Keep the Baby, Faith Read online

  They pushed me into the back of the blue-and-white. Alma Letron left to make room for me. She’d go to the hospital with her son. But she wasn’t looking at her son. She was staring into the police car, at me. I stared back. It was hard to make her out through the close grillwork of the backseat cage I now occupied, but I could see her eyes. Her eyes were big and blue, and they shone with a cold, insane gleam of triumph.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I GOT INTO SCARSDALE on the last train that night. Then my mother started.

  “I called Hi Marks,” she announced. She was telling me this before I even got to the car, a Mercedes diesel two-door. World War II is over at last for a lot of people from Our Set, at least when it comes to buying cars. I started to head for the passenger seat, but Mom took off her seat belt and slid across, leaving me the driver’s side. Mom hates to drive; I don’t mind, but I don’t get a lot of practice. It is a nice car. I got in, leaned across, gave my mother a kiss on the cheek, buckled my seat belt, as the law of the People’s Republic of New York now requires, and started the engine.

  Hi Marks sounds like the kind of store my mother wouldn’t go to, but he is instead an attorney, an old friend of my father’s from the country club. Needless to say, the name was Hyman Markowitz when he first got it.

  “So you called Hi Marks,” I said. “That’s nice, how is he?”

  “How should he be? I didn’t call him to find out how he is, I called him to get him to sue the New York City Police Department for you. Besides, he’s fine. He’s such a hypochondriac, he would have told me if he wasn’t feeling fine.”

  “Sue them for what?”

  “False arrest!”

  “I wasn’t arrested.”

  I couldn’t see too clearly in the darkness, but I knew exactly the exasperated expression that had to be on her face.

  “What do you call it, then, when you’re about to come home for Thanksgiving, and you have to miss your train, because the police take you and haul you off to jail? An honor?”

  I restrained myself from sighing. It drives her crazy when I sigh. “They didn’t take me to jail, they took me back to the police station and asked me more questions. They had a right to.”

  “They had a right to listen to a crazy old woman—Faith’s been telling me stories about that one—”

  I had a cold flash of fear. “You didn’t leave the girls alone,” I said. I must have been an idiot not to have thought of it the minute I saw my mother there. Instinctively, I pressed a little heavier on the accelerator.

  “Slow down, slow down,” she said. “You think your mother is an idiot? They’ve got a policeman with them.” I slowed down. Then, in a softer voice, she said, “Harry, do you think there’s going to be any trouble?”

  “No,” I said truthfully. “I really don’t. I just don’t want to take any chances.”

  “I think that’s smart.”

  “I hope you don’t mind. Sue and I inflicting all this on you.” It was less than gallant to bring Sue in, since I had been the one who’d inflicted it on her, but all’s fair in love, war and dealing with your mother.

  “How could I mind? Faith is like family. A sweet girl. She’s had more than her share of tsouris.” She thought for a moment. When my mother slips into Yiddish, things are getting serious. “Maybe we should sue the old lady, instead.”

  “I don’t think we’ve got much of a case against her, either.” The idea was tempting, though. There was no evidence Alma Letron had been behind anything but a bunch of neurotic children, but she still gave me the creeps. Maybe we could sue her, and if she got off by reason of insanity (if you can do that in a civil suit), then we would have some leverage to get her committed. It occurred to me that maybe I should have a chat with Hi Marks. Especially if I could do it without my mother finding out. She’s one of the world’s foremost gloaters.

  “From what you told me on the phone, she gave her own son a heart attack.”

  “Whereas my mother only gives me ulcers.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Just a joke.”

  “I said, very funny.”

  “Anyway, she doesn’t own up to that one. Last I heard, she was threatening to sue the police herself, for coming on too strong and startling poor Robert.”

  “Poor Robert,” my mother echoed.

  “That was the phrase she used. I’ve got a certain amount of sympathy for him myself. The thing is, Alma neglected to tell the cops in advance that Robert has a heart condition, so nobody could make any money on that lawsuit but the lawyers.”

