“Yes. That one,” mumbled Sarah.
“That’s when things are all mixed up. Wrecked.”
Sarah, troubled, inspected Ginny. “But it’s good to have a sister.”
“Of course it’s good!” Maggie squeezed the small shoulders. “It’s wonderful! But when you’re grown up, you have a lot of feelings, and most of them are mixed up with other feelings. So even when you’re very very happy, the way I am about Ginny, you’ll probably have a very very large number of other feelings mixed in.”
Sarah nodded, satisfied. Will said unexpectedly, “A googol.”
Maggie laughed. “That’s right. I have a googol of feelings about Ginny.”
As soon as she saw it, Ginny decided to sleep in the big room on the top floor. It occupied the entire floor, fifty or sixty feet long and twenty wide, and was clear except for a couple of structural columns. Nick and Maggie had outfitted it for exercise space. The wall opposite the stairs was mirrored for most of its length, with a barre; nearer the stairs there were stacks of tumbling mats, a set of child-height parallel bars, and a low balance beam. The ceiling was too low for rings or high bars, Maggie explained. “The kids like to climb in the maple tree outside when it’s nice,” she went on. “We hook on a ladder so we can climb up from the back porch roof. But most of the time we’re in here. It’s great for tumbling and dance.”
“Mom said they told her you liked sports,” Ginny remembered.
“Gymnastics?”
“No. Guess they weren’t very specific. I sort of had the idea you watched baseball on TV.”
“Goddamn nonidentifying buggers.”
“Yeah. Do you dance too?”
“Not much. Nick is better trained than I am. I just know a few basic ballet things for floor exercise and beam. Do you want to work out with us?”
“I’m out of shape,” Ginny demurred. “Also tired. Kakiy and I’ll just watch.”
Maggie had changed to a black leotard. The children, in their underclothes, began some simple tumbling exercises. Maggie, keeping a sharp eye on Will for signs of fatigue, switched on a little tape recorder, and Ginny held Kakiy and watched contentedly as her little relatives were guided through the exercises. Will was getting grumpy but insisted on pulling himself sturdily along the parallel bars with his short arms. He was still very chubby, baby fat, but Sarah was lengthening out, her knobby-kneed frail child’s body surprisingly wiry and well coordinated.
When they had finished the short workout, Maggie said, “Bath time,” and sent them downstairs to get ready. She paused at the head of the stairs. Ginny was still sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall near the stairs, hands resting limply on Kakiy in her lap.
“You look exhausted, love,” said Maggie.
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll skip dessert and just sack out.”
“Okay.”
“But listen, I did want to say one thing.”
“What?”
“Mom always said you were good. Gram is the only one who said that other stuff.”
“Yeah, but—well, thank you, that does help, Ginny.”
“Yeah.” She looked up into the eyes like hers, and wondered if her own were as full of pain. “Hey! I almost forgot!” She put Kakiy down and scrambled to her feet.
“What?”
“Look!” Ginny ran to the middle of the floor and quickly turned a neat cartwheel.
“Hey! All right!” Maggie clapped her hands in delight, and for a moment they smiled across the room at each other, still linked somehow by an unbreakable umbilical of love. But then suddenly there was nothing to say, or rather too much to say. That rush of joy brought angry questions in its wake. Crap, she was too tired to get into all that now. It was a relief when Sarah yelled, “Hey, Mommy!” from the foot of the stairs.
“Coming, love.” Maggie hurried down, calling over her shoulder, “I’ll bring up some sheets for you when the two bozos are tucked away.”
“Thanks.”
The door at the foot of the stairs closed, and Ginny hauled one of the thick mats to the narrower back part of the room. Yes, she was exhausted. She lay down, and Kakiy curled against her hip. She could look out the window at maple leaves and, behind them, the line of brownstone roofs against the hazy glow of city sky.
Hazy darkening sky …
Saturday
September 15, 1979
VII
Saturday morning there was still no Ginny.
