Doctorow

  You didn’t tell me you had a past including a stretch in juvenile detention, the lawyer said. To say nothing of a previous as yet un-annulled marriage to a convicted drug dealer.

  Jolene was so stunned she didn’t think to ask how the lawyer knew that if she hadn’t told her.

  She was up against a scumbag husband on his own turf, so what could she expect but that there was worse to come, as there was, if he knew all along where she was hiding, and if he knew by first names everyone in town, as he probably did the very police officers who came one morning to arrest her for unlawful kidnapping of her own child, who they took from her arms and drove off in one squad car with Jolene in another as she looked back screaming.

  I don’t want to hear about what is the law in this country and what is not, Jolene told the Legal Aid person who was assigned to her. Do you know what it means to have your child torn from you? Do you have to have that happen to you to know that it is worse than death? Because though you want to kill yourself, you cannot have that relief for thinking of the child’s welfare in the hands of a sick father who never smiled at him and was jealous of him from the day he was born.

  My baby, she said aloud when she was alone. My baby.

  He had her coloring and button nose and carrot-red fuzz for hair. He drank from her with a born knowledge of what was expected of him. He was a whole new life in her arms, and for the very first time she could remember she had something she wanted. She was Jolene, his mother, and could believe in God now, who had never before seemed to her to be much of a fact of life.

  And so now there was a hearing for the divorce Brad had filed for. And his whole miserable family was there—they loved him after all now that he was getting rid of her and her past was thrown in her face. They had it all down, including the medical records of her STD from Coco, her living in sin, and even her suspension one term at South Sumter High for smoking pot. It was a no-brainer, her Legal Aid kid was out of his league, and without giving it much thought, the judge ruled she was an unfit mother and granted Brad G. Benton sole custody of her Mr. Nipplebee.

  On top of everything, in the fullness of her milk that she had to pump out, she must have done something wrong, because she ended up in the hospital with a staph infection that had to be drained, like the milk had gone bad and turned green. But she had a chance to think. She thought of her choices. She could kill Brad G. Benton—it’d be simple enough to buy some kind of gun and wait on him—but then the baby would be raised by the Benton family. So what was the point? She could find a job and see the baby every second Sunday for one hour, as allowed by the judge, and rely on the passing of time for the moment when nobody would be looking and she could steal him back and run for it. But then on her first visitation what happened was that Brad was up in the gym and a new large Indian woman was with Mr. Nipplebee, and Brad’s crone of a mother stood with her back to the door and they wouldn’t let Jolene hold him but just sit by the crib and watch him sleep. And she thought, If I stay on in Tulsa for my visitations, he will grow up learning to think of me as an embarrassment, a poor relation, and I can’t have that.

  —

  THESE DAYS, JOLENE HAS this job in West Hollywood inking for a small comic-book company, except they don’t call them comic books—they call them graphic novels. Because most of them aren’t funny at all. They are very serious. She likes the people at work, they are all good pals and go out for pizza together. But where she lives is down near the farmers’ market, in a studio apartment that is sacred to her. Nobody can come in no matter how good a friend. She has a little stereo for her Keith Jarrett CDs and she lights a candle and drinks a little wine and dreams of plans for herself. She thinks someday, when she has more experience, of writing a graphic novel of her own, The Life of Jolene.

  She has a pastel sketch she once did of her precious baby. It is so sweet! It’s the only likeness she has. Sometimes she looks at this sketch and then at her own face in the mirror, and because he takes after her in his coloring and features, she tries to draw him at what he might look like at his present age, which is four and a half.

  Friends tell Jolene she could act in movies because she may be twenty-five but she looks a lot younger. And they like her voice that she has courtesy of her ex-husband, the way it cracks like Janis Joplin’s. And her crooked smile, which she doesn’t tell them is the result of a busted cheekbone. So she’s had some photos taken and is sending them out to professional agents.

  I mean, why not? Jolene says to herself. Her son could see her up on the screen one day? And when she took herself back to Tulsa in her Rolls-Royce automobile he would answer the door and there would be his movie-star mother.

  I had taken up with her knowing she was this crazy lovesick girl. It was against my better judgment. I was too accustomed to having my life made easy. I was stuck in my tracks by the smitten sweet smile and the pale eyes. With straight brown hair she never fussed with but to wash it. And she wore long cotton dresses and no shoes in the business district. Karen. A whole year ago. And now she had gone and done this thing.

  She held it out to me all rolled up in a blanket.

  Where’d you get that?

  Lester, this is our baby. He is named Jesu because he is a Spanish-looking child. He will be a dark saturnine young man with slim hips like yours.

  The face was still red with its effort to be born, and the hair was slick with something like pomade, and it had small dark eyes struggling to see. Around his wrist was a plastic band.

  I don’t want to hold him, I said. Take him back.

  Oh silly man, she said, smiling, cradling it in her arms. It’s not hard to hold a dear child.

  No, Karen, I mean take him back to the hospital where you stole him.

  I couldn’t do that, Lester. I couldn’t do that—this is my newborn child, this is my tiny little thing his momma loves so that I am giving to you to be your son.

  And she smiled at me that dreamland smile of hers.

