Mary Coin (22 page)

“A while?”

“Well . . . for however long he likes.”

“He’s a baby,” she said. “He won’t be telling you what he likes and what he doesn’t like for some years yet.”

“Think about it, Mary,” he said, sitting on the bed beside her, taking her hand in his. “Think of his life here. What we could offer him.”

“What does your family want with a bastard child?”

“He’s a Dodge.”

“Just ’cause you’ve got money you think you can do anything you want with a person. Hire them. Fire them. Fuck them. Take their babies. I’m not leaving my baby with strangers.”

“I’m not a stranger,” he said. “Neither is Alma. He took to her so fast.”

She slapped him across the cheek. “That’s a vicious thing to say.”

“You have six other kids.”

“You think I don’t know what happens when I spread my legs? That I’m just some idiot woman who doesn’t know how to stop having babies? I chose all
seven
of my children. I
chose
them.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for everything.”

“Well, that’s the difference between us. I’m not sorry for one single thing.”

An hour later, while the baby slept peacefully on the bed, Mary let Alma dress her. She raised her hands like a child, and Alma lifted the nightgown over her head. Mary stood naked and unembarrassed as Alma took a damp rag and washed Mary’s arms and legs, her belly and her back. She helped Mary into a stranger’s green dress. She knelt on the floor and tried to fit Mary’s feet into a pair of heeled shoes, each one decorated with a small bow on the point of the toe. They were the most beautiful shoes Mary had ever seen.

“Maybe I could have yours?” Mary said, pointing to Alma’s woven sandals.

“Mis zapatos?”
Alma said, coloring with embarrassment.

“Sí.”

Mary slipped into the girl’s sandals, feeling their warm dampness. Her feet settled into the depressions worn into the leather. Alma put on the heeled shoes, her face opening into a wide smile as she admired her feet. When Mary was finally ready, she picked up the baby and settled him into her arms. Alma reached into the pocket of her apron and brought out a glass bottle filled with her warm milk. She tucked the bottle into the folds of the blankets.

Charlie was waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. “What will you name him?” he said, when she reached him.

“George,” she said. “My father’s name.”

“Georgie,” Charlie said.

“Just George,” she said.

“Will you tell him about me?” Charlie said.

“I don’t lie to my kids.”

“What will you say?”

“I’ll tell him the truth. I’ll tell him you were a decent sort of man in your heart.”

•   •   •

B
ack at the camp, the children were quiet and careful, unsure of her. The girls admired her green dress, touching the fabric as if it were made of jewels. James stayed close as she boiled potatoes, never letting her more than an arm’s length from him. When George began to cry, she opened the top of her dress and put him to her breast. He turned away.

“What’s wrong with him, Mama?” Della said. “Why don’t he want to eat?”

Mary unscrewed the cap of the bottle. She dipped her finger into Alma’s milk and rubbed the liquid on her nipple. She put George to her breast again. He sucked briefly before he stopped. His cries grew more disconsolate.

“Just give him the bottle,” Ellie said.

“He has to get used to me,” Mary said. She dipped and rubbed her finger again, and again he rejected her. His cries became screams.

“Why don’t he want you, Mama?” Trevor said.

Mary held back her tears. She had to get him to feed from her or her milk would dry up.

“What are you gonna do now, Mama?” June said.

What now?
It was the question that ruled her life.
What will we do now, Mama? Where will we go now? How will we eat now, Mama?
Her children stared at her, waiting for her answer.

The night before, Mary had woken in that white room to find Charlie standing by her bed. She had no idea how long he had been watching her. He was gentle as he led her down the darkened stairway and through the rooms of the sleeping house.

First he showed her a sitting room decorated all in blue. His mother’s favorite color, he said. Then he took her to a darker room outfitted in a manly style. A standing globe was next to the window. A set of leather chairs were directed toward one another, waiting, she imagined, for men to sit in them and say important things. He showed her the dining room, where a silver vase filled with blush-colored roses sat in the center of a long mahogany table that was polished to such a high gleam that Mary could see her face reflected in the surface. Each time they entered a new room, Charlie turned on a light as if he were illuminating a magical world. When he switched off the light, Mary had the impression of that world disappearing forever.