Rina woke early, having slept little. Rain spattered the windows. She hadn’t realistically expected Ginny home yet; but she couldn’t help hoping, and feeling disappointed. The only good news was that there had been no ransom demand either. So she wasn’t kidnapped, she really was with friends. Once again, Rina’s mind combed through that brief telephone conversation. Ginny had said that she was fine. But Philadelphia! Why Philadelphia? Who could she know in Philadelphia? Jan hadn’t known, nor Buck’s mother Rosamond, nor Linda Lang. The police hadn’t called either. As Rina sat up in bed, the cheerfulness of the birthday presents heaped in the corner of the bedroom mocked her.
Clint had had a restless night too, but now he dozed beside her. Without his glasses, his lined face looked vulnerable. Rina felt a sudden return of the old grief, the old sense of worthlessness. Two ordinary people, daring to hope that the usual miracle would occur for them, that they would conceive and bear a child as others conceived and bore children, that their love too would bear fruit. Two ordinary people discovering that they were wrong. Incapable. Unworthy. Cut off from the future. Two ordinary people slowly realizing that they were not ordinary at all, but far inferior. Realizing that ordinariness was a goal much too lofty for them ever to achieve.
Rina dragged herself away from the ugly thoughts. She rose and put on her blouse and slacks, pulled on a blue Fair Isle sweater she had knitted herself, and went to the kitchen. She made coffee, and heard the shower running in her mother’s rooms as she poured herself a cup. She hoped Ginny was not out in the rain somewhere, alone. No, she had said she was with friends. It would be okay. At eight o’clock, unable to wait another agonizing moment, she called Buck Landon.
“Sorry,” said Rosamond groggily, “he’s still asleep.”
Clint was standing behind her when she hung up. He gave her a hug, and they clung to each other a moment, as they had on those terrible recurrent days twenty years ago when her period returned and they knew that once again the dream was smashed. He said gently, “She’ll be back soon, honey. Let’s go get something at the bakery.”
“What if she calls?”
“She won’t this early. Besides, your mother is here.”
He was right, of course. But at the bakery she was so distracted that she could hardly focus on the breakfast rolls. She shouldn’t have come. A good mother wouldn’t have come. Clint finally made a selection, then took her arm tenderly and guided her out to the car again. The trees and the sidewalk were drenched, but the rain had finally stopped.
Rina asked, “Sergeant Trainer would know to tell the Philadelphia police about Kakiy, wouldn’t he?” Ginny would never be separated from her cat.
“Yes, of course, honey. And I told Paul Buchanan, so his office has passed on the word to the police there too.” Clint looked so old in the watery morning light, his hair faded, his wrinkled fair skin sagging. We’re too old, thought Rina despairingly. We should never have tried to take on a child in our thirties. No wonder she rejects us. We’re over fifty. What could we possibly have in common with a teenager?
“She said she was fine,” said Rina, reminding herself as much as Clint.
“I know. Damn it, Rina, we’re doing what we can!” He was blustering a little, as he always did when she was upset and he couldn’t help. He added, “I’ll check back after breakfast and see if Paul has found anything.”
“Good,” she said, trying to sound hopeful.
He put a gentle hand on her arm. “We’ve got to trust her not to do anything stupid. She’s bright, damn it. She won’t go far wrong.�
��
Rina wanted to believe it too. But the wild lurchings of her emotions, from hope to despair, were out of her control. She clutched the plastic armrest of the car as they turned toward home. The houses, hedges, lampposts, trees, utility poles were a blur outside, passing the window in fuzzy rhythm.
Her daughter was gone. Her darling. How had she failed her? She had tried so hard.
They had followed the agency’s advice and told Ginny she was adopted as soon as she had shown any interest in birth. The interest came when the guinea pig at nursery school had babies, and in the beginning Ginny had been much more intrigued by the tiny guinea pigs than by any implications for herself. But over the next year she had asked Rina about it from time to time.
“Susan was inside her own mommy,” she had said once.
“Yes. That happens a lot, Ginny. Usually.”
“But I wasn’t inside you. I was inside somebody else.”
“That’s right. But she wanted you to live with us, and be part of our family.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know, Ginny.”
“Why didn’t she want me inher family?”
