Chapter 23
The Language of Mothers
THE NEXT DAY, SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF HEATHER Pratt’s confession were published in The Manchester Union Leader. Naomi read this sidebar, and the large article it accompanied, while she sat in a restaurant near the jail and waited for visiting hours to start. There was a photograph of the baby, draped in sheeting like a football under a shroud, in the arms of the medical examiner, and a close-up of the knitting needle with its metal sheen. Naomi’s tuna melt, untouched since she had turned to this particular page of the paper, sat congealing in grease on her plate, the twisted wedge of sliced orange going dry. Naomi felt sick. She rubbed her forehead as pain erupted behind her sinuses. Now, even after she had maneuvered so doggedly for permission to visit Heather, it seemed to her that there was no question of going through with it. How she would face the person who had inflicted such an injury on such a victim, then sent its body downriver into her own hands, was unfathomable. And what she might possibly say …
The waitress came to pour more coffee. It tasted foul, but Naomi drank it.
“Something wrong with your sandwich?”
She seemed affronted. Naomi apologized for her own lack of appetite.
She had been to see Mrs. Horgan, the foster mother in Wentworth, just north of Peytonville, and spent the morning making tentative overtures to Polly. The little girl seemed dull but not unhappy. She watched the two older boys, Mrs. Horgan’s grandsons, while they watched television, far more consumed by their faces than by the bright colors on the screen, and ate pieces of cheese and carrot sticks cut thin for a morning snack. Naomi tried to appear competent, but she took notes frantically, asking for recipes and advice and instructions for every medical scenario she could think of. Polly did seem to recognize her, Naomi thought, though the girl didn’t exactly seek her out. Naomi would come back to pick her up the following afternoon, she told Polly, hearing herself speak, for the first time, in the language of mothers—the high pitch of maternal concern. She was thrilled by the sound of her own voice, and thrilled when Polly did not automatically turn away. I can do this, Naomi thought. Delivery first, then content. Imitation, then authority. I can do this, too.
She was meeting Erroll at five, at Heather’s house. She would collect, under his watch, whatever Polly needed.
At two o’clock Naomi went to the main entrance of the Peytonville jail and was directed through a confusion of identical white corridors to the medical wing. There seemed little overtly medical about this place, no nurses in uniform or guards who looked any different from the guards she had seen in the main part of the jail. Behind the desk, a man with a holstered gun sat before a bank of closed-circuit television screens, some blank, a few with blurry, motionless figures. She squinted to see if one was Heather, but by then the guard was staring at her distrustfully.
“You from the press?” he said, when she told him whom she was there to see.
“Just a friend. I called before. It’s okay for me to come.”
He didn’t believe her, though her name was indeed on a note attached to Heather’s file. He called his superior, and then the Public Defender’s Office, and then his superior again. Then he asked if she had brought anything with her.
Naomi put her bag on the desk and watched as he went through her keys and bunches of used Kleenex and date book, jammed with stray and unsecured pages. He took it behind the desk and said he’d hold it till afterward. Then he went through the things she’d brought for Heather: a sweet-smelling fancy soap and a Whitman’s Sampler. Both things were choices of desperation, and she felt a little embarrassed watching the guard pick over them. Both were unallowed, he told her. Naomi shrugged, too preemptively exhausted to even be angry.
He took her to a small room sliced in two by steel mesh. There were tables on either side of the mesh, and hard plastic chairs behind them, and doors with small windows in the upper half. She waited there about ten minutes, needing to go to the bathroom but irrationally afraid that, if she went, she might miss her chance to see Heather. She crossed her legs and idly fingered the knee of her jeans, which was buttery soft, about to break through to the skin. She didn’t want to be looking up when they brought her in. She wanted that extra instant, to be ready, but not before it was necessary.
When the door squealed open, she closed her eyes.
Heather took the seat opposite, shapeless under a blue hospital gown with loose pants. She put her hands on the table and looked calmly at Naomi. Naomi could not look calmly back.
“Oh, Heather. Did they make you do that?”
