by Jane Langton
Mary waited for its proprietor to sit down on the other side of the table, but Madame Chloe remained standing. Mary looked up at her and asked her question without ceremony. “Tell me, Madame Chloe, can you communicate with the other side? With people who have passed on?”
Madame Chloe’s kerchief was sliding off her hair. She grabbed it with both hands and rammed it down over her forehead. There was another pause. At last she said, “Mostly people just walk the labyrinth.”
“Oh.” Mary tried again. “The truth is, I’m looking for someone. Can you tell me whether or not a bereaved mother has consulted you recently, hoping to get in touch with her deceased baby boy?”
The rabbit bit her tiny lip and hitched up her shawl.
“It would be a kindness,” said Mary, “if you could tell me. You see, I’m trying to find her because she’s mentally ill.”
But Madame Chloe had only one thought in her head. She made vague paddling motions with her hands and said, “My labyrinth. Most people—”
“Oh, all right.” Mary stood up. “Where is it?”
At once Madame Chloe brightened. “You have to pay first,” she said. “Five dollars.”
Mary’s serious attempt to find Patrick’s mother had become a fascinated inspection of a strange cranny at the remote edge of the rational world. Reaching into her bag, she counted out five one-dollar bills.
“It’s in here,” said Madame Chloe. She swept aside a hanging bedspread and pulled the string of a bulb, dimly illuminating one corner of a cavernous cellar.
“I’m sorry,” said Mary. “I don’t see it.”
“Look down.”
The labyrinth was a nine-by-twelve rug. Machine-made, guessed Mary, probably in Battle Creek, Michigan, right next to the cornflakes factory. It had a commonplace spiraling pattern of flowers.
“Well, thank you,” said Mary. “I guess I won’t walk it today.”
The spell, if it could be called that, was broken. Abruptly Madame Chloe turned and tripped over her shawl.
“I’ve had it,” said Mary crossly. “No more spiritualists. It wouldn’t get us anywhere anyway.”
“Well, okay,” said Homer. “That’s all right with me.”
38
Beech Avenue, Mount Auburn Cemetery, 10 A.M.
Pushing Billy’s stroller slowly up the hill, the young mother saw the woman in the green coat emerge from Daisy Path land walk toward her. The woman was youngish, not likely to stop and coo over the baby the way old ladies so often did.
But there was a look in her eye that Billy’s mother recognized. The woman in the green coat was approaching quickly and staring at Billy with that familiar ok-what-a-cute-baby look.
“Oh, what a cute baby,” she said, stopping in front of them, blocking the way. “How old is he?”
At first Billy’s mother didn’t mind. In fact she liked it when strangers were charmed by her beautiful boy. “Fourteen months.”
The woman bent down, chuckling, and gave Billy’s tummy a gentle poke. The baby gurgled. “Oh, you must be so proud of him. Such a chubby little darling. May I pick him up? I just want to feel his fat little cheek against mine.”
“Hey, wait a minute.”
210 Aberdeen Street, second floor apartment, 11 A.M.
“Before I knew what was happening, she had him unstrapped. It was unbelievable. She was clutching him and starting to walk away down the hill, jabbering about how adorable he was. Incredible! I ran after her and said, ‘Excuse me,’ and tried to take him back, but she hung on, and Billy started yelling, and then she let go so suddenly I almost dropped him. And you know what she said?”
“God, no, what?”
“She said, ‘Oh, I just adore babies. You see, there was a tragedy. I lost my own little darling.’ So I said, ‘Well, I’m sorry. But you can’t have mine.’”
“Well, good for you. My God, people like that should be incarcerated. Listen, from now on, don’t take him there any more.”
“Of course I won’t. And anyway, it’s so easy to get lost. You feel as if you’re going around and around and never getting anywhere. It’s like you’re stuck in one dimension with all those dead people. I mean, it’s really weird.”
