Her daughter picked her up at South Station, the baby on her hip. He stared at his grandmother as though she were a complete unknown, an alien from outer space, when in reality she lived only four hours away by train, but it had been a while since she’d made the trip from New York to Boston. Sarai gave her mother an enthusiastic one-arm hug, the baby wide-eyed.
In the Jeep, the baby strapped in the back, Sarai’s face took on a careful expression. “Sam and I have finished furnishing the place,” she said, “for the time being.”
Nina said nothing. She was no fool. She knew darn well she’d gone too far last time she’d visited and she had resolved to behave herself. She had talked the matter all over with her friend Bonnie during their daily walks around Prospect Park. Remember when you were first married, Bonnie had advised. Actually, Nina couldn’t.
“What I’m saying, Mother…”
“Yes, yes, I hear you, dear. And I’m sure you’ve done a lovely job.” The last time Nina visited she kept finding items on the street to drag home to Sarai and Sam’s, usually with Sarai’s approval, sometimes with her assistance. Sarai fell in with Nina’s ideas, but—as Bonnie cautioned—Nina had to remember that Sarai was married to Sam, not to Nina.
Well, Nina knew that. It was just that the young couple had used all the money they had—plus cashing in Sarai’s life insurance policy Nina had turned over to them with the idea that it would stay intact while Sarai was actually alive and well—to buy a money-sucking Victorian in one of those close-in suburbs that surround Boston. Nina had furnished her own “working man’s” brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in sidewalk finds. When they were young, her children were perfectly willing to help her tote home an oak side table or a glass-topped coffee table or framed prints, rejoicing with her in their good fortune. Now that they were grown, only brand new things—Ikea and the like—were good enough for them. It had something to do with the people they’d married. Sam was particularly keen on everything being new, even though anyone could see that quality and endurance—and even style—might be lacking. It seemed the young were satisfied only with what they had to pay for.
That was a luxury Nina couldn’t afford when she was raising her family. It had been up to her to hold things together, especially after Declan up and left her and the children for good. Four children under eight and Nina with no more than an associate’s degree. She’d have gotten her BA before she’d gotten married if Declan hadn’t been in such a hurry. He had his BA, he argued—and, let’s face it, she agreed—what need did she have to get hers? Besides, they needed her waitressing wages first while he finished grad school and then to save for a house where they could start a family.
She got her BA, eventually, at great price, not in the carefree way of young students but while working at a succession of jobs—taxi dispatcher, short-order cook, department store clerk—and running her house and raising her kids. At one point, Megan, her oldest, held it against her that Bobby, the youngest and the only boy, cried for his mother some of those evenings when the children were left in the care of one indifferent teenager after another. Nina couldn’t very well expect a child to understand that it was all she could do to hold things together.
After she got the BA and started substitute teaching, she found that her knack for holding things together extended to the classroom as well. Some of the younger teachers had no grasp of discipline or organization. They couldn’t seem to learn, any more than a cat can be taught to read, what was to Nina second nature.
Mr. Peevis hired her to teach special education at MS 12, the middle school down the street from her house. Megan and Claire had already passed through the revolving door that is middle school and gone on to high school in Manhattan, and Sarai and Bobby were in 7th and 6th grades at MS 12. Things got easier after that. Nina had only one job now and she could take courses for her master’s degree one at a time. Most school day mornings, she left her house at the same time her children did, spent the day in her self-contained classroom taming and grooming her dozen or so charges, and walked home to eat supper with her children and spend the evening with them. She was holding things together. All four of her children and, as far as she could tell, some of her MS 12 students turned out fine. Bobby had joined the Navy to see the world and sent Nina postcards from around the globe. The girls were all married, Sarai, third in line, having leapfrogged over the others to produce the first grandchild.
The Jeep had swooped through the underground route that was the fruit of Boston’s Big Dig and was gliding through the leaf-canopied streets of Sarai’s town. “I don’t know about you,” Nina said, “but I’m always glad to get out of those tunnels. I read in the Times about a piece of the roof coming loose and crashing through a car and killing the driver.” The driver was about Nina’s own age, if she remembered correctly.
Sarai slid her eyes toward her mother and smiled the sort of indulgent smile one might give a child. “Now, mother, Boston is no less safe than this street we’re on.”
“You can’t believe that!” Nina looked out at the neat lawns and flowering shrubs and brick walks leading up to white-pillared porches.
“Well, inner city problems spill over into the suburbs, you know mother, even here—drugs, for instance, and guns.” They had turned into Sarai’s driveway and arrived at her kitchen door. The baby had fallen asleep, and Sarai unhooked the harness of his car seat and gingerly placed him against her shoulder where his little body molded itself to her. She turned to her mother and placed one finger to her lips.
