Bless the Child (5 page)

“I feel I need a cup of tea rather badly, just now,” Maggie said finally, needing an excuse to escape them and think this through. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’ll have Maria put the kettle on.” There was a phone in the kitchen, Maggie thought desperately. She’d call John McCarthy, the family lawyer, and ask his advice. She put the kettle on and whispered hastily to Maria, “Jenna’s married. They’ve come to take the baby.”

“
O meu Deus!
Senhora . . .” Maggie couldn’t follow the raid-fire-Portuguese, but the tone left no doubt about its intent. “You cannot permit such a sinful thing, dona Maggie. It is the work of the Devil!”

“Maria!” Maggie said sharply, the strain evident in her voice. “Let’s try to keep this rational, at least. Please.” She was dialing as she spoke.

“John, thank God, you’re there!” she breathed when the lawyer answered; he’d been a good friend over the years. “I’m afraid I need some sage advice, rather quickly. Jenna’s come back out of the blue and wants to take Cody away. She’s married to a wealthy European and they’ve got a place in Greenwich, and . . . Oh my God, John, they want to take the baby
today
. . . now! What should I do?”

“First of all you should slow down enough so I can understand what you’re telling me, Maggie. Let’s just take it from the top. Jenna’s back, and off drugs, I presume? Okay. And married. That complicates things considerably, especially if he’s rich. The law’s pretty clear on this kind of case, Maggie, the child is Jenna’s. She’s only been with you because of the mother’s incapacity, but if Jenna’s well, now . . . capable of caring for Cody . . . I’d say you’ll have to hand her over.”

Maggie’s heart sank. “Oh, John, I’m so unclear about what’s
right
here. If Jenna’s really healthy and straight, of course, she should have Cody . . . no matter how much it breaks my heart to let her go. I know
that’s
right. But they’re both strangers to her. Cody doesn’t know them from Adam’s house cat! She’s terrified. I can’t just let them walk out the door with her. How do I
know
Jenna’s straight . . .how do I
know
he’s not an axe murderer? What’s right here, John? Screw the law, I’m talking
right!
”

She heard the low whistling breath let out slowly at the other end of the phone. “If you’re asking me as a father, and one who’s observed your daughter’s conduct over the past few years, Maggie, I’d say
right
is to tell them to go fuck themselves. If you’re asking my legal counsel, I’d have to tell you, they have the law squarely on their side. Christ, Maggie, you’ve practically got to prove somebody dips a kid in boiling oil, twice a day, to get custody away from its birth mother . . . and, in the abstract, that’s a good law. In the real world . . . in this case . . . who the hell knows what right is? Certainly not lawyers, I assure you. All I can tell you is this: If she calls the police and tells them she wants Cody, you’ll have to hand the child over.”

Maggie replaced the receiver and wiped the frustrated moisture from her eyes. She saw Maria standing in the living room doorway eyeing Eric with calculation. His urbane charm did not seem to extend to household help.

“Get the child’s coat,” he snapped at the woman autocratically.
Oh God, they’re leaving!
Maria Aparecida crossed her arms in front of her mighty chest, raised a Frida Kahlo eyebrow and stood her ground awaiting a signal from her mistress.

“I implore you, Jenna,” Maggie said, facing her daughter. “Think first of Cody in this! She’s a sensitive little girl and you’re complete strangers to her. Can’t we figure out some kind of gentle transition that will give her time to get to know you both? I could bring her to you on weekends, or you could come here to visit . . . I’ll cooperate in any way that helps you learn to love each other.”

“I’m afraid you Americans coddle your children to an outrageous degree, Maggie,” Eric rebuked. “In Europe, we find that the more definitively we set rules and regulations for our young, the easier it is for them to comply. Standards of behavior, discipline . . . from what I’ve seen here, you have little regard for these thing in America.”