  She moved her shoulders from side to side and sang to it, but the little arms sort of jerked and waved a bit and she didn’t seem to notice. There was a dried blob of blood on the front of its wrappings.

  I looked at the clock. It was just noon. Was this a reasonable day, Karen should have been at Nature’s Basket doing up her flowers.

  I went into the bedroom and put on my jeans and a fresh shirt. I wet my hair and combed it and got a beer from the kitchen.

  There were two hospitals in Crenshaw, the private one in the historic district and the county one out by the interstate. What did it matter where she took it from, either one would be just as good. Or I could drive it direct to the police station, not the smartest move in the world. Or I could just take the Durango and leave.

  Instead of any of these things, by which I would finally reform into a person who makes executive decisions, I thought to myself I would not want to shock such a woman in her dangerous blissful state of mind, and so went back and tried again, as if you could argue sense into someone who was never too steady to begin with and was now totally bereft of her remaining faculties.

  This is wrong, Karen. It is wrong to go around stealing babies.

  But this is my baby, she said, staring into its face. I mean our baby, Lester. Yours and mine. I bore it as you conceived it.

  I went over to the couch where she had sat down and I looked again at the wristband. It said “Baby Wilson.”

  My name is not Wilson and your name is not Wilson, I said.

  That is a simple clerical error. Jesu is our love child, Lester. He is the indissoluble bond God has placed upon our union. God commanded this. We can never part now—we are a family.

  And she looked at me with her pale eyes all adazzle.

  Jesu, if it was him, was crying in little yelps and its head was turning this way and that with its mouth open and its little hands were all a-tremor.

  I had known she would finally put me at risk. I tried to pay no attention when she stole things and presented them to me, becaus
e they were little things and of no use. A Mexican embroidered nightshirt, whereas I like to sleep in the altogether, or a silver money clip in the shape of an L for Lester, like I was some downtown lawyer, or an antique music box, for Christ’s sake, that plays “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean,” as if anyone would want to hear it more than once. Totally the wrong things for me, if it was me she was stealing for, whereas I was hard pressed to get a decent meal in this household.

  Karen opened her blouse and put the baby to her breast. It hadn’t changed any that I could see—of course there was no milk there.

  I sat down next to her and pointed the remote at the TV: cartoon, a rerun, puppets, a rerun, nature, a preacher, and then I found the local news station.

  Just like them, they hadn’t heard the news yet.

  —

  KAREN, I SAID, I’LL be right back, and I drove into town to the Bluebird. It was lunchtime, busy as hell, and Brenda wasn’t too pleased, but seeing the look in my eyes she took a cigarette break out the back door. I told her what was what.

  She stood listening, Brenda, and shook her head.

  Lester, she said, your brains are in your balls. That is the way you are and the way you’ll always be.

  Goddamnit, Brenda, it’s not something I’ve done, you understand. Is this what I need to hear from you right now?

  She was squinting at me from the smoke drifting up into her eyes.

  I said, And you sometimes haven’t minded if that’s where my brain is, as I recall.

  Brenda is as unlike Karen as two women can be. Sturdier in mind, and shaped as if for the Bluebird clientele in her powder blue uniform with the Brenda stitched on the bosom pocket.

  Are you aware, she said, that kidnapping is a federal offense? Are you aware that if something happens to that infant the both of you—I’m saying the both of you, don’t shake your head no—let’s see, how do they do it in this state, I forget, electricity or the needle? I mean all Alice in Wonderland will end up is in the loony bin, but you as aiding and abetting—good-bye, Charlie.

  I was beginning to feel sick to the stomach standing there out in the sun with the Bluebird garbage bins in full reek.

  She ground out her cigarette and took me by the arm and walked me around to the parking lot.

  Now, Lester, the first thing is to go to the Kmart and buy you some infant formula, I believe it comes in their own plastic bottles these days. You follow the instructions and feed that baby so it doesn’t die, as it surely will if you don’t step in here. And while you’re at it, buy you an armload of diapers—they come with Velcro now—and a nightie or three and a cap for its head—she looked up at the sky—it’s supposed to get cooler later on—and whatever else you see there in Infants and Toddlers that might come in useful. You understand me?

  I nodded.

  And then when it turns out you haven’t killed that child, you get it back to its rightful parents as soon as you possibly can, anyway you can, and see to it that your darling poetess up there on Cloud Nine takes the rap that is justly hers to take. Do you hear me?

  I nodded.

  Brenda opened the door for me and saw me up behind the wheel.

  And, Lester? If I don’t hear on the TV tonight that you’ve settled this to a happy conclusion, I personally will call the cops. You understand me?

  Thanks, Brenda.

  She slammed the door. And don’t ever try to see me anymore, Lester, you asshole, she said.

  —

  I HAD DONE EVERYTHING Brenda said to do by way of food and sanitation, and now there was peace in the house. I didn’t want to alarm Karen in any way, so I treated her with nothing but cooperation. By the time I had gotten back from the store, she had just begun to realize a baby needed taking care of. She was so grateful she hugged me, and I helped her fuss over that child as if it was truly ours. Isn’t he the sweetest thing? Karen said. How he seems to know us—oh that is so dear! Look at that sweet face. He is surely the most beautiful baby I ever have seen!

