Three Marys

by Glenn Cooper

  And at the center of all this was Sue who had not seen any of this coming when she was hired four months earlier. Her first two months had been spent at the mansion, outfitting it with a seemingly unlimited budget for a purpose she hadn’t fully understood. When the veil was lifted shortly before the arrival of the first girl, she had reservations. These were assuaged by additional compensation larded on from her unseen employer and meted out by Mrs Torres. In four months, Sue had earned more than the previous five years combined. Without rent, food or utility payments, her salary was pure profit and her savings account had reached levels she could never have imagined. And every two weeks it only got fatter. With the end of her paycheck-to-paycheck existence her future looked different and more interesting. She resolved to do her job as well as she could, bury her reservations, and get out of Dodge when it was done. She was keen to see what the world looked like with money in the bank.

  Before long the girls settled into a routine. They got out of bed to play with the French bulldog, which Mary Riordan had named Lily. Mary had, at first, refused to share the puppy because she’d been told it was hers. But once the novelty wore off, she became less territorial and the dog became communal. Far and away the most assertive, Mary claimed the bathroom first each morning, taking her own sweet time. There were fifteen bathrooms in the mansion but Sue and the translators were unable to convince the Marias to use a different one. They chose to sit on the floor waiting, tossing Lily her chew toys.

  Sue picked up a pink hairbrush from Maria Aquino’s dresser and sat beside the girl. She was a tiny thing, no more than eighty pounds dripping wet, and her pregnancy hadn’t added much weight. Her baby bump was slight, the smallest of the three girls. When Sue took her glasses off and began to brush her brown shoulder-length hair the girl turned her face toward her and, for the first time, briefly smiled.

  ‘Salamat.’

  Sue knew the word. ‘Thank you.’ She checked the cheat-card with Filipino phrases she kept with her. ‘Walang anuman,’ she replied haltingly. Anything more complex would have to wait until Mrs Simpauco came up from staff breakfast.

  The girl seemed to appreciate the small gesture and she leaned into the soft bristles massaging her scalp.

  All the girls had been provided a new wardrobe. When Mary Riordan left the bathroom to begin picking an outfit for the day, Maria Aquino took her place at the sink. Maria Mollo was still in bed, awake but on her side with her head turned to the wall. Of the three, she had been the least communicative and most miserable. If Sue had been asked the color of her eyes she would have responded: red.

  Torres looked in from the hall and said to Sue, ‘Why is she still in bed?’

  ‘There’s no rush.’

  ‘She’s lazy, that’s why,’ Mary Riordan said from the walk-in closet.

  ‘She’s not lazy, she’s just a little delicate,’ Sue said.

  Torres was less tolerant. In Spanish, she sharply told the girl to get up and make her bed. Maria reacted poorly to the harsh words and began to cry again.

  ‘Lidia,’ Sue said, ‘you gave me primary responsibility for their day-to-day welfare. I’d appreciate it if you’d let me do my job.’

  ‘Yeah, for fuck’s sake, Lidia, let the woman do her job,’ Mary said gleefully, emerging in her underwear to stick out her tongue before retreating into the closet.

  Torres said something hateful under her breath and left. Later she would demand that Sue call her Mrs Torres in front of the girls.

  ‘Is the old cow gone?’ Mary asked.

  ‘You shouldn’t swear and you shouldn’t call her a cow,’ Sue said unconvincingly.

  ‘I’ll take that with the sincerity you intended.’

  ‘Get dressed, Mary,’ Sue said. ‘If I didn’t know you were only seventeen.’

  ‘How old would you have said I was?’

  ‘Older than me probably.’

  ‘And how old are you then?’

  ‘Thirty-six.’

  The girl whistled at that. ‘Ancient.’

  Sue turned her attention to Maria Mollo and sat on the bed to stroke her narrow shoulders. She wasn’t much larger than the Filipino girl – a few inches taller, a few pounds heavier. She was considerably fuller in the face too, which might have made her seem more cheerful if she weren’t so patently miserable, and her lips were thick and juicy. Sue had already formed her own shorthand opinion about the girls. Maria Mollo was pretty and sad. Maria Aquino was tiny and sweet. Mary Riordan was saucy and precocious. She realized that these impressions were subject to change, but she had a feeling she might have captured at first blush the essence of each one.