“But we have a great deal of regard for love and compassion,” Maggie snapped. “Perhaps the makes up for our other deficiencies.” Eric’s smile faded.

“Be that as it may, Maggie,” he persisted his voice several degrees cooler than before, “my first doctorate was in the law, and I assure you, however our attitudes may differ about child rearing, the law will see to it that Jenna and I raise Cody . . . according to our own standards. You appear to have been a perfectly acceptable substitute mother for a period of time, but that substitution is no longer required. The
real
mother exists and she wants her child. For your own sake, and Cody’s, do not attempt to stand in our way, or you will simply force us to remove her from your sphere of influence, permanently.” Eric let the threat hang so ominously Maggie bit back a sharp retort and quelled an urged to kick him in the knee. She stared at Eric, then at Jenna, but it was apparent she would get no support from the quarter. “I’ll get her ready,” she murmured hoarsely, the words rebelling. “Maria will pack her things.”

Maria muttered a stream of expletives as she packed the little suitcase. Maggie caught only the “illiterate of father and mother” and “thieving ox” parts, as she stood clutching Cody’s hand, feeling the child’s fear electrify her own.
Oh God, I can’t do this!
I can’t let them take her into
nowhere
. Can’t not share her laughter anymore, or heal her hurts. Oh Sweet Jesus, how will they know she has a scrunched-up pillow she can’t sleep without? Will they care that oatmeal makes her skin itch, or that Yehudi Cat sleeps on her bed?

“I don’t like that lady,” Cody said softly. “That man has mean eyes.” Maggie fought back tears and forced herself, for Cody’s sake, to be brave.

“Listen to me, love,” she pleaded. “You’ve got to listen to me, now! Your mommy left you with me to mind, a long, long time ago . . .” She felt her throat fill up with tears and beat them back. “She was very sick then, and she couldn’t take care of you, so she asked me to keep you here where you’d be safe and loved. And I did that because I love you with all my heart. Now she’s well again, angel, and she’s been missing you all this time, and she needs you to come home.”

“Home is here!”
Cody said emphatically; Maggie’s stomach lurched. “Yes, sweetheart, this will always be your home, but your mommy has a nice new home that she wants to share with you.”

“Can you come live there, too?”

“No, love. I have to stay here with Maria.”

“I want to stay, too!” Maggie could see the rejection cloud the child’s eyes.

“Please don’t send Cody away, Mim,” she pleaded, tears running down her cheeks. “Please don’t make me go with those bad people.
I love you!
I’ll be good!” She began to sob and Maggie shot a glance at Maria, whose stern face was already bathed in tears, and made up her mind. She’d make a fight of it if need be, but she wouldn’t let them take the child. At least not today.

Maggie held Cody close as she descended the staircase. She could feel the beating of the little girl’s heart against her own.

“Jenna, Eric . . .” she began, holding Cody tight. “Please try to understand what I’m going to say because it’s very, very important. I believe Cody
belongs
with her mother, If Jenna is able to care for her—but this isn’t the proper way to accomplish that. You must see how shockingly difficult this is for me and Cody . . . she’s never known any home but this, any family but me and Maria . . .”

“That is precisely what we’re her to remedy,” Eric cut in smoothly. “Prolonging the
good-byes
is not going to make them easier, Maggie.”

“Why must there be good-byes?” Maggie demanded, “Why can’t you just let her learn to love you, before you take her away from all that makes her secure?”

Everything that happened next occurred so fast it was just a ghastly blur. Cody wrapped her arms and legs around Maggie and began to shriek, as Jenna tired to pry her free from Maggie’s grip. Cody, terrified and defiant, hit Jenna squarely in the jaw, and Eric, who’d been waiting a chance to pounce, roughly yanked the baby away form the two women.

“No!” Maggie screamed. “Don’t do this!” But Eric was already heading out the door. “She’s only three years old. She doesn’t understand why you’re doing this!”