  I was getting near home. The Ross ancestral estate, in the family for the one generation we’d been Rosses, was a ranch house in light green that had spread like an amoeba every time my father came down with an attack of do-it-yourself. I used to get in his way, and drop his tools, and color on his plans, a mode of behavior we both used to refer to as “Helping Daddy.” The house was up ahead about a mile, and the closer I got to it, the more I wanted to retreat to childhood and forget about this whole mess.

  “I’m tired, Mom,” I said.

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Worn out with this stuff. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Something else? Sure. When are you going to get married, instead of running around with other men’s wives? Did I raise you to do things like that?”

  I started to laugh.

  “Adultery is funny to you?”

  I didn’t tell her that while Lucille had committed adultery, all I’d been guilty of was fornication. I doubted Mom would appreciate the distinction. Instead, I said, “Mom, I apologize. You were right all the time. You used to tell me, do one thing wrong, get caught, and you’re marked for life. I never believed you until now.”

  She addressed the roof of the car. “Why do they never believe you until it’s too late?”

  This started me laughing again.

  “Now what?” my mother demanded.

  “It’s you,” I said.

  “Me.”

  “That’s right. Breeding tells, as they say at The Grayness. You may jog. You may eat yogurt. You may be tanned from the sun in the summer and a lamp in the winter. You may be as chic as Bloomingdale’s can make you. You may be tennis champ of the club for six straight years. You may be forever young and beautiful, even with white hair. You may still be able to get into your wedding dress.”

  “I weigh less now than I did when I got married.”

  “You may be the new format, but the essentials are all the same. You are still a Jewish Mother.”

  “And don’t you ever forget it.” The last word, as always. We were home. I pulled into the driveway, and we went in to meet the girls.

  The best thing about the next two days was that nothing happened. Well, okay, things happened. We made turkey stuffing. We ate. We talked. We played Trivial Pursuit (Faith and I were big winners). On Thanksgiving, equality of the sexes was temporarily suspended, so I had to pretend I knew how to carve a turkey, and the three of them had to pretend they preferred it in shreds. As it was, I got the better of the deal, because I got to watch football while “the girls” (Mom’s word, including herself) cleaned up. By tacit agreement, the name of Louis Letron, and the subject of bombs and murder, was not brought up.

  There had been some minor excitement early Wednesday morning (I’m talking early, about 4 A.M.), when my mother woke me up demanding to know what we were going to do if Faith went into labor.

  “Hah?” I said. I couldn’t see her because the light had cauterized my eyelids together. Hitting the light switch without warning was Mom’s favorite way of announcing her presence.

  “I said, what are we going to do if Faith goes into labor? She’s carrying awfully low, and she says she’s about due, anyway. So what do we do if the baby decides to come today?”

  “Panic?” I suggested.

  “Very funny,” Mom replied.

  Then I told her it had all been taken care of. Sue had thought of it. Dr. Metzenbaum was spen
ding Thanksgiving with her parents, too, and they happened to live in Harrison, less than a half hour away. If Faith got precipitate, we had the phone number, we’d all meet at St. Vincent’s Hospital in White Plains, and everything would be hunky-dory.

  “That’s good,” Mom said. “I was worried. Go back to sleep.”

  Not always the easiest instructions to follow, but I had no problem with them that time. I stayed awake only long enough to reflect that another answer to Mom’s question would be “Rejoice.” If Faith would just go ahead and have the baby, the threat would be removed whether or not it was Louis who’d been behind the whole mess. The money would pass and there would be nothing anyone could do about it. Sue had thought of everything else, why hadn’t she asked the doctor about induced labor? I thought of mentioning it myself, but just before I drifted off, I decided not to. Faith would hate it, and I couldn’t blame her. There was something unwholesome about messing with the birth of an innocent baby because of some sordid adult squabbling over money.

  Friday afternoon, Faith wanted to go for a ride.

