Where Nobody Dies (37 page)

“Is something wrong?” Marla and I both asked approximately the same question at exactly the same time.

“I don't know,” Lisa replied. “But Doc looked serious when he came in, and you know how he is. Always smiling. Like Santa Claus,” she added, a smile creeping over her plump face.

“Jesus” was all Marla said, but she slammed the car door hard and walked quickly, the heels of her shoes making little holes in the grass as she took the straightest path to the door, disregarding the curved flagstone path. I followed, wrapping my jacket around me and wondering how Lisa could stand being outside without a coat.

Inside, the place was homey, but institutional. Everything had been done to make it seem as though a family lived here—afghans over the rocking chairs, souvenir plates mounted on the wall, a colorful rag rug—but with a touch of impersonality. Like a Shelter Island summer house, with transient group renters season after season.

A middle-aged woman I took to be Mrs. Bonaventura came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. She extended a still-damp palm and motioned for me to sit. I chose a rocking chair; she sat on the edge of an uncomfortable-looking sofa. She didn't bother urging Marla to sit; anyone with half an eye could see my colleague was bent on pacing and smoking until she'd seen the doctor.

“This is a nice place,” I said lamely.

Mrs. Bonaventura smiled as though I'd called the home a palace. “We do what we can,” she said. She was about five feet tall, with dark hair pulled back into a bun. Her accent could have been Spanish, Italian, Greek—Persian, for that matter—indefinably not American.

This was a deeply meaningful conversation, but it wasn't getting me closer to my client. But then I wasn't sure I was ready for another girl with a high school face and a mother's belly, especially one being seen by a doctor who might pronounce the product unfit for sale.

Jesus, stop thinking like that
. I spoke to myself pretty sharply. I did not want to start talking like Marla, wearing armor clothes, peroxiding my hair. Smoking.

My colleague stubbed her cigarette into a cut-glass ashtray, the kind you see at stoop sales for fifty cents because nobody smokes anymore. Two hard twists of the wrist and the butt stopped smoking, ground into the glass by Marla's efficient hand. She reached into her Coach bag and pulled out a badly folded legal paper. She handed it to me with a casual air that was supposed to mean she'd almost forgotten this little detail. But I'd known Marla a long time, and something about the move seemed calculated. I went on the alert.

“What's that?” I said brightly.

“Oh, nothing much. I like to get a consent to adoption before the birth, then firm it up once the baby's delivered. Mrs. B. here is a notary, so—”

“How convenient.” I fixed Marla with a stare I hoped conveyed amused tolerance for her naive attempt at manipulation. “I
can
read, you know,” I pointed out. “I may have started this case not knowing much about adoptions, but there's this really handy reference book. Maybe you know it—it's called the Domestic Relations Law, and it contains everything you ever wanted to know about New York adoptions. Including,” I finished, letting my voice carry a touch of steel, “the fact that prebirth consents aren't worth the paper they're written on. Marla, dear,” I went on, matching her poisonous sweetness, “why are you asking me to have my client sign an unenforceable consent?”

She leveled a stare that should have had my hair falling out. “
I
know it's unenforceable,” she said, spacing out the words. “
You
know it's unenforceable. But the little dears who give up their babies don't know it's unenforceable. It's just my way of making sure they know what they're doing is for keeps. If they really want to change their minds, they'll find out soon enough the consent doesn't matter until after birth—and by that time, they'll have signed another, valid consent.”

I'd started shaking my head in the middle of her speech, but it didn't stop her making her case. Now I said it flat out: “No, Marla. I will not take that form to Amber. I will not pretend she's signing a valid consent to adoption now when I know the consent is worthless. You brought me into this case as her lawyer, and that's who I am. Amber's lawyer. Not your patsy.”

She shoved the paper back into her bag, then gave me an unexpected grin. “Hey, it was worth a try.”

