Fresh Kills (4 page)

“Who?”

“Doc Scanlon.” She grinned. “Saint Christopher of the Golden Cradle. Patron saint of the unwed, the unloved, the unborn.”

The penny dropped. “That was
Chris
Scanlon? The right-to-life guy?” I made a point of avoiding television discussions of the subject, so I'd read his name without ever seeing one of his numerous television appearances.

She nodded, a conspiratorial smile on her lips. “He's a real bullshit artist. But,” she went on, “he's the one who got me this nice room and the private phone line. He told Mrs. B. I needed my privacy, since there were complications to my pregnancy.”

Now I was ready for Question Two. “If you feel that way,” I said, going back to the bullshit artist remark, “why didn't you have an abortion?”

Direct blue eyes raked me up and down, as though she could see just from looking at me that I'd marched for the right to choose.

And maybe those assessing—accusing?—eyes could see a newly graduated lawyer sitting in a waiting room at Planned Parenthood, sick to her stomach with worry, hoping against hope that what every cell in her body was telling her wasn't true after all. Maybe Amber could see that lawyer sobbing into her pillow after the procedure, thanking God it was legal. Going home, slipping into bed with a heating pad, calling in sick to work without telling anyone the nature of her illness. Telling herself it was a simple medical choice, not the end to a life-in-being.

If I'd had the child, she'd be fourteen. Old enough to sit in the television room of this house, belly swelled out to
—

“You ever have a kid?” The question startled me back to the present; maybe Amber really could read minds.

I shook my head.

“I did. Four years ago. She died.” Flat words, flat voice. Flat eyes that turned toward the window, but didn't see the rainy day beyond the glass. “She was only alive for a couple of days; I never even took her home from the hospital, but I knew I could never—” She choked on the words.

“I understand,” I whispered. I didn't. I wasn't sure I wanted to, wasn't sure I wanted to remember every year the date that could have been celebrated with another candle on a cake but was instead memorialized by unexplained pain in my lower abdomen.

“No, you don't,” Amber challenged. “And neither does that bitch Marla. She looks at me like I'm a prize cow about to give birth to a champion bull.” The words accused me of complicity with Marla; they also had me wondering where Amber came from that she referred so readily to breeding stock.

“I just want him to have a good home, that's all.” She folded her shapely hands protectively over her belly as a secret smile crossed her face. One hand left her stomach and reached for the delicate pendant, enclosing the golden stone in her slender fingers.

“Him? Did you have an amnio?” Enough of my friends had been through post-thirty-five births that I could speak Basic Pregnancy.

Amber nodded. She reached out a hand and touched the tiny wind chime that hung on a cup hook off the window frame next to the bed. The tinkling sound filled the air and mingled with her laughter. “Sure. Amnio. Ultrasound. The works. Nothing but the best for this cow.”

“Okay, you told me why you couldn't abort, but why not keep the baby?” I was playing devil's advocate here; her reasons were clearly spelled out in the social work study Marla had given me. But I didn't want to rely on Marla for the facts; I wanted to hear the story from Amber's own lips. Especially since Amber had made it clear how little she liked Marla.

Amber took a big breath and let it out through puffed cheeks. As though she were practicing her Lamaze breathing. Her hand caressed the smooth, gleaming surface of her amber pendant as she talked.

“I liked the guy. I really did. I was pleased when he asked me out. And then—” She looked down at the piece of petrified sap. Her blue eyes stared up at me, and she started over.

“They call it date rape. Like you made a date just so you could get raped. Like it wasn't really rape because he bought you dinner first. At an Indian restaurant.” A harsh little laugh. “I swear I'll never eat curry again.”

Her fist closed around the amber talisman. “It's like he was two different people. The guy who asked me out, who kidded around over dinner, who was funny and smart and let me have all the mango chutney.”

She closed her eyes. Her fingers slowly moved around the amber in a sexy, swirling motion at odds with the hard words.

