The Sabbathday River

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  When they came back, it was still night. Heather jerked awake, adrenaline rushing through her body. The man at her right elbow seemed angry. He gave a tug and she got unsteadily to her feet. He was a different man—not the one who had sat outside the door. He was one of the ones who had left to go to her house. She wondered how long they had let her rest.

  Charter was back in the room, waiting for her, his thick back to the door. Erroll, who sat beside him, looked over his shoulder to give her a little smile when she reached the doorway. She walked around them, back to her place, without asking. The table was covered with objects, but she had to squint at them to see what they were because they were shiny from being put in plastic bags, the same zip-lock type Pick had used for freezing her applesauce. Heather peered at them and saw, to her mild curiosity, that they were all spikes. Long thin nails, some rusted; an awl with a faded wooden bulb; an ice pick with an apple-green handle, indistinguishable from her own, at home in the kitchen; and a metallic array of thin knitting needles, multicolored, just like the ones in Pick’s sewing basket at home, sharp and glittery like pickup sticks. She had kept her basket by the couch, for her tools and whatever lovely thing she was making. Since Polly’s quilt there hadn’t been much. Her hands, she said, and she preferred to play with the baby. There was one sweater she did make, Heather remembered: lavender, with sweet white cuffs and collar, but Polly had already outgrown it and there wouldn’t be anything more. Where was the basket now? It suddenly seemed awfully important to remember, but Heather couldn’t remember.

  “I hope you were able to rest,” Charter said. “I think you did need a rest.”

  Heather looked at him.

  “And you’re ready to continue, I assume.”

  Continue, she thought. She looked at the spikes.

  “You recognize these?” he said evenly. “It’s a lot to take in.”

  She peered at them again. She wasn’t sure she understood the question.

  “Do I recognize them? They’re all different. It’s knitting needles and an ice pick.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re not going to disagree with me about that,” he said genially.

  “Are they mine?” Heather said. “Are they from my house?” She stood up and leaned forward across the table. A couple of them she didn’t recognize. “Those aren’t mine,” she said, pointing at the awl and some of the nails.

  “They were all collected from your own home, within the past two hours.”

  “Really?” Heather said, perplexed. It was possible, she supposed. After all, Pick had been much more handy than she. She never used half of Pick’s things in the cellar, and she hadn’t bothered to clean out the tool area, either. “Well, all right.”

  “So then you agree that these are your things.”

  “Do I agree?” Heather frowned. “Why are you asking me about this?” She felt disoriented now, as if she had missed some crucial turn in their drama. She had told him about the miscarriage, and he had accused her of killing her child. That was bad enough, but what did it have to do with spikes?

  “It’s important for us to know,” Charter said, his eyes on her face. “I know you don’t really want to think about these things, and believe me, I promise I won’t make you go over and over it. But we need to know exactly what happened, and that means we have to know which one of these you used. Or maybe the one you used isn’t here at all. Maybe you put that one somewhere so you wouldn’t have to see it. We need to know that, too.”

  “Used,” said Heather, testing the word. “Used for what?”

  He looked at her. His thick forefinger tapped the top of his file. The file, she noted vaguely, had grown.

  “I used this one for defrosting the fridge,” she said, sounding, to her own ears at least, just the tiniest bit angry. Or was it desperate? “The nails and stuff I don’t know. I’m not very handy. The knitting needles were P—my grandmother’s.” Charter did not react. “See these? These are for big stitches, with wool. The littler ones make finer stitches. She made a sweater for Polly with them. It was a lavender sweater. It’s already too small for Polly.” Even to her own ears she sounded strange, but she couldn’t stop herself from talking. “Those”—she pointed—“were for making socks. You use four of them. You make a triangle and the fourth is to knit.”

  “I don’t need knitting lessons,” he said sharply. “Which of these did you use to kill your baby?”

  Instantly she was fully awake. “I didn’t kill her,” Heather snapped.

