by Toni Andrews
“We considered the matter with great care at the time. It is a very serious thing to abandon a child, even in a place where it is sure to be found and cared for.” He paused, and I thought I heard ice clinking in a glass. “Several people thought they had seen someone sitting in that pew shortly before the baby was found, but the descriptions did not match one another. Although more than one person said it was a woman, and she was too old to be the child’s mother. There was a police report, of course, but nothing ever came of it.”
Just the same, I was going to ask Sukey to see if she could get a copy.
“What about the baby carrier, or the clothing? Was there anything special about them?”
He paused for a long time, and I thought the connection might have been lost. Then he said, “When you answered the call, you said your name was Mercedes. An unusual name.”
My throat was suddenly dry, but I resisted the urge to clear it. “My mother liked it.”
“Your mother?”
Now it was my turn to pause. “My adoptive mother.”
“Ah.” Another of those resonant chuckles. “Tell me, Mercedes, would today happen to be your birthday?”
The telephone receiver felt heavy in my hand, as if it would slip from my grip. I managed to answer, “Yes, today’s my birthday. At least that’s what it says on my birth certificate.”
“The same birth certificate on which your…mother put the name ‘Mercedes’?”
“That’s right.”
“In that case, Mercedes, I will tell you what was unusual about the clothing. It had a word stitched into the collar. The name was ‘Mercy.’ But I think you already know this, perhaps.”
“Yes,” I breathed. “My adoptive mother told me. Today.”
“Quite a day you’re having.”
You could say that.
“So,” he said. “You are—you were—the baby. I cannot tell you what pleasure it gives me to speak to you. I’ve often wondered what became of you.”
“You could have found out through the adoption agency.”
“Oh, I did, back at the time. I found that you’d been adopted by a couple in New Jersey. I must admit, I did not give the matter much thought after that. Until five years ago.”
What?
“What happened five years ago?”
Again I heard the tinkle of ice cubes against the side of a glass. “A young woman came to see me at the church. It was just a few days before my retirement, you see. She claimed that she was the baby found in the church.”
“She—what?”
“She was quite convincing—she knew the dates and had copies of the newspaper story, printed out from one of those machines at the library.”
“A microfiche machine?” I asked.
“Yes, I think that is what they are called. We spoke for a long time, and she asked questions.”
“The same questions I’ve asked?”
“Those and many more.”
“And did you answer them? I mean, did you tell her about the name stitched into the clothes.”
He sighed. “No. No, I did not.”
“Why not?” My voice sounded foreign in my ears, as if someone else was speaking. What was this all about?
“Because I did not believe her. First, she seemed to be a little too young, although she had tried to make herself look older. Also, in fifty years as a priest, a person develops a pretty good sense of when he is being told a falsehood.”
“And I don’t give you that sense.”
“No. And then there is your name. ‘Mercedes.’”
“I’m actually called ‘Mercy.’”
“I suspected as much.”
We were both silent for a moment; then I asked, “The woman who came to see you—do you know who she is?”
“Yes,” he said, to my great surprise. “I mean, I have the name she gave me. And a telephone number. She wanted me to call her back if I remembered anything else. Although I never intended to honor her wishes, for some reason I cannot explain, I have kept that information. Would you like to have it?”
“Yes,” I said, scrambling for something to write on. My notepad was on top of my desk, but I grabbed it so quickly that the pen rolled off and landed on the floor. “Just let me get—” I groped under the desk, and finally the pen was in my hand. “Go ahead.”
“The name is ‘Charity.’ No last name, I’m afraid. And the phone number is—” He read out a number with an unfamiliar area code.
“Thank you,” I told him. “Thank you so much for calling me back.”
“There is one other thing,” he said, surprising me again. “Something else I did not mention to Charity.”
“What?” The room seemed off-kilter, as if I’d had too much to drink.
“When the sisters from the orphanage came to take the baby, they brought a carrier with them. They didn’t need the one the child had been found in, so I said I would have it cleaned up and given to the church’s thrift store. It was late in the day, so I took it to my office. And later, when I moved it aside, something fell out of it.”
“What was it? A note?” I could hear the rush of my pulse. Or was that static on the line?
“Nothing so revealing. It was a piece of jewelry. A necklace with a pendant or…I suppose you might call it an amulet.”
An amulet?
