The Home for Unwanted Girls

by Joanna Goodman

  Gabriel laughs again, a hard, angry noise that fills her with dread. “So it’s true,” he says. “You gave away our child.”

  She realizes that no answer will ever bring him solace or possibly even salvage their relationship. The truth is impossible. It’s been too long. “I had no choice,” she attempts.

  He paces the carpet while she cowers against the headboard, watching and waiting. “You gave away my daughter, Maggie.”

  “My parents made me,” she says. “They made all the decisions. I had no say. It was 1950 and I was sixteen and my father threatened to disown me if I ever saw you again!”

  “And what about the last few times we were together?” he accuses. “The night we bumped into each other in the cornfield? Or the first time I took you to the Papineau apartment and we talked for hours? Or the day we made love?”

  “I came here to tell you today,” she repeats dejectedly. “I’m sorry you found out before I had the chance.”

  “Sorry?” He shakes his head in disgust. “We stood outside Canadair the other day and talked about the future and about me divorcing Annie for you, and you didn’t think of mentioning that we had a fucking daughter together?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” she says. “There’s more to it.”

  “What is it like then?” he cries.

  “I wanted to tell you everything the moment I saw you in the field that night. But it’s complicated. There’s more to the story than what Audrey told you.”

  “I know the story,” he says. “You didn’t want to spend your life with me, living in poverty with a French-Canadian factory worker.”

  “I wasn’t sure the baby was yours!” she blurts.

  This silences him.

  “My uncle Yvon raped me when I was living with him,” she says. “That’s the story.”

  Gabriel’s hands ball into fists.

  “I was going to tell you, my love. Today.”

  Gabriel sits down on the edge of the bed, deflated. She waits, hopeful that he’ll understand and take her in his arms and they can move forward with their plans. A long time passes, but he doesn’t move. He just sits there, staring at the floor.

  “Gabriel? Say something. Please.”

  He looks up at her, his eyes red. “I’m sorry for you,” he says. “I really am. And if you had told me back then, I would have killed the bastard. Maybe I still will.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you know,” he says. “That’s the problem. If you would’ve told me the truth back then, we could have managed. We could have raised the baby together. And that’s the thing I can’t get past. You didn’t want to.”

  “That’s not true,” she says, but her words lack conviction. There is some truth to them—she’d weighed her options back then, and what she was most terrified of losing was her father and his seed store. To that end, she was complicit with her parents’ decision.

  “That’s what hurts most,” he tells her. “You knew I would take care of you no matter who the baby belonged to, but when your father threatened to disown you, you chose him.”

  “I was a child,” she says. “I wasn’t ready for marriage. So yes, I chose my family. You would have done the same. But I’m a grown woman now.”

  “I would not have done the same thing,” he counters. “Anyway, nothing’s changed, Maggie.”

  “Don’t punish me for the decision I made over a decade ago when I was just a kid.”

  “So it was your decision,” he says, his rage suddenly reignited. He turns away from her and kicks in the wall with his boot. The plaster crumbles, but it doesn’t stop him. He comes at her and grabs her by the shoulders. For a split second, she worries he’s going to throw her to the ground. He shakes her once, hard, and then stops. “I would have married you,” he tells her, devastated.

  “Marry me now.”

  “It’s too much of a risk. We haven’t changed enough for it to work.”

  “We’ve grown up, Gabriel. We’re adults now.”

  “I can’t get past this,” he says, releasing her. “You could have come clean about your pregnancy before I had to hear it from Audrey McCauley. But you were still sizing me up, trying to figure out if you could be happy in my world. If I’m good enough for you.”

  “You’re the one who doesn’t think you’re good enough for me!” she throws back. “That’s why you’re running.”

  “I’m not running. I’m leaving, because I don’t trust you.”

  He stands up and moves away from the bed. She follows him, positioning herself directly in front of him and blocking his path. “My love,” she says. “Please, don’t go.”

