The Story of Beautiful Girl (12 page)

“I can’t—”

“You can.” Graciela moved over to the baby and picked her up.

Martha was mortified, standing there in her nightgown. Her hair must be filthy. The room must look like a fright.

Graciela went into the bathroom to change the wet diaper. Relieved to have someone take charge and in no state to resist, Martha sat down for her dinner.

“Let us take a walk today,” Graciela said one morning.

For six days now, she’d been stopping by when she and the five children vacuumed the corridor in which Martha and the baby were staying. Graciela would retrieve dirty diapers and deliver new bottles of formula. Henry, busy with building projects, had come by three times a day with trays of food. Martha had not asked for these services, yet she was grateful; left to her own devices, she fell into a hole of too many questions, too much sleeping, and a trance of bassinet gazing. At one week old, the baby already held her in her gaze.

“A
walk
?” Martha asked. “It’s almost December, and we’re in the mountains.”

“We can stroll inside the resort.”

“I enjoy being in the room.”

“We will take the baby. You need to get blood moving in your veins.”

She gestured beside her in the hallway. Graciela had come with a baby carriage.

Martha’s earlier relief at being cared for bloomed all the more in her chest. She put on one of her two dresses and combed her hair. Then she set the baby inside the carriage.

“The resort is a zigzag,” Graciela said, turning the carriage to the right as they stepped outside Martha’s room. Worn carpet lay on the floor, and flimsy paneling covered the walls. “It was falling down when we bought it.” She laughed. “It still is.”

But as Graciela pushed the carriage ahead, the corridor seemed a wondrous place. Martha felt as if she’d been in the room her whole life.

“Down at the one end, where you came in, is the lobby. The fireplace is the oldest thing about the resort. We’re thinking of having marshmallow roasts on Friday nights. It is one of the ideas Henry has to draw people here.” Graciela pushed her luxurious hair behind her ears. “The dining area, he is going to paint that. We will have a game room, too. Henry has a lot of ideas to make our resort popular.”

They zigged into a new corridor. These were separate buildings that had been connected.

“Out that way”—Graciela waved her arm—“is a beautiful lake. It is why we picked this place.” She went on, her voice lower. “When Henry first brought up the idea of leaving our life in Brooklyn, I have to admit, we quarreled for months. He told me we could find a place where the children could run free, I could set up my potter’s wheel, our son Alfonzo could practice his drums without bothering neighbors. Then we came to see this hotel.” She made a little laugh, as if recalling that first trip, and said, her voice brighter, “And when we walked around and he saw so many possibilities, and then he showed me the lake, well, he just won me over.”

Martha looked at Graciela with surprised admiration. This marriage was not the conspiracy of somber coexistence Martha had lived. Graciela and Henry were quite different, yes, and did not always agree, yet they helped each other along until they came to share the same dreams.

They passed into a corridor with peeling paint, and as Graciela talked about the amount of effort that lay ahead of them and how she simply had the faith that it would all work out, Martha wondered how she would respond if Graciela pressed her about the duration of her stay. A week was already longer than her lie would have required. How much more time could she and the baby remain here?

Back at the door to room 119, Graciela said, “The kitchen is that way. You can make your own meals, though it would be such a pleasure to have you join us. And
you
,” she said into the carriage.

Martha fit her key in the door. “You and Henry are being very considerate.”

“It is good to be able to help someone out. But,” Graciela said, “I have a question.”

Martha felt her grip tighten on the knob.

Graciela reached into her skirt pocket and withdrew an envelope. Martha made out that it was addressed to the hotel and had a postmark from Well’s Bottom. She also recognized the handwriting though could not place it.
Oh, no
, she thought, even though it was improbable that the School could have found her.

Graciela said, “One of your other students wrote us.”