  Sue peeled back the bedclothes, scooped the girl into her arms and tenderly lifted her. Rather than resisting, Maria put her arms around her neck and clung to her like a marsupial. Sue was not a large woman herself but she was fit with a strong core and she was able to stand easily. There was a window seat with a flat, padded cushion and that’s where she lowered the girl’s legs. The windows were closed and the air conditioning was working against the warm morning air outside. The girl stood there and waited for Sue to get her blue hairbrush. In her t-shirt and little shorts with their appliqué teddy bears she didn’t much look like an expectant mother until she turned ninety degrees. Her baby bump was more pronounced than Maria Aquino’s though less so than Mary Riordan’s. As Sue began to brush her thick black hair that fell long and straight to the middle of her back, both of them gazed through the panes of glass. The landscape was flat and barren. The sprinkler-fed grounds surrounding the house were green, but stretching to an indistinct horizon, the land was scrub-brown and arid. There were white wooden fences separating the lawns and the nothingness. Between these fences, horses grazed on the stubble.

  Sue’s line of work had put her in front of Spanish-speakers and she reached down into her memory bank for the Spanish for horse. It wasn’t a word she’d had to use before but she took a stab at it.

  ‘Caballeros?’ she said, pointing.

  Something like a snort came out of Maria’s mouth. ‘Caballos,’ she said.

  ‘Caballos,’ Sue repeated. ‘Gracias.’

  She didn’t know how to ask if the girl liked horses and didn’t want to call Torres so instead she pantomimed riding a horse, pointed at the girl and lifted her hands in a questioning gesture.

  ‘No nunca,’ the girl said. Then the storm cloud descended over her head once again and through quivering plump lips she moaned, ‘Quiero que mi mama.’

  ‘Lo sé. I know you miss her, sweetheart.’

  Mary Riordan came out dressed in a polo shirt and knee-length pleated skirt.

  ‘She’s a whiner, that one.’

  Sue reproached her. ‘That’s not very charitable, Mary.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  Sue looked her up and down. ‘That’s a skirt for formal occasions. Why’d you put it on?’

  ‘Wanted to. Who knows, Prince Charming might turn up.’

  Sue didn’t want to play favorites but she had a hard time warming to the girl. She was a one-trick pony: always in your face.

  ‘Go change into something more appropriate. Try shorts. I thought we’d go outside today with Lily before it gets too hot.’

  ‘And where exactly is outside? And by that I mean, where the fuck are we?’

  ‘You’ve been told again and again that I can’t tell you that. And please don’t swear.’

  ‘Do these two know they’ve been kidnapped or are they too thick?’

  ‘You weren’t kidnapped. Your parents gave consent.’

  ‘Yeah, after getting bribed by stacks of cash. If we weren’t kidnapped we’ve been sold like livestock. Three pregger sows sold at the fair, we are.’

  ‘Three young ladies.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever. Did they also get in the family way absent a night of passion?’

  ‘You’re all in the same boat. That’s all I know.’

  ‘When do I get to phone my mum?’

  ‘Soon I hope. I’ll
ask Mrs Torres again.’

  ‘She’s even worse than you are. You ever been pregnant?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘You Catholic?’

  ‘Nope again. Protestant.’

  ‘So that makes you a barren Orange hag, don’t it?’

  Sue sighed heavily. ‘Go change your clothes, Mary.’

  Later that morning the two Marias were introduced to their English teacher, Mrs White, a woman Sue had met for the first time the day before. She was only a few years older than Sue but way on the starchy side. Even so, Sue tried to be extra nice to her. After four months, she was getting lonely. Torres wasn’t someone she could spend an evening chit-chatting to, or watching a film with when the girls went to bed. The huge red-brick house was a cavernous place at night when the kitchen and cleaning staff were gone. While the two girls got their first lesson, Mary Riordan got parked in front of a computer set up with learning software to continue her secondary school transition year. Every time Sue looked in she was stuck on the same page, doing her nails or playing a game on her phone and no amount of coaxing could get her to take it seriously.

