The Parallel Apartments (72 page)

Yesterday morning, at home, while Livia was holding Edith in her lap, looking for evidence in the baby's rather stern face that the two of them were related, the telephone rang with the news from the FBI that the woman who'd stolen Justine's baby had been caught.

“What about the baby?” Livia said to the FBI agent, calmly; she knew the answer. Everybody did.

A moment of static, then:

“I'm sorry to report that the child has passed away.”

Outside, the storm threw ice at the windows.

“I'm sorry,” the agent repeated.

Edith began to cry. Archibold came into the room and took Edith out of Livia's lap. Livia looked down at her thighs where Edith had been lying. Her jeans were still warm. She leaned forward until she could see her sneakers. If Justine survived, these shoes would take Livia to see her daughter, and Livia would have to tell her that Edith was alive, but that Babette was dead; that Livia got to be a mother again, and Justine didn't.

“I wish it was me,” said Livia.

“Pardon?” said the FBI agent.

“What?” said Archibold.

“Are you all right?” both of them said at once.

“I don't know.”

“I must report also that the kidnapper is dead, too,” said the agent.

“Thank you.”

“We won't release anything to the press until you have notified your loved ones.”

Livia hung up. She stood. A tendril of cold wind found its way into the ill-insulated old house, chilling Livia's bare ankles and gently stirring the leaves of the old dieffenbachia in the corner before finally falling to the floor, motionless.

“Who was it?” said Archibold, but Livia didn't hear. She left the room, went through the kitchen to the back door, and walked out into the storm, coatless, sockless, alone.

The snow, a few inches deep, eddied and drifted in the buffets of wind. A great
cligk-cacagt
could be heard now and then as a tree limb conceded to the weight of its coats of ice. Livia walked down the alley, block after block, anesthetic to the cold, until she was stopped by a massive felled sycamore blocking the way. She sat in the snow.

A notion struck her hard, a swift wherret to the side of her head. She realized how cold it was, how cold
she
was. She had left her sister and her husband alone. She began to make her way back, tearing at the new notion, testing its solidity and mettle. Yes, it might work.

At home, Archibold placed Livia in a hot bath. She shivered alarmingly.

He massaged her toes and feet. Edith lay on the bathroom floor, grasping, kicking, throwing her tiny fists around.

“I didn't even know you'd left,” he said. “What happened?”

Livia told him the FBI agent's news. She also mentioned the idea that had struck her as she'd sat by the sycamore.

“That will never work,” he said, sitting back against the sink.

“I don't think there's any choice. You've heard Dr. Kraus talk about the dangers of mental trauma after serious physical trauma.”

“Justine just learned the truth about herself, her birth, her real father, and now you want to wipe all that away with a
bigger
lie?”

Archibold allowed Edith to squeeze his pinkie. How powerful this little thing was.

“The truth'll kill her, Arch.”

“Ouch, leggo!” said Archibold, pretending to draw his pinkie away from Edith, who squealed in delight. “Hey, leggo, you!”

“I can't take care of her. I have a child, but I don't want one, and Justine and Rose, who want one, have nothing. Theirs was murdered. It seems obvious to me that Edith should be theirs.”

“Yes, but why the big deception dance?”

“I know Justine will be happier if she thinks her own baby survived. She has no real connection to Edith. An obscure infant aunt.”

“She'll find out someday,” said Archibold, his voice rising. “Then she'll be devastated. She'll have been deceived again. And I can't even imagine how Edith would take that news when she grows up.”

Edith let Archibold's pinkie go and began to cry.

“Bring me the phone,” said Livia. “I'm going to call the doctor and the FBI agent. This will work.”

“One secret, many mouths.”

Archibold picked up Edith and left the bathroom. Livia, finally warm, closed her eyes and slid down till the water covered her face.

Only Dr. Kraus, Livia, Archibold, and the FBI would ever have to know.

After a full two minutes underwater, Livia realized that Archibold was not going to bring her the phone. She climbed out, put on her terry-cloth robe without drying off, and called Dr. Kraus. Livia explained her plan. She asked the doctor how hard it would be to fake a birth certificate. The doctor said she could do it.

Later, Livia told Archibold that Edith was going to become Babette. Even Rose wouldn't know. Livia would tell her Edith had been given up for adoption.

“They'll find out,” whispered Archibold, sitting by Edith's crib, watching her sleep.

Justine, covered in sweat, tried to push a lock of hair off her forehead, but it resisted. Her mother reached over to help but Justine batted her hand away. She decided she would not ask again what had happened to her baby. It was quite obvious, anyway. She didn't want to know the details. Poor Rose surely did not take this news well.

“Rose will be here soon,” said Livia.

“I don't care.”

“But I think you will.”

“What's that mean?”

“Don't you love Rose?”

Dr. Kraus came into the room. She turned off the TV. She asked Justine if she felt like eating. Justine did not feel like eating. She felt like nothing: a wet, aching zero.

Livia looked away as the doctor lifted up Justine's paper gown. The scar was surrounded on all sides by livid stretch marks. Livia's own belly was furrowed with them, reptile and angry, and when she was younger, every time she'd been with a lover who pretended to ignore them, or, worse, paid them fetishistic attention, her resentment of Justine grew that much blacker. Now, though, at the sight of her daughter's scars, a patchy scape broken up only by a violet rope of tissue, she felt no schadenfreude. Now she only wished her own scars were worse, that her own belly had been lacerated, raped by a thief's hands, and emptied of a daughter.