“She will Maggie,” he called over his shoulder, sprinting down the steps, Cody flailing pitifully in his arms.

Maggie ran after them, grappling for the child, but Eric and Jenna were too fast for her, in a screech of tires the huge car pulled away from the curb. Maggie could see Cody’s stricken face pressed against the rear window screaming soundlessly.

Feeling as if her heart had been torn from her breast, Maggie clutched the porch railing, stunned, tear-blind and heedless of the cold or the stares of passerby. She sank to the steps, put her head in her hands, and wept.

I
t had been thirty days since the Tiffany card arrived from Jenna, with an Address in Greenwich, and the admonition to stay away for a month “so Cody could adjust to her new surroundings.”

Maggie checked the directions Scotch-taped to the dashboard of her Volvo, and turned off the Merritt Parkway onto Round Hill Road, pushing the trip odometer back to 000 so she could monitor the 2.8 miles to her next turn.
Left at the stop light, left again after the church
brought her into horse country. Tiny buds were trying to force back the gray-brown barrenness of winter, with minimal success, but the cold wind had lost some of its bite. Under ordinary circumstances Maggie would have taken pleasure in the late-winter landscape and the Connecticut air. Today, only one thing mattered; Cody was somewhere around the next bend in the road. Cody, whose beloved voice she hadn’t heard in a month, would soon be in her arms again, laughing and chattering; easing the fears that had nagged her night and day since the awful moment of Jenna’s return. How tragic it was that what should have been a joyous reunion had gone so awry. There had to be way to meant the wounds.

Every child belongs with her mommy,
she’d reminded herself ten thousand times, since the horror of parting. If Jenna was well, as she seemed to be, she and Cody would love each other, and be good to each other, as God intended. And Maggie would be a grandmother, like other grannies. She would spoil the child with trips to F.A.O Schwarz and Rumpelmayer’s. They would do the zoo together, and the Museum of Natural History. She would teach her, and love her indulgently, as other grandmothers did, with none of the hardship or responsibility of parenting. Maggie recited all these perfectly sensible arguments for the umpteenth time, and didn’t feel better in the least. Caring for Cody had been more blessing that obligation; she would miss her till the day she died.

She sighed and rolled down the window, so the cold air could clear her head.
This isn’t about you Maggie,
she reminded herself. This is about Cody living happily ever after.

Just as long as she’s safe,
she said aloud to the lush countryside, in an effort to buoy her own spirits.
That’s all that matters
.

The land had changed from side-by-side great houses, to those on huge tracts of elegant real estate. Maggie checked the mileage and realized the immense iron gates straight ahead of her must be the Vannier estate. They appeared to be unlocked and unmanned.

A long winding driveway curved languidly to the right, and disappeared into mature white pines and Acer maples that forested the estate, all the way to the Sound. Maggie steered the Volvo along an endless driveway until a house loomed up ahead of her—although “house” hardly seemed an adequate description for the vast mansion that materialized around the last wooded bend. Beyond a lawn so manicured it looked like the eighteenth green at St. Andrews, a French château of the late Gothic period stood. Elaborate turrets, mansard roof, and stone balustrade balconies gave the place the specter of a fortress from another century. Some besotted robber baron’s effort at immortality, she thought. Wouldn’t you know!

Maggie parked at the center of the circular drive, shaken by the unexpected grandeur of the estate. The iron gates that preceded the eight-foot double doors at the entrance did nothing to calm her agitation.

Wonderingly, she rang the echoing chimes, then stepped inside the marble-floored foyer, and handed her coat to a uniformed servant. “Madame will receive you in the East Drawing Room,” the woman said in a librarian hush, gesturing for Maggie to follow her through one elaborate room to another and another. The ominous quiet filled her with apprehension; there were no signs of life or laughter here. Where were the child-sounds in the mausoleum? Where, the small fingerprints on the walls? A clock chimed, startling her with its intrusion, and she focused more clearly on the room she’d been brought to.

