Nathan made his way back to the car, slowly this time. Still holding Sadie’s collar. And feeling a measure short of heroic.
• • •
“I want to adopt that boy,” Nathan said to his wife, Flora, over a late brunch. They sat at the kitchen table, Nathan smearing jam on his English muffin. He preferred butter, but was having to watch his waist.
“Don’t be absurd,” Flora said. She sat with a cigarette high in the crook of her first two fingers, reading the paper. She had the gravelly voice of a drinking woman, which she was not.
Nathan sipped his coffee; it was hot and strong. He felt a pang of loss remembering there would be no roast duck for supper. “Why is it absurd?”
“Neither one of us is very fond of kids. We made up our mind against them. Besides, we’re hardly kids ourselves.”
“No, you made up your mind against them. You decided for both of us.”
Flora looked up from her paper for the first time. Peered at him through the smoke. “I thought you said it was more than you wanted to take on in life.”
“This is different. This was meant to be.”
She took a puff of her cigarette, set it down on the ashtray, and regarded him briefly. “Nathan,” she began. Nathan thought he heard a note of derision. Condescension, even. “I’ve known you twenty-nine years, and you have never before said that anything was ‘meant to be’.”
“Maybe in twenty-nine years nothing else came into that category.”
Still the harshness of her scrutiny. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why what do you think? Why would you suddenly want to adopt the child of a perfect stranger? It makes no sense.”
He opened his mouth to answer, then stopped himself. You simply didn’t say, to the person who has shared her life with you, that her company was not enough to fulfill you. The truth though it may be. It was unnecessarily hurtful, and not intended to serve the common good.
He took a different tack.
“I’ve just had this feeling. Since I found him. I can’t describe it. But it’s an emotion—”
She cut him off rudely. “An emotion? That’s unlike you.”
“My point, exactly,” Nathan said. “And now that I have it, I don’t want it to go away. I just don’t feel willing to give it up again. To go back to the way things felt before.”
He stopped there, feeling he skated dangerously close to the judgment he had earlier decided against voicing.
A difficult pause.
Then Flora shook her head. “Anyway, the kid probably has somebody. A mother. They could find the mother.”
“If they find her,” Nathan said evenly, “they will put her in jail.”
“And then it could turn out he has some other kin that would take him.”
“Maybe,” Nathan said. “We’ll see. It just seems to me that when an infant is alone in the woods, slowly dying … then that child has … for all intents and purposes … no one.”
“I guess we’ll see,” Flora said.
“Yes. I guess we’ll see.”
Nothing more was said about it for the remainder of the day, though Nathan was sure he could feel its presence at each moment, and he wondered if Flora could, too. He glanced over at her often, but saw no signs of her being similarly haunted.
• • •
Nathan dined on a simple evening meal of chicken and dumplings. He praised Flora for her cooking of it, and it was a more than adequate meal. In fact, he might have enjoyed it a great deal if not for the sense that it could not replace the anticipated roast duck. It simply was not what he’d been set to receive.
After dinner, Flora retired to her room. She had a TV set in her bedroom, the only one in the house. Nathan despised the drone of television dialogue as background to his life.
It wasn’t unusual for Flora to disappear right after dinner, but on this night Nathan was more than usually aware of it.
He sat on his bed across the hall, with his door open. Her bedroom door was closed, and as far as Nathan could hear, her TV had not been turned on yet. She must have been undressing for bed. Now and then he could see the vague shadow of feet cross the gap underneath her door. One of her floorboards tended to squeak when she crossed it, and she made no attempt to avoid it, as Nathan would have done.
For the first time in a very long time, years, Nathan felt tempted to knock on her door. Request that they spend a bit of time together. They could talk, or even play a game of cards. But before he could rise, he remembered her dismissive tone earlier in the day. No, the fact that he was feeling empty, he realized, did not mean in any way that Flora could, or would, help him fill that void.
He rose, and walked to the kitchen phone. He called directory assistance, and asked for the number of the hospital. He dialed, and got what sounded like a switchboard.
“Patient information, please,” he said.
“What is the name of the patient?” a cool woman’s voice responded.
That disarmed him.
“Well. He doesn’t have a name,” Nathan said. “I wanted to learn the condition of an abandoned newborn I found this morning in the woods. I brought him to your hospital. John Doe is his name, I suppose. At the moment.”
“Are you family?”
“I’m the man who found him in the woods. What family would he have, then?”
“Then you’re not blood family.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Then I’m afraid I can’t release any information to you.”
“I see,” Nathan said. “Will you please connect me with your emergency room?”
A pause, followed by what sounded like a sigh.
“Hold on. I’ll connect you.”
A few seconds of silence. Nathan felt his molars pressing too tightly together along one side.
Then a click, and a brusque male voice on the line.
“ER.”
“Oh. Yes. I’m sorry to bother you,” Nathan said, wondering how he had started off on such disadvantaged footing. “But I’m the man who brought in that baby this morning, and I was hoping to talk to the doctor who—”
“This is Dr. Battaglia,” the voice said.
