Just as she set the pages in her briefcase and snapped it shut, Laola reappeared in the doorway. “That anchorwoman from Channel Two keeps calling.” The breathless voice again. “You know, Sue Causeman. She wants to know where she can find Sharon David. What am I s’pposed to tell all these reporters?”
Vicky got to her feet, swung her bag over one shoulder, and picked up the briefcase. “Tell them ‘no comment,’” she said, brushing past the secretary. In the outer office, she stopped and turned back. “Oh, and Laola, call the Grace Clinic. See if the director has a few minutes to see me this afternoon. Then call Luther Benson and ask him to meet me later.”
It was mid-afternoon when Vicky turned in to the parking lot of the Grace Clinic, a tan-brick building surrounded by a sweep of tree-studded, manicured lawn. Shadows lay over the walls, making the clinic seem cool and inviting after the heated meeting she’d just left. Lawyers for the garage owner had spent the night dreaming up new hoops for Sam Eagle Hawk to jump through, all unacceptable. She’d held firm for the settlement, and finally, reluctance seeping from them like blood from an opened wound, they’d agreed. In her briefcase on the seat beside her was the signed agreement.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, she patted her hair into place and touched up her lipstick. She’d called Laola from the lawyers’ offices and learned that both Dr. Roland Grace and Luther Benson could see her. Dr. Grace was expecting her at two o’clock. Ten minutes ago.
She slid out of the Bronco and hurried up the brick-lined sidewalk bisecting the lawn. A warm gust of wind caught at her suit skirt, molding it around her legs. Overhead the sky stretched as far as she could see, a smooth blue satin. Clouds rose over the mountains like white smoke. A rush of cool air hit her as she opened the glass door and stepped into the clinic.
Rows of chairs in bright, cheery colors lined the waiting-room walls. There was only one patient: a woman seated in the middle of an empty row, looking as if she might deliver a baby at any moment. At her feet, a small boy was pushing a miniature truck across the carpet. An image flashed into Vicky’s mind, like a photograph superimposed on the woman and the boy: she, with another baby on the way, Lucas playing at her feet.
How often the memories came, unbidden and unwelcome, triggered by some ordinary scene. And with the memories, a sharp stab of regret that somehow things had not gone as she’d planned, not as she’d planned at all.
She crossed the reception room to the counter on the opposite wall. Behind sliding glass panels sat an attractive woman in her forties, Vicky guessed, with stylishly cut blond hair and thin brown eyebrows penciled above eyes as green as the blouse she was wearing. She had a pale complexion, but her face took on a yellowish cast under the fluorescent lights, like a bleached canvas soaking up color.
“May I help you?” The receptionist leaned toward the small opening between the glass panels.
Vicky said, “I’m here to see Dr. Grace. My secretary called earlier.”
“You’re the attorney, then?” The eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Please let the doctor know I’m here.”
The woman was still staring. “I’m afraid Dr. Grace is with a patient. Perhaps I can be of help? I’m the business manager.”
“I’ll wait.” Vicky gave the woman an assuring smile. As she started toward a chair, the door next to the counter swung open. A young woman with a small bulge at her waist stepped into the lobby. A glance back, a grateful smile: “Thank you, Doctor.”
In the doorway behind her was a large man about fifty, wearing a white coat that hung loosely over his dark trousers and blue shirt. A red-printed tie was knotted sharply at the shirt collar. His forehead continued into a bald scalp that shone under the fluorescent light. His eyes seemed outsized and intense behind thick, pink-rimmed glasses. “Ms. Holden?” he said. Then, without waiting for a reply, “Do come in.”
Vicky followed him down a narrow carpeted corridor past partially open doors. She caught a glimpse of white-sheeted examining tables, silver footrests, a nurse smoothing white paper over one table. The acrid odor of iodine hung in the air.