  Now, with everything calmed down and both Karen and Baby Wilson asleep on our bed, it was time to do some thinking. I put on the five o’clock news to get the lay of the land.

  Oh my. The Crenshaw Commissioner of Police saying the entire CPD had been put on alert and deployed throughout the city to find the infant and apprehend the kidnapper or kidnappers. He’d also notified the FBI.

  Hey, I said, it is just my slightly crazy girl Karen. You don’t have to worry, we’re not kidnappers, man.

  The female they wanted for questioning was probably in her twenties, young, white, about five-six, slight of build with straight brown hair. She had brought a bouquet of flowers and, when approached by a nurse, claimed to be a friend of Mrs. Wilson.

  She was that cool, my Karen?

  Behind the commissioner was a worried-looking hospital official and, I supposed, the nurse in question, tearful now for having turned her back for a moment to look for a vase.

  Then a doctor stepped to the microphone and said whoever had the baby to remember that there was an open wound at the site of the umbilical cord. It should be kept clean and dressed with an antibacterial agent and a fresh bandage at least once a day.

  Well, I knew that. I had seen it for myself. I’d found the Polysporin in the medicine chest I had once bought for a cut on my forehead and applied it only after I washed my hands. I am not stupid. The doctor said the baby should only have sponge baths until the wound healed. I would have figured that out, too.

  A reporter asked if a ransom note had been received. That really got me riled. Of course not, you moron, I said. What do you think we are? No ransom note as yet, the commissioner said, emphasizing the “as yet,” which offended me even more.

  Then we were back in the studio with the handsome news anchor: He said Mrs. Wilson the mother was under sedation. He quoted Mr. Wilson the father as saying he didn’t understand—they were not rich people, that he was a CPA who worked for his living like everyone else.

  I had seen enough. I woke up Karen and hustled her and the baby and all the Kmart paraphernalia into the Durango. Why, whatever is the matter, Lester? Karen said. She was still half asleep. Are we going somewhere? She looked frightened for a moment until I put Baby Wilson in her arms. I ran back to the house and grabbed some clothes and things for each of us. Then I ran back again and turned off the lights and locked the door.

  I could imagine them any minute coming up the road and through the woods around us at the same time. We were in a cul-de-sac at the end of a dirt road here. I drove down to the two-lane. It was a mile from there to the freeway ramp. I pointed east for Nevada, though not planning to go there necessarily but just to be out on the highway away from town, feeling safer on the move, though expecting any minute to see a cop car in the rearview.

  I wasn’t worried about Brenda—she would think twice before getting involved. But I reasoned that if the police were smart they would talk to every florist in the city. Of course their being Crenshaw’s finest, it was only even odds they would make the connection to an employee of Nature’s Basket who had not shown up for work, one Karen Robileaux, age twenty-six. But even odds was not good enough as far as I was concerned, besides which the FBI were getting on the case, so say the odds were now sixty-forty, and if they made an I.D. of Karen it would be too late for an anonymous return of the baby. And if they came knocking on the door before I had the chance to deliver him back of our own accord, as appeared likely, there would be no alleviating circumstances for a judge to consider, that I could see.

  And so we were out of there.

  —

  I HAD PICKED UP her shoulder bag when running out of the house. Of course it was of Indian design, knitted, with all sorts of jagged lines, sectioned like a map in different colors of sand and rust and aqua. Inside, she kept not what women usually keep in their bags, no lipstick or powder compacts or portable tampon containers or any such normal things as that. She had some crumbs of dried flowers and a packet of Kleenex and her housekeys and
a paperback book about the Intergalactic Council, a kind of UN of advanced civilizations around the universe and how it was trying to send messages of peace to Earth. It was a nonfiction book, she had told me all about it. She had been thinking of becoming an Earth Representative of the Council. And two crumpled dollar bills and a handful of change.

  Karen, don’t you have any money? Didn’t you get paid this week?

  Oh I forgot. Yes, Lester, let’s see, she said and rooted about in the pocket of her dress. And she handed me her pay envelope.

  She had her hundred and twenty in there. I was carrying thirty-five in my wallet. Not great. I could cover gas, food, and a motel room for a night.

  After a couple of hours on the road I was calming down. It occurred to me, despite everything I was not mad at Karen. Given her state of mind she couldn’t be held responsible. If anyone, I was the one to blame for not springing into action the minute she walked in the door with the kid. And she was so trusting, sitting up there beside me with Baby Wilson in her arms and her eyes on the road ahead. She didn’t ask where we were going, not that I could have told her. And the moving car seemed to soothe him, too. He was quiet in her arms. A weird feeling, something like a pride of ownership, came over me, that I would compare now to falling asleep at the wheel. Migod, I woke up quickly enough.

  By now it had gotten dark, it was all desert now, the road flat and straight. Karen opened her window and leaned out to see the stars. I had to slow down so Baby Wilson would not have a cold wind blowing into his face. I stuck my hand over the back of the seat and rummaged around till I found the package of diapers. I pulled one out and told her to put it around his little head.