Her educated gaze caught an exquisite collection of New Guinean Cult hooks and a display of Kris knives; over the door arch, a culthouse lintel perched, and she remembered the Sepik River tribes who carved such images were cannibals. Very unusual collections for Greenwich. An assemblage of queer metal and leather artifacts in a glass case caught her attention; they looked vaguely familiar, but the only thing she could imagine them to be were thumbscrews, and that was absurd.

“Good morning, Mother,” Jenna’s voice interrupted, sounding as if she’d taken elocution lessons from Katherine Hepburn. Maggie turned to see her daughter enter the room, graceful in a tailored Ungaro. The high-heeled shoes, stockings, jewelry, were all perfectly chosen, but oddly formal for so early an hour.

“You look so . . . grown-up, Jenna,” Maggie said, confused by the image before her. “It’s hard for me to not think of you as the teenager I remember, and now . . . you’re so elegant.” She smiled and walked toward her daughter, tentatively; Jenna permitted an embrace without enthusiasm. Maggie took a deep breath and tried again.

“All these years, I always believed you’d come home someday, sweetheart, but I suppose I never imagined you’d come home so full of surprises.”

I have a wonderful life now, Mother,” Jenna responded, but Maggie heard no joy in the words.

“This is quite a house, darling. You and Eric and Cody must have to leave a trail of bread crumbs to find your way back to your room at night.”

Jenna relaxed a little. “There are fifty-some rooms here . . . I haven’t seen all of them yet. Eric’s grandfather built the place before the turn of the century, to duplicate one they own in the Loire Valley.”

“And these collections are astounding,” Maggie prompted, wondering if humor might lessen the strain. “Who’s their decorator . . . Torquemada? Not everyone collects thumbscrews, you know.”

Jenna blinked, not sure how to respond. “Eric’s grandfather and father were sportsmen who hunted all over the world, Mother. They brought back artifacts from everywhere. I’ll get Eric to take you on a tour.”

“And how is Cody coping with all this splendor?”

They turned a corner and suddenly Maggie saw Cody, sitting in a puddle of pale shaft of sunlight on the nursery floor, coloring diligently in a book.

“Sweetheart!” she called excitedly, holding our her arms for the little girl to run into.

Cody looked up; an expression of joy and relief flooded her small features, then diminished like a receding tide. The child rose and walked toward them solemnly; there was tension in every movement.

Maggie ran forward and swooped her up into loving arms. “I’ve missed you
so much
, munchkin!” she breathed into her hair, as she hugged. “I’ve thought about you every minute and missed you
all
the time! Let me look at you, angel. You must tell me every single thing that’s happened in your new life . . .”

Maggie felt the little body stiffen in her arms. The head came up sharply, as the child’s gaze was drawn to the far doorway.

A formidable black woman had entered the nursery. She was well over six feet tall and seemed taller still because of the native headdress she wore. She had an imperial mien and searing black eyes that were fixed on the child in Maggie’s arms. At her side were two massive Rottweilers, silent and menacing. Cody wriggled out of Maggie’s embrace and stood facing the woman, at sort of a quiet attention, as if awaiting orders.

“Mother, this is Ghania, Cody’s Amah,” Jenna said in a rush. “She’s from Madagascar, and she’s been with Eric’s family for years and years. As a matter of fact, she was Eric’s Amah, too. She raised him from infancy. We’re so lucky to have her for Cody.”

What age could the woman possibly be? Maggie wondered automatically. If she raised Eric, who must be forty . . . Ghania looked ageless as a North Atlantic cliff. And just about as tractable.

“How do you do, Ghania?” Maggie asked politely, but she thought with distress,
Oh my poor, dear baby, what will become of you in that woman’s care?

“I give you greetings, Madame,” Ghania answered, her voice resonantly flavored by the Malagasy French of her island home.