At the far door, before the corridor jutted into a north wing, the doctor halted and, stepping back, ushered her into a small office. Bookcases faced each other from opposite walls—the same-sized books stacked together, as if they had been arranged by height rather than subject. The rolltop desk across the room was open, exposing cubbyholes filled with envelopes that extended over papers and file folders arranged on the surface. Next to the desk, a narrow window covered with a blue semitransparent shade diffused the sunlight and gave the office a faint blue cast.
The doctor motioned her to a dark leather chair. He took the old-fashioned wood chair in front of the desk and, leaning toward her, said, “What can I help you with?” There was a veiled sharpness to the words, as if a visit from an attorney had put him on guard.
Vicky settled her bag on her lap. “One of my clients believes she may have been adopted from this area thirty-five years ago,” she began. “She may have been placed through a private adoption, perhaps handled by a private clinic.”
The doctor’s face broke into a smile of undisguised relief. He shifted his bulky frame, leaned back, and crossed one thick thigh over the other. “So Sharon David thinks she was adopted from the Grace Clinic!” He gave out a little guffaw. Then, in a low, confidential tone: “A beautiful woman. Tell me, what’s she really like?”
Vicky ignored the question. “I know that women from the reservation came to the clinic for prenatal care in the 1960s.”
“Still do,” the doctor said.
Vicky went on: “Can you tell me whether the clinic ever handled private adoptions?”
Behind the pink-rimmed glasses, the doctor’s eyes took on a harder look. He uncrossed his legs and sat up straight. “Not in the twenty years I’ve owned the clinic. What happened before that, well, I could hardly be responsible . . .” He raised both hands, palms up, as if appealing to some invisible authority. “Jeremiah Markham owned the clinic then. Got his start here, didn’t you know?”
Vicky gave a little nod, and the doctor hurried on, undisguised pride working through his voice. “Founded the clinic. Delivered babies for about a year around 1964 before moving to Los Angeles. Started a large clinic there and . . .” He paused a moment. “The rest, as they say, is history.”
Vicky found a pen and small pad in her bag. On a blank page she scrawled the name Jeremiah Markham. Glancing up, she said, “Wasn’t that the year many Indian babies died?”
Dr. Grace shifted his weight sideways against one armrest. “I believe that year determined his career. He has never said so, of course, but”—he raised both hands again—“losing one baby after the other. Not knowing the cause. Waking up in the middle of the night asking yourself what you might have done differently.” The doctor glanced away a moment, as if to bring the enormity of what had happened into focus. “Jerry understood there was nothing he could have done. The water was seriously contaminated. But I believe the infant deaths at the clinic led him to devote his life to ensuring that every baby would have the chance of arriving safely in this world.”
“Are you saying babies were delivered here, at the clinic?” Vicky had assumed the women delivered at one of the local hospitals, as she had.
The doctor gave her a tolerant smile. “Jerry was ahead of his time by a decade. He preached natural childbirth before it was called natural childbirth. Offered a comprehensive program of nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, and mental preparation. Highly revolutionary at the time. Most hospitals didn’t want any part of it. So he opened his own hospital right here.” He nodded toward the north wing where the corridor had taken a sharp jog. “Women came to the clinic for classes during their pregnancies and delivered in the birthing rooms. As soon as the health officials determined the water was polluted, Jerry instructed patients to drink only bottled water. Unfortunately some women didn’t follow instructions.”
The doctor exhaled a long
breath. “I always believed Jerry felt he had to leave here. What he was doing was beneficial to mothers and babies. Yet, many babies died. There was a stigma, don’t you see? A dark spell cast over his revolutionary theories. Jerry had to start anew somewhere else, which he did in Los Angeles.”
Vicky was quiet. The doctor only confirmed what Aunt Rose had said about a time of lost babies and dashed hopes. A time when no Arapaho woman would have given up her child. Yet there could have been one lonely frightened woman who had decided to do just that. She said, “Do you know whether Dr. Markham ever arranged private adoptions?”