“This is my favorite room in the house,” he said, when they entered a library lined with books. He walked along one of the shelves, his hand running over the bindings.

“Have you read all these?” she said.

“A lot of them. I read literature in college. Not my father’s choice.”

“What did he want you to do?”

“The sciences. Something a farmer could make use of.”

He pulled a heavy book out from one of the shelves and opened it, turning the thin pages with the tip of his finger. He read aloud.
“‘The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees, The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas. The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding—Riding—riding—The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door
.
’”
He stopped and smiled to himself.

“What’s that?”

“This was my favorite poem when I was a boy. I made my father read it to me every night until I could read it for myself.”

“Well, keep going,” she said.

“It’s a long poem.”

“I’ve got a long patience.”

He continued, gaining speed until he was reading in a rhythm that reminded her of a horse galloping across a field, tossing its mane from side to side. He read about the landlord’s daughter named Bess who loved a highwayman so much she saved his life by sacrificing her own. When he was finished, he closed the book and replaced it on the shelf, lining it up so that it was flush with the other bindings.

“I would not shoot myself to warn my lover,” she said.

“You’d let him be killed by the redcoats, then?”

“He was a thief.”

“But she loved him,” he said.

“Well, it doesn’t pay to love a dishonest man.”

•   •   •

A
re you all right, ma’am?”

“What?”

The taxi driver turned around in his seat and looked at Mary. “Do you want me to drive you back to the bus station now?”

“So soon?”

“We’ve been sitting here for a half hour.”

“I’ll pay you more. Whatever you think is fair. I just want to sit here a little bit longer.”

The taxi driver looked out the window. “Not a lot of houses like this around anymore,” he said.

“Yes,” she said distractedly.

“I’m going to go stretch my legs.”

“Go ahead.”

“Can I trust you with my car?”

She saw his teasing smile.

“You’d better take your keys,” she said.

She turned her attention back to the house. She had always thought Charlie had taken her on that midnight tour in order to show her how much better a life he could offer their baby. Now, so many decades later, she wondered if she had been wrong, and if he had only been trying to show her something of himself and let her know that she had relieved his loneliness for a time, and that he was grateful.

The door of the big house opened. A teenage boy ran out. He collected a bicycle from where it lay on the lawn and swung his leg over the seat. A man appeared at the door just as the boy pushed off and pedaled down the driveway.

“Walker Dodge! Get back here right now!” the man called out.

The boy reached the end of the drive and raced away.

The taxi driver returned and got into the car, saying something about that boy needing to be careful, but Mary didn’t hear him. Her heart was beating too fast, and the rush of blood made her deaf. The man stood by the house looking in the direction the boy had gone. His gaze then settled on the cab. He stood too far away for Mary to make out his face. He began to walk toward the car.

“Please,” Mary said urgently to the driver. “Take me back. Take me back to—” But she had forgotten where she had come from. “Please!”

The driver put the car in gear and drove away.

35.

T
he San Francisco bus station was nearly empty. A woman stood at the ticket counter. A man wrapped in layers of coats slept on a bench. A poster advertising a runaway hotline showed a glum teenager sitting on a garbage-strewn curb. Mary walked into the gray drizzle of the afternoon. She saw a hotel across the street, but the men lounging in the doorway told her what sort of place it was. She had wasted so much money on that taxi ride to the house and the extra bus ticket, but what use did she have for her money anymore? She got into a waiting cab and told the driver to take her someplace clean.

All night long she lay on her hotel bed, not bothering to remove the spread. She dozed on and off. Every time she woke, she did so with a start, as if she had missed something crucial. She listened to the sound of nighttime delivery trucks on the street, to the crunch and grind of the ice machine in the hallway. She did not think the word
sick
could describe what she was feeling. It was more the sensation of her body shrugging itself off like a coat. How much longer would she be able to perform the particular sleight of hand that convinced everyone and even herself that this body and these thoughts added up to a particular person named Mary Coin? That was what living was, after all. A trick played on fate for as long as you could pull it off. She was in a hotel for only the second time in her life, and for the second time she did not know who she was.