“He came all over my legs. He had me pinned down on my couch, held my arms back so hard I had bruises. I was crying but I remember being grateful, thinking that at least the sperm didn't really get inside, because I was moving too much, trying to keep away from him. But it only takes one of the little fuckers, and I guess one of them made it inside me.”

The psychological double-talk of the social work report was one thing; this raw account was something else.

“I can't believe you didn't abort,” I blurted out. The minute the words left my mouth, I wanted them back. Marla had somehow alienated this girl; did she need another lawyer who sat in judgment, who refused to understand?

A single tear ran down her cheek. “If it was him inside me,” she said, “if it was a dirty fucking rapist in here, I'd flush him out so fast—” She shook her head. The tear glided away, but it left a track like a snail, visible when the light struck her face at a certain angle.

“But it's not,” she went on, voice gaining firmness. “It's a baby. An innocent baby who never hurt anybody. So why should he die because of what his father did? If there's a family out there who can give him love, let them have him. I can't. I can't keep him, because every day he was alive, I'd think about that hot dirty scum running down my legs and maybe I'd take that out on the kid even if I knew better. I can't risk that. So when I saw their ad in the paper, I decided to give my baby a good home.”

“By they you mean the Greenspans.” Marla's clients. The childless couple who were pinning all their hopes on the woman in this bed.

Amber's face lit up. “I just love Ellie,” she said. “I know she'll be a good mother to my Jimmy.”

Jimmy?

A heavy-duty alarm bell went off in my head. Marla exuded confidence that Amber wouldn't change her mind, but naming a fetus didn't seem like a good sign.

She returned my quizzical look with a shy smile. “That's what I call him. Just between me and him.” She gave her bulging tummy a proprietary pat. “I know Josh and Ellie will give him a different name, but to me he'll always be Jimmy.”

“Look, Amber,” I began, in my best lawyer-laying-down-the-law tone, “if there's any chance you might—”

“There isn't.” She said it crisply. “Don't worry about me. I know what I want, and what I want is my life back. I want to go back to school, get my degree, get a job, travel. Meet a nice guy and get married. I don't want to be tied down with a baby I can't handle. Besides,” she added, her voice softening, “I've spent a lot of time with Josh and Ellie, and I just know they're the perfect parents for my baby. I want you,” she added, “to go and see them for me.”

Fourth surprise: I hadn't counted on meeting the Greenspans until we had to appear in court. I knew the couple had spent time with Amber; she didn't need me to tell her they were okay.

Her face and voice turned suddenly shy; she looked more like a teenager than a woman of the world as she reached toward the night table, opened the drawer, and pulled out a card-sized yellow envelope. “For Josh” was written on the outside, in a fine-pointed calligraphic style.

“It's for Josh,” she said unnecessarily. A faint blush tinged her cheeks. “His birthday is tomorrow,” she added.

“It's a birthday card?” More alarm bells; something in her hesitation said she might have a crush on the father-to-be. Another complication I didn't need.

“I sent Ellie one on her birthday,” Amber replied, her blue eyes shining. “I really want Josh to have it, and even if I mail it today, it won't get there in time. And Marla told me you live in Brooklyn, so it won't be out of your way. Please take it to him. Please?”

I was about to say no when Mrs. Bonaventura, out of breath, burst through the door.

“He's here again,” she panted. “That man's here.”

“Who is he, Amber?” Marla demanded. Both women stood next to the bed, identical expressions of disapproval on their faces.

“What man?” I asked, not sure whom I was addressing.

It was Marla who answered. Her face was red, and she looked at Amber with a loathing she didn't bother to conceal. “It's your boyfriend, isn't it, Amber? The one who says he'll take care of everything, support the baby, if you change your mind about adoption.”

She didn't wait for an answer. “Honey, please. I've been down this road before, and I guarantee you he'll walk out in a year, no forwarding address. Listen to me …”

I stood up from the chair and walked toward the window. At first I saw no one, then realized I was looking at a Staten Island street with Brooklyn eyes. Looking for a pedestrian when I should have been scoping out the cars.

