Fortune's Daughter

by Alice Hoffman

  She meant to go inside and thank her mother for the gift, but the shoes simply had to be used, so she walked past the salt marsh, down to the beach. Even when she ran into the water she kept her shoes on, and she walked for nearly two miles and didn’t come home until dinnertime. Rae went around to the back of the house where she could rinse off her shoes under a metal faucet, but she stopped by a mock orange shrub that was covered with white flowers. Carolyn was out there on the back porch, and she was breathing in that same way she had when she’d asked the bus driver to pull over. Rae’s father was standing behind the screen door to the kitchen, looking out.

  “If you’re so miserable why don’t you leave,” he told Carolyn.

  The sky was as blue as ink, and when Rae licked her lips she could taste salt. There was a slight wind, and Carolyn’s skirt rose up, like the tail end of a kite. Right then what Rae wished for more than anything was that her mother would have the courage to take Rae and get back on the bus and leave him.

  “But if you stay,” Rae’s father said through the screen door, “I don’t want to hear any more complaints. I’d just as soon not talk at all.”

  In the shadows by the side of the house, Rae crouched even lower and held her breath. She expected Carolyn to call out her name, and when she did Rae would stand up and her mother would grab her hand; then they’d run past the high white dunes, and keep running until they reached the center of town.

  But Carolyn didn’t call out her name, she just stood at the porch banister, then she turned and went inside, and the screen door slammed behind her. Even then, Rae could tell when someone had given up, and as she stood out in the yard she felt betrayed. Later, when she went inside, Carolyn was setting the table for dinner as if nothing had happened, and Rae’s father was starting a fire in the fireplace to get some of the chill out of the house. As they ate canned soup and tunafish sandwiches, Rae could hear the sand crabs outside, scrambling through the dunes. When a log in the fireplace popped Rae was certain that Carolyn shuddered. That was when Rae decided she would never trust her mother again; she could never love someone so weak, someone who couldn’t even tell her husband not to light a fire because on the top of the chimney there was an owl’s nest made of sea grass and straw.

  All that summer Rae kept to herself, even during the week when her father wasn’t there. She hid the red shoes at the back of the closet in her room, and when they left Wellfleet at the end of August, Rae left the red shoes behind, relieved to know that even if they rented the same house again, those shoes would never fit her the following year.

  As she waited for Jessup by the pool Rae fell asleep and she dreamed about the house in Wellfleet. In her dream, Carolyn stood out on the back porch. It was late at night and the sky was black. As Rae watched, her mother disappeared, slowly dissolving in the salt air until there was nothing left on the porch but some fine white powder. When Rae woke up it was after five and the lounge chair had left ridges all along the side of her face. There was absolute silence, except for the wind and the sound of metal chimes hung along the outdoor balcony.

  Every room on the second floor opened out to a painted blue walkway, and each room had a view of the pool. But when Jessup had gotten back an hour earlier, he hadn’t bothered with the view. He had picked up a bottle of tequila after work, and as soon as he got into his room he pulled the drapes closed and ran a bath. When Rae knocked on his door, Jessup was sitting in a tub of cool water, his feet propped up on the far rim. He was drinking tequila out of a Dixie cup, and wondering why lifting a few pieces of sound equipment had left him feeling like an old man. He heard the first knock on the door but decided to ignore it. Tonight he didn’t care about extra pay, he wasn’t working overtime. He leaned his head against the cool ceramic tiles behind him and listened to the echo of water running through the pipes as someone on the floor above him ran the shower.

  The longer she stood out there in the sun, the more Rae felt like crying. She had promised herself she would be calm; she had gone over this a hundred times in her head, and she planned to argue her case reasonably. But she didn’t feel reasonable. She was certain that Jessup was in because the desk clerk had assured her he had picked up his key, and Rae wound up pounding on the door. When Jessup finally answered he had a towel wrapped around his waist and he was dripping wet. Rae walked right past him and sat in a tweed armchair. The room was small enough for her to lift her legs and reach the bed; she rested her shoes on the clean bedspread and looked up at him. Jessup had closed the door behind her, and now he was trapped. The only way for him to get anywhere was to jump over Rae’s legs. And there was something else in Rae’s favor—Jessup wasn’t wearing clothes and somehow that made things fairer.