39
This time it was Homer who found a letter in the metal box in the bushes, because it was his own infuriating turn again. It should have been Mary’s graveyard watch, but she had unfairly squirmed out of it by pleading an appointment with a Concord real estate person.
But the truth was that Homer had no wish to be present at the loss of their house in Arcadia. He was glad he had an excuse to be somewhere else. In fact he planned to conduct an experiment in the cemetery by lying flat on his back on the grass and counting all the leaves on a tree. He had figured out a clever way to do it.
But first he poked in the crazy mailbox behind baby Patrick’s small headstone. To his surprise he found another letter. A very recent letter. Whereas the earlier ones had been wilted and a little damp, this one looked crisp and fresh. The envelope was dry, the inked words were clear and sharp, not blurred with moisture.
The damn woman must have been here only a little while ago. Had she been one of the people he had passed on Central Avenue and Beech? There had been brisk walkers, mothers pushing baby buggys, a feisty old woman in hiking boots and a couple of people with field glasses. Those guys with binoculars would be looking for mauve-breasted skeets and lesser flutterbills and a lot of other peculiar species winging up from the southern hemisphere. And thered be plenty of them, because the poor birds must be so exhausted. They’d be twittering joyfully and coming down in flocks to rest in the trees in this arboreal paradise.
The letter was even nuttier than usual.
Darling Boy!
My new contact was so helpful! She pounced at once on the crime itself. And she told me how dreadfully uneasy you are, how anxious that justice should be done after so many years.
Oh Patrick! To think what was taken from me! After so many failures you were such a blessing, such a gift! The doctor said you were the cutest and smartest baby she had ever seen! Therefore I am more determined than ever. At my next appointment I’ll ask the crucial question, WHERE IS SHE?
Your loving Mother
As he lay down on his back for the great experiment of counting all the leaves on the tree that spread its branches wide and high above his head, Homer wondered what Patricks insane mother thought was happening to the letters they had removed from the box.
Well, no problem. Anybody crazy enough to write sepulchral letters to the dead would also be crazy enough to think they had actually been delivered. Some angel, probably, had stooped down from heaven to pick them up, tucking them into a diaphanous pocket.
Or maybe it was the local mailman. Homer had run across his monument up there on Pyrola Path—
BARNABAS BATES
1787–1854
Founder of Cheap Postage
Maybe Barnabas was the postal go-between with the other world.
Counting all the leaves on a tree was easy. Nothing to it. Homer began with the nearest twig, on which there were six leaves. Okay, how many twigs on this little branchlet? Call it eight, so that was forty-eight leaves, call it fifty. There were about ten branchlets on the larger secondary branch, so that was five hundred, and there were fifteen secondary branches on the bigger branch, so that was—um—seventy-five hundred leaves on the first big branch altogether. Now, how many big branches were there on the whole entire tree from top to bottom? Say, fifty?
Homer grinned, making his final calculation. It turned out, after only five minutes of calculated guesses, that this tree, spreading so enormously over his head, shading his face so kindly from the sun, was a burgeoning universe of three hundred and seventy-five thousand leaves, give or take a few thousand.
He smirked. Who else would think of such a charmingly clever way to count all the leaves on an entire tree? Homer promised himself that the very next time they went to the beach he’d count all the grains o
f sand.
… suddenly to become aware … how mysterious life is …
M. C. Escher
40
Come to our house this time,” said Mary Kelly.
Well, okay,” said Leonard. “Where is it?”
“It’s a little tricky. You go out Route 2, but then you can’t turn left on Fair Haven Road, so you have to go past it to the traffic light and reverse direction. And then—listen, Leonard—Fair Haven turns into a dirt road with a lot of forks. You have to take the right fork. I’ll explain.”
While Leonard listened he shifted the phone book in the telephone booth so that it made a perfect right angle with the edge of the shelf, and began lining up his coins in a row. “Two rights and a left,” he mumbled, repeating Mary’s directions and nudging a quarter with his thumb.
