Beach Plum Island (15 page)

“Not anywhere close to here. My sister Marie, she was broken in half by the whole scandal,” Finley said. “She was convinced that having a bastard child was the biggest sin there was, short of murder, and sometimes she acted like even that might not be as bad. She kept up the lie about there being no baby and sent Suzanne away.”

“Where?” Ava asked.

“To a Catholic home for unwed mothers over in Bangor.” Finley sighed. “Not a nice part of Bangor, either. Marie and I drove your poor mother over there at night, making her lie down on the floor so nobody could see she was pregnant. Suzanne had dropped out of school by then to keep people from talking, saying she was ill, but of course there was some talk.”

They left her in Bangor, Finley went on, her voice a determined rasp, expecting Suzanne to deliver the baby and give it up for adoption, then come home and return to school like nothing had happened. She’d get on with her life and go to college, knowing she’d done the right thing for her family and for the baby, too.

“Your mother wasn’t supposed to see the baby after she delivered,” Finley said. “That’s the thing that went all wrong: one of the nurses brought the child to her. Suzanne told me later that it was like he knew her already. The baby stopped crying right away when she held him. He turned his head to nuzzle her breast, and that did it.”

“What do you mean?” Elaine asked. “Did what?”

“Sealed the deal. Suzanne told me later that she couldn’t even imagine giving her little boy away once she’d held him in her arms, so she came home with him instead of going back to the nuns and signing him over.” Finley shook her head. “I couldn’t believe it when your grandmother called to tell me she was back in her father’s house with that baby. Then again, what else could the poor girl do? She had no money, no place to go. The rest of the family was all in Canada. Your father had no idea where she was, or even that she was pregnant. Her parents had made her break up with him and wouldn’t let her talk to him, even though he camped out in his car in front of their house until the police chief had to chase him off.”

Marie wanted Suzanne back in school and convinced her the best thing would be to have Finley care for the child. Finley lived half an hour away, in another small town entirely; bringing up the baby there would keep him in the family while preserving Suzanne’s reputation. She had given Finley money every month so she could quit her job at the paper mill and stay home. Marie, Finley, and Suzanne didn’t tell anyone where the baby was, not even Suzanne’s father, and certainly not Bob, who might have made trouble.

“The baby was tiny, born a month early, and he had problems right from the start. Cried like somebody was sticking him with pins. Colic, I suppose. Later of course we realized he was blind as a mole,” Finley said. “Even so, he walked early and was always trying to climb things, feeling his way around this house. I was sure he’d kill himself. I was all alone, and he was too much! I tried my best. I did! But I ended up giving him away, too.” She doubled over in the recliner, her head nearly pressed to her knees.

“I’ll make some tea,” Ava said, and sprang to her feet.

Stunned, Elaine could only stare at Finley as she rocked and rocked with her chubby arms wrapped tight around her knees, looking like an abandoned child herself.

•   •   •

Her aunt’s kitchen was even filthier than the living room. Those crusted dishes in the sink had probably been there for weeks, and the floor was so sticky that Ava’s sandals adhered to the linoleum. For one awful, absurd moment, she remembered Mark putting sticky paper down for mice in their house, and how she’d found a frantic mouse trapped on it, its poor little foot nearly torn off after a night of trying to chew itself free.

Ava rummaged through the dusty cupboards for tea bags. She found an old stash in a plastic bag, probably filched from a restaurant, and set a saucepan of water on the stove. While she waited for it to boil, she went deeper into the house to find the bathroom, desperate to pee.

It was here, at the end of the long dim hallway, that the memory came rushing back. Definitely a memory now and not a dream: She had walked down this hallway and reached up to open the door to the farthest room on the right. The child had come shooting out of the room, clawing at her and making weird high-pitched squeaks, babbling a few words.

What had he said to her? The words came back now, like gravel flung at her face: “You home now, I come out!” Then, after clutching her neck and feeling her face, the boy had sprung back as if burned and then, absurdly, he’d laughed. “Who you?” he’d cried. “Who you?”