  He sat down on the bed and put a hand on Rae’s ankle. “Look who’s here.”

  “You bet I’m here,” Rae said.

  The air conditioner was on, and the sound got between them. It was difficult to hear, and neither of them wanted to shout. In spite of herself, Rae thought he looked better than ever—he certainly wasn’t wasting away.

  “I wish I could explain some of the things I’ve done lately,” Jessup said. “But all I can say is I’m going through some sort of crisis.”

  They both laughed at that, and Rae laughed a little too long. Before they knew it, she was crying.

  “Come on, Rae,” Jessup said. “Please.”

  “Goddamn you,” Rae said.

  Jessup shook his head sadly. “I know,” he agreed.

  Rae took a shower while Jessup got dressed. She rehearsed the right way to tell him she was pregnant, but the thing was she didn’t quite believe it herself. She didn’t look any different; it could very well be a mistake. When Rae got out of the shower and dressed again there was sand in her clothes and it stuck to her damp skin. She couldn’t stop herself from imagining the worst. What if a monster was growing inside of her, something made out of blood and flesh that wasn’t quite human. It might be her punishment; it had to happen to somebody—somebody’s baby had to be misshapen, somebody had to die in a delivery room and be wrapped up in a stained sheet, somebody’s lover had to leave her when he found out she was pregnant.

  That night they went out to dinner; they ordered hamburgers and played the jukebox and tried to pretend that nothing was wrong. On the drive back to the Holiday Inn a wind came up suddenly; sand whipped around the Oldsmobile and Jessup had to switch on the windshield wipers in order to see the road. Rae heard the sound of wind chimes each time they passed a house or a trailer, and even though Jessup told her that people in the desert believed the chimes brought good luck, the sound put Rae on edge. The temperature had dropped nearly twenty degrees, but when they reached the motel the wind had begun to die down and Rae saw millions of stars above them. Jessup opened the door to his room, but Rae just leaned over the balcony railing. The night was black and white and so breathtakingly clear that she felt she had never seen the sky before.

  Finally, Rae went in. She took off all her clothes and got under the covers. Jessup left a wake-up call for seven, then took off his boots, undressed, and turned out the lights. After he’d gotten into bed he didn’t touch her.

  “I’ve been trying to think of ways to explain what went wrong,” Jessup said. He reached for his cigarettes in the dark, and when he lit a match Rae blinked in the sudden light.

  “It’s like I’ve been dreaming all these years and I suddenly woke up,” Jessup said. “And here I am. Almost thirty.”

  The window in the room was open. It was the time when coyotes came down from the ridgetops; you could hear them howling as the moon rose higher in the sky. As she lay in bed Rae listened to the wind chimes out on the balcony; cars pulled into the parking lot, they idled, then cut their engines.

  “I’m glad you woke up,” Rae said bitterly.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Jessup told her. “You know what I mean.”

  “Well, if you’re planning to leave me we may have a problem,” Rae said. She could feel Jessup
’s weight on the mattress; each time he breathed they shifted a little closer together. “The problem is,” Rae said, “I’m pregnant.”

  Jessup reached for a glass ashtray and stubbed his cigarette out. When he put his head back on the pillow, Rae knew it was over.

  “Are you saying you think you’re pregnant or you know you’re pregnant?”

  “I know,” Rae said.

  “There are plenty of times you say you know something, and then I find out you’ve made a mistake.”

  “Jessup,” Rae said. “I know.”

  Jessup sat up in bed with his back toward her. In the room next door someone turned on the television and muted voices drifted through the wall.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Jessup said finally, “but this is impossible. I’m not ready for this.”

  Lately, Rae had the sense that everything that was happening to her was really happening to someone else. She pinched her thigh until she could feel the bite of her own fingernails.