Heather’s hand went to the back of her head. “No. I asked them to. They said I didn’t have to.”
“But your hair.” She knew she shouldn’t say this. It was cruel to say this, Naomi thought.
“It’s all right. It’s less worry like this. And it will grow back. My head feels light.”
“That’s good,” Naomi said. “Well, you look very well.”
“I do?” Her voice had always been thin like this, Naomi thought. She was Heather still—a pale and formless person, a blank where a person was supposed to be.
“I brought you things,” said Naomi. “I brought you some soap and some chocolates. They said I couldn’t bring them in. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right, Naomi. I’m fine. I don’t need anything.”
You need a shake, Naomi thought, before she could censor herself. She stared at Heather. Only a few weeks had passed, it came to her, since she had last seen her, out at her house with the kitchen smelling of applesauce. She had gone to bring another sampler kit, she recalled now with a stab of resentment: that first sampler sacrificed to be a shroud for a dead baby.
“You’ve seen Polly?” Heather asked, and Naomi nodded.
“Just this morning. She’s fine, you know. Eating, playing.” She paused. What else was there to report? What else did children do? “I’ll pick her up tomorrow and bring her to my house.” She paused. “That is, if you still want me to look after her.”
“I do,” said Heather, showing some animation for the first time. “Oh, I really do. If you will.”
“Of course I will. For as long as it’s necessary.”
They looked at each other, exchanging the same grim thought.
“I’m going out to your place later on today, to get stuff for Polly. Can you think of what I need?”
She hadn’t been allowed paper and pen, of course, so Naomi closed her eyes and tried to memorize: the crib, the special blue elephant, the plastic mat that attached to the bathtub with suckers, the plate with Snow White and the cup with Dumbo, the striped red blanket, the zip-up pajamas with little Christmas trees, even though it was big for her, the No More Tears shampoo. There was so much. There was too much to carry.
“Naomi,” Heather said, “I can’t thank you.”
“It’s all right.” Naomi shook her head. “Please, let’s not—”
“But what you must think.” Heather’s voice cracked open. Naomi saw, to her great dismay, that she was beginning to weep, and freely.
“Heather, don’t.” It was all she could think of.
“But it’s so terrible, it’s all so terrible. What I did!”
“Don’t tell me,” Naomi said sharply. “Heather, I can’t.”
“You thought I was such a good mother. You told me.”
“You are,” Naomi heard herself say. “Polly has a wonderful mother.”
“But the other one. You see, it was Ashley’s, too. I should have loved it, too.”
Naomi felt herself lean back, away from the table. Heather was crying still, her nose running. Naomi looked down.
“You’ll be able to forgive yourself.” She was choosing her words as carefully as she could. “One day you will. I know it. And things will get better.”
“No, you don’t see!” Heather said sharply. “I didn’t do anything to the baby. I just didn’t love it. That’s what’s so bad, you see?”
Naomi didn’t see. She wanted
to go. She glanced behind her shoulder at the window.
“That stuff they made me say, about the needle and putting it in the river … none of that happened!”
Naomi almost missed it. Then, slowly, she looked back at Heather. The girl’s chopped hair was ragged around her ears, but her ears, Naomi noticed, still stuck out a bit. She had no idea how to respond.
“I never hurt my baby!” Heather said. “I didn’t!”
“Well,” Naomi spoke, “I can’t—”
“They made me say it. They wouldn’t give Polly back if I didn’t. And now …”
She trailed off, bereft.
Naomi shook her head. “But, Heather, it was your baby. It was.” She frowned. “Wasn’t it?”
“I had my baby in the field behind my house. I told them it was dead. It was dead when I had it. It just lay there on the ground. It didn’t breathe!” She looked to Naomi as if for confirmation. None was forthcoming. “So I put it in the pond there. It’s a muddy little pond at the bottom of the field. I put it there. I never moved it again, and I never … with a needle!” She glared at Naomi. “Never!”