“I intended to pass it along to the orphanage or give it to the thrift store, but I was curious about the inscription. I did not recognize the language, you see. So I put it in my desk drawer. But, I’m sad to say, I forgot about it. By the time I found it, weeks later, I knew you had already been adopted. It did not seem valuable—made of brass rather than gold or silver—and I still hadn’t found out about the inscription. So I put it back in the drawer, where it became, I’m afraid, one of those things you get so used to seeing that you never think about it anymore.”
“Do you still have it?” It seemed too unlikely to be possible.
“Yes, I do. After Charity’s visit, I remembered it. I found it in a box of things I had already packed in preparation for my retirement. And I finally figured out the inscription.” There was a note of triumph in his voice.
“How did you do that?”
“The Internet! My assistant had been trying to get me to learn to use the computer for years, but, I must admit, I resisted. Until I found out how easy it was to research things. Biblical things, for example. I fear I became quite ‘hooked,’ as they say.”
“What did you find out about the inscription?”
“It was a single word. Thagár.”
“Thagár?” I repeated. My scalp tingled.
“Yes. It means ‘king.’”
King? The tingling spread to my chest. “In what language?”
“Romanes. The language of the Gypsies.”
17
Although it has occupied its prime Newport Harbor spot for forty years, the Villa Nova was originally located on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood. Opened in 1933, the place was a hangout for such celebrities as Charlie Chaplain, Bing Crosby and even Marilyn Monroe. In 1969, after the Strip had descended into seediness, the restaurant moved to the Pacific Coast Highway, just off the base of the Balboa Peninsula. With its trompe-l’oeil exterior depicting an Italian fishing village, the Villa Nova was famous for its authentic cuisine, extensive wine list and old-world service.
Hilda, who’d been a regular there for years, often spoke about the original building, with its rabbit-warren floor plan—a series of narrow, crowded rooms leading through to a spectacular bay view. In 1995 the place burned, and she’d been afraid that yet another Southern California landmark had been lost. Happily, it had been rebuilt and the splendor of its trompe-l’oeil murals restored. Although she claimed to miss the cramped, dark rooms of the original, even she had to admit that the spacious floor plan of the new building was more comfortable and quite beautiful.
Certainly there was plenty of room in the piano bar, where we sat at a long table. I sat at one end, with a vi
ew of both the bay and Lido Island, and the piano. Richie was massaging the ivories while a white-haired gentleman gave a surprisingly good rendition of an Italian aria. Richie was a Villa Nova fixture and had been playing everything from old show tunes to contemporary rock for more than twenty-five years.
“I see we have a guest singer in the audience,” he said into his microphone, over enthusiastic applause. “Hilda, won’t you come up here and do a song with me?”
“Oh, really, I couldn’t,” said Hilda with transparent insincerity. Sukey rolled her eyes, and I ducked my head.
“Get up there, baby,” said Tino. “You promised Mami.”
“And me,” I surprised myself by saying. “It’s my birthday, and I command you to sing.” I was definitely feeling that second martini. And the champagne Sam had bought.
“Oh, well, if you all insist.”
“We do,” said Roger Falls. He was back on cranberry juice, I noticed—no beer after the incident at the pier—but he was enjoying himself, flirting equally with Hilda and Teresa, and ignoring Tino’s occasional glares.
“I’m glad you liked your presents,” said Sukey, as Hilda began the opening strains of “Someone to Watch Over Me.” Her voice was lovely—deep and theatrical.
“I’m overwhelmed.” The bounty was spread on the table in front of me. There was a lush red sweater from Hilda, who was in league with Sukey to get more color into my wardrobe, a pair of deck shoes from Grant, and a photo album from Teresa, with the inevitable sunflower on the hand-crafted cover. I’d been shocked when Sam handed me a box, which turned out to contain an elaborately carved figure of a man in old-fashioned sailor’s garb, about four inches tall.
“Dad carved it,” he said. “When I told him we were going to your birthday party, he insisted that I wrap it up for you.”
“Do you think he knew—”
“Who you are?” he finished for me. “I’d like to think so.”
I looked at his wistful expression and wondered what it would be like to have a father you loved and respected, and then see him slowly lose himself.
Sukey’s gift had been surprising, too. The gilt gift bag had contained a box of cards and a corresponding book.
The Orthodox Tarot. The cellophane-wrapped box lay unopened in front of me, and Sukey reached out and picked it up.
“I’d open them for you,” she said, “but I read online that you shouldn’t let other people handle them too much. You need to, like, bond with your cards.”
“What made you think of Tarot cards?” Sukey always bought birthday and holiday gifts for me, usually articles of clothing outside my comfort zone.
“Well, remember when Madame Minéshti did that Tarot reading for you? When you told me about it, it sounded like you were really intrigued.”