Ava remembered now how terrified she’d been, hearing the other child’s manic, panicky giggling, a sound that occasionally repeated itself in her dreams. She’d been sure the boy was laughing at
her
.

She hesitated, hand raised, then pushed open the same door. She flinched as the door creaked and then yawned open.

Ava felt around inside the room for a light switch, found it, and flicked it up. The ceiling light was an old fixture, probably original to the house, a pink glass ball etched with flowers. The bell of it was speckled black with dead insects. The room was empty but for a small white dresser and a single bed with a surprisingly elegant maple frame, the top of the headboard carved with flowers and fruit. The bed was covered with a striped Hudson’s Bay wool blanket, white with orange and blue stripes. A one-eyed stuffed dog sat on the pillow. Otherwise, the room was free of clutter; not a single toy or magazine marred the bare hardwood floor. It smelled musty in here, as if the room had been closed up for a long time.

When would she have opened this door and found her brother? She was around three, so that must have been forty years ago. Peter would have been four and a half.

She shut off the light, closed the door again, and shuddered as she spotted a hook on the outside of it and an eye screwed into the frame. Finley must have kept Peter locked inside this room whenever she needed a rest or couldn’t control him, figuring at least that way he’d be safe.

What was wrong with him? Why had he been born blind, and what other disabilities did he suffer?

Was he scared or delighted that night, when the bedroom door had suddenly, unexpectedly opened? Had he been kept in this room, a shameful secret stowed away, for hours at a time? That seemed likely, especially since he was too young, still, for school.

If that were the case, Peter never would have met someone his own size. What other child would he have seen? Yet he would have recognized her as a child. Children always knew other children. She’d seen that in her own boys, delighted by the sight of their own kind even as babies and toddlers. No wonder Peter had grabbed her and started babbling, trying to touch her face and hair. He must have been so shocked when she wasn’t Finley, but someone who felt entirely different—someone who felt a lot like
him
. No wonder his reaction had been hysteria.

And then her mother must have heard the commotion and come running down the hall to quickly push him back into the bedroom and lock the door, dragging Ava away.

“But who is that?” Ava had asked, over and over. “Who is that boy, Mommy?”

Ava remembered this as clearly as if it had happened last week: she could see her brother running toward her in striped pajamas, his dark hair rumpled, his mouth round, issuing sharp cries like a jungle bird.

Now she opened the door to the bedroom again, stepped quickly across the room, and, with her heart pounding, picked up the little stuffed dog and tucked it into the pocket of her shorts. Then she closed the bedroom door and found the bathroom across the hall.

Ava peed standing up over the filthy toilet and returned to the kitchen as the saucepan threatened to boil over. She made the tea and added two generous spoonfuls of sugar, then carried the chipped white mug out to her great-aunt.

Gigi and Elaine were still seated on the couch, the two of them looking as frozen as if they were having their portrait painted. Nobody was talking. Finley was bent at the waist, face in her hands.

“Here you go.” Ava knelt in front of Finley again. “Drink this. We’ve given you a shock, showing up here with our questions. You need something hot and sweet.”

To her relief, Finley sat up and took the mug, cradling it between her hands. “I couldn’t do it,” she repeated. “You understand, don’t you?” She was pleading with Ava now, ignoring the others. “You have two sons. You know what trouble they are! I was all on my own and Peter was too much. Never gave me a moment’s peace.”

Ava thought of responsible, bossy Sam and sweet, timid Evan, saying a silent prayer of thanks for them both. “I’m sure it was very hard on you.”

She did feel sorry for Finley. Without having married or had children of her own, this poor woman, with her anxious, reclusive nature, would have had a hard time raising any child. She’d taken the baby because that’s what families did for each other.

Her great-aunt sipped the tea and made a face. Ava didn’t know if this was because of the heat on her tongue or the memories. “Her mother helped her make a list, you know. When Suzanne was pregnant. They wrote the things she could give her baby on one side of the paper, and on the other side the things a real family could give him. You know what was on her side of the list? Nothing. Not a home or a wedding ring, even. On the other side were all the things two loving parents could give the baby. That’s how Marie finally convinced Suzanne that she should give the baby up for adoption. I have to believe my sister did this not to spare herself any shame, but out of the goodness of her heart.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Ava said.

