Five Fortunes (33 page)

Authors: Beth Gutcheon

Big where she was small, male where she was female, black as she was white, as deprived of material things as she was laden with them. She looked at his eyes and she saw nothing she recognized.

No hunger, no fear, no hatred, no requests. He was just there, staring at her. What did it mean? Had she somehow conjured a night terror from her dreams and made him flesh?

Carter’s concerns were less existential. A toddler needs clothes, books, toys, special food. It gets an earache and you can’t give it a shot of scotch. Flora had gradually begun talking again but she got frantic if she woke from sleep and Carter wasn’t in the room. Awake, she didn’t want to be out of her sight, and she preferred to be touching her. Carter spent a lot of time holding Flora, reading with her, or watching
Sesame Street
. Jerry had brought her two cartons of children’s videotapes and Flora watched them over and over and over. DeeAnne bought Flora a little yellow plastic cassette player so that Flora could sit quietly beside Carter’s desk listening to
The
Muppet Musicians of Bremen
in her headset while Carter worked.

Carter had called the minister of Shanti’s church. He remembered meeting her. He said that the neighborhood knew she had taken Flora, and thought it was the safest thing for her, if Carter was able to keep her for the time being. Carter said she’d been expecting to hear from Child Protective Services, or whatever agency concerned itself with orphaned children. The minister said he thought it unlikely. “She wasn’t in the system when her mother died. No reason they’d know anything about her.” From him she learned more about Shanti’s history.

“I never knew her late dad,” said Reverend Campbell, “he passed
Five Fortunes / 259

before my time. But her mother was a fine woman. Sang in my choir.”

“Did she work?”

“Yes, I believe she was an executive secretary. She worked somewhere over in Century City.”

“And Shanti lived with her?”

“Yes, Shanti and Delia both,” said the minister.

“What about other relatives?”

“I believe May’s people were from Georgia, but they moved to Detroit when she was a girl. She had one older brother, but I don’t think he is still living.”

“What about her husband’s relatives?”

“His mother may be alive. I believe she was from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but I wouldn’t have an idea how to find her.”

Neither would Carter. The police had taken all Shanti’s records, her letters, her address book. They wouldn’t release them to a non-relative. The minister hoped Carter would be able to locate Shanti’s sister.

Carter had called Terri at The Cloisters. Terri knew what had happened to Shanti; her mother, homesick for the old neighborhood, kept in touch.

“Tell me about Delia,” Carter had said, and Terri sighed.

“Little Delia,” she said.

“Why do you say it like that?”

“Oh—little Delia. You couldn’t tell that girl anything she didn’t want to hear. Tell her she couldn’t make mud pies in her Sunday school dress without getting dirty, she’d think that meant
you
couldn’t. She thought she’d be able to manage it just fine.”

“Did she and Shanti get along?”

“She thought people like Shanti and me were Goody Two-Shoes.”

“Would you know any friends she might be in touch with?”

Terri came up with some names of girls Delia had run with in junior high.

“What about boys?”

“She liked the bad ones. She thought she could handle anything.”

“What about men in Shanti’s life?”

260 / Beth Gutcheon

“I can’t help you. I think Flora’s dad was someone she met through work, but she never talked about him. She really wanted kids; she didn’t especially expect Prince Charming to be part of the deal.”

That left Delia as Flora’s most promising next of kin. As soon as Carter could get back to work, she would lay out a strategy for tracing her. She didn’t expect to be out of action for very long.

If in those first few days Carter could have found a more sensible home for Shanti’s daughter, who was utterly bereaved, a speechless bundle of nerves and needs, she would have. But Flora became hysterical if Carter left her. The family next door had offered to keep her for a morning so Carter could go discuss the situation with DeeAnne, but the baby’s screams followed her down the sidewalk, and she had turned around and gone back. It was as if Carter linked Flora to her mother, and thought that as long as Carter was near, time might reverse and bring Shanti back.

Finding a proper home for an orphaned baby would not in any case be the work of a moment. Carter couldn’t bear the idea of delivering Flora to the child welfare system; she would disappear into its maw and Carter feared she would never again know how to find her, how to tell if she was well placed, if she was all right. Or be able to help her if she was not. In the first long days and nights they were alone together, Carter and the baby were in suspended animation.

Carter tried to think of what she ought to do, but instead was bom-barded with the raw shock of the moment when she had walked into Shanti’s living room. Awful images. Smells. She closed down her emotional aperture to a pinprick of light through which she could see the baby, and thought of nothing, as best she could. For a while there would be no tomorrow and no yesterday.

As she waited, almost paralyzed, for enough scar tissue to form to allow her to resume normal functioning, Carter became absorbed in minute changes in Flora’s adjustment. She watched for a hint of smile. She sat staring into space, apparently vacant, while inwardly engaged in feeling the little body relax against her into sleep.

Something began

Five Fortunes / 261

to happen to her. It was as if she had finally been let in on nature’s biggest secret, the answer to the formerly unanswerable question: why would a woman rather have a baby than live her life for herself?

Why did parents look at their children with adoration when a stranger observing the same child would want to brain it? Carter woke up one morning to find she was utterly in love with Flora.

She stopped talking about how temporary the situation was. She started studying how to choose a pediatrician, how to manage the baby and work, how to get her adjusted to a baby-sitter in case Flora ever decided to let her out of her sight. She discovered Toys R Us.

Jerry came by about once a week. He had never had children and Carter couldn’t imagine he had much interest in them. But he seemed unwilling to allow Flora to remain as frightened of him as she had been the first day he’d met her. He would arrive unannounced after work and sit with Carter while she gave Flora her supper, or they’d put her in a stroller and walk around the block. He made no attempt to bribe Flora or even please her; he just sat quietly, talking with Carter about this and that. After he’d gone Carter would find a stuffed toy or a giant box of crayons left in the front hall. One Saturday he came and took Carter and Flora for a ride in his convertible.