Right. Martha had forgotten. She’d felt so desperate about the new baby, she had completely forgotten the plan. Now it came back. It had been Eva’s idea to write letters to Martha’s students. Not all of them, of course. Just the few with whom she was closest, the ones who were, or had become, deeply appreciative of their
time in her classes. The handful who seemed most likely to offer assistance—which included Henry. This letter helped explain why Graciela and Henry had been so generous for so many days.

“When did you receive this?” Martha asked.

“Right after you arrived.”

And they hadn’t said anything.

“It is lonely out here in the sticks,” Graciela said, her voice taking on a wistful tone. “We have been here a year and you are one of our only guests. I’d love for you to stay as long as you’d like.”

“I’m very… Thank you.” Martha reached for the carriage, then thought to add, “What else did Eva say?”

“She said we should not ask questions.”

Eva was as trustworthy as Martha could have asked for. She’d picked wisely.

“You said you had a question,” Martha said. She lifted the baby and muttered, “She’s such a good baby,” hoping this would stave off whatever it was that Graciela had to say.

“You have been here a week,” Graciela said, “and we still do not know. What is her name?”

By the end of the second week, Martha and the baby were venturing out for walks on their own. By the end of the third week, they were spending their days in the hotel lobby, warming themselves by the fire, the children taking turns holding the baby. At the end of the fourth week, Graciela suggested Martha take the baby to a doctor friend of theirs. “She needs her first examination.”

Graciela drove. The day was windy, with snow across the mountains and valleys, creeks turning sapphire in the cold. Martha wanted to hold up the child and say,
Look at the world! It’s yours!
Instead, she thought, for the first time in all these weeks, about the letter she herself had received from Eva. It read, “Oliver
came across tire tracks running right up to the woods, so we know a search party has been looking for the missing man. But the tracks did not go to the house, which must mean they’re still not aware of the baby.” Eva didn’t ask how long Oliver would need to keep working, so in Martha’s reply she’d sent Eva a check for twice the amount they’d discussed, prolonging a discussion of time while worrying that the postmark could lead to her being found.

The white-haired doctor worked in his house. Telling him she was the grandmother, Martha placed the child on a baby-sized table and was pleased to see that even though her easy child (
her
easy child) was unaccustomed to doctors, she had no trouble looking him in the face and cooing when he touched her skin.

The doctor made pleasant conversation, mostly through the child. “You’re looking so healthy,” he said. “So well cared for.” Finally, near the end of the exam, he said, “And does your grandmother need a birth certificate?”

Martha looked out the window to the snow. “Yes.”

The doctor said, “I’m going to need two things to write this up. The first is the truth.”

Martha looked at him.

“I know from Henry that you’re a trustworthy person, and therefore this child must be in your possession for a good reason. You can tell me. My career is a story of secrets.”

She took a breath and told him; and when she finished, the doctor fed an official form into his Smith Corona and typed, “Father: Unknown. Mother: Unknown. Address: Unknown.”

Then he looked up. “The other thing I’ll need is her name.”

Martha shook her head. “I don’t know.”

That dusk, Martha stared out at the trees. Presenting herself as a grandmother already seemed as if she were betraying Lynnie. How could she go so far as to give the baby a name?

It was terribly unfair. Here Martha was, getting her pinky grasped, her heartbeat matched, and her face watched as if it were the face of the sky. She was dressing and bathing and feeding this baby. She was relishing the pleasure of pushing her in a carriage. Lynnie was getting no more than a bitter memory.

A wind bowed the tops of the trees in the night sky, and the thought came to her:
The best way to hide something is not to conceal it from sight, but to give it a convincing disguise.
Coming to care about the baby made them look as if they belonged together. Becoming her grandmother and naming the baby were ways to belong together. This was not betrayal; it was an act of conscience. Loving this child was the right thing to do.