  “I appreciate the fact that this is a serious situation,” Jessup said. “I really do. But what the hell do you expect me to do about it?”

  She didn’t have an answer.

  “I’m not going to be somebody’s father.”

  If he were anyone but Jessup, Rae would have sworn he was about to cry.

  “Here I am in the middle of some sort of crisis and you come and tell me you’re pregnant.”

  She knew it for sure now, he was crying. She was glad the lights were out and she didn’t have to see it. She wasn’t angry with him any more, just tired.

  “We don’t have to talk about it now,” Rae told him. “We’ll talk tomorrow.” She put her arms around him and pretended not to know he was crying.

  “It’s not like I don’t miss you,” Jessup told her. “I don’t want to, but there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.”

  She held him until he fell asleep, and then she moved back to her side of the bed. Long after midnight, when she was finally able to sleep, Rae dreamed that she left Jessup in bed and went to the window. She opened it wider and climbed outside. She dropped down two stories, and her feet landed in the sand with a thud. Right away, even though it was dark, she saw the pawprints and she followed the tracks far into the desert. The sand was the color of moonlight and the cactus grew eight feet high. All she had to do was sit down, and the coyote came right over to her, curled up by her feet, and put its head in her lap.

  It didn’t seem to matter if the coyote was her pet, or if she’d been captured. When she reached down she could feel its heart beating against its ribs, and she felt elated to be so close to something so wild. She stayed in the desert all night, and by morning she had learned all of the coyote’s secrets: she knew which cactus were rich with hidden water, and how to follow a path along sharp, bone-colored rocks. She knew how to stand so still on the top of a high ridge that rabbits ran right past you, and hawks mistook you for stone and tried to light on your shoulders. At last she knew the moment when the night was so pure, you could fight it all you wanted and still—sooner or later—you’d throw back your head and howl.

  When she got back to the motel she climbed up the railing, then crouched on the window ledge. Everyone in the Holiday Inn was asleep, covered by white sheets, dreaming of home. There was sand all along the window ledge and it spilled onto the wall-to-wall carpeting. Once Jessup turned in his sleep, and Rae held her breath. But even though he opened his eyes briefly, he didn’t see her at the window, and he never heard her climb down onto the carpet, where she slept curled up at the very edge of the room.

  When Rae woke up it was dawn, and she knew that she had to get out. She needed fresh air, and breakfast, and a change of clothes. Jessup didn’t wake up when she ran the shower; he didn’t hear the window close, he didn’t hear the door. She would think about losing him later, but this morning all she wanted was to get across the desert before noon. She left the motel room exactly as it had been before she arrived. The air conditioner was still on; the pipes in the walls made a murmuring sound; in the bathroom there were a bottle of tequila, a package of disposable razors, a plastic container of Dixie cups. Only two things were missing when Rae left: the car keys were no longer on top of the night table, and out in the parking lot the space where Jessup had left the Oldsmobile the night before was empty. By the time Jessup woke up the asphalt in the parking lot was already beginning to sizzle. By noon it would reach a hundred and fifteen degrees. But by then Rae was already out on the freeway, and with all the windows in the Oldsmobile rolled down, the only thing she could feel was a perfect arc of wind.

  PART TWO

  ON THE NIGHT LILA GAVE birth to her daughter she had already walked up two flights of stairs before she realized she couldn’t go any farther. She held on to the iron banister and slowly sank to the floor. In the middle of a terribly cold winter, there had been an oddly warm week, with rain instead of snow, and everyone in the city seemed sluggish and out of sorts. Lila’s parents had come to agree that their daughter’s strange behavior was caused by a combination of the weather and the mysterious pains of being eighteen. Ever since autumn, Lila had refused to wear anything but the same wide, blue dress, which hung from her shoulders like a sack. She refused suppers and lunches, yet she looked heavy and she walked as if off balance. At night, the next-door neighbors could hear her crying, and when she finally slept nothing could wake her, not even a siren right outside the apartment building. No one had dared to ask Lila what was wrong for fear she might tell them. And so, it had not been very difficult for her to keep her pregnancy a secret. But on that day in January, when her legs gave out and she sat huddled on the second-floor landing, Lila knew there was just so much you could hide.