Dr. Kraus watched the two women. Justine lay on her bed with great propriety, as if it were a rampart over a borderless demesne she governed with an authority granted of her infirmity. Justine was in truth helpless, highly mortal, and as brittly vulnerable as a lacewing, but her essence seemed powerful. Livia, though, appeared uncomfortable, off-balance, and little; a floundering tourist in a very large country. Dr. Kraus wondered whether she was doing the right thing. She told herself yes; it was best for her patient.

Livia fidgeted. She was growing hot beneath her sweater and coat. Where the hell was Rose? She was only a day out of jail, and only freshly informed that Justine was awake, and of the existence of Babette.

Livia called Rose.

“Where are you?”

“I'm right here.”

Rose, brushed with snow, holding a well-bundled object in her arms, entered.

“Justine,” she said, “meet Babette, our daughter.”

Livia watched her lie hang in the room, a black gossamer catafalque.

XXXVI

August 2009

Babette was mad at her mother. It seemed like whenever Babette found something she loved, Mommy took it away. Babette had found a salamander under a half-buried brick in the alley, where she wasn't supposed to go. He was dark gray and decorated with yellow dots, one of which was shaped like a heart. She'd brought him inside to show her mother, but she simply took him away, saying salamanders had poisonous skin secretions.

“Then why can you hold him?” shouted Babette, glad she hadn't licked the salamander. Babette liked to taste things. Dirt, the outsides of cans, hubcaps, the wrong end of the toothbrush, her mother's hair while she was sleeping.

“I'm an adult.”

“Rose never takes my stuff away!”

Babette liked Rose more than her main mother. Maybe it was supposed to be like that. Babette did love them the same, though. Well, maybe Rose just a tiny bit more.

Her mother put Mander in a shoebox on top of the refrigerator with some lettuce and a pickle-jar lid filled with water.

Babette decided to take something of her mother's as payback. She began to go through the lower drawers of her mother's dresser. She had to drag a folding chair in from the den to get to the top one. Inside were lots of panties, a roll of dimes, a chipped arrowhead, two fifty-dollar bills, a key ring with like a thousand keys on it, and… what was this?

It was a flat-bottomed wooden egg with a doll painted on it. Babette wondered if the doll was for her, a present, even though Babette's birthday was months away.

In general, Babette didn't care for dolls. She liked nature. She was happiest when in the yard rolling doodlebugs around and breaking sticks and examining dandelions and licking trees and watching birds. Especially birds. Man and lady cardinals playing in the sycamores, bluejays as big as chickens harassing the neighborhood cats, cooing doves, and, every now and then, owls. They would sometimes take a seat at the very top of a phone pole in the alley, where they would watch the world. But Babette's favorites were the parrots. She had her own. Green, a petit Quaker parrot, wasn't really hers, but he had made his home in her mother's big giant Château Frontenac birdhouse on the pole in the backyard. Green was a collector. He would snatch pennies and barrettes and pecans and bottle caps and take them to his nest. Green hadn't been coming out as much lately. Mommy said it was because it was summer and he was hot and tired, and Rose said it was because he was on a trip to visit friends in Sweetwater.

Green and all the other wild things in the backyard were far preferable to dress-up and tennis and Binni Ballerina and Moon Sand Adventure Island and electric guitars and dune buggies and bubbles and all the other stuff she had in the house. Borrrr
ing.
Especially dolls.

But this one, the doll in the top dresser drawer, was special. For one, it was purloined. For two, Babette had dropped it when taking it out of Rose's drawer, and it had broken in half, where inside was another doll—exactly the same, except a little smaller. Babette picked it up and shook it. There was stuff inside! More dolls? She dropped it again. It didn't break, but instead rolled under the bed, right to the middle. Babette crawled under. It was nice here. She shook her new doll again. It was hard to see in the dark, but she could feel a little groove in the doll, right in the middle. It ran all the way around like a belt. Babette got her little fingernails into the groove and, with a grimacy effort, pulled it apart. Another doll!

Babette spent the next day opening doll after doll with whatever got the job done: a nail file, toenail clippers, the key to her toy cash register, a quarter, a kick down the hallway. The smaller the dolls got, the harder they were to open. Now she had nine, each of which she'd reassembled and lined up on the picnic table in the backyard.

The smallest one was no larger than a Jelly Belly. Was there another one inside? She tried everything she could think of to open it. She hit it with a hammer, but she kept missing, making little white marks on the concrete walkway. She stomped on it in her Baby Britches cowboy boots, she threw it against the house, she mashed it in the utility-room door, she dropped
Gone with the Wind
on it. She even stuck it under the car tire in the driveway, but no one seemed to need to go anywhere.

“Mommy, why don't you go to the store.”

“Why, what do you need, darling?”

“Um… some… beans.”

“You just want me to leave the house so you can get the salamander down.”

Babette had not thought of that. Maybe she could have both Mander and the littlest doll!

“I really need some beans.”

“Go play.”

Babette stomped off. She retrieved her doll from the driveway. She reintegrated the other dolls as best she could and replaced them in her mother's top drawer, keeping the little one in a black purse with a silver chain strap that Rose's friend Matt had given her. For the rest of the day Babette schemed on how to crack open the little doll.

That night, after Justine went to bed and Rose was lying under a blanket on the divan playing chess on her laptop, Babette came out of her room.

“Rose, can you help me open this?” she said, handing her other mother the tiny doll.

“Where'd you get this?” said Rose, leaning over to examine it under the lamp. Much of the paint had been worn away from Babette's labors.

“From… Green. It fell out of his nest.”

“That right.”

“Yep. There's something inside, I bet.”

“This,” said Rose, standing up, seeming as tall as the ceiling and dark
as a storm, “is your mother's. It's the smallest one. There's nothing inside. I want you to go put it back in the other dolls and go to bed.”