The appointment was for four-thirty, so he barely had time to race from the library at M. I. T. to the subway stop at Kendall Square and ride the T to Harvard, then take a cab to Sibley Road to pick up his car.
He hadn’t counted on a moment of panic on the platform at Kendall Square. Staring like everybody else into the darkness of the tunnel, watching for the arrival of the train, Leonard was overcome by the sense that he had fallen into a frightening fantasy by M. C. Escher.
When the train appeared at last, humming pleasantly out of the darkness, its cheerful windows all alight, he boarded it thankfully.
“Oh, Leonard,” said Mary, running down the porch steps, “I’m afraid our house is a mess. We’re trying to clear out a lot of old stuff.”
“It’s Mary’s fault,” said Homer amiably, holding open the front door. “That woman never throws anything away.”
Mary laughed. “Don’t listen to him, Leonard. Come in and sit down.” She put her foot on a cardboard box and shoved it across the room. Homer picked up another box and dumped it in the corner.
“You’re really moving to Cambridge?” Leonard stared at the view out the window, where the great bend of the Sudbury River spread wide in a glittering lake. “What for? How can you leave all this behind?”
There was a short silence. Mary gave an embarrassed laugh. “The truth is, Homer doesn’t want to move. It’s my idea, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, I see.”
Homer grumbled something under his breath, and Leonard said doubtfully, “Well, I hope you find something. Cambridge real estate has gone through the roof.”
“Tell me about it,” said Homer gloomily.
They pulled their chairs close together and Homer read aloud the newest crazy letter from Patrick’s mother.
They passed it from hand to hand.
“It reminds me of the film,” said Mary. “The one of the baby’s grave. There’s the same sense of threat.”
“This word ‘justice,’” said Homer. “What does she mean, ‘justice should be done’?”
“Vengeance,” said Mary angrily. “She wants vengeance. That’s what she means by justice.”
“Vengeance,” agreed Homer. “Vengeance on her niece, the babysitter.”
Thinking of the woman she had seen in the nursing home, Mary and bitterly, “A lovely family, the whole clan. Especially the niece. First she killed the baby and then, years later, she killed her old Uncle Edward by pushing his wheelchair down a set of concrete stairs.”
“Is there a pattern here?” said Homer. “We’ve got aunts, uncles, mothers, nieces, babysitters, babies, missing females and—”
“Homer”
“Oh, sorry, not females.”
Leonard gazed into his empty glass. “It’s like the pattern of prime numbers. Aunts and uncles and so on. Elusive, like understanding the separations between primes. Just when you think there’s a pattern, it surprises you.”
“Sorry, Leonard,” said Homer humbly. “I forget what they are, prime numbers.”
Leonard took out a pencil, and soon they were bent over a scrap of paper on the coffee table. “You see, even the simplest sequences have deep and beautiful properties.”
“Beautiful?” Homer stared at the scribbled numbers. “Well, okay, if you say so.”
“Hey,” said Mary, “What about the deep and beautiful properties of aunts and uncles?”
“That’s right,” said Homer, looking keenly at Leonard. “What’s the pattern of the prime numbers in this case? I mean the prime suspects?”
“Two missing people,” said Mary. “Frieda for one, and the crazy mother who writes the letters.”
“And the niece,” said Leonard. “Don’t forget the niece.” There were magazines heaped on the coffee table beside Leonard’s glass, and he stacked them into a cube.
“You know,” said Mary, taking the letter, “this part is really important—After so many failures you were such a blessing. I’ll bet those failures were miscarriages.” She looked up in triumph. “She had a long succession of miscarriages, until at last this cutest of all babies was born.” Shuddering, Mary looked back at the letter. “I wonder who this doctor was.”
“What really seems sick to me,” whispered Leonard, “is her belief that the baby himself is calling for vengeance.”
“It’s not just sick,” said Homer, “it’s scary.”
“You know,” said Leonard slowly, “there are specialists in difficult pregnancies. Maybe we could find the one who helped her.”