“For an Indian child?” The doctor’s eyebrows rose above the steel rims of his glasses. “You would have to ask him. He may have records from that period.” Reaching across the desk, he pushed a button on a small intercom. “Get me Jerry Markham’s number,” he barked. Still holding down the button, he brought his eyes back to Vicky’s. “Jerry hasn’t practiced in years. Too busy writing books and lecturing. But he still works as a consultant. We call him from time to time, when we have a difficult case.”
Static sputtered over the intercom, followed by the business manager’s eager voice reciting a telephone number. Vicky jotted it down, then slipped the pad and pen back into her bag and got to her feet. Dr. Grace stood up and extended a beefy hand.
“You’ve been very helpful,” Vicky said, her hand lost in the folds of the man’s palm.
“About Sharon David.” The doctor was smiling. “Perhaps you could arrange a dinner party?” he said.
Quid pro quo, Vicky thought. “I’ll let Sharon know how helpful you’ve been,” she said, ignoring the request. She retrieved her hand and escaped into the corridor.
As she stepped into the waiting room, the business manager pushed aside one of the glass panels and leaned forward. “Dr. Markham can be very hard to reach,” she said.
“Any suggestions?” Vicky walked over to the counter.
A look of exasperation came into the woman’s eyes. “You have to keep calling. Over and over. Leaving messages on that infernal machine. Eventually Dr. Markham gets back to you.” She gave a long sigh. “He’s very busy, you know.”
Vicky thanked her and started to walk away.
“Is this about Sharon David?” Eagerness leaked into the other woman’s tone.
Vicky turned back. “I want to talk to him about the clinic.”
“Well, if it has anything to do about business, you should talk to Joanne Garrow. She was his business manager, and business managers know a lot more than doctors about business matters.” She straightened her shoulders and gave the files stacked along the counter a proprietary glance.
“Where would I find her?”
“Joanne? Still lives where she always did. About four blocks south of here. The big red-brick house on the corner. Can’t miss it.”
13
A glance at her silver watch told Vicky she was late for the meeting with Luther Benson. But Luther, she knew, would wait. Ensconced at his favorite table in the back of the Mountain Lounge, one hand wrapped around a sweating martini glass, the other poking at the swivel stick, bobbing the olive in the clear liquid, Luther would wait, glad for the excuse to order another martini. Since he’d retired from his law practice a few years ago, he had few demands on his time.
She let up on the accelerator, suddenly aware that the green sedan ahead was traveling about fifteen miles per hour. She tapped out an impatient rhythm on the wheel as she followed the sedan down the residential block and through the intersection. Suddenly the car swerved right and crawled up a long driveway that ran alongside a two-story, red-brick house.
Vicky swung next to the curb as an elderly woman emerged from the sedan, opened the rear door, and lifted out a brown bag of groceries. Then she pushed the door shut with one hip and started across the lawn.
“Ms. Garrow?” Vicky called, sliding out of the Bronco.
The woman whirled around, clutching the groceries against her chest like a shield. “Yes?” she called. It might have been the chirp of a small bird.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Vicky started up the sidewalk.
The woman was peering over glasses that slipped partway down her nose. A pink cord hung from the side pieces and dangled below her chin. She looked to be in her seventies—the small, birdlike frame hunched around the grocery bag, the tightly curled gray hair and the face furrowed with worry.
As she approached, Vicky gave her name and said she was an attorney. “Could I talk to you a moment?”
“I can’t imagine what it could be about.” The woman started across the lawn toward the porch steps.
“About the clinic Dr. Jeremiah Markham ran in town.”
The woman was halfway up the steps. She stopped and, without looking back, called out, “I don’t know anything.”
For a moment Vicky wondered if she had stopped at the right house. “Weren’t you Dr. Markham’s business manager?”
“Go away!” she shouted. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Ms. Garrow”—Vicky walked to the bottom step—“I only want to ask you . . .”
The woman had reached the porch. She swung around, staring over the carton of eggs poking from the grocery bag. “You’re Indian, aren’t you?” She hurled the words like an accusation.
Vicky caught her breath. For a moment she couldn’t speak. Then: “I’m a member of the Arapaho tribe. I have a few questions about the Markham Clinic.”
