“I know,” she says.
“Then what are you doing here?” he asks.
“Will you turn me in?” she asks.
“I don’t even know your name.”
“Do you want to know it?” she asks, offering herself up to my father, to this stranger, to this man to whom she owes everything.
“I don’t even want to know you exist,” my father says.
The woman shuts her eyes, and I think that she will fall. I take a step forward and then stop—too young, of course, to be of help.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he asks.
“It wasn’t . . .” she begins.
I am certain she was about to say, It wasn’t me, and apparently my father thinks so, too. “You were there, weren’t you?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says.
“Don’t say another word,” my father says as he turns to me. “Nicky, leave the room.”
“Dad,” I say.
The woman’s knees go first, and she seems about to squat. She thrusts her arms forward, but she takes the corner of the table with her chin. I have never seen a real person faint. It’s not like in the movies or in books. It’s ugly, and it’s frightening.
My father kneels beside the woman, and he lifts her head off the floor. She comes to almost immediately and seems not to know where she is. “Nicky, get me a glass of water,” my father says.
Reluctantly I leave the room. My hands are trembling as I turn the faucet on. I fill the glass nearly to the brim, and it spills a bit as I run with it to the den. When I get there, the woman is sitting up.
“What happened?” she asks.
“You fainted,” my father says. “Here, drink this.” He hands her the glass of water. “Can you make it to the car? We have to get you to the hospital.”
Her hand is so fast I barely see it. It snakes around and clutches my father’s wrist. “I can’t,” she says, looking at him. “I won’t.” Her face is pale, almost green. “I’m leaving,” she says, letting go of my father’s wrist. “I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry.” She makes an effort to stand. Beads of sweat have popped onto her forehead.
“Sit down,” my father says, and after a second’s hesitation, she does. “When did you last eat?”
“If you take me to the hospital,” she says, “they’ll arrest me.”
A simple truth. They will.
The woman bends over and vomits onto her jeans.
My father puts a hand on her back. I can hardly believe what I am seeing. The fainting, the vomiting—it’s all wrong in our house.
“Nicky,” my father says, “get me a wet paper towel and a pot.”
In the kitchen I rip a wad of paper towel from the holder and wet it. I find a saucepan in a cabinet. When I return I hand the woman the paper towels so that she can clean herself up. I’m shaking as I set the pot on the floor.
The woman wipes her jeans. She leans against the leg of the table. “I need a bathroom,” she says. With effort, she makes it to her feet. She begins to sway. My father reaches for her arm and catches her.
“Steady now,” he says.
Together, my father and the woman move to the back hallway, where the bathroom is. I watch as she detaches herself, enters the bathroom, and closes the door.
Agitated, my father runs his hands through his hair. “This is a disaster,” he says.
“You can’t take her to the hospital,” I say.
“She needs medical help.”
“Maybe she hasn’t eaten. Maybe she’s just tired.”
“She can’t stay here.”
“But Dad . . .”
My father and I stand between the kitchen and the bathroom, near enough to hear the woman if she calls out but not so close that we can listen to whatever is going on behind the door. My father puts his hands in his pockets and jiggles the change there. Each of us is silent then, absorbing the fact of the woman who has entered our house, who has, however briefly, entered our lives. My father walks to the back door, opens it, gazes out at the snow, and shuts the door. He crosses his arms in front of his chest again.
“Christ,” he says.
I climb the stairs and head for my room. On a shelf in my closet behind a duffel bag, I find a pair of pajamas my grandmother made for me. I hate them and wanted to throw them out, but my father insisted that I keep them to wear when my grandmother comes to visit. They have childish pink and blue bears on them and a big elastic waist.
When I return, my father is in the kitchen. He has lit a cigarette. The smoke rises and makes a quick left turn in a draft from the window. We hover, my father with his cigarette and I with my flannel bundle, as if waiting to be called upon to save the young woman in the bathroom. First the infant and now the mother.
The door opens and the woman’s head pokes through. She looks at my father and then at me. “Can I speak to you?” she asks.
I point to myself, a question on my face.
“Yes, please,” she says.
I walk to the door.
“Do you have a Kotex?” she whispers.
A Kotex, I am thinking. Oh God, a Kotex.
“No,” I say, chagrined.
“None?” She seems surprised.
“No.”
She tilts her head. “How old are you?”
“Twelve.”
I have a pad that the school nurse gave each of the seventh-grade girls at the beginning of the school year just in case, but it’s in my locker. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I truly am. I’m more than sorry—I’m mortified.
The woman looks out the window at the falling snow. “It’s bad out there, isn’t it?”
I offer up the flannel pajamas.
“What’s this?” she asks.
“Pajamas,” I say. “They’re too big for me. The waist is elastic.”
Her arms slide through the gap, and I see that her legs are naked. She glances out the window again. “Maybe there’s something?” she adds as she shuts the door.
I return to the kitchen and lean against the red counter. How am I ever going to manage this? I wonder. I close my eyes and think a minute.