In the morning, she showered and put on her dress and her white shoes. She sat on the bed and opened her purse, taking out an envelope that was wrinkled and soft. She’d carried the letter with her for nearly twenty years.

Dear Mrs. Coin,

There is a sense you get when you have taken the right photograph. It is a feeling that you have lived that second of your life more completely than any other. The moment opens, and you realize how much larger your life is than you thought it was, how much closer to a kind of . . . is it happiness? I don’t know.

I saw you and I recognized you the way you recognize people in your dreams even if you don’t know who they are. That’s all a photograph is, really. A recognition.

Very sincerely, and with great sadness for the end of things.

Forgive me,

Vera Dare

Mary tucked the letter into the envelope and put the envelope back in her purse. She washed out the bathroom sink and dried it with a bit of tissue then straightened the bedcover so it appeared as if no one had been there at all.

36.

A
t first she thought someone had released a flock of birds into the room. The museum gallery whispered with the sound of wings and flight, and she thought of the starlings wheeling through the flat Oklahoma sky, a solid flag of them waving in the currents of a wind. Was that sixty years ago? More? She knew her death was near because time had begun to fold like a fan so that the past and the present rubbed together in ways that made her feel supple and porous, as if time were moving through her body and not the other way around. She clutched her purse to her chest, her palm sweating against the leather. In her other hand she carried the wrinkled bag filled with her travel clothes and the red hat. Her feet ached in the pumps. The pain in her abdomen told her that she was not going to be able to outrun herself for much longer.

There were no birds, of course, only the hush of voices and the soft rustle of feet as museum visitors shuffled past the photographs. The gallery was crowded, and people jostled one another to get closer to the images. They crossed their arms over their chests as they studied the work, their faces set grimly as if they were standing in their doorways listening to someone trying to sell them religion. The crowd circulated in one direction, and Mary let herself be moved along at its slow pace. She stopped in front of a picture of a young girl standing by a barbed-wire fence. In the background, a woman—the girl’s mother, Mary supposed—stood with her hand to her brow to shield herself from the sun’s glare. She looked sad, or maybe that was just the set of her face; some people had a mournful look to them. Or perhaps the mother was watching the photographer, wondering why she wanted to take her girl’s picture. But she could have been looking at something else, maybe another child she had to keep her eye on or a neighbor who was coming over to see what was happening. Mary looked at another picture, of four men picking lettuce. If you didn’t know what it felt like to be bent in two for ten hours a day, you might think it was a pretty picture because a field of ripened harvest is pleasing, the way the rows lie out evenly and because it reminds you of full stomachs and good rains. In the next photograph, a man stood knee-deep in a truckload of cotton pickings that looked soft as a feather bed but which she knew were filled with burs that would draw blood if your arms and legs weren’t covered. She paused before more photographs: a man holding a baby outside a shack made of bits and pieces; a boy standing in the doorway of a tobacco barn; a couple in the middle of a terrible argument.

The accretion of images in the gallery operated on her like too much noise, and for a moment she forgot why she had come all this way, why she had ridden a dirty bus that smelled of cramped sleep and useless disinfectants, why she had paid to stay in a hotel that was supposed to be clean but where a curl of someone’s pubic hair greeted her when she went to take her morning shower. She could not faint. She
would
not. Someone would look in her purse and find her wallet. Another person would make the connection. Some eager reporter would write about it in the newspaper. And how would she look then? She reached to steady herself against a wall, but a guard shot her a look. She found a tissue in her purse and dabbed at her forehead and along the sides of her nose. It was too much, being in this big room filled with all these trapped people, the ones in the photographs and the ones revolving slowly like fish in an aquarium.