This appeared to be a completely new experience for Flora, and she liked it. He drove them out to the beach and sat studying Flora’s face as she looked at the ocean.

“Have you ever been to the beach?” he asked her.

Flora looked up at Carter, as if she had a few questions herself.

“I think we ought to take her down, so she can feel the sand.”

It was a bright day, but cool. They walked down to the water’s edge with Carter carrying Flora. She put her down on the sand, and Flora squatted to feel it.

“Sand,” said Carter. “The same stuff you have in a sandbox.” Then she remembered what Shanti had said about the sandbox in the playground that the junkies had ruined.

“Do you want to take your shoes off?” Carter asked. “Wiggle your 262 / Beth Gutcheon

toes in the sand?” Flora nodded. Carter took off her sneakers and her tiny socks, and Flora, standing on sand, obediently wiggled her toes. She looked up, surprised and interested.

Jerry walked a little way and found a seashell.

“What’s this?” he asked, and Flora trotted over and squatted to study it.

When she had collected enough shells to fill both of Carter’s jacket pockets, Carter said, “We better get you home, little bear. It’s time for your lunch.” Jerry had offered to stop at McDonald’s, but Carter worried that they had taken enough of his time, and declined.

He didn’t press it.

The next time he had stopped by for a few minutes in the evening on his way to meet Graciela for dinner at Venice Beach, he said; Flora was playing with a toy school bus on the living room rug. When one of the passengers fell out and rolled under a chair, Flora had to squeeze past Jerry to retrieve it. Carter noticed that she put a hand on his knee to balance herself as she went past him, as if he were something safe, like a chair in a familiar room. Jerry gave one of his rare smiles.

One Sunday afternoon in mid-March, Carter was sitting at her computer in the tiny office off the living room when she saw an enormous ancient black Lincoln Continental creep down the street past her door. It stopped, then reversed. Majestically, it pulled into her driveway behind the Brown Bomber. Carter was standing by this time, her face against the glass. When she saw who was inside, she went to the door with a feeling of dread. The longer Flora was with her, the less she wanted to think about a time when she might not be.

The driver of the car was the minister, Reverend Campbell. He held open the passenger door for his companion, Aunt Sallie Spear.

Both were wearing their church clothes, prepared for a formal visit.

Carter was in sweatpants, none too clean, and an old tennis sweater.

Too late to change, or to run the vacuum, wash the windows, or bake a cake. She opened the door.

Five Fortunes / 263

“We thought you must be at home when we saw your car,” said the minister.

“I’m afraid I’m not dressed for company.”

“Don’t give it a thought,” said Aunt Sallie Spear with the air of one who has gotten used to the younger generation, which is not the same thing as being one who would ever be caught in her housecleaning clothes on a Sunday afternoon herself. She was wearing a navy blue dress with covered buttons and a white lace collar, and a hat with a blue veil. The veil was turned back so that it covered the hat, not her face, but it made Carter want to see her with it down. It made Carter want such a hat herself; what a good idea veils were, a hell of a lot easier than all those bottles and brushes Jill had made her buy.

Aunt Sallie led the way into the house. The living room floor was littered with the toy schoolhouse and bus Flora had been playing with, and the little peg-shaped children that fitted in the bus or in the school. Oh god, oh god, the children are almost all white, Carter thought. There’s only one little brown one. What’s the matter with me, why didn’t I think of that?

Aunt Sallie took the chair Carter gestured her to, and Reverend Campbell took another one partway across the room. They didn’t lounge or sprawl on the couch. They sat rather stiffly. Carter offered coffee or tea, or iced coffee, or iced tea. Reverend Campbell said,

“Nothing, thank you. We’ve just finished the hospitality hour after the service. Unless…Sallie?”

“No, nothing for me, thank you. But you go ahead.”

“No, I’m…I’m fine too,” said Carter, and she sat down. “I was just…I’m fine. I’m very glad to see you.”

She gave a big smile. Then she noticed that Aunt Sallie had decor-ously crossed her legs at the ankles whereas she had flopped one great knee over the other, and there was a gap between the tops of her socks and the hem of her sweatpants. She uncrossed her legs and sat cursing her mother for not teaching her anything useful, ever. She smiled again.

There was a silence because finally Carter managed to remember a

264 / Beth Gutcheon

shred of her training, and kept her mouth shut. If they’ve come to take Flora, at least don’t make it easy for them. Make them say why.

Make them make their case.

The silence lengthened.

Finally both her guests began at once.

“Forgive us for busting in…” said Reverend Campbell, while Aunt Sallie said, “Reverend Campbell tells me you…”

Then they both stopped and looked uncomfortable. Somehow they agreed, wordlessly, that Sallie would continue.

“Reverend Campbell tells me,” she began again, “that you asked him about Shanti’s family.”

“Yes,” said Carter.

“And you know that she has a sister.”

“Yes, I know. Shanti told me. And since…And I’ve been trying to find her, but the last lead we had put her in San Francisco, and we’ve had no luck there at all.”

“Well, that’s the thing, that’s what it is we wanted to talk to you about,” put in the minister.

“We know where she is,” said Aunt Sallie. “She’s been seen.”

“Where?”

“New York.”

“New York!” Carter needed a minute to adjust to this. “Well, no wonder I couldn’t find her in San Francisco.”

“Yes.”

“No wonder.” Her callers once more spoke together.

“Can you tell me more? Who saw her? And when? And what kind of shape is she in?”

The minister looked at his hands. Aunt Sallie looked distressed.

It was she who pressed on.

“There’s a boy who used to go to our church, he was a friend of Shanti’s.”

“Like a big brother to her.”