The Remedy for Regret (11 page)

Blytheville, Arkansas

O
ur drive to Blytheville would seem uneventful to the unknowing observer. There is no map to turn to since Blytheville is a straight shot south from St. Louis on Interstate 55. There is no excited conversation about where Blair and I are headed, no hotel reservations to confirm or carefully-laid plans to discuss for the days that lay ahead. There is nothing to indicate that we are on a pilgrimage of sorts except for the suitcases in the trunk.

Despite my offer to drive, Blair insists on being at the wheel. She assures me she slept fine last night and that driving will keep her focused on what lies ahead and not what lies behind. I slept fairly well myself last night. The enormous house was like a tomb without the girls and Blair’s family sharing it with us.

For the first hour there is little conversation. We sip coffee that we bought at a Starbucks on our way out of St. Louis and Blair asks me little questions here and there about my life at the moment. I’m cautious about asking too many questions about hers. I don’t know what hurts too much to talk about.

“You know, I’m surprised you didn’t become a map-maker or whatever they are called,” she says getting an update on Antonia. “You were always so crazy about maps.”

“A cartographer,” I say, almost sheepishly. “I
was
crazy about them. I thought about it as a career for a while. I even changed my major to geography my sophomore year. Remember, I went to that island off the coast of Argentina to map its topography with a bunch of other students?”

“So what happened?”

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I just got cold feet. Or lost interest. I am not sure. It was harder than I thought it would be.”

“So, you like what you’re doing now?” Blair asks.

“Well, yes, I do. I kind of have you to thank for it.”

“Me?”

“I never thought about fashion and style until I met you.”

Blair says nothing as she contemplates this. I meant it as a compliment but I am not sure she is taking it as one. The expression on her face is difficult to read.

“It just seems to me you’re too intelligent to be dressing mannequins,” she finally says. “You were always the smart one. Smarter than Jewel. A million times smarter than me. You should be doing something brilliant.”

“Well, like what?” I say, laughing nervously. I am completely surprised again by something Blair has said.

“Like making maps or solving mysteries or finding a cure for cancer. You’re too smart to sell clothes. I could do that. My mother could do that.”

I sit in wordless wonder. In the back of my mind I am aware that this is the conversation I had wanted my dad to have with me when I was twenty-three, living at home, and unable to motivate myself to go back to college and finish my degree.

“None of my St. Louis friends care what my degree is in, Tess. You know why? ’Cause it doesn’t matter. I went to Boston University to find a rich man to marry. And I did. I found Brad. Who cares what my degree is in? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t prove I’m good at anything or smart in anything. It just shows I went to a good East Coast school where I was lucky enough to meet a rich Midwest man.”

“Blair—” I begin, but she does not want to continue this conversation.

“Sorry I brought it up. Get me a bagel, will you? I don’t want to talk about this.”

I reach into a bag between our seats and pull a bagel out for her. As I hand it to her I see lines on her face and around her eyes that seem to have emerged overnight, like her woes have aged her. Then it occurs to me. Blair had only one day to grieve for the man she loved. Not even that. It was more like half an hour. In those hours between the time she called me in Chicago and I arrived in St. Louis she was still clinging to the hope that Brad would live. She was not yet grieving then. But then Brad died and her immediate sorrow was too much for her. Half an hour later, Blair had been sedated; medicated so heavily that she could not take my phone call. In the morning, before anyone else was awake, she had gone into Brad’s study, probably to recapture the feeling of being close to him. Perhaps she had been in there for ten minutes, maybe fifteen, when she opened a drawer or looked in his briefcase and found papers that Brad surely had thought were in a safe place until he needed them. Thirty minutes of grief the night before, fifteen minutes of grief the morning after. Then everything changed for her.

She had forty-five minutes to mourn the death of the husband she loved. Less than an hour. And now it seems like she faces a lifetime of loathing the husband who was unfaithful to her, a lifetime of bitterness and resentment. I am thinking, as I look at her, that plain, uncomplicated grief would be less devastating.

We are quiet for the next ten minutes or so. Then Blair motions to an envelope by the bagel bag.

“Take a look in that envelope,” she says.

I pick up the envelope, place it on my lap and reach inside. I draw out a folded newspaper clipping. When I unfold it, I gasp. I haven’t seen this in years. It’s the article from the local Blytheville paper about the baby we found.

“Oh, my gosh! You kept it!” I say.

“Didn’t you?”

“I think it’s at Dad and Shelley’s. I’m not sure. I haven’t seen it in so long. I kind of forgot about it.”

“I read it again last night. It had been awhile.”

The photo of the three of us standing outside Jewel’s church is grainy with age. The baby isn’t in the picture. By the time the local press had heard what had happened it was close to four in the afternoon. An ambulance had come for the baby shortly after Jewel’s mother called the police—without its sirens blaring, thank goodness. That had been at noon, three hours after we found the baby. We told everyone we found him around eleven-thirty. Actually it was Blair who did the outright lying. No one asked Jewel or I to verify the time. But I know had someone asked Jewel, she would have told the truth. I still feel a pang of guilt just thinking about what we did.

I look at the photo next to the story. We are sitting on the steps where we found the baby. We have nothing to show to the camera. The baby was long gone and the police had taken the peach box and the soiled sweatshirt. Jewel and I didn’t know that there was, in fact, in our possession, tangible evidence of what our amazing morning had been like. We didn’t know that in Blair’s front shorts pocket there was a folded note and a locket on a chain.