“I was,” I admitted. “But I didn’t think about taking it up myself. I’m just not very metaphysical.”
“That’s rich, considering—” She stopped at a sharp glance from me.
“Actually, what I meant was, what made you choose this particular Tarot deck?”
“Well, after I saw the pictures of the Romanian church on the Internet, I kept thinking about all that gorgeous art. I read about it a little bit. Those paintings, of the saints and stuff, are called icons, and they’re a really big deal.” She took a sip of her champagne. “I knew I wanted to get you Tarot cards, so I went to that store that sells the crystals and stuff, and they had about a zillion decks to choose from. I had no idea which one to pick. Then I saw the picture on the box.”
She turned the box over, revealing a picture of a beautiful robed woman with a golden halo, a cross emblazoned on her chest. The caption read 2—The High Priestess.
“It looked just like those icons. So I read the description on the back of the book. See? The cards are all based on religious images from the Orthodox Church. During the Dark Ages, Tarot readers changed the pictures on their cards to correspond with saints and things, so that Christian people wouldn’t think they were practicing witchcraft. Some stories say the priests even used them.” She shrugged. “They just felt right. Aren’t you going to open them?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “When there isn’t so much distraction.” And I was one hundred percent sober. I was probably imagining the thrumming vibration whenever I handled the box, but I still wasn’t comfortable opening them here.
Hilda finished her song to enthusiastic applause, and I looked up just in time to see Teresa start, as if coming out of a trance. She hadn’t been paying attention to the song, I realized, and only Tino’s loud applause had brought her back to the present.
“Do you think Teresa is getting too tired to be here?” I asked Sukey. “She’s only been out of bed a few days.”
“I think she’s just worried about Gus. I’ll go sit next to her.”
“No, let me,” I said. “I want to thank her again for the album. With everything that’s been going on in her life lately, it’s amazing she took the time to make something by hand.” I got up and walked to the seat vacated by Hilda, who was starting a second song.
“Teresa, the album is beautiful. I wanted to thank you again.”
“I’m glad you like it. I enjoy making them—it’s important to have someplace special for pictures of your family.”
I didn’t stop my grimace in time—too much vodka—and she looked puzzled.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“Oh, no. It’s just that—” No. Even after too much to drink, I wasn’t going to indulge in self-pity. Not tonight.
“You were about to say that you don’t really have a family,” said Teresa.
“Yeah.”
She shook her head, then made a sweeping gesture that encompassed all the people at the table. “What do you call this?”
“They’re my friends,” I said. She had no way of knowing how new that concept still felt for me.
“They’re more than that. They’re your family of choice.”
“My what?”
“I saw this on television. They were talking to people who, for whatever reason, were not able to be with their natural families. Everyone from gay people whose parents had disowned them to holocaust survivors whose entire families had been killed in concentration camps.”
Or, I thought, little girls growing up in group houses and foster homes, because they destroyed their own chances for a real family.
“Anyway, the people they interviewed had all built new families, with members of their own choosing. In the story, they concluded that the bonds in these ‘families of choice’ were every bit as strong as those in biological families. Stronger, sometimes.”
Something was stinging my eyes, and I reached up to rub them, surprised when my fingers came away wet.
Teresa’s hand was on my arm. “Mercy, are you all right? I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”
I put my hand over hers and squeezed.
“You didn’t. It’s just—thank you, Teresa.”
Another round of applause signaled the end of Hilda’s song, and I joined in.
“Everybody, we have a birthday in the house,” Richie said into the microphone. I felt my face redden and looked toward Sukey, who shrugged and grinned. A blaze of light appeared over her shoulder, and I focused on a waitress carrying a cake through the doorway that led from the main dining room into the piano bar. As Richie started to pound out the notes to “Happy Birthday,” everyone at my table and, it seemed, in the entire restaurant, began to sing.
I’m going to punish you for this, I said silently to Sukey.
No you’re not. You love me too much.
As the blazing cake was placed in front of me, the song ended. Everyone yelled, “Make a wish!”
I thought about what Teresa had said.
A family of choice, huh?
I’d made some bad choices in my life. Making myself an orphan, ditching school, killing—No, I wouldn’t go there right now.
I looked at the faces surrounding me. It was good t
o know that, in one area of my life at least, my choices had been just fine.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-3389-2
CRY MERCY
Copyright © 2009 by Toni Andrews.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, MIRA Books, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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*A Mercy Hollings novel
*A Mercy Hollings novel
*A Mercy Hollings novel
