She shook her head. “No’m, not yet. I’m not sure I can, I’m just dreading it so. Because as soon as I do, he’ll know what kind of mother he has.”
“Now listen to me,” I said, leaning toward her. “All he needs to know is that you were in love and planning to be married. Eventually, at least, because you were. Lloyd and everybody else knows how much you loved Mr. Pickens, so they’re not going to blame you. Lloyd certainly won’t.”
I could hardly believe I’d said such a thing, and further, that I firmly believed it. Never before had I been known to offer any excuse for such behavior as Hazel Marie had so obviously indulged in. Yet here I was, not only excusing it, but finding justification for it, and using
love
, of all nebulous and unreliable things, to justify it. There was a time, not so long ago, when I would’ve averted my eyes and walked on past any unmarried mother-to-be. There would have been some pity in my heart, knowing what the mother and her unborn child were up against, but my basic feeling would’ve been that she was reaping what she’d sown, and getting exactly what she deserved.
Well, you do live and learn, or at least, I do, especially when someone you care for finds herself in that kind of predicament. Things look a little different on the other side of the fence.
“Miss Julia?” Hazel Marie said, bringing me out of my reverie. “I’ve been thinking that there’s something I could do. If I could bring myself to do it. I know other people have done it and been all right with it. I just don’t know if I could.”
“What’s that, Hazel Marie?”
“Well,” she said, needing the mascara-smeared Kleenex again for her eyes, “I could make up some story for Lloyd and leave him here. Then I could go off somewhere and have the baby and then . . .” She stopped, her voice hoarse with tears. “And then put the baby up for adoption.” The Kleenex covered her face by this time as her shoulders began to shake. “Then I could come back and get Lloyd. He wouldn’t have to know anything about it.”
My first reaction was to lean over, put my hand on her arm and try to talk her out of such an extreme solution, so I did. “Oh, no, Hazel Marie, that would be too terrible. I can’t bear the thought of you giving up that tiny baby and never knowing who it was or where it was. None of us would ever have a minute’s peace if you did that. Please, let’s think of something else.”
But my second reaction, which I kept to myself, was that adopting that baby out would solve a multitude of problems. But only for us and only in the short run, not necessarily for the baby. Who knew who would adopt it? Who knew what kind of life it would have? The thought of a little one with Mr. Pickens’s black eyes and Hazel Marie’s sweet nature in the care of strangers filled me with an overwhelming sadness. What it would do to Hazel Marie, I couldn’t imagine.
Then it hit me. The only reason either of us was thinking of hiding the existence of that baby was to keep us from being the topic of whispers and gossip. Well, and to keep a little immorality under wraps. But what if Hazel Marie stayed home, grew noticeably and publicly larger, and gave birth at Abbotsville General? Would the world come to an end? No, it wouldn’t. Oh, there’d be talk, all right, and she’d be snubbed and excluded from parties and clubs and what-not, as I would be, too, since she’d be doing it with my approval.
Well, I was getting tired of the same old social whirl anyway. All it was was the same people saying and doing the same things over and over. I could do without that. Pastor Ledbetter might drum us out of the church, but there were other churches that would welcome us and our tithes with open arms.
The more I thought about it, the better it seemed. Contrast a little snubbing against a child turned out to fend for itself, and there was no contest. All Hazel Marie would have to do was hold her head up high and go right on with her business, knowing that she was accepting the care and the responsibility for what she had put in play.
The only one who might suffer from having a mother who was having a second illegitimate slip was Lloyd. I hated the thought of him being the brunt of jokes and jeers, but if it got too bad, there was always boarding school. Although that was another extreme solution I could hardly bear to consider. Still, I suspected that he’d weathered the same responses to bastardy before this and he’d come out, as far as I could see, unscathed.
By this time, I’d about convinced myself that if the boy were told everything, given all the options to consider, that he’d come down on the side of keeping his little brother or sister and riding out the storm.