  He tries to hide his face, but she glimpses his expression. Instead of the condemnation and contempt she’d anticipated, she sees tears sliding down his cheeks.

  “Don’t do this,” she pleads.

  He stares at her for a moment, his expression cold and resigned, and then he pushes past her. “It’s over, Maggie.”

  “No one can love you like I do.”

  “Or hurt me as much.”

  Chapter 29

  Maggie lies in bed, gazing up at the crystal chandelier Roland bought her for their second wedding anniversary. Each of the ten cast-iron arms has a single cut glass bobeche with dangling teardrop crystals. She remembers the day the electrician installed it above the bed, how elegant the room had looked, how pleased she’d been. She’d arrived—that’s how she felt. Now it seems to be taunting her, glittering up there in the light through her bay windows, beautiful and meaningless.

  She’s pregnant again. It was confirmed by her doctor today. The baby is Gabriel’s—that’s not in question. The only time she’s had sex without her diaphragm was at the Papineau apartment a few weeks ago, her first and last time with Gabriel. She hadn’t expected to sleep with him that day, hadn’t been prepared. In the moment, she’d ignored the little voice in her head. It’ll be fine, she’d told herself. Whatever happened, she felt it would be fine.

  And now she’s carrying his baby, due in January. She hasn’t spoken to him since that night at the motel. She wanted to give him some space, felt it was essential. He needed time—time to miss her, time to reflect, time to figure out he can’t live without her. Time to forgive her. She hasn’t given up hope. Not yet.

  She is determined to have this baby with him. Staying with Roland is no longer an option; he’s already moved out, living temporarily at a hotel until she relocates to Knowlton. He would probably take her back if she asked, maybe even raise this child as his own, but when Maggie contemplates the possibility, she imagines one of those generic family portraits in which everyone is posed in pretty ribbons and crisp white collars, with frozen smiles capturing a single moment of synchronized perfection, but behind the smiles, it’s all secrets and disconnection and pain.

  She reaches for the telephone on her bedside table and calls Gabriel’s house again. It rings and rings, until finally the wife picks up and says harshly, “Who is this?”

  “An old friend from Dunham.”

  Annie is silent.

  “Is he there?” Maggie asks.

  “Why’re you calling so late?”

  “I need to speak with him,” Maggie says, choosing her words carefully. “It’s important.”

  “He’s not here,” Annie says. “Stop calling my house.”

  The line goes dead.

  The next day, Maggie decides to drive out to Canadair and confront Gabriel outside work. She checks herself in the mirror and pinches her cheeks to bring some color into them.

  Three fifteen. The men begin to pour onto the street, their boots stampeding the pavement, their Zippos glinting in the sun. Maggie gets out of her car and waits. The mob thins. The last stragglers emerge from inside the building, but Gabriel is not among them.

  Maggie spots one of his union acquaintances and catches up with him. “Where’s Gabriel?” she asks, dispensing with a formal greeting and sounding far more hysterical than she’d intended.

  “Go
ne,” he says, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. “He’s driving a cab full-time now.”

  “He left Canadair?”

  “Better hours, better wage.”

  “What cab company?”

  The guy shrugs. “No idea,” he says, sounding put out. “I don’t keep tabs on him.”

  The sky suddenly grows dark and a clap of thunder announces a coming rainstorm. Maggie drives over to the place on Papineau. With her purse over her head to protect it against the now pounding rain, she rushes up to the front door, only to see there’s a new name freshly handwritten next to the buzzer. She buzzes anyway and a young woman answers.

  “I’m looking for Gabriel or Pierre?”

  “Pierre doesn’t live here anymore,” the woman says.

  Soaking wet, Maggie runs back to the car and sits there for a while, her mind scrambling to concoct some new scheme.

  The rain is beating against her windshield, and she’s growing worried about having to drive home in rush hour traffic. She turns the key in the ignition and pulls onto the street, practically smelling the boy Gabriel once was that day in his pickup when Clémentine drove her home in the storm. Sweat and soil, damp teenage hormones and the smell of rain.