“Get off my property, do you hear? Get off my property.” She was backing across the porch, one arm slung around the sagging grocery bag, the other fumbling in a jacket pocket. Pulling out a key, she pointed it like a weapon. “I’ll call the police if you don’t leave immediately. You’re trespassing.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“Trespasser! Trespasser! Indian trespasser!” the woman shrieked as she turned and began jamming the key into the lock, ramming the grocery bag against the door, as if the egg carton and bulge of groceries might break through the wood.
Vicky started backing down the sidewalk, her legs trembling beneath her. She forced herself to turn around and walk confidently to the curb. The whack of the door slamming behind her broke the afternoon quiet of the neighborhood. As she slid inside the Bronco, she saw the lace curtain flutter at the front window of the house, as if a breeze had caught it for the briefest moment before dropping it back into place.
She switched on the ignition. The engine growled into life, echoing the fury surging inside her. Giving the wheel a sharp turn, she pulled into the street. She hadn’t seen it coming, that was all. The woman’s reaction had caught her off guard. She could usually read the questions in the eyes of strangers: Greek? Italian? Spanish? And then the dawning realization: Ah, Native American. But there had been no questions in the eyes of Joanne Garrow, only hatred as pure and sharp as broken glass.
She turned the corner and headed east toward Main Street, her mind replaying the scene: she, walking up the sidewalk—the dark, slanted eyes and black hair, the coppery skin. Joanne Garrow had seemed only startled. Then Vicky had said she was an attorney. She had mentioned the Markham Clinic.
Vicky felt her muscles begin to relax. An alien from outer space with green skin and purple hair could have walked up the sidewalk. It would not have mattered. The fact that she was Arapaho did not matter. It was a convenient excuse, words hurled like stones to make her run away. What mattered, what had ignited the hatred in Joanne Garrow’s eyes, was the name of Dr. Jeremiah Markham.
• • •
Vicky still felt shaky as she made her way through the clouds of smoke in the Mountain Lounge, past the men perched on bar stools, turning, staring. She found Luther Benson seated at a small table in back. As she approached, he started to his feet, stumbling sideways, righting himself against the table. A half-empty martini glass scurried toward the edge. He grabbed it and set it solidly into place.
“Thanks for seeing me, Luther.” Vicky sat down across from hi
m. The lawyer waited a moment before folding himself into his own chair. He was in his seventies, but he might have been taken for a man ten years younger: the thick, iron-gray hair and bushy eyebrows, the deep-set eyes with a perpetual look of amusement, the ruddy features of a man accustomed to the outdoors.
“Never let it be said Luther Benson turned down a drink with a beautiful lady.” He lifted the martini glass and gave her a mock toast before taking a long sip. From the bar came the soft buzz of conversation, the sound of ice cubes clinking against glass. “You’ll join me, won’t you?” He waved over the bartender.
“Just water,” Vicky said after the man in blue jeans and T-shirt had sauntered over, a white towel slung across one shoulder. She never drank alcohol; she feared its magical powers. It could draw out the very soul, transform someone into something unrecognizable. Before her eyes, it had transformed Ben into a stranger.
“Guess I’ll drink for both of us.” Luther glanced up at the bartender. “Bring me another.”
The moment the bartender moved away, Luther leaned toward her and, in a low, raspy voice said, “I forgot about you being Indian.”
Vicky knew that wasn’t true. She said nothing.
“Indians either stay fallin’-down drunk or don’t touch the stuff.”
“You think so?”
“Think so! I been around these parts a good long time.” He winked at her.
Vicky gave a little shrug. “I’m not here to discuss the problems some Indian people have with alcohol,” she said. Not with a man who wanted to meet in a bar in the mid-afternoon. Who has already polished off at least one martini and is about to start on another.
Holding her gaze, Luther drew his wallet from inside his light-colored, western-cut jacket and plucked out a few dollars, which he tossed on the tray as the bartender delivered another martini and a glass of ice water. “You wanted to see me about Sharon David, right?”
The Lost Bird Page 10