“Dad?” I say finally. “I need to go to Remy’s.” My tone is slightly defiant, anticipating an argument.
“Remy’s,” my father says, stubbing out his cigarette in a saucer he keeps for the purpose.
“I have to get something.”
“What?”
I shrug.
“Something for you or something for her?” he asks.
“Something for her,” I say.
“What is it?”
“Something for her,” I repeat.
My father gets up and walks to the window again. He examines the snow, gauging depth and speed. The tracks of his truck and the blue car are nearly covered now.
“It’s important,” I add.
“There’s nothing else that will do?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“You’re sure?” he says.
Yes, there might be a cloth or a towel that would do, but I have never before been given such a mission, and I am determined not to fail this woman. “Please, Dad,” I say.
“I’ll go,” he says. “You stay here.” But as he says this, I can see him reconsidering. He doesn’t want me in the house alone with the woman.
“Never mind,” he says. “You’ll come with me.”
We dress in silence for the snow. I tap on the door and tell the woman we’re going to the store and that we’ll be right back. We climb into the truck, and my father starts the engine. He steps out and scrapes the snow from the windshield and the windows. I tell myself it isn’t so bad out, but it is: the snow is falling fast and thick.
Our road, unplowed, is slippery beneath the wheels of the truck. My father drives with concentration, and we don’t speak.
I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing I am—that we just left a strange woman in our house, a woman who may have tried to murder her baby. Murder her baby. I cannot make the p
hrase sit still in my head. Since we moved to New Hampshire, nothing ever happens to my father and me; hardly anyone ever drives up the long hill. But in the past nine days, we’ve had three sets of visitors: Detective Warren, Steve and Virginia, and now a woman whose name we still do not know.
We pass the school and the church and the village green. At the corner of Strople and Maine, the rear wheels of the truck begin to float across the street. My father takes his hands off the steering wheel, and after what feels like many seconds, we come to a stop. My father puts the truck in gear and pulls into our lane. I’m praying that we don’t hit something, because if we do it will be all my fault.
Up ahead I can see both Remy’s and Sweetser’s, but my father makes a sudden turn into the post office. I guess he wants to check his mail. Instead of stopping at the post office, however, he pulls behind that building to another building that houses both the police station and the town clerk’s office.
“What are you doing?” I ask, my eyes widening.
My father doesn’t answer me. He parks the truck, turns the engine off, and opens his door.
“Dad?” I ask.
I watch my father walk toward the police station. I open my door and hop out. Did he intend to come here all along? Did he agree to go to the store simply to get me out of the house while the police arrest the mother of the baby? Would my father do that? I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I know my father very well; at other times I wonder if I know him at all. “Dad!” I yell, running after him.
My father stops at the door and waits for me to catch up to him. He bends toward me. In a quiet voice that I know means business, he says, “Go back to the truck.”
“What are you doing?”
“This has nothing to do with you.”
“But you can’t . . . ,” I say, holding my hands out. “You just can’t.” Already I feel a sense of loyalty to a woman I don’t even know. I shake my head vigorously back and forth.
My father feels a nudge at his back. He steps aside so that the door can open. Peggy, the town clerk, pulls a scarf around her head. “Hi, Nicky,” she says, stepping outside.
I first met Peggy when I applied for a permit to sell raspberries at the end of our road. She charged me seven dollars.
Peggy smiles at my father. “You need me?” she asks.
“Actually I’m looking for Chief Boyd,” my father says.
“You just missed him,” she says. “He and Paul got called out to eighty-nine. An accident at the exit.” Peggy looks at the sky. “Is it urgent? I could raise him on the radio.”
I stare at my father.
“No,” he says after a few seconds. “No, that’s all right. I’ll give him a call.”
I let out a long breath.
“Well, you’ve certainly been in the news,” Peggy says, pulling on her gloves. “What a thing that must have been!” she says. “To find a baby.” She looks at me. “And you were with him, too!”
I nod.
“I’m off to Sweetser’s,” Peggy says. “Have to get some batteries and road salt before the storm gets worse. You want to wait inside? I won’t lock the door.”
“No, we’re fine,” my father says. “Thanks.”
“If I don’t see you later, have a good Christmas,” Peggy says.
My father and I walk to the truck. I climb into the cab. I know enough not to ask a single question, not to say a word.
At Remy’s my father slows to the curb. Through the whiteout and the steamed window, I can see the pale yellow light of a bulb above the register. My father hands me a ten-dollar bill. “Make it snappy,” he says.
The steps are poorly shoveled. A bell rings when I enter the store, needlessly announcing me. Marion sets her knitting down. “Nicky,” she says. “Sweetheart. You’re my hero, you know that? Haven’t seen you since you found the baby. Haven’t seen your dad either.”
“We’ve been kind of busy,” I say.
“Well, I guess so!”
Marion, a large redhead with a rubbery face, married her sister’s husband after an affair of biblical proportions that shocked even the most ardent proponents of New Hampshire’s highly unrealistic state motto, Live Free or Die. But that was years ago, and now the woman is a pillar of the community. Her husband, Jimmy, who was once the Regional’s star quarterback, weighs in at over three hundred pounds. One of Marion’s sons is at UNH; the other is at the state prison for armed robbery.