But it wasn’t my decision to make. It was Hazel Marie’s. She, however, could be swayed and I might try to do just that. I mentally shuddered at the thought of going about my usual activities around town with Hazel Marie in tow, and her as big as a house, and everybody shaking their heads in dismay at our blatant disregard for appearances. It wasn’t something I would look forward to, but I could do it if it meant keeping Lloyd with us and that baby out of the hands of a stranger.
But first, we had to give Mr. Pickens a chance. If we could find him, and if Sam was right that he would do the right thing.
Lord, my head was reeling with just the thought that Hazel Marie might give that baby up for adoption. I’d played along with all her proposals for solving the problem so that she would continue to confide in me and so that I would know how to talk her out of some of her more drastic schemes. It seemed to me that her head would be reeling, too, thinking up first one thing and then another and none of them worth a lick, especially when there was a simple, quick, and perfect resolution to everything. I was convinced that if I could get Mr. Pickens delivered before that baby was, Hazel Marie would snap him up and never look back.
“Hazel Marie?” I said, lowering my voice and leaning close. “If Mr. Pickens . . .”
She jerked upright. “No. No, ma’am, I just can’t.” Then she covered her face with the Kleenex and folded up on herself. “Oh, I’m sorry, Miss Julia, I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m really sorry. It’s just that I can’t . . . I mean, I don’t want him anywhere around. I just hate him, and he’s no help, anyway.” She lowered the Kleenex and took a deep breath. “It’s my problem, and he doesn’t have anything to do with it.”
Well, it seemed to me that he’d already had plenty to do with it, but I’d just learned my lesson: Stay off the subject of Mr. Pickens. At least until we could get him here, which had better be soon or she’d be so wedded to the idea of going it alone that not even his black-eyed charm would be able to deter her.
Chapter 13
Late the next morning, I was back in Hazel Marie’s room, chatting with her. Trying to keep her spirits up, I described the break-in at Sam’s house and what a trial it was proving to be to get things back in order. She was properly dismayed at the thought of such heedless destruction, but plainly it was not a matter of immediate concern to her. Too much else on her mind, I supposed, even though I was doing my best to distract her by listing off the problems that other people were facing.
And one of those problems was having everybody in town knowing about the break-in and having to fend off the resulting phone calls. Wouldn’t you know that the
Abbotsville Times
ran it on the front page? LAW YER’S HOME VANDALIZED the heading read above two paragraphs and continued on the back page. The article said no more than we already knew, namely that the sheriff had no suspects and the investigation was ongoing. The whole thing vexed me because that house was no longer Sam’s
home
. Since he now lived with me, it was his
former
home and now only his
house
. I wished they’d get the particulars right.
But hearing Sam come in downstairs, I hurriedly went down to join him.
“Sam?” I said, meeting him in the hall. “You’re home early. Have you finished?”
“I think I have,” he said, wiping his hand across his face. He looked more tired and dispirited than I’d ever seen him. “It’s no use, Julia, more than papers are missing. I had five cassettes of interviews that weren’t transcribed, and they aren’t there. I doubt I can replace them. Now that this has happened, people will have second thoughts about talking to me.”
“Oh, Sam, surely not.”
“ ’Fraid so,” he said with a shake of his head. “I called one woman this morning and she hung up on me. And remember Rafe Feldman? I interviewed him a while back, but his mind is completely gone now. And even worse,” he said, slumping into a chair, looking beaten, “I just spent an hour or so at the courthouse and the records I needed to replace what’s missing are gone, too.”
I stood over him, unable to take in what I was hearing. “You mean, somebody has taken them from the public domain? That’s not legal, is it?”
“Hardly,” he said with a rueful smile. “Somebody has been awfully busy wiping out what it took me so long to put together.” He leaned over, resting his arms on his knees. “Actually, it’d be hard to walk out of there with an armload of files, so chances are they’re still there, just misfiled. But Lord, it’d take forever to find them. I mean, we’re talking records from a period of over ten years, Julia, and they were filed some forty years ago.”
“Can’t you find them on a computer somewhere? I thought that was where everything was these days.”
He shook his head. “No, they haven’t got that far back yet. Everything current is computerized, but it’s taking years for the clerks to enter the back records.”