  There was more football on, but it was college, and I could miss that. I was encouraged to see her taking an interest in things; back in New York, she had acted as if to leave the security of home was to tempt the gods and court sudden destruction. Just to make sure (the motive for more and more of my actions lately), I asked her why.

  “I want to see the old town,” she said. “I’ve been back here for three days, and for the first time since I got pregnant, I’ve been feeling safe. Mostly. And I can’t get around by myself very well.”

  “We could all use some fresh air,” Sue said.

  “We’ll go to Carvel,” Mom put in. “You can get ice cream.”

  “I love ice cream in the winter,” Faith said.

  “I’ll go to Carvel if Mom eats some, too.”

  “Oh, Harry, I’ve eaten too much already, the last two days.”

  “Harry’s right, Mom,” Sue said. “No fair being a skinny Jewish mother while you’re trying to make your kids fat.”

  It was agreed. We got loaded into the car, then I said, “Just a second, I forgot the keys.”

  “They should be on the hook in the kitchen,” Mom said helpfully.

  I knew where they were, they were in my left front pocket. I wanted to go inside to use the phone. I was as tired as anyone of this shadow-fear game we’d been playing, but I wasn’t going to ignore any of my moves until it was over. I spent one of my mother’s message units, and arranged with the Scarsdale police for a discreet escort. Just to make sure.

  I took them on Central Avenue toward White Plains. This is the classic Suburban Main Road, lined on either side for miles by franchise fast food joints and auto parts stores, stereo centers and shopping malls, small brick office buildings. Usually, wide as it is, traffic is impossible, but today it wasn’t bad at all. Day after Thanksgiving, a lot of people didn’t have to work.

  Thinking of work reminded me that I had to be back in harness at The Grayness come Wednesday. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I wasn’t sure I approved of the notion of messily dead bodies being easier to take than orange-on-black computer displays of TV listings, but that’s how I felt at the moment.

  I was also thinking of the kind of crap I was going to get if they ever found out about my reticence to them about this whole affair. I’d told them enough to give them the jump on the other papers (that much loyalty I had), but I hadn’t said anything about Faith, or her husband’s whereabouts or condition, or why Louis Letron might possibly have wanted to kill her. More amazingly, it seemed the papers and TV stations hadn’t been able to find out anything about it, either.

  I found that hard to believe. I’d found out in a day or so, and I was hardly one of the great names in journalism. Maybe the police were sitting on them or something. I didn’t really care. It may be hypocritical for someone who takes a paycheck from a contemporary American newspaper to be glad for a little privacy—no, I know it’s hypocritical—but there it was. The respite was doing all of us good.

  So did the ice cream. This particular Carvel franchise was in one of the shopping centers, across a large parking lot. Central Avenue may have been calm, but the shopping center was hopping, the movie theaters and the malls doing great holiday business. The ice-cream store was packed, and we had to wait quite a while before we were served.

  Carvel has branched out into a line of trendy, scoop-it-out ice cream, the kind that comes in Yuppie flavors like Carob & Kiwi, but old-time fans ignore that stuff for the soft ice cream (vanilla or chocolate) that swirls out of a huge stainless-steel machine. It’s so good, it almost lets you forgive their excruciating TV commercials. Anyway, we all got our cones (straight vanilla for me, vanilla Brown Bonnet for Sue, chocolate for Faith, and chocolate with sprinkles for Mom), and since there was no room in the store, went back to the car to eat them.

  There was something pleasantly death-defying about trying to keep soft ice cream from dripping on the interior of a Mercedes-Benz. Fortunately, it was one of those steel-gray November days, dry, but cold enough to help keep the ice cream in place. “It would probably be a lot more fun to try this in August,” I said.

  “I’m having plenty of fun,” Faith said. “I’d almost forgotten what it was like. Thank you, Mrs. Ross—”

  “Don’t be silly,” Mom said.

  “—and you too, Harry, Sue. I know I must have been impossible.”

  “Nah,” I told her. “Just extremely difficult.”

