He flips through the pages, his expression unreadable. She wonders if he’s at all proud of her.
“Maggie,” he says, looking up and setting the galleys down. “I don’t think you’ve thought this through. You can’t possibly mean to raise this child by yourself. It’s just not practical financially or for the child.”
“I’ll have spousal support,” she says. “And whatever I earn from translating.”
“I’m sure Roland would gladly reconcile.”
“I came here to talk about my book, not my marriage.”
“I wish you would be more practical,” he pleads. “For once in your life, this is no time to go against the grain.” You always were my wildflower. “You’re having a baby.”
“Why did you have an envelope from a lawyer in your filing cabinet?” she asks him.
“You shouldn’t have gone through my things.”
“You know why I did it,” she says. “Why did you have that envelope from a lawyer?”
“I know you think there’s some great mystery, Maggie, but there isn’t.”
He stands up, throws away the garbage from breakfast, and turns back to face her. “I patented my Prévert seed,” he says, sounding exasperated. “That’s why I needed a lawyer. Satisfied?”
Maggie searches his face for some clue he’s lying.
“Anticlimactic, isn’t it?”
Maggie can’t hide her disappointment. She’d been hoping for something else.
“Take a poinsettia on your way out,” he says. “I’m overinventoried.”
“They give me a rash,” she mutters, leaving his office with the sinking feeling that things between them will never be the same.
Chapter 34
Sonny Goldbaum’s office is in an old apartment building on Queen Mary Road, nothing like the swanky law offices on St. James Street that she’d imagined. Maggie dusts the snow off her coat and huddles against the radiator for warmth before pressing his buzzer. She’s extremely eager to speak to him, given that she’s been waiting nearly two months for him to return from Florida.
“It’s Maggie Larsson,” she says into the speaker. He buzzes her in.
She holds tightly to the railing, maneuvering her large body down the stairs. The hall reeks of cat urine. When she gets to the basement, Sonny Goldbaum is holding his door open for her. “I didn’t know you were expecting,” he says, as though he should have. “And by the looks of it any minute?”
“Not till the end of the month,” she says, unwinding her scarf.
Goldbaum is about forty, much younger than she was expecting, with dark curly hair, black horn-rimmed glasses, and a deep suntan. He’s short and wide, wearing a white polyester shirt, through which she can see his white undershirt, and gray slacks that are fastened below his stomach. “Come in,” he says.
Inside, he helps her into one of two sagging yellow-and-brown-plaid armchairs in his living room, which doubles as his office. There are half a dozen wooden filing cabinets lined up against the wall and a desk sandwiched between the kitchenette and the hallway, which is strewn with file folders and piles of papers.
“I found your name in my father’s things,” she begins, still smelling the cat litter from the hallway, along with something fishy. “I just want to confirm what you did for him.”
Goldbaum leans back in his chair.
“He told me you handled a patent for him?” Maggie continues. “For a special type of grass he invented. Prévert?”
Goldbaum’s face is a complete blank.
“Do you remember doing a patent for a man named Wellington Hughes?”
“Hughes?” he says, still baffled. “That doesn’t sound like anyone I’d know.”
Maggie shifts around in her chair, trying to get comfortable. Her back is starting to hurt.
“And I don’t do patents either, Mrs. Larsson.”
Maggie’s heart sinks.
“So what’s the real reason for this visit?” he asks her, staring directly at her belly. He removes his glasses, lowers his voice, and says, “Because I’m not in that line of business anymore.”
“What line of business?”
“The baby business.”
“Oh, no . . . I’m not . . .” Her hand goes right to her stomach, where she can feel the baby kicking.
“Then I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he says. “I don’t do patents, and I certainly don’t remember your father or his grass. So why don’t you tell me why you think I would know him?”
“I had a baby when I was sixteen,” she says. “My father must have hired you to arrange an adoption. That is what you do, right?”
“It was, in a manner of speaking.”
“I thought my father took the baby to a foundling home, but there’s no record of her arriving there,” she explains. “And then recently I found your name in his files.”
“And he told you I worked on his grass patent?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he lied to you.”
“Did you arrange for her to be adopted?” Maggie asks him.
“It’s possible.”
“You must have a record of some sort,” she says, glancing behind him at all the filing cabinets. “It would have been March 1950.”
“I arranged a lot of adoptions,” he says.
“Can’t you look it up?”
“What good would that do?”
“I want to know if she was adopted.”
“Shouldn’t you ask your father?”
“I’ve got a better chance getting the truth from you,” she says. “I just need to know for my peace of mind.”
“I can assure you that if I was involved, your daughter was adopted. That’s what I did. I got babies into the hands of the right parents. So if your father hired me, your daughter found a home.”
Maggie begins to relax. She already feels lighter. “Can you confirm he hired you?” she asks, ever more hopeful. “Would you mind checking your files just so I can be sure?”
“You signed the agreement when you were paid,” he explains. “Forfeiting your rights to her and to all information about her.”
“When I was paid?” Maggie cries. “I never signed anything. Or got any money.”
“I assume you were at the home for unwed mothers?” he says, reaching for a pen and tapping it on his desk.