Nathan felt more than surprised. He had expected to leave a message, which would not be returned until morning. “My goodness, you work long shifts down there.”
“Ho,” the doctor said. “You have no idea.”
“I tried to get some word on his condition without bothering you,” Nathan said. “But they wouldn’t tell me anything. They said I’m not blood family.”
“Yeah, they’re like that. Swimming in their rules. Now, me, I guess I figure you’re as close to family as that little beggar has got. So I’ll tell you. He’s still with us. Call back in the morning and talk to Dr. Wilburn. I’ll tell him you’ll be calling. First twenty-four hours will be the most crucial. If the kid is still alive in the morning … mind you, it’s no guarantee. There are no guarantees in this business. But if he’s still kicking when you call in the morning, that’ll be a very good sign.”
• • •
Nathan closed his door and lay, fully dressed, on the bed. Tomorrow he had a morning appointment with the recently widowed Mrs. MacElroy. Helping her work out the financial details of her sad new life. That was inconvenient timing, but as soon as that meeting was over, he could begin to make his calls. Find out if the child had a social worker yet. Learn whom he should talk to, and how to proceed.
Then he chided himself for thinking of his meeting with the widow MacElroy as inconvenient. After all, her inconvenience was certainly greater than his. It wasn’t like him to think so much of his own needs or place them above those of others.
He would have to watch that.
He listened to the occasional creak of Flora’s squeaky board, and noticed it sounded lonely. Or maybe that was just him.
3 October 1960
The Day He Lost You
Flora was asleep when he rose the next morning. Which meant there wo
uld be no coffee.
Never sure about the coffee situation, other than his role in drinking it, he felt hesitant to take on the job. It seemed better to make instant coffee for himself, even knowing it would be dreadful. That seemed preferable, somehow, to anticipating good coffee and then being disappointed by his own failure in that department.
The instant coffee was even more dreadful than he had imagined, though, because he didn’t allow the water to boil fully.
He took two or three tentative sips, made a face, and poured it down the sink drain.
Then he called the hospital and spoke to Dr. Wilburn. Deeply braced against potential tragedy.
“Ah, yes,” Wilburn said. “I’ve been expecting your call. Well, he’s breathing. And that’s good. Trouble is, we don’t really like the way he’s breathing. We’re going to suction out his lungs and see if the situation improves. He’s awfully young to survive pneumonia. If that’s what’s going on. But he’s still kicking. What can I say? He’s practically a miracle already. But complications are a definite possibility, and I’m afraid they’re beginning to rear their ugly heads. Sorry to say he’s not out of the woods yet.” A long pause, then a huge snort of laughter. “Well, at least he is literally. Sorry. I know you probably think it’s not very funny.”
“Thank you, doctor,” Nathan said. Not betraying his thoughts on the subject.
Then he rang off.
Mrs. MacElroy usually offered him a cup of coffee, and when she did it was always superb. He made a wish that today would be one of those days.
• • •
“Oh, Nathan,” she said. The moment she opened the door. She’d only recently taken to calling him by his first name, since her husband’s death, and he found it mildly unnerving. “Tell me. Was it you?”
“Excuse me?”
She stepped back to allow him in.
She was a handsome woman, Nathan felt. More handsome than traditionally beautiful. About Nathan’s age, she had a dignified way of dressing and carrying herself, and he admired that. None of this mincing about, pretending to be a woman half her age. She had some sense of decorum.
He stepped into her living room.
“I just had a feeling it might have been you. Just an intuitive feeling, I guess. Of course, you did tell me you were planning on going duck-hunting …”
Nathan briefly grieved his lack of morning coffee. The resulting absence of mental clarity certainly wasn’t helping him now.
“I’m not sure I know what you’re referring to, actually,” he said.
“Well, the headline in the paper this morning, of course. I know you must have seen it. Everybody’s buzzing about it. Already I’ve gotten calls from my friend Elsie and my manicurist, and it’s barely nine A.M. It isn’t often something so momentous happens around here.”
“I’m guessing,” Nathan said, “that the headline you’re referring to was about the abandoned newborn. So then, yes. It was me.”
“Oh, Nathan. I just knew it.”
A cold feeling gripped his stomach. “What else did the article say? I left the house this morning without benefit of coffee or the morning paper.”
“Oh, I have it around here somewhere. What did I do with it?”
She began to bustle. Or, at least, Nathan decided that bustling would be a good word to describe her actions. She wore a dark-navy shirtwaist dress, mid-calf length, with an attractive woven leather belt. As if she were going off to a front-office job in a good firm, rather than just opening the door for her bookkeeper. Her thick hair was pulled into a loose bun.
He sat on the couch, wishing she had caught his hint about the coffee. And also wishing the tight feeling in his stomach would ease.
“Did it say anything about custody? That is, did it indicate who would get custody? If the baby has family, I mean? That is, if his mother is never found.”