  Lila was expected home for dinner, but she sat in the stairwell for nearly an hour. Outside the sky filled with huge white clouds. The weather was changing that night, dropping five degrees an hour, and Lila tried to convince herself that the sudden shift in the atmosphere was what made her feel so exhausted and sick. In her calculations she had at least six more weeks to go. Lila was still stunned by what had happened to her, and every time the baby moved she was amazed all over again. On those rare days when she accepted that she was indeed pregnant, she could never quite believe she would actually give birth. Perhaps after nine months of pregnancy the process would reverse itself: the baby would slowly dissolve, forming, at the very last, a nearly perfect pearl, which Lila would carry inside her forever. But there on the stairs, Lila knew that something was happening to her. When she found the strength to stand up a wave began somewhere near her heart; it traveled downward in a rush, and then, without warning, exploded. Suddenly, Lila’s dress was drenched, from the waist to the hem, and as she climbed up the stairs a trail of warm water was left behind that would not begin to evaporate until the following day.

  Lila managed to get into the apartment unnoticed, then she undressed and crawled into bed. When her parents realized she was home they came to knock on her door, but by that time Lila’s voice was steady enough to call that she was really too tired to join them for dinner. She closed her eyes then, and waited, and she was in her own small bed, in that room where she’d slept every night of her life, when her labor pains began. At first it was nothing more than mild cramps, as if she had pulled the muscles in her back. But the cramps came and went in a regular pattern, and no matter how hard Lila willed the pain to stop it rose upward; it was climbing to the roof. The movement of time changed altogether; it seemed as if only two minutes had passed since Lila had managed to sneak into her room—but it was more than two hours later when the pain began to take on a life of its own. There was a steady rhythm it complied to, and as the pain gained control, Lila panicked. She jumped out of bed, pulled a blanket around her, then ran out of her room and into the hallway. Lila’s parents had long finished dinner, but her father was still at the table reading the newspaper, and her mother was returning the dishes to the cabinet in the dining room. When Lila’s mother saw her d
aughter in the hallway with a wool blanket wrapped around her and her dark hair flying wildly, she dropped a large platter which broke into a thousand pieces on the wooden floor.

  “Something’s wrong,” Lila screamed. Her voice did not sound at all like her voice, and though her parents were only a few feet away, Lila was certain that she had to yell to be heard. “I have to go to a hospital,” she cried. “Something’s happening to me.”

  Lila’s mother ran over and put a hand on her daughter’s forehead to check for fever, but a strong contraction came that made Lila drop down and crouch on the floor. Through the wave of pain, Lila could hear her mother shrieking, and the moment she was able to stand again her mother slapped her face so hard that Lila could feel her neck snap backward. It was then Lila’s parents began to argue and accuse each other of stupidity, lunacy, and every other parental crime possible. They nearly forgot that Lila was there in the room with them. At last, her mother and father both agreed that an ambulance’s siren was too deep a shame for them to endure, and so Lila’s cousin, who was a nurse in the emergency room at Beekman Hospital, would have to be called.

  At that point, Lila didn’t really care what was decided. It didn’t matter that her mother was crying hot tears as she telephoned Lila’s cousin, or that her father had already left the apartment, even though he had no place to go—too humiliated to sit in the lobby or ask a neighbor for a glass of water or tea, he went to the stairwell and sat there, and prayed that no one he knew would see him. Lila let them make all the decisions. When they refused to take her to the hospital, she went back to her room and knelt by the side of the bed. After a while, she put her face down on the cold sheet and gripped the mattress with both hands. She felt herself slipping into something dark, and each time a contraction came her waist was ringed with a band of fire. Each time the band grew hotter, until finally it threatened to burn right through her spine. One thing Lila knew: she could not live through this kind of suffering. But even now, she didn’t dare scream and bring the neighbors running. She simply begged for someone to help her, and although her mother must have heard her she did nothing more than come into the hallway and quietly close the bedroom door.