  She laughed at that. A few days ago, she would have hit me.

  “I feel so much better. For the first time since I knew I was pregnant, I feel as if I can have my baby in peace.”

  This was just wonderful. It was great for Faith’s mental health and all, but it bothered me that I was now more worried by the situation than she was.

  “It may not be over, you know,” I said. I felt like a louse, but once you let a sense of responsibility wrap itself around your brain, you are more or less condemned to a life of lousehood.

  “I know,” Faith said. “There’s always a chance it wasn’t just Louis.” I forewent pointing out that she was the one insisting on a conspiracy of the entire family against her. “But it isn’t that. I’ve just decided not to be scared anymore.”

  Sue gave her a little hug, and my mother leaned back over the seat and kissed her on the cheek, and patted the baby. She told Faith how brave she was. I thought, what the hell, I was scared enough for everybody.

  I finished my cone, told Mom to buckle up, and started the car. There was some commotion in the parking lot, a few people yelling and running, but the windows were rolled up to deaden the sound, and “the girls” were all busy talking, so no one seemed to notice but me, and I didn’t care what it was, a contest, a purse snatching, or a personal appearance by Miss Nude America.

  All I wanted to do was to get everybody safely back home. It occurred to me that a sense of responsibility would probably be a lot easier to carry off accompanied by some courage, but I couldn’t seem to come up with any. It also occurred to me that I was learning a number of things about myself in recent days, and I didn’t much like any of them.

  I wondered what Lucille was doing this minute. I remembered her grinding against me in the dusty apartment. I had to shake my head violently to get rid of the image. Mom asked me if anything was wrong.

  “No, Mom,” I said. “Sudden chill.”

  I was thoroughly disgusted with myself by the time I left the parking lot.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  I GOT EVEN MORE disgusted with myself later, for letting myself get talked into not going straight home. Faith still wanted to be driven around. She wanted to see Scarsdale High School so badly you might have thought it was America’s answer to the Arc de Triomphe, built specifically for people to go admire the architecture, and be moved by what it symbolized. The whole thing would have been easier to take if I hadn’t known Faith had spent three years sitting in that building, complain
ing about it daily in chorus with my sister.

  I said words to that effect. My mother told me to stop grumbling. We went to the high school; we looked at it from all accessible vantage points. Faith seemed to be getting her money’s worth. Finally, she seemed satisfied, and we got back in the car.

  I was still the only one who wanted to go home.

  I asked Faith where she wanted to go. She didn’t mind, anywhere. It was just so nice to be home again. She’d been so far from this, had actually tried to forget it, and that hadn’t been fair, to her father’s memory, or to herself. Mom and Sue took that big. I was afraid I was going to have to open the glove compartment and hand out Kleenex.

  At this point, I ceased worrying about the whole business. What the hell, I thought. Her life, her baby. Besides, in the rearview mirror, I could just make out our friendly police escort, sitting discreetly by the side of the road, waiting patiently for us to move on. It would have made a big hit with the local taxpayers (of whom my mother was one) if they’d known we were tying up an entire squad car to escort us on an aimless little sentimental journey through the highways and byways of Westchester County, but it would have been self-defeating to bring the matter up.

  The sooner I got moving, the sooner I could get them home. I decided to stick to the byways rather than the highways. Westchester has a lot of these, old WPA projects that had been engineering marvels in their day, but had since been made largely obsolete by higher speeds, and the big state and interstate roads. Faith would see more of the county this way, and the relative lack of traffic would let the cop behind us get a good look at anybody who happened to join us.

  Nobody did. We tooled along an old tree-lined road, gray-white, with sloppy stripes of tar smoothing the way between the concrete slabs. Faith read road signs like old poetry. The police car stayed behind at the edge of visibility. I decided again to quit worrying—if someone had been following us when we’d left the house, he would have had to stop when we’d gotten ice cream, he would have had to follow us around the high school. The cop would have spotted him by then.