A child cried out. Mary turned toward the sound, and there, across the room, hung the familiar charcoal-gray shapes of the image that shadowed her life. Time collapsed again, and she was on the side of the road with her children, exhausted from pitching the tent, knowing that it could be hours before Earl came back with the repaired radiator so they could move on from that place. She was a stocky old woman in a museum in 1982. She weighed a hundred pounds, if that, a half century earlier, watching as a lady with a limp got out of a car and asked to take her picture. She walked across the gallery and stood in front of the photograph. She remembered her children’s haircuts. Just the day before, she’d taken a scissors and snipped straight across. She was pleased by the way the bobs framed their small faces. And there was the baby in her arms. Her George. Sometimes, even all these years later, she could still feel that heaviness. A watermelon might do it, or a load of clothes warm from the dryer.

She did not know what was in the minds of the people in the other pictures hanging in the gallery, but she knew exactly what she had been thinking when that picture had been taken: she had been asking herself a question, the same one she’d been asking every day since. Whenever she thought she knew the answer, she also realized that she didn’t. Six times she heard the click of the camera. And each time the woman drew closer, Mary had the same feeling she had when her mother caught her in a lie.
You didn’t wash out the sheets. Yes, I did. Then why are they still dirty? They fell off the line. They fell off the line and rolled around in the dirt? It was windy.
Lies to cover lies, until she was cornered and there was nothing left but to submit to the back of her mother’s hand. It was useless to lie to herself any longer. She could not manage with seven children and no real husband and no work. She could not keep this very sick child alive without medicine. George let out a wretched howl. Mary felt his burning forehead and saw his misery.

The photographer went back to her car and started the engine. The wheels gained traction in the mud and she drove away. Mary imagined what would happen: They would drive back to Porter. She would go to the house during the day, when Charlie was likely to be out on the farm, so that she would not have to face him. Alma would answer the door. The girl would be confused, but all Mary would need to do to make her understand was to hold the baby toward her. Alma’s arms would go up automatically the way any woman’s arms would, no matter if it was her child or not, because holding was a woman’s purpose. And as soon as Alma felt the heat coming off George’s little body, as soon as she saw his glassy eyes and his parched lips, she would understand. Mary imagined George grown into a boy. She saw him running through those wonderful rooms Charlie had shown her that night, his keen eyes and bright laughter making it impossible for the Dodge family not to love him as one of their own.

In fact, Alma did answer the door, but as soon as she saw Mary she went back into the house. After a few minutes, an older man appeared. “I’m Theodore Dodge,” he said. He stared at her with contempt. “If you’re after money, you can leave.”

Events were unfolding so differently from how Mary had planned. She hadn’t thought she would have to explain herself.

“Please,” she said. “Take him.”

“I don’t—”

“He’s sick,” she said, interrupting. “He’s so sick.”

The man looked down at the baby. His expression shifted imperceptibly.

“I’m begging you,” she said. “He’s your grandson. Please have mercy on him.”

He said nothing, only turned and walked back into the house, leaving Mary standing at the door. She waited, unsure if she had been dismissed or if the open door was an invitation. Finally, he returned with Alma. She took George from Mary’s arms.
“Lo siento,”
she whispered.

“We will never see you again,” Theodore Dodge said to Mary.

“Never,” she said weakly.

The door closed. Mary hadn’t expected it to happen so fast. She hadn’t been ready.

A couple stepped up to the photograph. “She reminds me of someone,” the man said.

“Who?” the woman said.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe no one. Maybe I’ve just seen this so many times I feel like I know her.”

“She looks so . . . so . . .”

So what?

A teenager said, “We learned about that picture!” rushing toward it with excitement, as if she were meeting someone at the train station. But as she stared at the photograph, her expression grew vacant, as if she could not think of what to say next, her eagerness snuffed out by the dullness of familiarity.

“You can see it all in her face,” someone else said.

What all? What do you see?
She was a ghost in the room. She looked at the other ghosts in the photographs lining the walls—the farmer with dirt on his cheeks, the woman posing next to her car. None of them had known that one day they would be hanging in this museum, a single moment of their lives frozen into an indelible past like an insult you can never take back.

Mary turned again to face the picture and saw her reflection in the glass. There they were. Two women named Mary Coin. If they met on the street in the high heat of a summer’s afternoon, they would be polite in the old-fashioned way to show they meant each other no harm. “Hello,” they would say in passing. “My, but isn’t it a wretched day?”