  Charter raised his eyebrows. “The baby had a stab wound, as you know.”

  As she knew? Heather thought. Had Naomi said this to her? About the baby from the river?

  “It was not an accidental stab wound. Unless”—he leaned forward—“that is what you are telling us, Miss Pratt. That your baby’s stab wound was somehow accidental?”

  “I didn’t stab her,” Heather said. “I never …” She stopped. Never, never. She couldn’t.

  “Are you unsure?” he asked. “Do you need to think?”

  “No,” Heather said. “Look, you said a miscarriage wasn’t a crime.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed.

  “I never stabbed a baby. That wasn’t my baby!”

  He sighed deeply. “Don’t you see that this isn’t helping? You are only wasting your energy, Miss Pratt. My time, you’re free to waste. I’ve got plenty. But your energy … It seems a shame. We could be helping you, you see? We could be starting to do all the things we want to do to help you, but you are making it so hard for us. Please. Make up your mind to tell us only the truth from now on. We won’t judge you.”

  She looked into his face. His features were easy, untroubled. This, she saw, was only bureaucratic work for him. The period of his judgment was indeed long past, and there remained only the filling out of forms. He wouldn’t stop until every line had its quota of confirmation.

  “You’re lying,” Heather said, enraged.

  Charter leaned back in his chair. His face was tight, and beneath their ragged brows his gaze was tight, too, and fixed. “I’m lying,” he said carefully. “I’m lying.” He shook his head. “Do you know how long I have been doing this, Miss Pratt? Talking to people who are accused of crimes?”

  “You said miscarriage—” Heather shrieked.

  “Not miscarriage. Murder. Murder, by stabbing, of an infant baby!” His ugly face was suddenly made more ugly by the blood beneath his white skin. Almost comical, she thought. Did he know he could change colors?

  “I never!”

  “Twenty-one years, Miss Pratt. As long as you’ve been alive. And here are three things I’ve learned about talking to people who are accused of crimes. Even in this big world, full of all kinds of people, there are three things that always happen when somebody’s accused of a crime.” He was seething. She pictured his heart pumping rage into his voice. “First thing: they lie. Second thing: they lie. Third thing.” He glared at her. He slammed the table with the flat of his hand. “They lie!”

  The sound took a long time to dissipate. No one spoke.

  I want to go home, she thought pointlessly. If they let her go home, she would stay there forever. She would never show her face. Surely that would be enough for what she’d done.

  “Heather,” said a different voice. Heather looked up at Erroll. “You tell us. In your own words. I know you remember, and I know it hurts to remember. But you know we have to know.” He glanced at Charter. “We won’t interrupt you. That seem fair?”

  Fair? Heather thought. None of this was fair. They didn’t know what it was like to be so weak your lover could no longer love you, or have a baby inside you whose face you couldn’t bear imagining. They didn’t know what it was like to be out there in the back field, in the night with all those stars watching to see what would happen.

  “I’ll tell you,” she heard herself say. “This is the truth.” She looked at Charter. Without taking his eyes from her, he felt for his pen.

  “I was sleeping,” she
started. She had no idea how she would tell this story. “It was the middle of the night. Tuesday night. Don’t ask me what time, all right? And I woke up sick. I felt … it wasn’t like with Polly. It was just, like it was suddenly there. No preparation. I was just going to have it. And I wasn’t ready, you know.” She looked at their faces. Charter was writing. “I hadn’t told anyone, so I was by myself. I felt really hot. You remember,” she said, trying not to sound so ragged, “it was hot.”

  “A couple weeks ago,” Erroll said. “Yes, it was pretty hot.”

  “I just … I suddenly didn’t want to be in the house. I didn’t want Polly to wake up and hear me. She can get out of the crib sometimes. I didn’t want her to hear me and get out, and come in and see …” Heather shrugged. “So I went outside. It was cooler outside.” And the stars, she thought. Like bullet holes people up there were peeking through, watching her. “I didn’t know what would happen. I never meant for anything bad to happen.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” said Erroll. Then he waited for her to start again.