Naomi was feeling sick again. Her sinuses beat some deep, resonant rhythm. She thought she might go mad if she didn’t get out of the room soon, but she had unfortunately lost the strength to get up and move away. From Heather, who was truly divorced from rational thought, Naomi thought—from the realm of the rational in which she, herself, was trying only to navigate. She couldn’t listen anymore. She had to leave.
“I’d better go,” she said, concentrating on the words, making them come out right.
“Naomi, listen.” Heather poked her fingers through the grate and grabbed at the mesh: the nails were short but with rims of dirt, anyway. Naomi flinched. “Listen to me, Naomi, please. At the house. The pond at the bottom of the field. Remember! It’s there. I know it is. I didn’t move it.” She stared out from behind the wire. “I checked, Naomi, it’s there!”
Naomi was overcome with pity. How terrible it must be, she thought, to do what Heather had done and find your life was not even over, that you could not even escape your own sadness and guilt by being dead yourself, but had to stay alive to face the blame of others. She would have to not blame Heather, she suddenly understood. Heather deserved that at least: one person, her whole life, who would not blame her.
“It’s all right,” she said. She was amazed by the softness of her voice. She said the same words again, and again they were soothing, sweet, infused by a caring she didn’t at all feel. “Heather, try to rest. And let the doctors help you. They want to help. I’ll get Polly settled and come back soon to see you. I’ll bring her, too, if they’ll let me.”
“Yes, please,” said Heather. She seemed depleted. “I want to see her.”
“And try not to think about any of this. None of it can be helped now. There’s nothing we can do to change what happened.” She got to her feet. “Take care.”
“Naomi.”
She was leaning forward, to the mesh. So close it cut into her forehead, making a lattice of indentation.
She whispered: “Please.”
Naomi, who wished fervently not to do this, leaned forward. Their heads were close, touching not each other but metal. “What?” she said.
“Remember. The bottom of the field. It’s small. Don’t miss it. Please.”
Naomi took a step back, repelled. Heather smiled, her face weirdly strained. The two women stood in this way for a moment, suspended in tandem but separated by space and metal, and circumstance. Were it left to Heather, Naomi thought suddenly, she would not be allowed to leave at all. Anxiety surged inside her. She found her own legs and jerked them to life. Then she turned to the door behind her, banged on the square of glass, and made good her escape.
Chapter 24
All of the Worst Things
BY THE TIME SHE DROVE OUT TO HEATHER’S house later that afternoon, Naomi had managed to winnow her memory of the interview to a vague impression of the girl’s shorn hair and a detailed list of Polly’s necessary things. This, transcribed over a Flourish order form, lay on the passenger seat as she turned onto Sabbath Creek Road, and Naomi drove, leaning forward, eyeing with suspicion the darkening sky.
“Looks a little nasty,” she called to Erroll as she pulled up next to his car. They both got out.
“It’s supposed to storm,” he told her. “I can’t stay too long.”
“Fine.”
Naomi reached back into the car and retrieved her list.
“You been to see her?” he asked.
Naomi nodded. They were walking around to the front door. “This afternoon. They’ve cut off all her hair,” she said accusingly, as if Heather had not made the request herself. It occurred to her that she wanted him to feel bad.
“No kidding,” Erroll said. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“And they wouldn’t let me give her the gifts I brought. A bar of soap, for Christ’s sake!”
“There’s probably a reason,” he remarked. He looked, she thought, paler than usual, a blue cast to the skin around his blue eyes. “Look, I’m not going to keep saying I’m sorry about this, Naomi. I’m not happy, but there’s no question, you know?”
He paused, waiting for her.
“I know you know that, Naomi.”
“Fine, fine.” She nodded impatiently at the door. “Let’s just get on with this. I’ve got a whole list.” She brandished it. He sighed and fished the key from his pocket.
“No one’s been here since the night we interviewed her,” he commented. They both stepped in, smelling the sharp air.
“Yuck,” she said involuntarily. “What’d you do, leave a stink bomb?”
Following the smell, she walked directly to the kitchen and flung open the oven door.