Nina hunched her shoulders in agreement. That was another thing that had gotten her into trouble the last time she’d visited. She’d never insisted on quiet for her own babies. For one thing, after Megan, quiet wasn’t always possible. Her babies learned to sleep through anything. Was it her policy, a theory of child rearing, or just the way things worked out? Nina couldn’t remember. So much of the past had become a blur—perhaps because she had been so very busy.
But, of course, this baby was breastfed, and that seemed so much more delicate an endeavor than bottle feeding. On her previous visit, Nina had suggested to Sarai that she give the occasional bottle. Sarai—and Sam too—had reacted as though Nina were a matron in a Rumanian orphanage drugging babies around the clock with paregoric.
Sam met them at the door and, as always, greeted Nina with a bear hug. He was an emotional man, rather like Declan, and, also like Declan, capable of being a little full of himself. He had fixed dinner for them and set the table. Nina fell in easily with his desire for praise. She liked Sam—when she could put aside the ways in which he reminded her of Declan.
“Have you told your mother our plan?” Sam asked once they were seated at the table. He dished out a slice of meatloaf onto Nina’s plate.
For a moment, Nina was afraid she was going to be given a list of instructions regarding breastfeeding and scavenging. But, of course, her children and sons-in-law were all too circumspect—and kind—to scold.
“Well, if the baby stays asleep…” Sarai trailed off as though such a possibility were remote.
“You can nurse him just before we leave.” Sam served himself last. “There’s no hard and fast timetable.” It turned out that his college roommate was hosting a gallery opening that evening in the neighboring town. Nina could see that it wasn’t just the wine and cheese and showing up for his friend that Sam wanted. He wanted to get out, to get out with his wife, without the baby.
“Well, of course!” Nina made herself sound enthusiastic. To tell the truth, she was a little afraid of being put in charge of a breastfed baby. The last time she’d visited she could hardly hold the baby without his crying for his mother. One of the reasons she’d dragged home furniture, she realized now, was that she had wanted to be of some use to the household.
The baby woke up half way through supper. At first, he wanted only his mother. Then he let Sam dandle him while Nina did the dishes and Sarai changed into gallery-going clothes—brand new, unlike the carefully chosen thrift-store finds Nina had raised her children on. Finally, the baby accepted Nina’s arms, giving her the solemn expression he’d greeted her with at the train station. Sarai nursed him again just before she and Sam were ready to leave and, handed him, wide awake, back to Nina. “Now, mother,” she said at the door, “if he’s unhappy, you call me and we’ll come right back.”
The baby complained when Nina when into the living room and sat down. So she stood up and walked and he resumed his stoic expression. She walked with him though the entire house talking to him as she went. He looked at her as though he understood. She decided she liked him. Why had his parents named him Peter Declan?
For some reason she couldn’t grasp, the children all loved Declan. He had been a frequently preoccupied father when he lived with them and an erratic presence thereafter, but, again, for reasons she couldn’t fathom, they all forgave him. He showed up at each of the girl’s weddings—accompanied by the very woman he’d left his family for—walked each daughter down the aisle, and was persuaded at each reception to sing “Danny Boy,” at the end of which everyone except Nina was in tears, his children—even his son—throwing themselves around his neck.
The baby lay his head against Nina’s shoulder. She continued to walk. She would have named her first-born Declan if Megan had been a boy, but her husband said oh, no, they’d be no Declan the Third. He wanted any son of his to have his own name, not a handed-down one.
But there was a Declan the Third, after all. After a series of miscarriages over a number of years, Declan’s second wife finally produced a son, who was given the name that rightfully should have been Bobby’s. That boy was at the weddings, too, a completely ungoverned boy who talked out loud in church and raced around the receptions knocking people in their knees causing drinks to spill. Nina sized him up as ADHD, a label that the private school Declan and wife somehow could afford wouldn’t touch with a ten- foot pole.
The baby’s eyes were heavy. Nina kept walking and began to hum so as to maintain the delicate art of keeping him quiet. The previous spring Mr. Peevis had called her into his office during her prep period and putting pencil to paper showed her how she’d be just as well off financially whether she continued working or not. You’ll be free to follow your dreams, he’d said. Only afterwards did it strike Nina that Mr. Peevis had the school’s welfare in mind as much as he did hers. He could hire two kids right out of college—without MA’s—to fill her one position. Bonnie retired, too, and threw herself into the year-round pursuits she’d had to squeeze into spare time. Nina had never had the time to develop hobbies. For the first time in her life, she felt at loose ends.
The baby had fallen asleep. Nina walked to the playpen they kept for him in the living room. She knelt on the rattan rug, lowered the side of the pen with one hand and eased the baby onto a woolly blanket. She covered him and raised the side. She sat back on her haunches, the baby’s imprint remaining against her chest. No wonder Sarai adored him. A sensuous memory of her own babies suffused Nina.
