Charlie reached over to cup a hand over hers. ‘Do you want to wait here while I ring the bell?’
Mary glanced again at Noelle, feeling her throat tighten. ‘No, I’ll come with you.’ Mama would have to be a monster to turn away her own grandchild, sick as she was.
As she made her way up the front walk, the baby in her arms and Charlie’s arm firmly anchored about her waist, Mary forced herself to hold her head high.
I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Noelle,
she told herself.
I’m not asking for anything for myself.
Nonetheless, as she waited on the porch, Mary’s heart was pounding so hard she was certain it could be heard through the heavy oak door just as surely as
she
could hear the faint, measured tread of her mother’s footsteps.
The door swung open. Mama stared at them in blank astonishment, as though she’d been interrupted in the midst of housework or preparing dinner. She wore an apron over slacks and a pink cardigan. Squiggles of hair the color of faded ginger strayed from the combs over her temples. Though still on the heavy side, she looked as though she’d lost weight recently. The flesh had begun to slide away from her square jaw and the knobs of her cheekbones. Her blue eyes squinted against the bright winter sunlight, as if it had been some time since she’d set foot outdoors.
No one spoke in those first few seconds. There was only their breath punctuating the frosty air, coupled with the hollow plink-plink-plink of icicles melting from the eaves. Then Mama brought a hand to the jutting prow of her bosom, exclaiming, ‘Good Lord, Mary Catherine. What in heaven’s name happened to you?’
Mary, who in thirty-six hours of labor had not once, through sheer force of determination, cried out for her mother, opened her mouth now to say that a woman who hadn’t turned her back on her own daughter would know such a thing without having to be told. But before she could get a single word out, she burst into tears.
She felt Charlie’s arm tighten about her waist. ‘The baby’s sick,’ he said. There was urgency in his voice but not a hint of pleading. He stood tall, looking her mother squarely in the eye. Mary had never felt more proud of him than she did at that moment.
Mama’s eyes dropped to the tuft of hair peeking over the top of the afghan. Though her broad face remained impassive, she seemed to wrestle with some inner conflict.
Then her mouth settled into its familiar line of disapproval—like a thin red line penciled in where a smile ought to have been—and she briskly stepped aside to let them in.
‘I don’t know what you could have been thinking, bringing a baby out in weather like this. You should have called.’ She berated them. ‘Here, give her to me. Why, she’s burning up!’
Mary felt herself go limp, as if the bundle scooped from her arms were the only thing that had been keeping her from falling apart. As she trudged up the stairs after her mother, she felt the house wrap about her like a warm, comforting embrace. Even its familiar smells brought memories so vivid she could almost touch them: strips of bacon in neat rows on grease-soaked paper towels, line-dried sheets so crisp they crackled, deep drawers fragrant with the scent of dried lavender.
In her old room at the top of the stairs, which she saw with an almost visceral wave of relief was exactly as she’d left it, she watched her mother gently lower the fever-drowsy baby onto the bed. Mary hung back uncertainly, as if it had been her mother who’d been in command all along and were merely assuming her correct role. She watched Mama move about, brisk and knowing, in her sensible shoes and checked apron with its rickrack-trimmed pockets for stowing loose change and buttons and candy wrappers retrieved from between sofa cushions and under beds.
Mama peeled away layers of blanket and clothing until the baby lay naked atop the quilted pink spread. Noelle was wide-awake now, arms flailing, her face screwed into a small red fist of outrage. Mary instinctively moved forward, arms extended. But her mother, as usual, was one step ahead of her. Mama placed a hand squarely over Noelle’s chest, and the baby at once grew still, seeming to sense that someone competent, someone who knew what she was doing even though it might be a little uncomfortable, had at last seized the wheel of this runaway bus. Noelle fixed her bright gaze on the stranger poised above her.
‘Mary Catherine, run to the kitchen for some ice,’ Mama ordered. ‘We’ve got to get this fever down.’ She bustled into the adjoining bathroom and reappeared a moment later with towels, a washcloth, the plastic basin used for hand washing what she called the unmentionables.
Mary did as she was told. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to question her mother’s judgment in a matter such as this. In the kitchen downstairs her only thought as she filled a Tupperware container with ice was that
she
should have known what to do. What if Noelle had died because of her?