  ‘Let me call home and maybe I’ll click on the next screen. Otherwise, piss off.’

  After the girls had lunch they were allowed to spend an hour unsupervised in their lounge. Torres called Sue on the intercom and asked her to come down to her ground-floor office near the library.

  ‘How did they do this morning?’ she asked Sue.

  ‘Mrs White said the Marias did fine at their first lesson. They learned some basic words. They were cooperative. Mary is on strike. She says she won’t get with the program unless she’s allowed to talk to her mother.’

  Torres shook her head. ‘I hate to let her be the one in charge. The fact is that we’re on hold for a few days. They need to deliver a phone here that can’t be traced. You know how security-conscious they are.’

  ‘I don’t even know who they are,’ Sue said.

  As usual, Torres ignored that kind of fishing expedition. ‘Dr Lopez is coming this afternoon,’ she said.

  Lopez was the local pediatrician hired to be on call for the girls. He had examined them on their arrival and administered prenatal vitamins to all of them and immunizations to the Marias.

  ‘Why?’ Sue asked.

  ‘Dr Benedict wanted to meet the pediatrician.’

  ‘Who’s Dr Benedict?’

  ‘He’s a big-shot obstetrician from Washington.’

  Sue bristled at the news but held her tongue.

  The Cessna jet circled overhead once then touched down on the private landing strip to the rear of the mansion. The chauffeur was waiting for the VIP passenger and gave him the one-minute ride to the front portico where Dr Benedict, a white-haired patrician of a man, emerged in a seersucker suit. He clutched a large cracked-leather medical satchel that he would later tell Sue had been passed down by his physician-father and his father’s physician-father.

  His greeting party in the marble front hall was Torres, Dr Lopez, and Sue. Sue inspected the business card he thrust into her hand and understood the fuss. Benedict was the President of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

  Torres had him come through to the living room where she offered him a lemonade and inquired about his trip.

  ‘Very comfortable,’ Benedict said, sipping away. ‘Quite a lot of secrecy,’ he said. ‘My lawyer actually advised against signing your confidentiality agreement without knowing the nature of the consult but you dangled a king’s ransom in front of me.’

  ‘It wasn’t us,’ Torres said. ‘We’re only employees.’

  ‘And who is the person or persons behind the curtain?’ he asked.

  Sue bailed Torres out by saying, ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’

  ‘I see,’ Benedict said, bushy eyebrows elevating. ‘When I boarded the plane, I was given a folder. That was the first time I knew whom I’d be examining today. It wasn’t what I was expecting.’

  ‘What were you expecting?’ Dr Lopez asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the wife of a Saudi prince. I’ve done that kind of work before. This is rather more interesting. What’s your specialty, Doctor?’

  ‘Pediatrician,’ Lopez answered.

  ‘And are the girls healthy?’

  ‘The Irish girl’s the picture of health. The Peruvian girl is underweight and has iron deficiency. Same for the Filipino girl but she’s severely underweight. We’ve got them both on a good diet and supplements.’

  ‘And what do you do, Mrs Torres?’

  ‘I’m the manager of the property, Doctor. I keep the trains running.’

  ‘And you, Ms Gibney?’

  ‘I’m a midwife.’

  ‘Are you? Excellent.’

  Sue didn’t sound convinced. ‘You think so?’

  ‘You may know that the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has formally embraced the role of midwives in delivery management.’

  ‘What ACOG says and what an obstetrician thinks can be two different things.’

  ‘Well, it’s what I think too. What’s your background?’

  ‘Masters from New Mexico State University. Twelve years of practice, mostly in New Mexico. Over a thousand deliveries. Never been sued.’

  He laughed. ‘No lawsuits! Now that’s an accomplishment. Tell me, why the decision to do home deliveries?’

  ‘Privacy,’ Torres answered. ‘They don’t want a media circus.’

  ‘You’ll be in attendance, Dr Lopez?’

  ‘That’s the plan.’

  ‘And what kind of hospital back-up will you have, Ms Gibney? You’re not all that close to a local, let alone regional facility.’

  ‘If they need a C-section, there’s a helicopter on the property and a full EMT crew will be on standby,’ Sue said.