  A few days later, Maggie finds herself in Dunham, knocking on Clémentine’s door. The Phénix shack looks slightly less dilapidated than she remembers it. The roof and windows look new, and the front door is freshly painted.

  Clémentine appears at the door in her overalls. “Maggie,” she says, looking surprised. She brushes a strand of loose hair from her eyes and smiles. She’s still beautiful in her natural, unfussy way. She doesn’t bother with the tricks and tools that most women are enslaved to in order to feel desirable or even adequate. She opens the door wider and gestures for Maggie to come in.

  Maggie has to hide her shock. She can’t remember ever seeing the inside of it, even when she was friends with Angèle. It’s the size of a motel room, and as she takes it in, she wonders how they all managed to live here together. Had Maggie kept her baby and married Gabriel, they would have been five in this place.

  Clémentine offers Maggie a cup of tea. She doesn’t seem at all embarrassed about her living situation, and it occurs to Maggie that Clémentine may not think there’s anything to be embarrassed about. She brings out a tray with cream, sugar, and two pretty teacups with pink roses on the porcelain. A very English custom, Maggie observes.

  “I’m all for change,” Clémentine is saying, as she sets the tray down. “As long as this new government doesn’t forget about us farmers.”

  Maggie notices a copy of The Handbook for Gardeners on Clémentine's bookshelf.

  “I can’t complain, though,” Clémentine says. “So far it’s been a good summer.”

  “How’s Angèle?” Maggie asks her.

  “Busy,” she says, pouring tea into Maggie’s cup. “She keeps having babies.”

  Clémentine sits down beside Maggie and reaches for the sugar bowl. When they’re both settled, the silence they’ve been staving off with polite small talk settles between them. Clémentine waits. Maggie wonders if she knows about the baby Maggie gave up at sixteen. She’s not sure if Gabriel would have confided in his sister after he found out or kept it to himself.

  Maggie is still feeling queasy and her tea is too sweet, but she forces herself to have a few sips because it’s something to do. “I’m here about Gabriel,” she begins.

  “I figured.”

  “Have you heard from him?”

  “We had a falling-out,” she says. “I haven’t heard from him in a few weeks.”

  Maggie can feel the familiar panic clamping down on her chest.

  “We’ve always had these . . . troubled patches,” Clémentine says.

  So have we, Maggie thinks.

  “He thinks I try to be his mother,” Clémentine confesses. “But he’s the one who treats me like a child. He tried to convince me to sell the farm—”

  “Sell the farm?” Maggie says, hurt that Gabriel obviously does not share her sentimental attachment to the cornfield.

  “Is everything okay, Maggie?”

  “He’s vanished,” Maggie says, her voice breaking. “I’ve tried his house, but he’s never there.”

  Clémentine is quiet for a moment. Finally, she says, “Are you . . . seeing him again?”

  Maggie looks away.

  “Has he left Annie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They were never a fit,” she says.

  Maggie instinctively touches her stomach. What if she does find Gabriel and he wants nothing to do with her or their baby? What if he can’t forgive her? She considers now that her hope of reconciliation and living happily ever after as a family may be hormonal delusion.

  “I could call Annie and find out what she knows?” Clémentine says.

  “Would you?” Maggie says, brightening.

  Clémentine takes her cup of tea into the kitchen. Maggie sets her cup down, folds her hands in her lap, and waits. She can feel the saliva collecting inside her cheeks, and she knows what’s coming. Her first thought is to run to the kitchen and ask for crackers, but she quickly realizes she’s not going to make it. Instead, she lunges for the front door just in time to throw up all over the pretty red geraniums on the front stoop.

  When she’s done with the first round—and there is always a second—she straightens up and looks for a more secluded location. This time she aims for the bushes, projectile vomiting all over a wall of moosewood.

  Maggie crumples to her knees on the grass to catch her breath. She feels empty. Her back hurts.

  “Are you okay?”