Faint with terror, she stared at the plate rail above the yellow Formica table, along which her mother’s souvenir plates were lined up like shiny buttons on a sleeve. It was a moment before she could breathe normally again.
In the weeks to come, when she looked back on this day, Mary would see it as clearly as she saw the avocado pit propped with toothpicks in a jelly jar on the sill, the seed that had taken root in her that moment, fed by guilt and shame and simple exhaustion. Deep down she must have known, as she climbed the stairs to her room, that she was home to stay.
Charlie must have sensed it, too. She could feel his anxious gaze tracking her as she carried the ice over to the bed, as obediently as she’d once marched to the altar at St Vincent’s to receive her first communion.
Mary didn’t dare look at him. She kept her eyes fixed on the baby instead. Watching Mama smooth a washcloth dipped in ice water over Noelle’s tiny, feverish body, she flinched as if
she
were being assaulted. She could recall in precise detail her mother’s hand against her own hot forehead as she lay in bed, home sick from school. The boiled egg and buttered toast cut in triangles brought to her on a tray. The sunlight slanting in through the lowered Venetian blinds.
Her mother hadn’t always been this way. Mary remembered when Daddy used to sneak up behind Mama in the kitchen and whisk her away from the sink while humming some old song they used to dance to. She would pretend to be annoyed, swatting him with a soapy hand and crying, ‘Ted, for heaven’s sake!’ But then she’d start to giggle and before long they’d be waltzing about the kitchen as if it were the Star-lite ballroom.
Mary remembered, too, the day her parents found out she was pregnant. They’d all gone to noon mass at St Vincent’s. She hadn’t eaten since the night before, and just after the blessings on the Eucharist, as she was sticking her tongue out to take the host, she fainted. When she came to, stretched out on the cool tiles of the vestry, Mama had insisted on taking her straight to the doctor. Mary, knowing full well what the matter was, buried her face in the folds of her mother’s best Sunday dress—one Mama had sewed herself, navy piqué with white piping, crisp against Mary’s cheek and smelling of lily of the valley—and wept. Christ might forgive her sins, she knew. In time even Daddy would come around. But as far as Mama was concerned, she’d be as good as dead.
It was Daddy who’d signed the consent form so that she and Charlie could be married. And her little sister, Trish, who’d helped her pack up her things, silently and with swollen red eyes. Mary hadn’t seen or heard from her mother since the day she moved out, five months pregnant with fifty dollars in her pocket.
Now, as she stood on the threshold of her old life, looking down at her baby, pink and glistening like when she’d first entered this world, it was as if she herself had emerged naked and gleaming from some dark, submerged place.
Even the way Mama took Noelle’s temperature, shaking the thermometer with an efficient snap of her wrist, was reassuring. When she held it up so they could see—down three whole degrees!—even Charlie breathed an audible sigh of relief.
Mary allowed herself to look at him then. Charlie was still wearing his Black Watch hunting jacket. Standing to one side of the door, he stuck out like a sore thumb against the faded wallpaper patterned in nosegays: a weary traveler who’d stopped to rest a spell before moving on.
His vivid creek water eyes seemed to beseech her. And despite all they’d been through, she felt the pull of something sweet and free and innocent. She thought of warm summer nights when they used to drive out to the lake. Once Charlie had clambered up onto the roof of his father’s Impala, pulling her with him. Stretched out side by side, they’d gazed up at the stars while Mary pointed out the constellations. She’d been a virgin then, and he’d whispered in her ear that when the time came, he didn’t want it to be in the backseat of a car. She deserved better.
The first time had been in this very room, on the very bed where their daughter now lay. One Sunday morning Mary had begged off church, feigning a headache, and Charlie had sneaked up to her room after everyone left. As she remembered how sweet it had been, not at all painful, but lovely and pure as a baptism, she felt a thread of longing pull tight inside her, one that was tugging her in his direction.
‘One thing’s for sure, you’re not taking her back out into the cold. You can do what you like, Mary Catherine, but this baby stays put.’ Mama’s voice behind her was crisp and firm. Mary didn’t have to turn around to know that her lips were tight and arms crossed over her chest.