He was in the silver-gray job down the block. I had no idea what make it was, but it was midsized, inconspicuous. He sat at the wheel with a newspaper open in front of him, as though that would allay suspicion. He could have been a boyfriend, nice-looking, around Amber's age. He glanced at the group home more than once, lifting his eyes from the paper and then hastily pretending interest in the news. He was a lousy stalker.

“Amber, do you know him?”

“Of course she—”

“Marla, I'm talking to Amber.”

My client shook her head. “Never saw him before in my life,” she said, her tone bored.

“And that doesn't worry you,” I said, not bothering to conceal my disbelief, “being followed around by some guy you don't know?”

“He never did anything to me. Never even talked to me. Maybe,” Amber speculated, “he isn't interested in me at all. Maybe it's one of the other girls here he's after.”

Mrs. Bonaventura weighed in. “Then why did Heather say she saw you talking with him at the mall?”

“Because Heather's a stupid little twit,” Amber replied. “She didn't see a damn thing; she just wants to get attention.”

Marla stepped in front of the housemother and shook an angry finger in Amber's face. “If you have
any
intention of changing your mind about this adoption,” she said, “you'd better tell me now, understand? No birth mother has ever backed out on one of my adoptions, and you'd better not be the first. Got that?”

Amber nodded, but the flash of defiance in her blue eyes worried me. If this adoption was really the piece of cake Marla had predicted, it was beginning to crumble.

It wasn't until we were halfway back to Brooklyn, on the sweeping expanse of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge—after I'd cursed Marla out for threatening my client, after I'd read Amber my own riot act about changing her mind, after I'd agreed with Mrs. B. that the police should be called—that I realized I still clutched in my clenched hand the birthday card Amber had given me for Josh.

I got the address from Marla, who was understandably reluctant to give it. Not as reluctant as I was to meet the Greenspans. Why, I wondered, was I always agreeing to do things I didn't want to do for people I didn't particularly want to do them for?

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

The Greenspans lived in a carriage house in an alley off Hicks Street. That meant bucks. It cost a lot to live in Brooklyn Heights, even more if you wanted to set up housekeeping in a place formerly occupied by horses. A brass plaque outside informed me that the building had been erected in 1843. Another, newer brass plate told me this was the office of Joshua Greenspan, Architect.

I rang the bell. As I waited, I admired the little row, a London mews unaccountably lost in Brooklyn, the tiny buildings like playhouses. The very first hints of spring were breaking through winter's icy shell; the snow was melting into tiny rivers at the edge of the street, and the warmth of the sun could be felt through winter coats.

The door was answered by a honey-colored woman in a burnt orange caftan. Her hair, skin, eyes, even lips all had the same golden honey glow, set off by the orange fabric and the gleaming gold around her neck. This had to be the wife; no maid could have afforded that eighteen-karat collar.

“You must be Ms. Jameson,” she said, motioning me inside with a wave of her manicured hand. Her nail polish looked like melted pearls with just a glint of gold. I glanced down at my own ragged nails, way overdue for a filing, and stuffed them into the pockets of my peasant skirt.

“Mrs. Greenspan?” I let my voice rise slightly; the polite way to ask whether I could use her first name.

“Call me Ellie,” she replied with a small smile. She led me into a living room that took me to another climate, another world. I knew Southwestern decor was up-and-coming here in the East, but this looked like the real thing. A Navajo rug on the floor showed elongated dancing figures in rich rusts and browns. On the sand-colored walls were basket displays, Indian pots on shelves, and another weaving, with deep turquoise lines that contrasted against the earth tones. Outside, the bushes bore rust-red knobs not quite ready to unfold stickily into new-green leaves; inside it was autumn in Santa Fe.

I could see where the miniature Navajo rug and stuffed coyote in Amber's room had come from. But could the sensibility that favored these mementos of the Southwest have thought Care Bears were cute? Or did babies reduce even the most sophisticated to outpourings of tastelessness?

Ellie led me toward the sofa, a butter-soft palomino leather item that made me wonder whether one of the house's former occupants had been transformed into furniture. “Would you like a drink?” she asked. “Or perhaps coffee?”