Mrs. Bonaventura asked us if we wanted anything to drink. I shook my head, and Marla muttered something about a neat vodka, cold, with a twist. She didn't get it.

Next thing I knew, Santa Claus was in the room with us. A young Santa, about fifty-five, with rosy cheeks and a tiny bud mouth hidden inside a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, laughing blue eyes, and a smile that could have melted the North Pole. A well-dressed Santa in a charcoal suit cut to fit his bulk, and handmade shoes on his oddly small feet.

“I'm Dr. Scanlon,” he said, holding out a plump hand. I shook it; he squeezed a second or two longer than politeness dictated or allowed, then turned to Marla.

“She's okay,” he said. “Fetal heartbeat strong. No sign of premature labor. Just a little spotting, some high blood pressure.” He frowned and turned his attention toward the diminutive housemother. “She really should rest,” he pronounced. “I've told her to cut down on her trips to the mall until the baby's born. It would be better if she stayed off her feet altogether, but—” He raised his hands, which were tiny compared to his swollen stomach, in a gesture of futility.

Mrs. Bonaventura shook her head regretfully. “You'll never get that Amber to stay in bed for two hours, let alone a week,” she said in a dark-chocolate voice. Her prediction rang as portentously as anything said on the streets of Troy by the original Cassandra.

The mall we'd passed on the way to the group home was a huge complex of stores, anchored by Macy's, Sears, and Penney's. I had visions of a very pregnant teenager wandering through its covered, fountained vastness, clutching her distended belly and moaning in pain as she cruised the boutiques.

“Can't you order her to stay in bed?” I asked, my voice rising slightly. “After all, you're the doctor.”

As soon as the words flew out of my mouth, I blushed for my stupidity. If I'd had a dollar for everyone who thought I could do something because I was the lawyer, I wouldn't have been standing in a group home on Staten Island making a fool of myself. I gave the bulky man a rueful smile by way of apology.

“I can strongly advise bed rest,” he explained, locking eyes with me as though we were the only people in the room. His were blue and slightly bulging, pulling me into the seriousness of his words. “She's young and basically healthy,” he said. “I'd admit her to the hospital right now if I thought she was in real danger. It would be better if she stayed as immobile as possible, but I can't prevent her from going for walks.”

“I can,” Marla interrupted. “I can and I will. If anything happens to that baby because she's tramping around that mall—”

“Amber always gets to go to the mall,” dumpy little Lisa complained. “Whatever Amber wants, she gets. It's not fair.”

“Lisa, not now,” Mrs. Bonaventura said in a firm voice. She moved toward the sullen teenager, about to shepherd her out of the room, but the litany of grievances had just begun. “… her own room, her own phone line,” the girl recited as the housemother all but pushed her into the next room.

“So can we see her or what?” Marla cut in.

Dr. Scanlon raised bushy, graying eyebrows. “Of course. Just don't upset her. Anything that can wait, should wait until after she gives birth.”

I trudged up maple-banistered stairs after Marla, feeling like a sailboat caught in the wake of a liner. We passed room after room furnished with identical twin beds, matching pine dressers, and blue shag carpets. There were wall posters with huge blowups of the stars of “Beverly Hills 90210,” rap groups whose names I didn't recognize, graduation photos of pimply boys—the proud fathers.

At the far end of the hall there was a big television room with fake leather couches crammed with teenaged girls in varying stages of pregnancy. All were white.

Amber had a room all to herself. She had a double bed instead of twins, fancier furniture with carved accents instead of plain pine, a Navajo-style throw rug over a beige carpet nicer than the blue shag the other girls had, and a white phone on the bedside table, the first phone I'd seen on this floor. It was a special room, a princess room. Lisa had a point; Amber had possessions and privileges the other girls didn't share. I wondered why, then filed the question for future reference.

The room was empty—well, not exactly empty; there were enough stuffed animals to fill a window at FAO Schwarz—but there was no one in the big bed or the straight chair next to it. I took the opportunity to look around while Marla went back down the hall to look for my client.