Finley shook her head. “I don’t know about that now. Your mother didn’t want to give him up. But she agreed to let me raise him.”

“He was blind?” Elaine said. “You know that for sure?”

“Yes,” Finley said. “A blind child compensates, feels his way through life if his sight is gone. Quite capably, really. But other things must have been wrong with him, too. I don’t know what. All I know is that boy was so jumpy and nervous all the time, it was like he was trying to crawl out of his own skin. I did well enough until Peter started walking, but then I had to lock him up for his own good.” Her aunt’s eyes flicked toward the hall, and Ava knew she was thinking about that room at the end of it.

“Did Mom ever come to see him here?” Ava asked. She had to know if her memory was real.

Finley nodded. “Just the one time. You were with her, though you were just little yourself, so I’m sure you don’t remember.” Finley studied the floor. For the first time, Ava was aware of the cigarette ash around her chair, like a light snowfall. “I’d called Suzanne to say Peter was too much for me to manage anymore. Your mother drove up here to talk to me about taking Peter back, now that your father was making good money and they’d bought a house. She brought you along with her. She’d just found out she was pregnant again and told me she always felt wrong, giving up her first baby. I think she wanted to introduce you to Peter and reassure herself that she’d be able to finally tell your father about him, too. Instead her visit had the opposite effect. She knew at once she wouldn’t be able to handle a defective child any better than I could, especially tired as she was. After that visit, your mom signed the adoption papers.”

Of course she did, Ava realized: seeing her abandoned firstborn son with Ava must have shocked her mother into realizing that she couldn’t let her two worlds collide ever again, or she might shatter. Which was what had happened, finally, in the end.

“She thought of him as
defective
?” Gigi was saying now.

“Well, in those days, that’s what people thought handicapped babies were.” Finley set the teacup down and rubbed her gnarled hands together. “We didn’t have the special programs and schools they have everywhere now. A baby like that didn’t usually live at home. Too difficult for everybody to cope. Doctors urged mothers to give their mistakes away.”

“A mistake?” This time it was Elaine speaking, but she sounded as shocked as Gigi.

Ava glanced at Elaine and saw that her face, always pale, had gone white. Her sister’s blouse looked limp and dirty, clinging to her skinny frame. Ava felt a pang of sympathy for her. It couldn’t be easy for Elaine to return to Finley’s house. She knew Elaine still blamed herself for Mom dying in the apartment upstairs.

“Well, he was.” Finley had gathered strength from the tea; now she shook another cigarette out of the package and lit it. “I’m not talking about God’s mistake. I’m not a religious woman. The hypocrisy of the Catholic Church is something I can no longer abide. No, I’m talking about how that little boy was a mistake because he should never have been born. At least not to your mother. Suzanne was a fragile little thing. The pregnancy and birth, the shame on top of that, well, that took about all the strength she had in her. Then your father leaving her finished her off.”

“What happened after you gave him up, Auntie?” Ava asked, hearing Elaine suck air between her teeth in distress.

“I couldn’t believe there was any family on God’s green earth who’d want that child with all his problems,” Finley said, drawing smoke. “My hope was that at least they’d find a foster home for him and get him into some kind of program to teach the boy how to look after himself.”

“Mom must have been sick about letting him go,” Elaine said.

“I’d say she was more resigned about the whole thing. Suzanne understood what had to be done. Frankly, I think it had been hard on her, knowing her child was living with me. Everything you did, Ava, every milestone—standing up, walking, talking, starting school—reminded her of the boy she gave away. In the end, she thought giving Peter up might let her focus more on the family she had and forget about whatever mistakes she’d made as a girl. But the past always catches up with you, doesn’t it?” Finley was tiring, her hands trembling in her lap, her voice barely above a whisper now.

Ava stood up. “Can you show us any pictures of him before we go, Auntie?”

Finley nodded. “In that top drawer underneath the TV there’s a photograph. He was mine for a little while, wasn’t he? I still pray for that child.” Her voice quavered. “I did the best I could by him.”