“She did want you, honey. But you see, she didn’t have a family when you were born. And she wanted you to have a family, so she let you live with us.”
A year later it was Cinderella that caused the trouble. Clint’s sister had sent a book for Christmas, a beautifully illustrated book of fairy tales. Ginny had been fascinated by the story. She had also started having nightmares, screaming at night, wetting the bed. Rina hid the book, but the nightmares continued, and during the day Ginny asked oblique questions about it, and hunted for it almost furtively. Finally Rina collected her courage, pulled out the book again, and went to her little daughter’s room. Ginny was sitting on the floor, a sneaker in her lap. Her black hair had been pulled back in two little ponytails that bobbed as she very somberly laced the sneaker with some bright red yarn.
Rina said, “Look, Ginny. I found your book.”
“Oh!” The little face looked up quickly, the huge eyes filled with more fear than pleasure.
“Do you want me to read Cinderella?”
She looked back down at the sneaker and carefully began poking the fuzzy red end of the yarn through the next hole. “Yes,” she mumbled.
Rina sat down in the rocking chair. Back then they were still on Long Island. Ginny’s room had had a birch tree outside, and on bright days the light bouncing through the delicate trembling leaves had a shimmery, watered-silk feel. Rina opened the book and began to read, glancing at her daughter from time to time. After a few paragraphs she stopped. Ginny was sitting rigidly, staring at the sneaker.
“She certainly is a bad, cruel stepmother, isn’t she, Ginny?” Rina said conversationally. Her heart was pounding.
“Yes.” Ginny glanced up at her quickly, then began lacing the sneaker again.
“But you know, most stepmothers are good,” Rina said. “They love their children very much. I’m a little bit like a stepmother, Ginny. But I’m not like Cinderella’s stepmother. I love you very much, so I’ll never be cruel to you.”
Ginny stabbed at the metaled hole with the frayed red end of the yarn and drew it through carefully.
Rina licked her lips and said, “Cinderella’s stepmother was cruel because she didn’t love Cinderella. That was the problem. But I love you very much. Daddy does too. We’ll always love you very much.”
Ginny still didn’t reply. She finished lacing her sneaker thoughtfully and put it on her little foot. “Look!” she demanded of Rina at last. “Isn’t that pretty?”
But Rina knew soon that she had guessed correctly, because the nightmares and wet beds stopped, and the Cinderella book was left on the shelf more and more often.
But maybe she hadn’t been able to show her love enough …
“Are you all right, Rina?” Clint asked as he helped her from the car. She was staring numbly at the garage wall, at Ginny’s bike, a geometry of dark rubber circles and metallic blue angles.
“Maybe Mamma was right,” she whispered. “Maybe God didn’t mean for us to have children, Clint.”
“Rina, Rina!” He shook his head, his dear old silvery head. “Don’t start that, please!”
“But maybe we’re not up to it, Clint.”
“Of course we are! We’re fine, Rina. Everyone has problems sometimes!”
But the old, old wound was throbbing again. I’d rather be blind, thought Rina, or in a wheelchair. Not barren, no, not a foolish old barren woman, playing at motherhood and revealed at last to be nothing but a wicked stepmother, sobbing to the unhearing heavens.
“Rina!” He was shaking her by the shoulders. She took a deep breath, and the sobbing stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Her mother’s voice was sharp, reverberating in the hollowness of the garage.
“Nothing,” said Clint, his own voice strained. Rina bowed her head onto Clint’s shoulder and took another deep breath. Mamma had never really understood. Mamma was not barren. Not handicapped.
“What’s wrong, Caterina?”
“Mamma, it’s all right.” Rina fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief. “I’m just so worried.”
“I know,cara. Here, come have some coffee.” The dark eyes were soft, solicitous.
“Yes. Yes, let’s have some breakfast,” Clint agreed. Rina let him lead her into the house, across the dining room and living room to the sofa. In a moment Mamma brought them coffee.
“No calls yet. Not even the police,” she said as she handed Rina a cup.
She’s anxious too, thought Rina. She had herself under control again. “They’re doing everything they can, I’m sure.”
“She’ll be back. You know she will.”