The room was a jumble of Care Bears, Hallmark cards taped to the walls, and posters with rainbows promising better tomorrows. Yet amid the rainbow-bellied bears was a white coyote, head raised to the ceiling in mid-howl, wearing a turquoise neckcloth. On the wall adjoining a “Just for Today” poster was a blowup of the Albuquerque balloon festival. The room seemed to have been decorated by two people with totally opposite tastes. I wondered which, if either, sensibility belonged to Amber.

Next to the window hung an unusual wind chime; I walked over to inspect it more closely. In addition to the usual tubes of tuned metal, there were silver-wrapped nuggets of semiprecious stones. I recognized a lavender amethyst, a rose quartz, an aquamarine. I was fingering a lemon-yellow stone when a voice behind me said, “Ms. Jameson?”

I turned. My client stood in the doorway, holding herself upright with one hand balanced on the door frame.

First surprise: Amber was no teenager. Twenty-three at least, she sat with a composed look on her perky face, manicured hands folded over her enormous stomach. She wasn't pretty, though her long, wavy hair had the kind of shine and bounce that sells conditioners. Her skin was fresh and rosy, her eyes clear blue. She looked like fun, like a ride on a roller coaster, like fresh-spun cotton candy, like a softball game on a breezy spring day.

Second surprise: Instead of a maternity top, Amber wore an oversized T-shirt that bore a replica of the
New York Post's
most infamous headline: “HEADLESS CORPSE IN TOPLESS BAR.” The latest in designer fashion for the mother-to-be. I couldn't help smiling; this kid had a sense of humor.

“Amber?”

She lifted a hand with French-polished fingernails and held it out. “Ms. Jameson,” she said, her voice was low and sexy. She could have been the lawyer, so self-possessed was she, so firm and confident was her handshake.

“This is really interesting,” I said, gesturing at the wind chime. I let my fingers play with the dangling gems, and a bell-like sound emerged, deeper in tone than I would have expected from the miniature metal tubes.

Amber beamed. “Ellie made it for me,” she explained. “Ellie Greenspan,” she added unnecessarily. “She's been just wonderful to me.”

Amber touched a pendant at her throat with a manicured finger. “She made this, too.”

I bent closer. It was a round, polished piece of amber, clear and pure, turning sunlight to gold as Amber held it toward the warm rays. It was cocooned in silver, caressed by a sterling hand—which, on closer examination, turned out to be the slim, naked body of a woman draped over the shining stone. She lay on the smooth surface as if she were embracing a lover, trying to bury herself in his naked flesh.

“Ellie says amber brings light into the body.” The accompanying smile was both warm and secretive. “She says it's a good name for me because I'm bringing light into their lives with this baby.”

There wasn't a whole lot to say to that, so I didn't say it. Amber motioned me to a straight chair next to the bed. I sat. Marla, back from her search in the hallway, stood behind me, ready to take charge, when Amber dropped her third surprise.

“Get out,” she said, giving Marla one sharp glance. She turned toward me as though we were already alone. Marla opened her mouth to reply, then thought better of it and made an exit.

“I'll be downstairs when you're finished,” she said. Her unspoken message:
and then you'll tell me everything that went on in here
.

I gave no sign that I'd understood that message. Whatever the reason, Marla had brought me in as Amber's counsel; my client was sitting in this bed, hands folded over an enormous stomach, not waiting downstairs, pacing and smoking.

Where to start?
What's a nice girl like you doing
—

No.

Why didn't you go for an abortion, like everybody else
?

No.

How in the hell did you get mixed up with Marla if you hate her so much
?

Actually, I liked that one. It had the advantage of blunt honesty, which I thought Amber would appreciate, given her quick dispatch of my colleague. But I never got the words out of my mouth; before I could speak, Amber asked, “So what did you think of Saint Christopher?”

“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?”