by T. Greenwood
Ginny leaned against the wall, her legs suddenly feeling too weak to support her.
“Here is what I am going to do,” he said firmly. “I will go through the necessary channels to get custodial rights reverted to you. But you—you will return to Massachusetts with my grandson. And you will not go to the press.”
“But . . . the other residents. You can’t expect me to just keep quiet?”
Abbott Senior paused, cleared his throat.
“It seems to me you have a decision to make, Virginia. Perhaps you should speak to your husband now, so you can discuss our arrangement.”
Ginny wiped at the tears that were spilling hot down her cheeks. She waited for Sissy to patch her through to Ab, feeling spent. Her body like a rag that had been wrung hard.
“I’m sorry,” he said, before she had time to speak. “For everything. I was wrong. I just want you to come home. I’m going to talk to my father and get this straightened out.”
“I already did,” she said.
“You talked to my father?”
“Yes. He’s going to take care of the custody issue. But he won’t drop the school as a client.”
Ab was silent on the other end of the line.
“Ab, why didn’t you believe me? Why wouldn’t you listen?”
Ab was quiet. “I don’t know, Gin. I was afraid. I am afraid. I don’t know the first thing about raising a child like Lucy. I am afraid that it will change our family. That it will change our marriage. All those things the doctor said, the things my father said? It terrifies me.”
“Well, I need you to be brave,” she said. “And I need you to get down here to meet your daughter.”
Thirty-Five
1969
“He’s ours?” Ab had said the moment he held Peyton in his arms.
Ginny had smiled and nodded.
“Forever?” he said, but he was talking to the infant in his arms now.
Ab was a good father, and he loved Peyton with a ferocity that Ginny rarely saw in him. He’d had no real passion for his studies, and definitely no passion for the law. Most of his life until then had been spent going through the necessary motions. And it was taking its toll. But fatherhood. With Peyton he was joyful, bubbling over with plans. He took little Peyton everywhere with him. He bought a camera to document every moment. His pride at even the smallest milestone was infectious. Did you see that? he’d say to anyone, everyone. He’s only eight months old and already walking! Peyton’s first word had been Dada, of course, uttered in the middle of the night when Ginny went to feed him a bottle. She’d leaned over the crib to pick him up, and clear as a little silver bell, he’d chimed, “Dada.” When she returned to bed and told Ab, he had whooped with delight, nearly waking up the entire neighborhood.
“You are going to have a very important job,” he had said to Peyton, when they explained Ginny’s growing belly to him. “You’re going to be a big brother. Do you know what that means?”
Peyton was only four; he had no idea why his mother was swelling up like a balloon.
“A baby,” Ab had whispered conspiratorially to him. “Maybe a baby brother.”
Peyton’s eyes had widened at the news, though they had also filled with tears. “Does Mommy have to have a baby?” he’d asked.
“Well, here’s the thing, little man,” Ab had said, hoisting Peyton onto his lap. “This baby is not for us. Not for Mommy, and not for Daddy. This baby is for you. He’ll belong to you. Your brother. Your very own.”
Ginny had felt her own eyes dampen as Peyton smiled.
“You’ll need to take care of him and keep him safe. You’ll need to teach him everything you know and help him do things. And someday, when you are both grown, he’ll be your very best friend.”
Ginny’s heart cracked as she thought of Ab’s brother, Paul. Ab had told her the story after they got married, one night in their house in Cambridge as she tried and failed to make the meat loaf that Rosa usually made for him. (Ginny had inherited none of her mother’s culinary gifts.) He’d been matter-of-fact as he relayed the details: the fever, the race to the hospital in the middle of the night, Sylvia’s empty arms when she left the hospital the next morning. He told her that no one ever spoke of Paul and that sometimes, he wondered if he’d only dreamed him; as an only child, he sometimes wondered if maybe he’d simply wished him into existence.
As he’d relayed the story, his cool demeanor had changed to that of someone who had been storing a lifetime of sorrow.
“I didn’t wash my hands,” he said. “At school. My father told me I must have brought the flu home from school. That if I’d just washed my hands before I held Paul’s hand, then he would be alive still.”
“That is a horrible, horrible thing to say to a child,” she’d said, stunned.
“But it was true,” he said. “I did forget. There was a little girl at school who was sick. She wound up in the hospital, too. But I was too busy. I didn’t listen.”
“You will protect him,” Ab said to Peyton. “It is your job to keep this baby safe.”
But three days later was the baby shower at Sylvia’s, and the next day Sylvia explained to Peyton that his baby sister was with the angels now. Peyton had never even gotten a chance to meet her. And Ginny, so mired in her own sadness and loss, hadn’t even begun to think what sort of damage this lie might do to her son.
She also had not considered the damage that Abbott had done to Ab all those years ago when he blamed him for his brother’s death. She had not stopped to consider the enormity of the guilt that Ab must have been carrying that caused him to give in to his father. Again and again and again. She didn’t consider that it was this crushing culpability that made Ab relinquish control of his own life to his father. That it was this that had, in the end, enabled him to relinquish his own child.