I sit back in my seat in Blair’s car and read:

Infant Found on Church Doorstep

Blytheville, Ark
—Local authorities are looking for the mother of a day-old infant found on the steps of the Church of the Beautiful Gate Wednesday morning. Three Blytheville teenagers, Blair Devere, Tess Longren and Jewel Mayhew, all thirteen, heard the baby boy’s cries while walking through Mayhew’s backyard. Mayhew’s father is Samuel Mayhew, pastor of the Church of the Beautiful Gate. The church adjoins the Mayhews’ home.

According to the police report, the girls were walking from Mayhew’s house to the Longren home next door when they heard a faint cry. Following the sound, the girls came upon a wooden produce box sitting on the church’s west entrance steps with the infant inside. Jewel Mayhew informed her mother, Corinthia Mayhew, who then called the police. The baby was taken to Chickasawba Hospital where he will be under observation for several days. Mississippi County authorities told the
Courier News
that the infant will be placed in foster care while the search for the infant’s parents or other family members continues.

“He is such a sweet little baby with such beautiful blue eyes,” Blair Devere told the
Courier News
a few hours after the baby was taken to the hospital. “We are so glad we found him before anything bad happened to him.”

The girls told the
Courier News
that they bought diapers and formula for the baby and that they wrapped the infant in one of the girl’s old baby blankets. The police report states the girls waited half an hour after finding the baby before telling Corinthia Mayhew.

“He was so hungry and he needed a diaper,” Tess Longren told the
Courier News.

Police have the wooden produce box the baby was found lying in and a plain, gray sweatshirt that was also found in the box but no other clues. The infant is believed to have been less than twenty-four hours old at the time of the discovery. He is Caucasian, blue-eyed and has a clubfoot on his right leg. Anyone with information about this incident is asked to contact the Blytheville Police Department or the Mississippi County Sheriffs Department.

“This was the first and only time I have ever been in a newspaper,” I say to Blair, looking at the article.

“It was my first, too. My second was when I got engaged.”

I put the article back in the envelope and help myself to bagel. We listen without talking to a Norah Jones CD until we cross the state line.

The transition from one state to the other is seamless. We cross into Arkansas and are promptly welcomed to the City of Blytheville. I cannot tell if it things look the same or if they look incredibly different. I didn’t pay attention to those details when I lived here. We take the first exit, one of only two, and see the first familiar sight, the Holiday Inn sign. Blair and I came here often for Sunday brunch with her parents. Blair managed to sneak a taste of champagne once when the buffet had been particularly busy. She had urged me to try it but I had been too scared.

We pull into the familiar parking lot and Blair and I get out of the car and stretch. She takes care of getting the room. I’m glad she wants to share a room with me. She can afford to get separate rooms, but I find it touching that she doesn’t. I wonder what it’s like for Blair to get a room in an ordinary Holiday Inn. She’s led a life of luxury for five years, but she says nothing about the commonness of the room when we step inside. We open our suitcases and wordlessly hang up the few things we brought. I am pretty sure Blair will waste no time in getting started on what we came here to do.

“We’ll eat something and then we’ll go to the county offices,” Blair says. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Don’t you want to drive by our old houses?” I am anxious in a childish kind of way to see Corinthia. It feels strange that she is just a few miles away from me.

“There will be plenty of time for that. You can have those two drawers and I’ll take these.”

She points to the dresser drawers and I am reminded as Blair deftly changes the subject that, for her, this is not a pleasure trip.

We get back in the car and head toward the main business district, driving slow and causing other drivers to impatiently ride our backend. It’s a little difficult to remember where everything is. It doesn’t appear that the town of thirty-thousand has changed that much but we didn’t drive anywhere by ourselves when we lived here before. We were just kids. By luck we find the Sonic drive-through that had been our favorite place for hamburgers and shakes. My old street is only a few blocks away from this fast-food place, but Blair doesn’t seem to care about this as we eat. I’m itching to at least drive by my old house, but Blair has only one thing on her mind. She wants the last name and the address of the family that adopted an abandoned baby fifteen years ago.

When we are done, Blair asks our server where the county offices are and we are directed to a four-story gray building a few blocks away. Within minutes, Blair is parking her Lexus across the street. We stare at the building in silence for a few minutes.

“I suppose we could start with the county recorder,” she says.

“That sounds good,” I say, but neither one of us move. We both know the real search starts here. It could also end here.

“C’mon,” Blair finally says.

It’s a little after one in the afternoon. Hopefully whoever works in the recorder’s office will be back from lunch. The air inside the building is cool and the hallways are dimly lit. A wide, graceful staircase leads to the other floors. The recorder’s office is on the first floor. Our steps echo on the linoleum as walk to the office and step inside.

A woman looks up from one of several desks as we approach a customer counter. There are two other employees in the room and a woman sitting in a chair in a waiting area just inside the door we came in.

“May I help you?” says the woman behind the counter; in a voice laced with a Southern accent I haven’t heard in a long time.

“Yes,” Blair says, trying to sound confident. “Births and adoptions are recorded in this office, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, my friend and I used to live here and fifteen years ago we found an abandoned infant on the doorstep of a church here in town.”

The woman’s eyes get a little wide.
There’s something you don’t hear every day
, they wordlessly say.

“The baby was adopted eight months later in this county. My friend and I are traveling through Blytheville and we would like to see how he is doing. We are hoping you can tell us where we can find him. I know the first names of the couple who adopted him but not their last name. I need to get in touch with these people because I have… I … there’s something I need to give that boy.”