  “I went down the hill. There’s a pond back there at the bottom. Well, not a pond, really. It’s mostly mud with a few big rocks around the edge. I don’t know why I went there. I didn’t plan that.” She looked at them. “I just was walking through the … cramps. You know?” But they couldn’t know, she thought bitterly. “And after a while, maybe a few minutes, like ten, down at the pond, I just felt like it was time to …” She stopped, suddenly embarrassed. Because it had felt just like going to the bathroom, really, and at the time she hadn’t been sure it was the baby at all, only this other thing that she had to do before the baby could come out. “I got down,” she told them. “Like crouching, all right? And I pushed, and something came out. But I didn’t realize it was the baby,” she said quickly. “I thought it might be … something else.” She wasn’t looking at Charter at all anymore. Erroll seemed intent. He nodded. “But I felt better, so I just stayed like that for a little while.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t know how long. Because I thought if I moved, it would start the pains up again. And it was only after that I looked down and I saw the baby.”

  Charter stopped. He looked up. His face was wooden.

  “Your baby,” he said, after a moment.

  “Yes.” Heather had tears in her eyes. She hadn’t felt them come, but she felt them fall. “She was dead.”

  He put his pen down.

  “Just like that,” he observed.

  Erroll turned to look at him.

  “You’re saying the baby was born dead,” said Charter. “I want to make sure I understand.”

  Heather, desperate to finish, nodded quickly. “She never moved. She didn’t cry. I’m not a doctor or anything, but I know she was dead! Polly cried right away. Babies cry! But this one just … she never.” She glared up at them both through her tears. “She was just dead! I couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “What did you do?” asked Erroll softly.

  “I stood up. I … That other part came out, too. I felt really dizzy, like I was going to faint. I wanted to go back up to the house. I was afraid of fainting out in the field. I was afraid Polly would wake up and call and I wouldn’t come.” Like the other time, she wanted to explain, but couldn’t. Like the time Polly had called and wept all day, pleading for the dead to return and comfort her. “So I went back. I went on my hands and knees for a bit. Then I got up. I walked up. I got back to the house and I got back into bed. I couldn’t think about what …” She shook her head. “Because she was dead. I couldn’t help her anyway. And I couldn’t stay awake. When I woke up, there was so much blood on the sheets. The mattress, too. I didn’t know what to do. I had to take care of Polly.”

  “And did you?” Erroll said. “Is that what happened?”

  “I took care of her. I got breakfast for her. I rolled up a towel and put it in my underpants. I tried to eat some stuff, but I kept throwing up. It was like that all day.”

  “What happened then?” Erroll said.

  “I put Polly down for her nap in the afternoon. About two. That’s the time she usually goes, anyway. And I tried to sleep, too. On the couch downstairs. But I kept thinking of it out there. I couldn’t remember so much about what happened. I thought maybe none of it had really happened. I mean, I knew something, but I couldn’t be sure.”

  “So you went out?” Erroll said helpfully.

  “Yes. I walked out. It was warm again. I went down to the pond.” She started to cry again. She swatted at her eyes. “I saw it on the ground. I saw it was a girl. That’s the first time I knew it was a girl. It had”—Heather swallowed—“this shiny thing over it. It was all gray. And there were some flies. I couldn’t stand that. I didn’t want flies.”

  Erroll nodded. Charter had his head down.

  “I thought I should bury it. I kept thinking of that phrase ‘proper burial.’ I didn’t know what that meant. I’m not sure I know what it means now. What’s proper about putting something in the ground? Just, you know, digging a hole and putting it down there? I didn’t think I’d feel any better if I did that.”

  “And that’s what you were trying to do?” Charter said, a little caustically. “Feel better?”