“No. I wasn’t,” she says, confused.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he tells her. “I don’t remember. There were a lot of babies back then. Most of them came from that home for unwed mothers in the East End. I always dealt with the nuns. There were only a few cases where I dealt directly with the birth mothers or, in your case, the parents of the birth mother. But my hands are tied. It was a closed adoption and the records are sealed.”
“You can’t even check for my father’s name?”
“It’s illegal, Mrs. Larsson. I’ve had enough legal woes. Besides, I don’t have any files that predate the kerfuffle in ’54.”
“What kerfuffle?”
“You’re too young,” Goldbaum tells her. “Some of us lawyers in the baby business came under scrutiny a few years back.”
“For what?”
“The government doesn’t like it when people sell babies,” he says. “The politicians don’t mind institutionalizing them and turning the other way when the priests and nuns abuse them, but God forbid you want to sell a baby to a decent family.”
Sell a baby? Maggie opens her mouth to say something, but he stops her.
“Mrs. Larsson, it looks to me like you’re back on the right track,” he says. “Believe me, if your father had correspondence from me, chances are I’m the guy who placed your baby. In which case, she’s in good hands and you leave here with what you came for. Peace of mind.”
Maggie drives straight to her father’s store and waits for him outside, pacing in the cold while he finishes up for the day. It’s dark out and she can see her breath, but the winter air feels good in her face. She watches him usher out the last customers,
those end-of-day stragglers, and then the lights go off. As he’s about to lock the door, Maggie pounds on the glass.
Her father lets her in, puzzled. “What are you doing here?” he asks, locking the door behind her.
“Why did you tell me you brought my baby to the foundling home?” she wants to know. “Why did you lie to me?”
Her father’s shoulders slump ever so slightly, enough for her to notice. He still doesn’t look well. “If you’ve spoken to that lawyer,” he says, “I’m sure you know why I lied.”
“Because you sold her.”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?”
“We were supposed to,” he admits, rubbing his temple with his thumb. “How could I tell you that? It was better that you thought she went to an orphanage. Still, Maggie, selling illegitimate babies was common practice.”
“It’s horrible!” she cries.
“It wasn’t even my idea. Yvon knew how to go about it. I guess he’d gotten a girl pregnant.”
Maggie scoffs in disgust.
“I thought it would ensure an adoption,” her father says. “And I was always in need of extra money. It was win-win, Maggie. But then it all fell through.”
“Why?”
“The baby was sick. She was supposed to go to a Jewish couple from New York,” her father explains. “Everything was arranged. I was going to deliver her to one of the Grey Nuns at Mercy Hospital—”
“The nuns?” Maggie cries. “They were involved with selling babies?”
“It was big business,” her father says. “The lawyers would arrange the documents and then give the baby to a nun or a doctor at the home for unwed mothers. They were all in on it. Goldbaum was arrested a few years after I dealt with him. It was in the news.”
The kerfuffle in ’54. Goldbaum made it sound like he’d been unfairly persecuted.
“There were all kinds of charges,” her father says. “Forgery. Falsifying birth certificates. But he got off the first time. The second time he had to pay a fine. That’s when the whole story came out in the paper.”
“How much were you going to sell her for?” Maggie wants to know.
“Three thousand dollars, but the nuns were to get most of it. After the lawyer got his share, we would have had five hundred dollars. Half of that would have gone to Yvon for letting you stay on their farm while you were pregnant.”
“My daughter was worth two hundred fifty dollars to you?”
Her father doesn’t answer.
“So what happened?”
“Goldbaum assured me they were good people who couldn’t have a child of their own,” he continues. “But when they found out the baby was premature and had jaundice, they changed their minds. They didn’t want a sick baby.”
“So where did you take her?” Maggie asks him, wiping her tears.
“She stayed at the hospital. The nuns were going to take her to the foundling home as soon as the jaundice cleared and she put on some weight. She was barely four pounds.”
“So you just left her there?” Maggie cries, not wanting to imagine her tiny baby girl being abandoned at the hospital.
“I left her in the care of the doctors and nuns, yes.”
“So she did go to the foundling home, but later? Maybe in April?”
“Maybe,” he says. “It was common practice, Maggie. I’m sure she got adopted in the end.”
“How can you be sure?” Maggie accuses. “You have no idea what’s become of her. Not that you even care.”
Chapter 35
On her way back to Knowlton, Maggie obsesses over what to do next. Visit the foundling home? Call back and inquire about any baby girls who arrived in the weeks following Elodie’s birth date? She starts to feel twinges of pain in her groin, so she pulls over and takes a few deep breaths, waiting for the pain to pass. When it does, she continues on her way, relieved to feel the baby stretching inside her.
She almost makes it back home, but then feels something warm between her legs. She looks down and discovers she’s sopping wet. The water. She remembers the water.
Yvon’s carving knife being sharpened for the carving of the roast beef. “Is there any horseradish?” And then the hot rush of water between her legs, the shame of her ignorance.
She’s not due for another three weeks. After another sharp pain, she decides to drive straight to the hospital. The water continues to pour out onto the seat. She keeps checking to make sure it’s not blood. Don’t let it be blood.
