The Sabbathday River (67 page)

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Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz

BOOK: The Sabbathday River
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Pharaoh's Daughter
Your mother shows me a photograph of you got up in lace. White crêpe-de-chine. White bonnet. White mittens.
Once, on a street in Moscow, a woman pushed snow in my face when it seemed I might have been frostbitten.
—Paul Muldoon, “White”
In Memory of Thaddeus
Wills (June 19-20, 1996)
The Pond
ON A HOT JULY AFTERNOON, NAOMI DROVE DOWN Sabbath Creek Road in her station wagon to return the last of Polly's things. There were two socks, mismatched, the plastic pail from the bathtub, and a collection of small books found beneath her bed when she was rolling up the rug. None of these items—she was the first to admit—was precisely crucial, and the socks, for that matter, were probably outgrown, but Naomi needed to see Polly before she left. And, she supposed, she needed to see Heather, too.
By now, people seemed to understand that Naomi was leaving, though how this understanding had come about she wasn't sure, since she had not told anyone except Judith of her plans. It was not only time to go, she thought, but past time. For years she had groped, in her inefficient manner, for the catalyst of her own transformation and departure, a thing so bad, Naomi reasoned, that she would tear herself away in order to run from it. It had not been Daniel's leaving. It had not been her failure with Nelson. It had not, in the end, even been Heather. Finally, it had not been a thing to run
from
at all, but a thing
she was compelled to run
to
. Not, in other words, the babies she had pulled from the water, but her own baby, the one inside and growing.
Sometimes over these past months she had wondered what she would miss when she was gone from this place, and was surprised to find, when she imagined her life in the city, that it was not the people who lingered—not Nelson, who was beautiful to her, and not even Judith, the only friend she had made in a decade here—but the look of the mountains, the blackish-green and sharp edges of the Whites, so raw and rough. It struck her only now that there was a specific smell to the air here which she had failed to discern, and failed to appreciate as it deserved. It struck her that pavement would never duplicate the bounce beneath the sole of the shoe that old mud and pine needles made, and to her own surprise, she mourned this.
But she was going, anyway. The idea, formed in her the night of the verdict when she had handed Polly back to her mother, had grown over the next days, mutter to drone to din, until she found herself rushing to make arrangements, catching up to her own yearning. In a week's time, now, the A-frame would be on the market and she would be back on the West Side. She wasn't the only one, either. Ashley was already gone—back to Burlington with his wife and kids, to be anonymous in his indiscriminate love of women. Charter was gone—he had slunk back to Peytonville and was not missed. And Nelson was gone. His farmhouse was locked and empty. Naomi had no idea where he was.
She had not been to Heather's house since the day she had found the second baby, ten months earlier, and coming down the long drive she was surprised to see that the house gleamed, newly white with paint, its trim dark blue. Someone, in addition, had mowed the grass beside and behind the house, so that the back field had a graceful slope to it, and there was a lush summer garden by the back porch, with peas climbing a tepee of strings. There, bent over in an undershirt, a woman with short dark hair worked with her hands in the dirt. Not Heather, Naomi thought. A big yellow dog, lolling on the sun-warmed stone doorstep, lumbered over when the car stopped and thrust its wet nose against the window.
“Amiga!”
The woman came to the car, a spade in one hand. The other reached for the dog's collar.
“Amiga, down!”
Naomi rolled down her window. “It's Simone, isn't it?”
“Oh. Naomi, right?”
“I was looking for Heather,” said Naomi. “I didn't know you were living here.”
“Since the end of spring term. We've been helping Heather get some things in order.”
“The house looks great,” Naomi said. “Did you do that?”
“Mostly Ella,” Simone said. “She's good with tools. I planted the garden.”
“That's very good of you.” Naomi looked around. “Is Heather here?”
She nodded. Naomi got out of her car and took Polly's things. They found Heather on the back porch steps, watching Polly play in a sandbox that looked new. Heather was still too thin, but her hair was growing back and someone had given her a fairly flattering haircut. She looked up in surprise when Naomi rounded the house.
“I didn't hear you!” she said.
“Yes. I'm afraid your Amiga's not much of a watchdog.”
“She's Ella's dog, really. She sleeps under Ella's bed.” Heather didn't get up. Naomi knelt by Polly.
“Hello, sweetie-pod.” She didn't want to say any more. She didn't want to cry. Polly looked at her briefly and went back to work, filling and upending a bucket.
“Polly, say hello,” her mother said.
“No, it's all right,” said Naomi. “I just brought some things I found.” She put them on the back step. “She used to love this book about fingers and toes.”
“Thank you,” Heather said.
Naomi sat beside her. “I didn't realize Ella and Simone were living here.”
“Oh, I couldn't have gotten myself together without them,” Heather said quietly. “They really helped me. And the others. There was a bunch of women who came up from Boston and helped me fix the roof. They brought things for Polly, too. Simone planted the garden. I haven't had a garden since Pick died. It's wonderful.”
