticed there’s an outlet in the bathroom that isn’t covered with a safety plug.”

“Where?” Marian frowned.

“You know. There’s only one outlet.”

“Above the sink?”

“Uh-huh.”

Marian laughed. “She’s a smart little girl, but I think it’s going to be a couple of years before she can climb up on the bathroom counter.”

“I guess.” Eve laughed at herself. She was growing into an overprotective mother. She saw danger everywhere.

Alison and Vicki, two of the young mothers who frequented the park, were already pushing their toddlers on the swings when Eve and Marian arrived with the children. Alison’s husband was a medical student, and Vicki was working on a teaching degree. Alison had a new baby and she wore the sling Eve had made her as a baby gift.

“The sling is fantastic!” she said as Eve slipped Cory into one of the bucket swings.

“I’m glad you like it.” Eve leaned over to peer at Alison’s infant. “How’s he doing?” She could talk diapers and formula with the best of them now. Alison reported on the baby’s sleeping and eating habits, and Marian joined in the discussion from a nearby bench.

“Did you hear they finally executed that girl?” Vicki asked, during a lull in the conversation.

“Oh, I know,” Alison said. “I saw it in the paper this morning. Good riddance.”

Eve’s muscles went tight.
What girl?
she wanted to ask but didn’t dare.

“What girl?” Marian did it for her.

“The sister of those guys who kidnapped that governor’s wife last year.”

Eve kept her eyes on Cory’s hair, curling out from beneath the hat, startling red in the summer sun. She pictured Tim counting out the three hundred-dollar bills, licking the envelope sealed. She thought of him getting the news that his sister was dead.

“Why would you say good riddance?” Marian asked, an edge to her voice.

“Marian, you’re such a liberal diehard.” Vicki laughed, and Eve felt like smacking her. These women knew nothing of how Marian had lost her husband.

“She was a murderer,” Alison said.

“A junkie,” Vicki added.

“A junkie?” Eve repeated.

“Uh-huh,” Vicki said. “She broke into this lady’s house and killed her and her daughter, then stole her jewelry to pay for drugs.”

“That’s completely wrong,” Eve said.

The three women looked at her. Marian’s face was the only one that held a warning.

“I mean,” Eve said, “that’s not what I’d heard. I heard she killed a photographer after he raped her.”

Alison frowned. “I don’t know where you got that,” she said. “Maybe you’re thinking of someone else.”

“The woman she killed was a photographer,” Vicki acknowledged.

“That’s true,” Alison said.

“Could you have misunderstood what you read?” Eve couldn’t stop herself. “Could the photographer have been at—”

“No,” Alison interrupted her. “I read it less than an hour ago.”

“I didn’t read it,” Vicki said, “but Charlie read it to me while I was getting dressed and it said she robbed a woman—a photographer—in Chapel Hill.”

“To get money for drugs,” Alison piped in.

“Cory said ‘mama’ this morning.” Marian made a lame attempt to hijack the conversation.

“Cory, is that right?” Alison leaned over to speak to Cory when the little girl swung toward them. “Did you say ‘mama,’ sweetie?”

Eve rarely read the paper anymore. The kidnapping had faded from the news, and her psychology books took precedence. Now, though, she wanted to race home and find the story.

“Oh!” Marian suddenly got to her feet. “I just remembered this is the morning I was supposed to wait for the plumber.”

Eve stared at her, perplexed, before she realized that Marian was rescuing her.

“Oh, right,” she said. “I’ll go back with you.”

“You just barely got here,” Alison said.

“The plumber said he’d come between eight and noon,” Marian said, “and you know how it is. If I don’t go back now, it’ll be the one time he comes at eight.” She chuckled. “You don’t need to come with me, Eve.”

“I think I should.” Eve lifted a protesting Cory out of the bucket and set her down in the stroller. “I don’t want Cory to get burned.”

Vicki laughed. “It’s eight in the morning,” she said. “And that hat’s wide enough to protect an elephant.”

Eve barely heard her as she and Marian collected the twins, and they bade goodbye to the women and started home.

“Did you read the paper this morning?” Eve asked Marian, as soon as they were out of earshot.

Marian shook her head.

“Let’s go to the minimart.” Eve turned the corner toward the little market. “I can’t wait two more blocks to read it.”

She bought the paper while Marian remained outside with the children. Back on the street, she found the article at the bottom of the front page.

“Andrea Gleason,” Eve read, “the sister of Timothy and Martin Gleason, who are allegedly responsible for kidnapping North Carolina Governor Irving Russell’s wife last year, was executed yesterday at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women. Gleason was convicted in the 1975 murder of photographer Gloria Wilder of Chapel Hill and her thirteen-year-old daughter. She broke into the Wilder home, killed the mother and daughter, then stole fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry. Wilder, who was found in her bedroom, had been shot four times; her daughter, shot once in the head, was found in the hallway.”

Eve looked up. “Oh, my God,” she said.

“Go on,” Marian nodded toward the paper. “What else does it say?”

Eve began reading again. “On November 24 last year, Genevieve Russell, the governor’s wife, was kidnapped after teaching a class at UNC. The Gleason brothers negotiated unsuccessfully for their sister’s release. They have not been found, nor has Mrs. Russell, who was pregnant at the time of her kidnapping. Governor Russell had no comment today on Andrea Gleason’s execution, although sources close to the governor’s mansion speculated that he was instrumental in getting Andrea Gleason’s execution moved to an earlier date.”