“Maybe you can do without them. I expect you remember most of whatever was in the records.”
Sam smiled at me. “I need the documentation, honey. I can’t just write what I think, or even know, without backing it up with citations of case numbers, dates, and so on. It’s looking more and more like I’ll have to give it up.”
“Oh, no, Sam, you can’t do that. You’ve put too much time and effort into it. And, listen, this theft is proof positive that what you’re doing has value. Why else would anybody want to keep you from doing it?” I stopped and sat down beside him. Taking his arm, I went on. “Two things, Sam. One, figure out who wouldn’t want you to write whatever you were writing and that’s your thief. And, two, you really do need Mr. Pickens.”
“Well,” he said with a pleased smile, “that’s what I came to tell you. Pickens is on his way.”
I flopped back against the sofa, relief flooding my soul. “Well, thank the Lord.” My relief didn’t last long, for I sat up with a jerk. “You didn’t tell him about Hazel Marie, did you?”
Sam shook his head. “No, I made him a business proposition and he took it. He’s going to stay at my house while he looks into the case.”
“Oh, but that’s perfect, Sam. Lloyd will be in and out over there, so he’ll certainly see him. Then
he
can tell his mother, and you know he’ll tell Mr. Pickens that she’s been sick. So they’ll both get to know about the other. And that way, you and I won’t have a thing to do with it. There’s no way she can be upset with us. Well, with me, since I’m the one who did the promising.
“Now,” I went on, doing a little distance gazing myself, “we’ll have to think of some way to get them together. I’ve never known Hazel Marie to be so adamant about anything, but she insists that she’s through with him. I mean, ordinarily she’s as pliable as she can be, always willing and eager to please.” I thought about how Hazel Marie had expressed such a sudden and unusual antipathy toward Mr. Pickens. So unlike her normal self. “You know what I think it is? I think it’s all those hormones that women in her condition have to deal with. You may not know this, Sam, but a lot of women are just completely turned off of their husbands the whole time they’re expecting.”
Sam’s eyebrows went up, but I couldn’t read the expression on his face. “Is that right?”
“Yes, but the thing is, as soon as the baby comes, why, the mother’s attitude changes right back to the way it was before.”
“I guess that’s why they generally have more than one baby.”
“Oh, I think you’re right about that. But what I’m getting at is that Hazel Marie may be one of those women, and if we let her run Mr. Pickens off for good while she’s this way, why, she’ll regret it in nine months. Eight months, I mean, or is it seven? I better find out how long we have.”
Sam nodded. “Shall we tell Lloyd that Pickens is coming?”
I had to think for a minute, then I said, “I think not. At least, not right away. Let’s let Mr. Pickens get here, get settled at your house, and firmly involved in the case. Then we can tell Lloyd, or just let him discover Mr. Pickens’s presence on his own. Because you know he’ll run tell his mother as soon as he knows. I don’t want to take the chance on her getting all upset before he even gets here. She might get it in her head to pack up and go off somewhere, or, who knows, she could get so perturbed that the baby would be endangered or marked in some way. You see, Sam, women in her condition have to be sheltered from any kind of distress or strong emotional upheaval.”
I knew, since Sam and his first wife had had no children, that he was unfamiliar with how to deal with expectant mothers, so I felt it necessary to enlighten him. Of course, I had had no personal experience with such matters myself, but that didn’t preclude my having heard them discussed at innumerable parties and meetings and in general discussions wherever women gathered together. After all, it didn’t take actually having a baby to know all one needed to know. Just look at all the male obstetricians.
“So,” I went on, “when is Mr. Pickens supposed to get here?”
“Tomorrow night. He has to wrap up a couple of things he’s been working on in Charlotte, then he’ll be on his way.”
I thought for a few minutes. “Shall we ask him to dinner? You know he’ll expect it, since he’s never been in this town without Lillian feeding him something.”
“No, he’ll be late getting in. But we, or rather, you will have to decide about the following night. Are you going to just spring him on Hazel Marie or will you warn her beforehand?” Sam cocked an eyebrow at me. “Either way, she’s going to have a fairly strong emotional upheaval.”