I have hardly ever seen Marion without knitting needles in her hands. Today she’s making something in red and yellow stripes. I hope it’s not for anyone over two years old. “So tell me all about it!” she says.
“Um,” I say, thinking.
“Something that wasn’t in the papers.”
I think another moment. “We wrapped her in flannel shirts and put her in a plastic laundry basket.”
“You did?” Marion says, seemingly happy with the detail. “Were you just completely freaked out?”
“Pretty much,” I say.
Marion picks up her knitting. “You went to the hospital, too?”
“I did.”
“Did you get to stay with the baby?”
“We visited for a minute.”
“What’s going to happen to her?”
“We don’t really know,” I say.
Marion loses her rubbery smile. “It’s sad,” she says.
“Well, we did find her,” I say, not yet willing to relinquish the role of heroine.
“No, I mean sad for the person who did it,” she says. “There must have been a terrible reason.”
I think about how the person who did it is in our bathroom at home right this minute.
“You finish the hat for your dad?”
“Yes,” I say, inching closer to the aisles.
“How did it come out?”
“Pretty good,” I say. “I think it’ll fit him.”
“You ended up liking the rolled edge?”
“I did,” I say.
My mother taught me how to knit when I was seven. I forgot about knitting until one day I saw Marion at the counter with hers and confessed that I knew how. Confessed is the right word. In those days, in the early 1980s, knitting was not a hobby a preteen would readily admit to. But Marion, ever enthusiastic, pounced upon me and insisted that I show her something I’d made. I did—a misshapen scarf—which she praised extravagantly. She lent me a raspberry-colored wool for another project, a hat for myself. Since then I’ve been knitting pretty continuously. It’s addictive and it’s soothing, and for a few minutes anyway, it makes me feel closer to my mother. When I run into trouble with a particular stitch or a pattern, I go down to the store, and Marion helps me sort it out. Usually, I am fascinated by whatever Marion is knitting, by the way a ball of string can become a sweater or a baby blanket, but today I just want to get away from the counter as fast as I can. I think of my father waiting in the car, about the way the snow must be covering the windshield already.
I know where the feminine products are kept, and I move in that direction. The box of Kotex seems larger than I imagined it would be. I take it down from the shelf and return to the counter.
Marion sets her knitting on her lap. “Oh, my,” she says, looking at the Kotex.
Foolishly, recklessly, I blurt, “It’s not for me.”
Marion tilts her head and smiles a maternal smile. It’s clear she doesn’t believe me.
I take the ten-dollar bill from my pocket. The Kotex pulses and sings a tune on the scuffed Formica. Marion punches prices into the register. “You feeling okay?” she asks.
“I’m just fine,” I say.
“You know, if you have any questions about anything, anything at all, you can always ask me.”
I nod. My face is hot.
“You not having, you know, your mother around,” she says lightly.
I bite my lip. I just want to leave.
“Not too many people in today,” Marion says. “But yesterday you should have seen the rush for mil
k and canned goods. Stocking up. It’s supposed to be a big storm. Biggest of the season, they’re saying, but they’re always wrong.”
I put the money on the counter.
“Have you seen the baby since that night?” Marion asks, making my change.
“No.”
Marion looks up quickly, and behind me there’s a voice. “Nicky, isn’t it?”
A blue overcoat and a red muffler slide beside me. I didn’t hear the bell announcing Detective Warren’s arrival. Well, maybe there wasn’t a bell, I realize; maybe he was already in the store, in another aisle.
“How are you?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say through tight lips.
Marion slips the Kotex into a paper bag, but not before Warren has surely seen my purchase. Sweat blossoms inside my parka. I stand as though I’m not really there—head slightly bent, back hunched. Warren puts his magazines and a package of gum on the counter.
“I’m going now,” I say.
“Camels,” Warren says.
“Have a good Christmas,” Marion calls to me. “And tell your dad I think he’s a hero, too.”
“Yes, you and your dad have a good holiday,” Warren says.
I walk as fast as I dare to the door. All I can think about is what will happen if my father sees the detective.
The bell rings as I open it. I slip and skid off the top step and take the rest on my butt. I pick myself up and run to the truck.
I slam the door and throw my head back against the seat. There’s snow in the paper bag. “Let’s go quick,” I say. “I have to pee.”
The ride back to the house is tense and long. At times my father has trouble finding the road. Again and again I feel the sway of the rear tires skidding out or jumping a rut. We see only a couple of other vehicles on the roads—few willing, it seems, to venture out in the storm.
We pass the small white cottage with its evidence of boys. I rub the condensation from the truck window and strain to see inside. The house has candles in the windows. I can see a lit tree in a living room. The mother is in the kitchen near a counter. She has her hair pulled back into a ponytail. Fragments of Christmas memories float across my vision:
She puts the baby ornament on the tree.