“Nelson,” Naomi said. “Jesus Christ.”
He came up beside her and they looked at the two rotting chickens as they breathed through their mouths.
“Where’s the garbage?”
“I took what was in the bin back to the station that night. We had to go through it. Then we threw it away.”
“Help me find some garbage bags.”
She rummaged in the drawers until she found a roll, then she threw away the chickens, pans and all. On the top of the stove, a pot of potatoes had fossilized into sculpture. Naomi threw that away, too, and the perishables in the fridge. Then, consulting her list, she started putting Polly’s plates and utensils into a shopping bag.
Through the kitchen were signs of disarray: drawers pulled out, cabinets emptied onto countertops. Erroll stood in the center of the room, watching her without comment. By the time they moved into the next room, it was too dark to see without light.
The living room was even more disturbed, with cupboards open and chairs upturned. Playing cards were spread over the living-room couch. Naomi frowned at them, then gathered them up.
“What were you looking for in the cards?” she asked him sourly. “Did you think she killed her baby with a joker?”
“They were there already,” Erroll said. “The little girl was playing with them.”
The playing cards, the chicken in the oven. “You just moved them right out, didn’t you?” she said harshly. “Just came on in and moved them out, whatever they were doing.”
“Heather came voluntarily,” he said, sounding tired. “Naomi, I’m not going to discuss this with you.” He glanced at his watch. “Can we keep going, please?”
“Sure.” She moved past him upstairs, gathering Polly’s toys from the steps. In the upstairs bathroom she took shampoo, the pajamas hanging on a peg over the tub, a bath mat, and everything that looked baby-specific from the medicine cabinet.
“You’re going to need another bag,” he observed. “I’ll bring one up.” He turned and went downstairs.
In Heather’s bedroom the bedclothes had been flung back and the denuded mattress actually cut open. She stared at it without even rudimentary understanding. The books had tumbled forward of
f the bookcase: paperbacks, a thick Norton anthology that looked pristine, a couple of child-care reference books which Naomi gratefully picked up, a small green address book with some kind of gold crest on the cover. Clothes in the closet had been pushed roughly aside on their hangers, and objects on the floor picked up and dispersed. She felt, in this room more than any other, the invasion of Heather’s privacy, the exposure of her life. She felt how even the image of such hands in her own things enraged her, and then, eyeing one partially untwisted wire hanger at the foot of the bed, of how suspect any person’s belongings could be made to seem. There was nothing in here for Polly, at any rate.
He helped her with the crib, lifting and twisting it down the stairs and out the door, where they placed it in the back of Naomi’s wagon. She was glad they hadn’t had to break it down, since it looked complexly put together and she wasn’t at all sure she could manage it on her own. He brought out the high chair from the kitchen and wedged it into the back seat. There was a separate bag just of Polly’s clothes, and Naomi, remembering that the little girl loved applesauce, took the last of the batch from the freezer in the basement. This act in particular gave her a brief jolt of optimism, and she was glad she’d thought of it. Erroll turned the heat back down and walked through one final time on his own—to make sure, she thought bitterly, that nothing deleterious to Heather had been removed, and nothing beneficial surreptitiously planted—then he got into his car.
“Naomi.”
Erroll had rolled the window down. She was standing a few feet away, digging for her keys.
“What?”
“Has anyone said anything to you? Any calls you want to tell me about?”
“What calls?” Naomi said.
He sighed. “I just want you to know, we’re here to make sure people behave themselves. You and that little girl deserve to be left alone, is what I’m saying. I take that seriously.”
She looked dumbly at him. “Has someone made a threat against me, Nelson? Or Polly?”
“Not at all,” he said. “And anyone who does is going to be sorry about it. There’s just grumbling about the situation. Well, you knew that.” She waited. He looked regretful. “You know how people feel about all this, Naomi. They’re bitter about Heather. And anyone who defends her … well, some people—not most of them, I’m saying some—would naturally feel angry at anyone who defended her.”
The Sabbathday River Page 25