The invitation, however veiled, was clear: Mary and the baby were welcome to stay. But not Charlie.
He stepped forward at once, his eyes flashing, his voice carefully controlled. ‘Thank you, Mrs Quinn. I appreciate everything you’ve done, and if you think Noelle should stay a little while longer, I have no argument with that. But she has a nice warm crib waiting for her back at our place. She’ll be just fine.’
Mama didn’t reply. She didn’t even look at him. She looked at Mary instead, as if to say,
You did wrong, but you’re still my daughter. It’s not too late to make things right.
Mary wrapped the baby in the towel and picked her up off the bed. It was exactly six steps to the doorway where Charlie stood eyeing her expectantly; she’d counted it once, walking heel to toe. Six steps between her and freedom. The trouble was, she was no longer sure in which direction freedom lay.
Once she’d believed it was with Charlie. But that was before the harsh reality of caring for a baby had sunk home. Before she’d known what it was like to be poor. Before she’d been forced to drop out of school. Before …
Corinne killed herself.
With her eyes, she implored Charlie to understand. Why did this have to be so hard? She loved him, God knew she loved him. But it wasn’t enough somehow. For that was the hidden truth, the trick snake springing from the can of fake peanuts, in all those sappy novels she used to soak up, and the movies where the lovers’ embrace fades to black before disillusionment sets in: Love doesn’t pay the rent. It doesn’t keep the wind from whistling through the cracks in the walls or stop the bills from piling up in the mailbox.
‘How’s Daddy?’ she asked, desperate to forestall the terrible choice ahead of her.
‘He has his good days and his bad days.’ Mama shrugged and bent over to smooth the bedspread. In that instant Mary caught a flicker of something as deep and strong as the love she felt for Charlie. She saw fear, too: Daddy wasn’t doing as well as Mama would like everyone to believe.
‘Mary …’ Charlie flashed her a stern look.
‘What about Trish? Did she pass that algebra test she was so afraid of flunking?’ Mary closed her eyes, blocking him from view.
‘A C minus beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I suppose.’ Mama didn’t ask how she’d known about the test. And Mary didn’t tell her about the furtive conversations with Trish, who used her baby-sitting money to call from pay phones.
Tears leaked out from under Mary’s closed eyelids.
‘Mama? Did you know Corinne Lundquist killed herself? It happened last night. I just found out.’
She heard her mother gasp. ‘Corinne? Good Lord. Why on earth would she want to go and do a thing like that?’
It took a lot to knock Doris Quinn for a loop, but that did it. Mary opened her eyes to find her mother standing stock-still in front of her, feet planted slightly apart as if squared against an oncoming blow.
‘I wish I knew,’ Mary said. But in a way she did. She knew perfectly well how a girl of seventeen could run out of hope, how she could feel desperate enough to …
‘Mary. Are you coming with me or not?’ Charlie spoke sharply, but his eyes pleaded with her.
For a long minute she didn’t speak. Even Noelle was quiet for a change. Mary could only sit there, shaking her head while tears ran down her face, knowing that whichever way she turned, there would be no going back.
In the end it was her father who pushed her into a decision. From the bedroom across the hall she heard him call weakly, ‘Mary Catherine, is that you?’
Mary turned a tearful gaze up at her husband. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie.’ There was no need to say more. No need for explanations or white lies about how long she intended to stay. Whatever was written in her face she saw mirrored in all its terrible anguish on Charlie’s.
He wouldn’t beg, she knew. He had too much pride. He stared at her in silence, his throat working. When he finally spoke, he sounded on the verge of tears. ‘I’ll call you in a day or two, okay? We’ll talk then.’
She nodded. But they both knew that every day she remained under this roof would be another nail in the coffin of the life they’d foolishly imagined they could build together.
Even so, listening to his heavy tread on the stairs, she wanted to run after him, reassure him that she’d be back—in a day or two, as soon as the baby was well enough. As soon as she herself was rested (at the moment Mary felt as though she could have slept straight through into next year). And she
would
have gone after him, yes, despite everything, if she’d known then what was in store: that she would spend the next thirty years, nearly twice as long as her entire life until now, running after Charlie in her mind, endlessly running down those stairs without reaching bottom, forever chasing the dream of what their life might have been.