She was surprised to hear the kitchen door open. Sarai and Sam were back earlier than expected. Two sets of heavy footfalls came quickly through the kitchen. Fear rose to Nina’s gorge and she got to her feet as two young men, one burly, the other slight, tramped into the room and gaped at her. When she was a child there were jingles about Fat and Skinny—Fat and Skinny went to bed. Fat rolled over and Skinny was dead.
This Fat and Skinny spoke to each other in language Nina had forbidden in her classroom and her home. They could have been two of her old MS 12 students a few years along in life. If they had been in the classroom, she might have mustered the inner resources to hold sway over them. But she quickly surmised that their shifty eyes and twitchy mouths were due not to their neglecting to take their Ritalin that morning but from involvement with some more potent and unpredictable drug. She hadn’t spent all those years as a special education teacher not to realize when she was out of her depth.
Fat gave orders to Skinny, who bounded towards Nina with jerky steps and pointed to a chair next to the playpen. She sat. With his herky-jerky movements, he pulled clothesline rope from his jacket pocket, pulled her hands behind the chair and tied them. Next to her ear, his breath smelled of bubble gum. The first semester she taught, she took a lenient attitude toward gum chewing, but after finding wads on the undersides of chairs and desks and smeared on the floor, she became a convert to the school’s no-gum policy. Skinny came around the chair and knelt to tie Nina’s feet. He had two swirls on the crown of his head, a sign Nina had half-believed in childhood that he would live on two continents. Fat took off then while Skinny stood, squinched his eyes and said, “Sorry ‘bout this.” Then he was off too. Nina heard them rummaging in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Each of the three floors in this monster house Sarai and Sam had bought had a bathroom, and the men raced to each while she sat helpless and completely without dignity.
She had felt helpless the day Declan walked around their brownstone bedroom packing to leave, this time for good. And she had cared nothing about her dignity. Please don’t do this she had begged, the baby in her arms, his head on her shoulder. She would have put the baby down and fallen to her knees and hugged Declan around the legs if she thought that could change his mind. She didn’t yet know about the other woman, didn’t know that Declan had a destination. She only knew that she loved him and couldn’t go on without him, couldn’t possibly finish by herself this gigantic house-and-family project they’d undertaken together. Declan said nothing until just before he went out the front door—You’ll manage; you always do.
That night, she’d taken all four children into her bed—hers and Declan’s—and held onto one or another of them through the night to keep herself from shaking. The next morning, she got the children’s breakfast, walked the older two to school, and later while the younger two were napping consulted the want ads in the paper. She’d managed. And she’d continued to manage the others in her life right through her last day at MS 12.
She realized now, sitting bound hand and foot, that she’d never really taken advantage of the freedom Mr. Peevis had promised. It was foolish of her to think she could fill her time with her children the way she’d had to do all those years. She didn’t want to do the things close to home that Bonnie was so fond of. She wanted to take the old fashioned Grand Tour of Europe, sail to the Galapagos Islands, walk on the Great Wall of China, things she’d read about and now was actually free to do. She’d sign up for tours. She’d been so busy for so many years that she didn’t have a great many friends, but now she was free to make new friends, friends who were also free and craved adventure as much as she did.
Declan would never be free. That boy of his was a handful and he was going to grow up to be a care, Nina was sure. For the first time, she felt sorry for Declan. And for his wife, Rose. The poor woman had lost one underdone baby after another. How she must have grieved—perhaps still grieved—before finally, at the biological last moment, going full term. Nina had had four pregnancies and four live births—how could she have endured the loss of any one of them?—and now, while still in the prime of life, was free of responsibility.
The intruders came pounding down the stairs. At the door of the living room, they stopped and looked agape as though in their race from medicine chest to medicine chest they had forgotten all about her. Again, Nina blocked their vile utterances and studied their body language. Fat reached into his pocket and brought out a gun. Skinny put his hand on Fat’s, in protest, and Fat shook it off.
Nina had watched enough episodes of Law and Order and its spinoffs to know what had to come next. She was a witness, after all. And they had a gun. “The baby,” she whispered loudly. Don’t hurt the baby. He can’t do anything to hurt you.”
The shot, when it came, felt like a swift, powerful, yet painless blow. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph—was it she who spoke or the skinny intruder? Or was she merely thinking the words. A montage tumbled through her mind: she and Declan feeding cake to each other on their wedding day, Baby Megan eating ice cream with a spoon, Claire at the supper table imitating her third grade teacher’s outrageous Brooklyn accent. And then her own father singing to her when she was a baby herself, before the time when she would have thought it possible for her to have a memory.
Nina is by the ceiling looking down. She sees the chair tipped over and herself inert on the rattan rug, a pool of blood widening around her. Peter Declan is standing in the playpen holding onto the bars and wailing. The shot must have woken him up. His parents will be home any minute. Sarai will pick him up and put him to the breast to let him drink and sob and shudder until he finds peace. Everything will be all right.
Nina wells up with emotion, an eternal springing forth. She has never felt more free.