Thirty-Six
September 1971
That afternoon Ginny lay down next to Lucy in the hospital bed. Lucy was watching The Guiding Light on the TV that hung suspended from the ceiling, clutching the stuffed alligator from Peyton. Her fever had come down some, but her body was still toasty as Ginny curled up next to her and rested her cheek against her soft back. Lucy touched Ginny’s hair, absently playing with it. It made Ginny feel drowsy, and she soon found herself drifting off to sleep.
“Mrs. Richardson?”
As the doctor entered the room, Ginny jolted upright, heart pounding like an alarm in her ears. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up.
“I’m sorry; I didn’t realize you two were sleeping.”
She looked to the bed, and Lucy had, indeed fallen asleep, her legs splayed open the way they did whenever she succumbed to slumber’s pull.
“Can we chat for a minute?” the doctor said.
Ginny nodded.
“Normally, I’d like to speak to both parents, but I understand your husband isn’t here yet?”
Ginny nodded but did not elaborate.
“Well, then, hopefully you can relay all of this to him. I’m also happy to give him a call if you prefer.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she said. “What’s going on?”
“Well, as you know,” he said. “Lucy’s condition means that she’s got some issues to contend with. For you to contend with. Delays in gross and fine motor skills. Speech. The lack of muscle tone can make all these things more challenging than with a typical child. You have a son as well?”
Ginny nodded. “Yes. He’s starting first grade soon.”
“Well, raising Lucy will be quite different than raising your son.”
“Of course,” she said.
“I also understand that until recently she’s been institutionalized?”
Officer Marley must have spoken to him.
“Did your doctor advise you to send her away?”
Ginny’s head fell to her chest, pulled by the weight of her shame, by the memory of the doctor who first delivered Lucy and then the news of her disorder. His warnings and con
demnation. That was exactly it; he had condemned her.
Ginny looked up again. His eyes were apologetic.
“Yes,” she said. “He did.”
“Well, a great many of her delays can be attributed to her Down syndrome, however, many others simply have to do with the lack of stimulation she’s likely to have experienced at the facility where she’s been living. Children with Down syndrome need attention: physical activity, interaction. They need to be held. And they need to be loved.”
Ginny’s eyes pricked with tears.
“But all these things, all these challenges, are something I suspect you are willing to take on. Or, perhaps, you wouldn’t be here?”
“I am,” she said. “I mean, I understand the challenges.”
“Good, good,” he said. “But listen, I need to give you a clear assessment of her health as well, before you make any decisions about her future.”
“You said she was going to be okay,” Ginny said, looking toward Lucy, who was snoring softly, her chest rising and falling with each breath. “She’s already getting better; her cough is better.”
The doctor took a deep breath. “I heard something a little concerning when I listened to her heart, a bit of a murmur. There were also some suspicious ventricular markings when we did the chest X-ray of her lungs.”
Ginny felt her stomach bottom out, the same way it had when they rode the Ferris wheel in Atlantic City. Her heart? There was nothing in her file about her heart.
She shook her head.
“I thought at first it might be benign, but I also knew we needed to be extra cautious given her disability. While we were running tests, we did an echocardiogram and have confirmed the presence of a moderate ventricular septal defect.”
Ginny scowled. Confused. “What is that?”
“It’s a congenital defect, very common in children with Down syndrome,” he said and paused. “It’s essentially a hole in her heart.”
She felt a hole in her own heart beginning to open. A chasm deep in her chest.
“What does that mean?”
“Well, smaller defects will often repair themselves as a child grows older. Or, if they are small enough, they can be managed with medication. But Lucy’s defect seems to be growing, which will eventually require surgery to repair.”
Ginny nodded. “But she’ll be okay if she has the surgery?”
The doctor smiled a little sadly. “Hopefully. But to be completely candid, had this diagnosis been made when she was born, the prognosis would have been much clearer. The defect has gone both undiagnosed and untreated for two years. The later the surgery is conducted, the riskier it is. There can be complications, the risk of permanent pulmonary hypertension. Her lungs could be compromised.”
Ginny felt dizzy and gripped the bed rail to keep herself upright.
“What happens then? I mean, if it can’t be fixed? Will she . . . could she die?”
“I don’t mean to scare you,” he said carefully, his voice measured. “And I am not a cardiologist. You’d need to take her to a specialist, ideally a pediatric cardiologist. You have a wonderful children’s hospital in Boston. My recommendation would be to have her seen there. They can give you a much more thorough diagnosis and prognosis. Of course, this all depends on whether you decide to keep her in your home. If she is returned to the institution, the medical team there will determine her treatment plan. But this is an important decision, one that should not be taken lightly. If you decide to care for her on your own, there will be tremendous demands: emotional, financial. A child with extreme medical issues can put a strain on a marriage, on a family.”
She felt as though she were swimming through that ether haze once again, the fog she’d found herself in after Lucy was born. Though back then the doctor had been condescending, insensitive. And her response hadn’t mattered one bit.
The doctor reached out and put his hand on her trembling shoulder.
“Mrs. Richardson, I only want you to be aware of the risks, but in the end this is your decision to make. Your choice.”
Thirty-Seven
Autumn 1969
She had left, once before.