Naomi smiled. “How long are they staying?”
“Oh well, Simone's going to France this fall on a language program, but Ella's going to stay. And another student, a friend of hers who has a little boy. We'll take turns looking after the children and going down to Hanover.”
She turned to Heather. “Hanover?”
“Mm,” she said, with a shrug. “I didn't tell you, I guess. They took me back. At Dartmouth. It actually wasn't a big deal at all. They had me down under ‘leave of absence,' and you can keep that up for like ten years before they unenroll you. So I enter the freshman class in September.”
Naomi stared at her. “Heather, that's wonderful. That's just the best news.
“Well, I guess. I guess it's the right thing to do. Ella says I have to start with myself. She says the best way to avoid being a victim is to cultivate power.” She looked at Naomi. “Do you think that's true?”
“I think every woman has to protect her own interests, and her children's interests.”
Heather nodded, but she looked glum. Polly, spotting the bath bucket, came to collect it from the step, and took it back to the sandbox.
“I'm moving away,” said Naomi. “I'm going back to New York.”
“I heard that.” Heather didn't look at her. “I guess I won't see you again.”
“Oh, I'll still be involved with Flourish, though Sarah Copley will run things for the time being. I'll probably set up some kind of outlet in New York, to sell things down there. So I'll be up and down.”
“Ashley moved away, too,” said Heather in a small voice.
“I heard that.”
“Back to Burlington. I think nobody would hire him here. I think people were really mean to him.”
Naomi said nothing.
“It wasn't his fault. I feel so badly about that, that he had to move. I should have been the one who moved.”
Naomi, who did not see the logic of this, kept still.
“After all, he didn't do anything wrong.”
“Neither did you, Heather,” Naomi said wearily.
Heather nodded quickly. She had heard this before. Suddenly she got to her feet.
“Come with me. I want to show you something.”
What? Naomi thought. She stood. They left Polly in her sand and walked downhill. “What?” Naomi said. Then, looking ahead, she saw where Heather was taking her. She did not want to go there. “I know this,” she said. “I was here.”
“No. I want to.”
She walked on, and Naomi followed. Surely there was some rule of
etiquette that precluded showing visitors the site of your baby's stillbirth. Naomi moved in dread. “Heather? You don't have to.”
“Look,” said Heather. She had turned and was staring uphill, a look of amazement on her face. “Look how far from the house it is! I came all the way out here, in the middle of the night. Maybe I was remembering the night Polly was born. I walked then, too. Up and down the hill. I remember, I had Pick following me around, and the midwife. I guess it took my mind off the pain.”
“Well,” Naomi said, “I guess that makes sense. You did what you'd done the last time you were in labor.”
“But I wasn't in labor. It didn't feel like labor. Nothing felt the same as it had the first time, because everything was different. Pick was gone, and Ashley was gone. And from the time they left, there was this thing in their place.” She waved her hands over her abdomen, quickly, as if she were shaking her fingers. “I didn't want it. It's just like that woman said. That psychiatrist. I didn't want it. I wanted to trade. I wanted the other things back—the things I had before I had this …” Heather stopped in frustration. She could not even name the thing she had so despised. “I didn't really believe I could trade, but I wanted it so much.” She looked at Naomi. “And nobody knew about it. I didn't tell Ashley. I didn't tell anyone. I thought if anyone knew, they'd make me keep it, and I didn't want to keep it. I hated it.”
“Don't, Heather,” Naomi said.
“Don't what?” Heather said sharply. “It's all done now. It must have died from my hating it all those months, because when it came out, it was still. And it didn't make a sound, either. I just pushed it out on the ground. It didn't even hurt very much, if you want to know the truth. I'm telling you, it was already dead. I'd already killed it.”
“Okay.” Naomi nodded. She desperately wanted to leave. “It was stillborn. You couldn't help that.”
“But that's what I'm
telling
you!” she shouted. “I didn't
want
to help it. I
wanted
it to be dead.”
“Fine,” Naomi said, feeling sick.
“It was right there.” Heather pointed. Her face was dull. “Right there. By that rock. And I remember thinking, It's dead just like I thought, because I didn't hear anything. And I put my hand over its face, just to make sure there was nothing there. I held my hand there till I was sure. There was nothing there. It wasn't breathing.”
Naomi, who wasn't breathing either, stared at the ground.
“But I'm not sure I hurt it,” Heather said suddenly. She stared at Naomi. “Didn't that doctor say he couldn't prove it had been alive?”
Naomi, numb, nodded. “He said that.”
“So. All right, then.” She looked down. A few feet past them, the little pond gave its dull reflection of the afternoon sun. Naomi could not look at it.
“I don't think I hurt it,” Heather said suddenly. “I'm not sure, but I don't think so.” She shook her head. “I only wanted to be sure.”
Naomi took a step back. “I have to leave.”
“When you found that other baby, I thought … no, I knew it couldn't. I didn't stab my baby like that other person. My baby wasn't breathing. I made sure it wasn't breathing before I put it in the water.”
Naomi turned and ran, away up the hill, her breath wet and rough in her ears. She could not leave fast enough. Behind her, Heather was kneeling by the water, reaching out to break the surface with a fingertip.

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