“I’ve missed my granddaughter so very much,” Maggie said. “Has she been well?” What on earth was there to say to such a creature?

“She has. Had she not been. I would have restored her.”

“Like a Queen Anne chair?” Maggie responded, annoyed. But the Amah had no sense of humor, she made a gesture and Cody walked obediently to her side, a dog trained to hand signals.
This is not Mary Poppins
, Maggie thought with a sinking heart.

The child turned, hesitantly. Without waiting for permission, Maggie crossed the room and picked her up, before Ghania could intervene. “Let’s go play outside for a while, my love,” she said.

“The child should rest now” the Amah interjected.

“The child should play with her grandmother,” Maggie answered sweetly, heading for the door. She was relieved to see that her daughter followed.

Maggie tried a dozen ways to get through to Jenna on some human level, as the day progressed, but all doors and windows of the heart seemed closed. The façade was so beautiful, but who was home inside?
What did life consist of here?
Maggie asked
. Did she have a therapist or counselor to help her stay straight? What did Jenna do all day? Did she see her old friends?
Maggie asked the questions and Jenna parried them noncommittally. There seemed only a perfunctory connection between mother and child, and Jenna’s conversation about Eric sounded like a recorded message.

Maggie and Ghania were at odds over nearly every aspect of Cody’s day. She was not permitted to play with other children, the grandmother was told. Nursery school was not an option. The Amah was to be her only teacher and companion. Jenna kept a disinterested distance, deferring to Ghania on all points.

Do you ever just hold your baby in your arms and thank God she exists in this world?
Maggie wanted to ask her daughter, but didn’t.
Do you play with her and laugh with her and help her learn what she’ll need to know to be happy? Or does Ghania hold sway over every nuance of Cody’s small life, now.
The thought chilled her.

“Don’t you find Ghania a trifle heavy-handed?” she finally asked.

“She’s a superb nanny, Mother,” Jenna said dismissively. “Why, Cody’s manners are more impeccable now, after only a month. And she’s not so spoiled anymore.”

Maggie accepted the slap without comment; if she lost access to Cody altogether, the little girl would be swallowed up by this cloistered, laughter-less world, of mothers who dress up to go nowhere, fathers who are disturbed by child sounds, and nannies who look like they should be minding the Addams family children.

All afternoon Maggie struggled to break through the strange new reserve she saw in Cody; she played all their old games and sang the songs from Gymboree . . . like a therapist luring back an amnesia victim with familiar scenes. By late in the day, the child seemed a bit more like the Cody she remembered. Then it was time to go.

Maggie lingered with her leave-taking; far from feeling relieved by what she’d seen, she was more troubled than when she’d arrived.

Cody stood obediently at Ghania’s side, staring at Maggie’s preparation for departure; the distress in the child’s eyes mirrored her own. Maggie bent to kiss her good-bye, holding her longer than need be, breathing her own strength into every cell of the little body. She felt it was a criminal act to leave her behind in this frightening place, but could see no alternative.

“I love you, little bug,” she said, lifting Cody into her arms once more and hugging her close. “I guess I have to go home now, but I promise I’ll come back very,
very
soon.” Maggie felt the small arms tighten around her in a resolute grip.

“Take me with you, Mim!” the child whispered urgently, into her grandmother’s ear. “
Please
take me home. They hurt the baby.” Maggie’s stomach clutched; those were the words she and Maria always used when Cody banged her head or skinned her knee.
“Did something bad hurt the baby? Don’t worry, we’ll kiss it and make it better.”

“You really should try to beat the rush hour traffic, Mother,” Jenna prodded, glancing significantly at the Patek-Philippe on her wrist. She reached out to take the child from her mother’s arms; both Maggie and Cody let go with equal reluctance, and the grandmother got only as far as the door when it happened.

“Mim!” Cody screamed, with sudden desperation, wrenching herself free of Jenna’s grip. She ran after Maggie, grabbing her legs in an iron hold.