Clint patted Rina’s hand. “Yes. She knows.”
Mamma settled into her rocking chair across from the sofa and said, “Ginny takes things so much to heart. She’s like me, you know.”
Rina paused in astonishment, her cup halfway to her mouth. “Like you?”
“But she’ll get over it too. You have to ignore us a little, Rina. You’re even-tempered like your father. But Ginny and I are too dramatic about things. We don’t really mean it.”
“Oh, Mamma, bless you!”
“She’ll be back.”
“I know. But I worry, I can’t help it.”
“I know.” Mamma gazed past Rina, out the glass doors toward the garden. “Do you remember when you were in high school? That church trip you took to the beach?”
“The beach?” Rina frowned.
“St. Francis church. Remember? They chartered a bus, and you were going with the Giordano boy.”
“Pete Giordano? Mamma, that was so long ago!”
“Well, I remember it well enough!” said Mamma tartly. “Don’t you remember? The bus broke down on the way back.”
“That’s right. Oh, we were all furious!”
“Furious! And how do you think we parents felt? It killed me, Rina! You were supposed to be back at nine. It was four in the morning!”
“Oh, Mamma, surely not that late.”
“Four in the morning. And you with that terrible Giordano boy, all pimples and loud voice. He was terrible, Clint. I was dreading the worst. It was like a knife in my heart.”
Rina put down her coffee cup on the end table. “But I got back all right, Mamma! You know what I did on that bus? I slept! Some people sang, but we’d been swimming and playing volleyball on the beach all day, and I just went to sleep.”
“Yes,” said Mamma gently. “But in those days, Rina, girls weren’t so knowledgeable. We tried to protect you so much. I told your father that night, no more! If Caterina gets back, I’m telling her about the world.”
“What do you mean?”
“There you were, Rina, with that idiot boy all night, with your beautiful woman’s body and the wisdom of a four-year-old.”
Clint said, “She means it’s good that you’ve talked to Ginny about thi
ngs, Rina. She’ll recognize trouble, maybe avoid it. She can take care of herself pretty well.”
“But she’s still so young! There’s so much I should have warned her about!”
“Nonsense!” said Mamma briskly, fetching the coffeepot and pouring Rina another cup. “You’re a good mother,cara. You’ve done everything possible. And that girl is older than you in some ways, you know.” She nodded wisely. “I’ve been thinking about it. She’s not such a baby. She’s ready to look life in the eye.”
Maybe Mamma was right. Rina drank her coffee and ate the Danish that Clint had chosen for her. Not comforted, because no one but Ginny could do that now, but ready to settle in to wait again, or to fight, whatever turned out to be necessary.
Clint left the room, and she heard him talking on the phone. He returned after a moment shaking his head. “Paul Buchanan says they don’t have any news in the DA’s office, but they’re working on it. I offered to drive up, but he says it wouldn’t help. He’s got the photo of her we sent with our last Christmas card, so he says they’re in good shape.”
“I wish she’d call again!”
“Why don’t you bring your work out near one of the phones?”
“Yes. That’s a good idea, Clint.”
She called again, but Buck still wasn’t awake, and the local police said there was no news.
Over the course of the morning, the phone rang several times, friends of hers and Clint’s, friends of Mamma’s. Every time, she trembled as she reached for the receiver, and then, like a stone, disappointment weighted her down again when it was not Ginny, not even the police.
She stitched carefully on her quilt. Soft bulging tan hills, long dark appliquéd strips for the tree trunks, the ridges of bark carefully corded. There were people in the design, fat hearty farm people, parents and children. But today she could not do children. She worked on the ancient trees, the eternal hills.
VIII
“St. Louis doesn’t sound all that exciting,” said Ellen Winfield-Greer as she speared a sausage. Her shrewd hazel eyes frowned doubtfully at Nick.
Nick smiled at her. From upstairs wafted the lively voices of Sarah, Will, and their little friend Alison Greer. Nick said, “I get to sing, dance, and twirl my mustache. And it’s only for a few days.”
Bad Blood (Maggie Ryan Book 8) Page 8