She pulls up to the Brome-Missisquoi-Perkins Hospital and nearly falls out of the car.
“She’s in labor!” someone cries. “Get a wheelchair.”
Her attention comes back to the present. People are around her. The wind and the snow on her face feel good. “It’s too early,” she mutters.
Even as she’s saying the words, a contraction comes, sharp and brutal. “Your baby disagrees,” the stranger says.
These things can’t be conveniently arranged.
“Is something wrong?” Maggie asks.
No one answers. The present dims again. Another contraction, another memory. Dr. Cullen’s sturdy hips. The enamel basin. The blood. The broken cord.
“Will she be okay?” Maggie asks.
“Everything is fine. Let’s get you inside.”
A wheelchair is slipped beneath her, and someone—a nurse—pushes her toward the hospital. In between contractions, she’s able to relax. She takes a deep breath of cold air and feels lucid.
“Just keep breathing deeply. It’s just a contraction.”
“I don’t remember it being this painful.”
“You’ve done this before then,” the nurse says. “You’re a pro.”
“It’s too early,” Maggie moans, stroking her stomach, trying to keep the baby inside. “I still have a few weeks—”
“It’s plenty long enough,” the nurse assures her. “I have a cousin who gave birth eight weeks early and the baby was perfect. Tiny, but perfect.”
Maggie can feel the pain in her rear, a hard pressing sensation that’s wretchedly uncomfortable. Inside, she’s rushed to the maternity ward. There are no available rooms, so she’s left on a gurney in the hallway. A nurse wants to know if she should call Maggie’s husband. “My mother,” Maggie grunts in the grip of a contraction.
Even in the fog and confusion of labor, she can’t get Elodie out of her mind. Each contraction brings a sharp stab of guilt over the fact that she left her daughter in this very hospital—sick, alone, and unwanted. When Maggie starts to cry, it’s not from pain but from remorse. Where is she now?
“Elodie . . .” she sobs.
“It’ll be just fine,” the nurse assures her. “We’re going to give you a shot for the pain.”
There are no spaces left between her contractions, just intolerable, unrelenting agony. “It’s coming!—” she wails, slipping in and out of consciousness. “Call my doctor. It’s here—” She can feel the baby now, pushing its way out into the world. She keeps weaving in and out of the past, one moment here, the next she is sixteen again.
“A doctor is coming.”
Dr. Cullen appears next to the bed. “It’s crowning.”
She’s vaguely aware of her hand in someone else’s. Pushing, pushing. Her head flopping back on the pillow. A nurse standing above her. The white uniform.
She jams her feet into Dr. Cullen, squeezing her aunt’s hand.
“You’re doing a great job.” It’s the nurse again. The white uniform.
“One more!” Dr. Cullen encourages. “Last push!”
And then her screams are suddenly joined by the piercing screams of a newborn. Her baby, the one she gets to keep this time. She tries to sit up, but the nurse gently pushes her back down.
It’s a girl.
“Can I see her?” Maggie says, half delirious.
“It’s a boy, hon. You have a son.”
A bolt of clarity in the haze of the flashbacks. A boy. She looks around the room, and her
mother and Deda are not here. Neither is Dr. Cullen. There’s a nurse in a white uniform, a doctor she’s never seen before. And her son.
Her son. Even as he’s wrapped in a thin blue cotton blanket and gently placed on her chest, she can’t help but grieve for the baby girl she gave away. Grieve and laugh with relief as she kisses his damp golden scalp.
“He’s perfectly healthy,” the doctor says.
“He would have split you in two if he’d gone full term,” the nurse says.
The baby is staring up at Maggie, surprisingly alert. She touches his nose and lightly kisses his forehead. She searches for Gabriel in his face. She’s accepted his absence in her head, but not yet in her heart.
The nurse leans in to take him.
“What are you doing?” Maggie says, tightening her grip on him.
“Just taking him to the nursery.”
“Please, not yet.”
She refuses to let him go. She made that mistake once and never saw her daughter again. She won’t let this one get too far out of her reach.
“What’s his name?” the nurse asks her.
Maggie thinks about it for a moment, and then, as though she’s known it all along, says, “James Gabriel.”
Gabriel,
I tried my best to get in touch with you, but all my efforts have come up short. I know you’re estranged from Clémentine, and Angèle won’t respond to my letters or return my calls. She was always ferociously loyal to you. She must be as disappointed with me as you are.
Since I can’t find you to tell you everything I want to say, I’m going to write it down so at least you’ll have a record. Maybe I’ll send this to Clémentine one day, trusting that eventually the two of you will patch things up. I know how much you love each other. I remember that afternoon during the rainstorm, when she drove us home from school, the tender way you spoke to each other, the affection that was so apparent between you. I remember I was jealous. I wished you would talk to me that way. I was already in love with you.
The reason I’m writing this is to tell you about our son. I found out I was pregnant right after you ended things and disappeared. What irony, eh? You left me over the child I gave away, only to miss the birth of the child I chose to keep. Our child, which I know for certain.
The Home for Unwanted Girls Page 19