On Christmas Day, when Martha’s students arrived at her farmhouse only to find a note on the door saying, “Martha went visiting this year, check back in 1969,” Henry came into the lobby of his New York hotel and told his children, and Martha and the baby, that he wanted to celebrate the holiday in a particularly festive way. When the children asked how, he said he’d show them that evening. “It’s Papa’s plan for attracting guests,” Graciela said, glancing to him with a knowing smile. “It works in Central Park, so maybe it will work here. But we all have to dress warmly.”

As the sun was setting, Martha dressed the baby and herself in layers, then joined Graciela and the children while they roasted marshmallows in the fireplace. Martha still had no name for the baby. Yet when she looked at Graciela and the children, and saw so much trust and affection in their faces, she knew she and the baby shared those same feelings when they looked at each other, too.

Henry came in the front wearing a top hat and Victorian coat. “Ladies and gents,” he said in a British accent, “your adventure awaits.” He bowed and doffed his hat.

Everyone hurried outside, and there, standing on the circular driveway before the hotel, was a horse-drawn coach. It was twice as high as they, with a handsome, curved shape—“like Cinderella’s coach!” Rose, the oldest daughter, exclaimed—and the horses’ harnesses jingled with bells. His idea, Henry explained with excitement, his breath showing in the night air, was for him to take young couples in this coach down to the lake and back. It would be a romantic place for a man to pop the question and honeymooners to sip champagne. And tonight, his family—and Martha and the baby—would get the first ride.

The coachman held the door open. Martha, with the baby tucked under her coat, stepped aboard. She sat on the seat facing the front. The others piled in, and Henry pulled a sheepskin blanket across their laps. “This’ll keep you toasty,” he said, and closed the door.

Henry and Ricardo climbed onto the driver’s seat in the front. “Giddy-up,” they said, shaking the reins. The bells jangled into the night.

The ride was slow and beautiful. Graciela and the children pointed out their sledding hill, the ice-skating pond, the place where Papa planned to build a gazebo. She talked about how Papa had won her over right along this path, when he talked of buying this very carriage. “Sometimes you think you know what you want,” she said, hugging her children, “until you see how much more you can have.” Martha watched the silhouettes of the trees. Lining the ridge of the mountains, they nodded at her in the wind.

She felt the child snuggle inside her coat and drew her arms close, hugging them both. When she looked up, they’d arrived at the lake. This was the point, Henry had explained, where the man would propose. “Graciela,” Martha asked, “what’s the lake called?”

“We named it after Tía Julia,” Rose said.

“Yes,” Graciela added. “But we used the ‘j’ sound. So it is Lake Julia.”

“Lake Julia,” Martha said. “That’s good.”

“That’s
good
?” The children giggled.

She opened her coat. The child looked up at her with the hugest smile Martha had ever seen. The sheepskin blanket meant nothing. The smile warmed her in a way she had never felt. This was the love that had been taken from her so long ago, returned to her arms at last.

“Welcome to your first Christmas,” she said. Storms could come, she knew. Winds and rain and hail. Right now, though, the baby’s smile seemed sure to last forever.

“May we always be this happy,” Graciela said.

“May
we
always be this happy,” Martha repeated, touching the baby’s face. And then she added, “Julia.”

1968

F
inally, on Christmas Day, they sent Lynnie back.

She was not expecting to go back. For all she knew, her punishment—“the debt No-No has to pay to society,” Clarence told her with a look of false sympathy—was going to last forever. After all, for five weeks she had lived and worked in Q-1, the “behavior ward.” Q-1 was the cottage for residents who couldn’t care for themselves or were viewed as uncooperative. Some were even kept in cribs through the day unless a working girl like Lynnie wheeled them to the dayroom TV. Clarence and his second-shift pal, Smokes, had come in early after Lynnie was captured just to escort her to Q-1. They were the ones who’d put on the restraints—“so you won’t run off again,” Smokes said as he’d unbuckled the leather ties, eyes blank behind his thick glasses, mouth chewing his toothpick. Lynnie knew the restraints were there to put her in her place, but that didn’t stop her from squirming and howling and chomping her jaw at their hands.