  ‘All right, I’d like to see them. Is there some place I could use for an examination room?’

  Taking the elevator to the third floor, Benedict let out a ‘Good heavens!’ when Sue opened the double-doors.

  They might as well have been in a medical complex because the room lacked for nothing.

  There was an examination table with stirrups, drawers full of sterile and non-sterile supplies, a well-stocked medication cabinet, state-of-the-art fetal monitoring gear, even an ultrasound machine. All of it was Sue’s doing.

  ‘I’ve never seen this kind of a set-up in a private house,’ Benedict enthused.

  ‘It’s a special facility for special girls,’ Torres said.

  ‘If I’m going to get back to Washington at a decent hour I’d better start,’ Benedict said. ‘Send them in – any order you’d like.’

  Torres left to get Maria Aquino.

  When she was out of the room, Sue asked him, ‘Could I ask you what you were told was the purpose of your examinations today?’

  ‘Only that an expert report was required from someone with an authoritative platform. Now that I know who the patients are, I can guess that they want my opinion on how these young ladies became pregnant. What that opinion will be used for, I’ve no idea. I only know that if I talk out of school about this, I’ll be sued for every penny I’m worth.’

  ‘Please hold for the President.’

  Anning was in a penthouse office that gave him unobstructed views of sunrises out one wall of windows during early-morning meetings and sunsets from the opposite wall of windows when he worked late.

  He suspected that someone would be listening in so he took a formal tone. ‘Mr President. What can I do for you?’

  Griffith was far more casual. ‘Randy, how the hell are you doing? Have a good trip back the other day?’

  ‘I did, thanks.’

  ‘Did you see the New York Times today?’

  ‘It’s on my desk but I haven’t gotten to it yet.’

  ‘Well, get to it. Page one, below the fold. There’s an interview with a Harvard egghead named Calvin Donovan. Ever hear of him?’

  ‘Actually, I have. He’s a personal fri
end of the pope. Celestine uses him from time to time to help with sticky situations. Off-the-books work when he wants to bypass Vatican personnel.’

  ‘Well read the interview pronto. It looks like Donovan was recruited to make a preliminary assessment of the virgin girls.’

  Anning reached for the newspaper. ‘Really?’

  ‘He hedges his bets and hides behind the fact that he’s not a medical man but he gives the impression that this virgin pregnancy situation could be on the up-and-up.’

  Anning looked at the flattering photo of Cal taken at a leafy spot on the Harvard campus. ‘I’ll read it right now and get back to you.’

  ‘You don’t need to call me back. I just wanted to say, Randy, that I don’t know what you’ve got up your sleeve, and as you said, I don’t want to know, but it just might be that you can use this Donovan fellow to your advantage.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr President. I’ll certainly give it some thought.’

  TWELVE

  Dressed in cargo shorts, pocket t-shirt, and boat shoes – the obligatory outfit for what lay ahead – Cal was finishing his second cup of coffee and trawling through his Twitter feed at his kitchen table. His Cambridge house was a large place for a single man but he needed – or more precisely, he wanted – the space for his collections. Collections of books, paintings, artifacts, sculptures – all the academic and cultural passions a good salary and a substantial trust fund could support. His father, the famous archaeologist Hiram Donovan, came from a long line of money and, upon his premature death, young Cal had become independently wealthy – trust-fund wealthy.

  Social media in general and Twitter in particular was blowing up with the hashtag #wherearethemarys, something Cal very much wanted to know himself. Cardinal Da Silva had been good to pass along any information the Vatican had gleaned from its local contacts in the Philippines, Peru, and Ireland but there had been precious little information. The Vatican had the firm impression – perhaps more than that, a firm belief – that the local authorities in Manila and Lima had been paid off by unknown agents to tread lightly with their investigations. The parents of Maria Mollo and Maria Aquino clearly knew nothing. The Irish police seemed impervious to bribery but they kept banging into dead ends and admitted they had no idea whether Mary Riordan was still in Ireland or abroad. And the Riordans were unhelpful. If they knew anything, they weren’t talking. So millions of people banded together as amateur sleuths, looking for the girls collectively.