  Maggie turns, and Clémentine is standing above her, her hair shimmering in the sunlight.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, wiping her mouth. “Your geraniums—”

  “Don’t worry,” Clémentine says, retrieving a hose from the side of the house. She turns it on and sprays her front stoop, cleaning away the vomit. “Maybe it’ll be good for them,” she jokes.

  They go back inside, and Clémentine heads straight to the kitchen, returning moments later with a plate of saltines.

  “Thank you,” Maggie says, stuffing the crackers in her mouth as though she hasn’t eaten in days. Clémentine is watching her.

  “Did you reach Annie?” Maggie asks.

  “He’s gone, Maggie.”

  “Gone?”

  “Annie says he left. He took all his things, she hasn’t heard from him in weeks.”

  Maggie is relieved, but now she’s run out of places to look for him. “I should go before I . . .”

  Clémentine nods and walks Maggie to the door. Gabriel is gone. It’s slowly starting to sink in. He obviously does not want to be found, certainly not by Maggie. “If he gets in touch with you,” Maggie says, “please tell him I need to speak with him.”

  Clémentine nods, touches Maggie’s arm. “I know it’s not my business,” she says. “But . . . you love him, don’t you?”

  Maggie can’t hold back her tears any longer. Clémentine moves closer and holds her while she sobs softly into the bib of her overalls. “I’ve lost him for good now.”

  “I know how you feel,” Clémentine says, her chest rising and falling in a commiserative sigh, and Maggie isn’t sure she’s still talking about Gabriel.

  Chapter 30

  Elodie

  Elodie opens the door to the stairwell and hurries down the first flight of stairs on her way to the basement. She’s late for work because one of the girls in her dorm got her period and tried to secretly wash the blood out of her sheets before anyone found out. Sister Ignatia caught her and chose ten girls at random to whip with the leather strap. Elodie was mercifully not among the chosen ten, but she had to stay and watch as the other girls were lined up and strapped, one by one.

  She got lucky not being chosen, but all Elodie could think about was not being late for work.

  As she rounds the corner and continues down the next flight
of stairs, she’s suddenly aware of footsteps behind her. Nervously, she quickens her pace and doesn’t look back. She’s sure it’s the new orderly who works the night shift on Ward B—a middle-aged man whose innocuous face seemed neither evil nor dangerous at first. She’d never considered for a moment that he might harm her—that was the domain of the nuns—so she was caught completely off guard when he pounced on her in the bathroom in the middle of the night. He put his hand over her mouth, shoved her into a stall, and yanked her nightgown above her knees. Her instinct was to bite his fingers, which were carelessly close to her teeth, and when she did, he cried out.

  “Tabarnac!” he said, and slapped her.

  She screamed for help, and within moments, several girls were outside the stall. Elodie was terrified Sister Ignatia would hear them and come charging in, but by some miracle, she never came.

  The orderly flung open the stall door and escaped the bathroom.

  “What a pig,” one of the girls muttered, cursing after him.

  “He tried to—”

  “Of course he did,” the girl said. “It hasn’t happened to you yet?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lucky. They all do it.”

  “Do the nuns know?” Elodie cried, stunned.

  The girls just laughed.

  Elodie has managed to avoid him for several weeks, but now she’s cursing herself. She should have waited for one of the other girls this morning.

  Her heart is pounding as the footsteps close in. She keeps moving briskly down the stairs, but as she picks up speed, so does he. She can hear him approaching, the soles of his shoes squeaking on the concrete stairs behind her.

  “I’m late for work!” she cries out. “Sister Calvert will come for me!”

  But when she turns to look behind her, it’s just a doctor. He ignores her and rushes past, down the stairwell with his white coat flapping behind him like a cape.

  Elodie stops to catch her breath. “Thank God,” she murmurs, relishing her good fortune and forgetting that she neither likes nor believes in God. After she steadies herself, she hurries down the rest of the flights. Sister Calvert—though not nearly as sadistic as Sister Ignatia—does not tolerate lateness.