“Brilliant,” said Mary. She jumped up, leaped over a box of books, snatched up the Yellow Pages and plumped herself down beside Leonard on the sofa.
“Try physicians,” he said softly.
She flipped the pages. “Here they are. Look, they’re organized by specialty. What do we want, obstetrics?”
Leonard pointed to the heading, OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY.
“Good grief,” said Mary, “what a lot of baby doctors.”
“Well, the race gotta be reproduced,” said Homer, getting up and reaching for the whiskey bottle. He held it over Leonard’s glass. “A little more, Leonard? No? Mary? No? How about you, Homer? Well, yes, I don’t mind if I do.” He poured himself a refill, then craned his neck to stare at the densely printed pages of obstetricians. “You know what? I’ll bet they don’t have six pages of baby doctors in New Guinea.”
“Oh, of course not,” said Mary. “Those brave women in New Guinea go out to hoe the field in the morning, take a ten-minute break to deliver a baby, then go right back to work. What an inspiring example for the self-indulgent women of the Western world!”
41
It was Leonard who suggested trying the subheading, High Risk Pregnancies.
The list of doctors was short. “This one sounds promising,” said Mary, “Obstetrical Specialist Rosalind Rosebush at Emerson Hospital. Why don’t I try her right now?”
Leonard coughed and stood up. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go.”
Homer was disappointed. “We thought you were staying for supper.”
“I’m insulted, Leonard,” said Mary. “You’ve got something against my pasta?”
“No, no,” mumbled Leonard, “it’s just that—I’m sorry.” On his way to the door he tripped over a box of Homer’s big shoes. “Thank you again.”
“Poor Leonard,” said Homer, watching his car growl up the hill in low gear. “His wits are in good shape, but something else is astray. Do you think he’s just a lovelorn fool, pining away for Frieda?”
“It’s his hair,” said Mary wisely. “That’s what it is. He can’t do anything with his hair.”
As usual they had an argument about who was to take the time to visit Doctor Rosebush.
“Homer, why does it have to be me? Oh, I know.” Mary turned sarcastic. “I suppose it’s because I’m a female. Listen, Homer, you may remember that I’ve never actually had a baby myself, and therefore I know as little about the practice of obstetrics as any lordly male.”
“But that sister of yours had such a teeming womb. When I met you for the first time you were knee-deep in her offspring, and if I remember correctly, another member of the litter was on its way at the
time. And aren’t some of Gwen’s daughters having babies themselves?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean—” Mary stopped objecting, because of course it was true. Tenderly she remembered the long nights last fall when she had walked the floor with one of the babies.
“And Benny,” cried Homer. “How can you forget Benny?”
Benny was the last of Gwen’s children, a clever boy who had lived for half his young life with his Aunt Mary and Uncle Homer—a lovable but exhausting child.
“Well, okay then,” said Mary, giving in. “I’ll try this Rosebush woman, but she’s probably not the right one.”
As it turned out, Doctor Rosebush was indeed the right one. But when Mary walked into her office she gave the doctor a turn.
Well, of course, thought Doctor Rosebush, the new techniques of fertility enhancement have been fairly successful with older women, so perhaps this will turn out to be an interesting case. “Sit down, Ms.”—she looked at her daybook—“Kelly. Am I right in assuming that your pregnancy is at risk?”
Mary laughed. “Oh, Doctor Rosebush, it isn’t my pregnancy. I’m inquiring about someone else’s.”
“Someone else’s? Your daughter’s?”
“No, no.” Mary leaned forward and explained. “I’m trying to find a woman who had a number of miscarriages some years ago, before finally giving birth to a healthy baby boy. Unfortunately the child was killed in an accident later on. I wonder if she might have been a patient of yours?”
Doctor Rosebush looked at her soberly, then stood up and walked to the window, which looked out on a loading platform. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk about private cases without the permission of the patient herself. It’s not only unethical, it’s illegal.” She turned and looked gravely at the visitor. “What was her name?”