Fall arrived early that year she was pregnant with Lucy, the heat of summer gone overnight, frost lacing the windows like Mother Nature’s curtains. She’d woken early as she always did, her enormous belly angrily growling with hunger. She hadn’t been able to eat more than a few bites in the last two weeks. The baby was so high up, she could barely even swallow, and when she did, the heartburn was unbearable. But now, it seemed like gravity had won, and the baby had sunk lower, opening her chest. She felt free. And starving.
It was a Sunday, the one day each week when Ab didn’t set the alarm clock on the nightstand. He slept soundly next to her, fists under his chin, more boy than man in this moment. She felt tenderness toward this sleeping man-boy, and she leaned over and gently kissed his cheek before quietly rising from bed and pulling her robe on, though it would no longer close over her belly.
She tiptoed down the hall, noticing that her usual stealth was compromised by her tremendous weight. Still, she managed to get past Peyton’s room, where he, like his father, slept soundly and sweetly.
What exactly had she wanted, if not this? The sense of loss, that palpable regret, consumed her at times, but she could never seem to figure out a solution. What would the remedy be? It wasn’t as though she could walk out of this life and into another. She had cemented herself in this house, in this family of Ab’s, in this world of country club brunches (glancing at her watch, she noted that they had exactly three hours until they were to meet Abbott Senior and Sylvia at the club for postmass eggs Benedict and golden toast) and afternoon bridge (though she still hadn’t gotten the hang of the game) and evening charity meetings (so many causes, so many unfortunate souls—none of them with this tremendously good fortune that Ginny had been proffered).
She set the coffee to brew and thought she might take her book (My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy) out onto the back porch, lose herself for an hour or so until the boys rose. Grab a piece of toast or a banana from the bowl, something to tide her over until they got to the club later. But suddenly, she was overwhelmed by hunger. Insatiable. She wanted pancakes, bacon, creamy scrambled eggs, and she wanted them now.
Not wanting to risk waking either Ab or Peyton up, she went to the laundry room, where she found the one pair of pants she was still able to fit into and a blouse that fit so long as she didn’t button the bottom four buttons. She put on a jacket and her shoes, though tying them proved impossible given her girth (she’d been shuffling around in her slippers for the last week), so she slipped on her Dr. Scholl’s wooden sandals right over her socks. Then she walked out the front door. Just like that. Twist of the knob, a little push, and she was outside, staring at the kaleidoscopic view of the trees’ autumn leaves. She found a sudden lightness in her step as she made her way down their street to the next block and finally to the street that led to downtown Dover.
It was the strangest feeling being out and about without anyone knowing where she was. Both liberating and terrifying. She entered the little diner, and no one even looked up at her as she made her way to a booth near the back and grabbed a newspaper someone had left there.
She had ten dollars in her pocket from her last outing to the market, and so she ordered enough food to feed an entire small family. She gorged herself on waffles and sausages. Even a small hot bowl of oatmeal with swollen sweet raisins. She read the newspaper from cover to cover. She could hardly believe all the things that were happening in the world. She felt like a time traveler who’d just realized they had zipped ahead into the future. Nuclear tests were being conducted by both Russia and the U.S. The Soviets were also busy launching spacecraft. Of course, that sort of news felt far away. Hardly affecting her life here in Massachusetts. It was easy to keep your head in the sand, she thought, when there were no waves crashing against that shore. But then she read the news article about the riots in Spri
ngfield and felt as though there were sand in her eyes as she read about the so-called Days of Rage in Chicago. Her woes seemed suddenly so small, her sense of injustice almost silly in the face of this. It (as well as the mountains of waffles) filled her with tremendous shame. What was wrong with her? Who was she to lament this life, this gift she’d been given?
Trying not cry, she paid her bill and didn’t stick around for her change. She pulled her coat on and left. She walked until her legs ached and she felt her ankles beginning to swell, then she sat down on a bench in the park and allowed herself to weep.
As she made her way home, she thought about the time she’d threatened to run away as a little girl. She could hardly remember the reason anymore, but she recalled the same distinct need to flee.
It had been winter then, and she’d packed a backpack and put on her boots and her winter coat. Affixed her own scarf.
“I’m running away,” she’d announced to her mother, who shrugged and said simply, “Okay. Take this apple in case you get hungry.”
She’d opened the front door to a blustery twilit afternoon and walked across the small front yard to the front gate that separated her from freedom. She’d sat down at the gate, not quite ready to commit to her departure. She removed her mittens and pulled the apple out of her pocket. It was a perfect Red Delicious. Not one bruise on it and shined to a high gloss. She pictured her mother at the market, carefully selecting the apple from a bin, inspecting it for flaws. She imagined her rubbing a cloth towel across each piece of fruit before assembling them in the wooden bowl on the counter. Recalling this small gesture filled Ginny with remorse and sadness. How could she run away from this woman who, in her own small way, brought beauty to the world? Who nurtured her, who fed her when she was hungry?
She’d returned to the house, knocking on the door like a visitor, and thrown herself into her mother’s arms.
When she returned home and opened the door that autumn morning in Dover, Ab was waiting for her. He had poured her a cup of coffee and handed it to her, smiling. “Just needed some fresh air?”