  “No, I … well, I don’t know. Maybe,” said Heather. She took a breath. There wasn’t much more. “So then I just … My eye sort of fell on the pond. It was right there. It was so dark. You couldn’t even see into it. And the mud on the bottom was really soft. I remembered from when I was a kid, I used to get all mucked up in it on really hot days, and the mud in between my toes.” She felt abruptly embarrassed by this, as if it were, in a way, even more intimate than the other things she had said. “It was … it seemed as if it was just like the ground in a way, but it was right there, and I wouldn’t have to carry …” She looked helplessly at them.

  Charter had stopped writing. He stared at her in distaste. “What are you saying?” His voice was soft but fierce. “Are you saying you put your baby’s body into this pond? And left it there?”

  She nodded eagerly. She felt the weight lift, she wouldn’t have to say any more. There wasn’t any more to say.

  “And this is your statement?”

  “My … ? It’s what happened,” Heather said. “It’s where I put it. It’s still there.”

  “I thought,” Charter shook his head, “you weren’t going to lie to us anymore. I thought we had reached an understanding, Miss Pratt.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I’ve told you.”

  “And your baby daughter”—he seethed—“then rose of her own accord, fell once upon a sharp object, and crossed half a field to drop herself into the Sabbathday River.”

  There was a shriek inside her head. It kept getting in the way of things people were saying in the real world, messing up the meaning of their words. She just couldn’t understand him. She just couldn’t understand what he was saying to her.

  “I’ll show you,” Heather offered.

  He had turned his shoulder to her, like an indignant classmate, circa fourth grade. He had turned and was pouting at the door when she called him back.

  “Show me what?” Charter barked.

  “The baby. My baby. I’ll show you.”

  He was silent. Heather got unsteadily to her feet. “Come on. Let’s go now.

  “It won’t work,” he said. “Just save yourself the trouble.”

  “But it’s there,” she insisted. “I know it is. I checked. When Naomi told me about … well, what she found. I knew it wasn’t mine. I mean, how could mine have gotten into the river? I knew it wasn’t mine, but I had to check, anyway. Wouldn’t you have checked?”

  He seemed disinclined to answer this.

  “I went down with my flashlight. I felt in the water. I touched it. She was there.”

  She stared at them.

  “I touched her!”

  Charter shook his head. He seemed amazed by her.

  “I never stabbed my baby! She was already dead!”<
br />
  “Maybe you wanted to make sure,” he said quietly.

  “What?”

  “Well, you were pretty sure she was dead. But you just wanted to make sure. Is that possible?”

  Possible? Heather thought. It was crazy. Why would anybody stab a dead baby?

  “You see,” he said, almost kindly, “if you did that, you could be sure it was dead, in a way you couldn’t be sure just by, say, leaving it on the ground. Yes?”

  Yes? Heather thought. Yes to what?

  “And you wanted to be sure, didn’t you? That’s why you went back to look, wasn’t it? You couldn’t stand that little chance that you were wrong and your baby daughter was just lying there in the grass, crying out for you?”

  She nodded, through hot tears. This was, after all, so absolutely true.

  “And maybe when you went down to see the baby you took something sharp with you. Just to make sure. Since it probably wouldn’t hurt her, because she was probably dead already. And you could rest easy afterward.”

  “No, that’s—”

  “Let me finish. And the baby seemed dead to you. Though, as you said yourself, you’re not a doctor or anything, so it’s not like you could be absolutely sure. But one little poke, just to settle the question. And then this baby you never really loved—not like you love your daughter, your little girl who you were pregnant with at the same time you had your boyfriend keeping you company all the time—this baby you never told anybody about and nobody would ever miss, would just sort of go away. I can certainly understand why you felt that way.”

  She had no words. She shook her head.

  “And then when you were finished, maybe you did put the body somewhere. But not in that pond, I don’t think. Because you didn’t really want it so close to your house, did you? You sure didn’t want to look out your window and see that pond and have to think about what was inside it. You wouldn’t want your daughter to go out and play there, just like you played there when you were a little girl, and put her toes down there into all that soft mud and feel the body—”