She had bustled off into the kitchen, but now her head appeared from around the door jamb. “Oh, but she was found. I thought you knew. Now I know I grabbed it and took it to the phone with me when Elsie called. But I don’t see— Oh, here it is.”
She hurried out into the living room again, extending a folded section of the morning paper in his direction. He accepted it, and dug into his suit coat pocket for his reading glasses. Noting that his hand trembled ever so slightly.
He skimmed as quickly as he could, in search of the most relevant information. The part that would settle his stomach. Or not.
The baby’s eighteen-year-old mother, a Miss Lenora Bates, had been located. That comprised the bulk of the article. She had attempted to cross a state line with her boyfriend, Richard A. Ford, presumably the child’s father, but had instead ended up in an emergency room, hemorrhaging. She and Ford had both been arrested, though not yet arraigned, and it was still under consideration, at the district attorney’s office, what charges should be brought. She might face charges of reckless endangerment, or reckless disregard for human life. Or she might even be charged with attempted infanticide, or conspiracy to commit infanticide.
The article also said that the child, if and when he ever recovered enough to leave the hospital, would be given into the custodial care of his grandmother, Mrs. Ertha Bates, mother of the troubled girl.
The news dropped into the waiting place in Nathan’s stomach and found … nothing.
The sensation was similar to that of dropping a heavy object into a bottomless well, and then waiting for it to make a sound. The news made no sound. The feeling of aliveness that had opened in Nathan only twenty-four hours earlier, in front of the hospital coffee machine, closed. And that was all.
It was almost a comfort to have his familiar blankness back.
He glanced back down at the article.
In conclusion it noted that the infant had been found in the woods by a man on a duck-hunting outing with his dog.
Nathan folded up the paper, set it to rest on the end table near the couch, and sat a moment, digesting this new information.
He thought about lighting a cigarette. An open box of them sat on the coffee table. But he’d gone to the trouble to quit them several years ago, and didn’t fancy going through all that again.
He shook the urge away.
Mrs. MacElroy spoke, startling him. “Why the woods? Why not a hospital or an orphanage?”
“I can’t imagine,” Nathan said.
He made a mental notation: do a little research into how hard it would be to locate this Mrs. Ertha Bates.
“Well, it certainly does make you the big hero.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”
“Why, that child would be dead if it wasn’t for you.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“They should have mentioned your name.”
“Oh, nonsense. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does, too. It was a huge thing you did. You deserve credit.”
“I don’t need credit. It was the same thing anybody would have done.”
“I keep thinking of my own son when he was just born. Thinking of him left to fend for himself out in that dark forest. It just makes my blood run cold.”
“I can’t imagine how anyone could do such a thing,” Nathan said.
The conversation sounded and felt distant and removed to him, the way voices in the next room sound just before you drop off to sleep.
“May I get you a cup of coffee before we start?” she asked.
“Oh, yes,” Nathan said. “Thank you. Coffee would be just the thing.”
• • •
When Nathan arrived home, Flora was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette and eating three fried eggs, despite the fact that it was late for breakfast. Nearly eleven.
The article sat folded next to her plate.
“Please don’t say it,” Nathan said.
“I told you that boy might have family.”
“I asked you not to say it.”
“Oh, is that what you wanted me not to say? How was I to know that?
I’m not a mind-reader, you know.”
He ducked out of the kitchen again. Sat near the living room phone and picked up the local directory. It was the first and most obvious step in the task of seeing how hard it would be to locate Mrs. Ertha Bates.
As it turned out, finding her was not destined to be difficult at all.
He noted her address in his appointment book.
He looked up to see Flora watching him from the kitchen doorway. He quickly put the appointment book away in his pocket again.
“What are you up to?” she asked.
“I’m not up to anything,” he said. “I just needed to look up an address. I just needed an address out of the phone book. That’s all.”
She disappeared again, and he sat a moment, lost in thought.
Today? he wondered. No. Not today. Not for several days.
It would be unconscionable to discuss his situation with Mrs. Bates until they knew for a fact whether the child would even survive.
• • •
He mixed up Sadie’s midday meal — canned and kibbled dog food with a little broth — and carried it out to her run in the yard. He stood and watched her while she ate. Leaning on the chain-link and talking to her.
“So, I guess that was our little brush with fame, eh, girl?”
The comfortable crunching sound of her deliberate chewing.
“Eleanor MacElroy thinks I should have been mentioned in the paper by name. She thinks it was a great accomplishment. But all I did was look where you were looking. And I’d bet anything that even if they had mentioned my name they wouldn’t have mentioned yours. But you wouldn’t care, would you? You probably care less about credit than I do.”
She glanced up at him briefly between bites.
“Who knew that child had a grandmother willing to take him? Then why didn’t that girl abandon her baby at its grandmother’s house?”
She chewed the last kibble and licked the bowl with her wide tongue. Then she looked up at him thoughtfully, her head tilted to one side.
“Oh, so you don’t understand it either, eh?”
Though he knew the dog was really curious about whether Nathan had anything besides lunch to offer her.
When I Found You Page 2
