“Let me ask you something, okay?” Joanna said.
No, he wanted to say—it’s not okay.
“Let’s say there’s a one percent chance I’m right.”
“What?”
“That’s fair, isn’t it? One percent?”
“Look, I—”
“I’m asking you a simple question. You want to attack me with logic, fine, I understand. So I’m asking you a logical question. You love percentages, don’t you? You’re an actuary—pretend it’s one of your insurance charts. Is there a one percent chance I’m right?”
“You want me to put a percentage on something I think is totally ridiculous?”
“Yes, I want you to put a percentage on something you think is totally ridiculous.”
“Okay, fine—there’s a one percent chance she’s not Joelle. And a ninety-nine percent chance she is.”
“Okay. Are you willing to leave the country with even the chance she’s not ours?”
For a moment he was going to say Joelle wasn’t theirs anyway—because in the usual God-given sense, she wasn’t. But he couldn’t say it. It wasn’t true anymore. From the second he’d clasped her to his chest, she’d become theirs.
She was their daughter.
So now what?
TEN
It seemed an eternity before Galina opened her door.
Maybe because Paul was no clearer about what he was going to say to her than he was before, and so was standing there frantically trying to come up with something. In addition to hoping she wouldn’t be home, that no one would actually answer Pablo’s knock.
Pablo had driven the three of them to Galina’s house in the Chapinero district, a working-class area of dun-colored apartment buildings and modest homes. When they’d slid into the backseat, Joanna hadn’t taken their daughter from Paul’s arms as she normally had in the two days they’d been with her.
She was making a statement.
This isn’t my daughter. You hold her.
Well, Paul thought, they’d see.
“Hello, Galina,” Paul said when the door finally opened.
She seemed surprised to see them, but not in a way Paul construed as alarmed. In fact, she smiled, then leaned over and whispered a sweet hello to her very favorite baby. Paul felt like turning to Joanna and saying see, satisfied now? Joanna didn’t look any different than she had during the ride over, which was nervous and unhappy.
Galina invited them in.
The door opened onto a small living room. It had a brown leather couch and two worn but comfortable-looking chairs facing a television. A lumbering yellow dog barely shifted from its sprawled position on the floor. Galina had been watching a soap opera; at least Paul assumed that’s what it was. A perfect-looking young woman was kissing a perfect-looking young man.
“Please sit,” Galina said, gesturing to the couch. Do you see this, Paul kept up his running, albeit silent commentary to Joanna, she’s inviting us in. She’s asking us to sit on her couch.
Galina brought out cookies and four cups of industrial-strength Colombian coffee in what must have been her fine china. She turned down the TV.
They made small talk.
“How did the baby sleep last night?” Galina asked.
“Fine,” Paul answered. “She woke up once around two, I think, and then went right back.”
“You’re lucky. She’s a good sleeper.”
“Yes,” Paul said. Joanna remained conspicuously silent.
“You have a lovely house, Galina,” Paul said, continuing to search for anything to talk about except the actual reason for their visit.
“Thank you.”
“What’s your dog’s name?” he asked.
“Oca,” Galina said. At the sound of his name the dog lifted his head and sniffed the air.
“Did Pablo take you to the doctor yesterday?” Galina asked.
“Yes.”
“And what did he say?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Wonderful,” Galina said. She smiled; her laugh lines fairly cackled.
Then Joanna spoke.
“Her fever was gone.”
“That’s good,” Galina said.
“I wonder what it was ?” Joanna added.
“Who knows?” Galina lifted her hands up in the universal gesture of the human limitation to understanding the mysteries of the universe.
Which is what Joanna was trying to do, of course. Understand, at least, one mystery.
Paul knew that he was expected to take over.
If he sat back and said nothing, Joanna would accuse him of nonsupport, of aiding and abetting the enemy. Except the enemy was treating them to coffee and cookies and the general hospitality of her home. The enemy had run to a farmacia to buy Joelle a thermometer when she was sick. Still, he was counted on to do certain things. Support her, for example. Something he hadn’t done when she’d insisted Joelle, the real Joelle in her mind, had been put to sleep the wrong way. Something he was firmly and unquestioningly expected to do now.
“Uh, Galina . . . we were wondering about something,” he started.
“Yes?”
“This is going to sound a little silly, okay?”
“Okay.” Galina repeated his American slang with evident amusement.
“My wife . . . both of us, really, have noticed this difference. About Joelle.”
“Difference. What do you mean difference?”
“Well, I said this is going to sound silly, but the fact is, she kind of smells different. Than she did before.”
“Smells?” She looked over at Pablo, as if for confirmation she’d heard him correctly. Apparently, she had. Pablo looked as confused as she did.
“She had this kind of musky smell,” Paul blundered on, “and now she doesn’t. It seemed to change after, uh . . . when we thought she was . . . when you went to get her the thermometer.”
“Yes?”
“We were just wondering about it,” Paul said. “That’s all.”
“All right.”
Evidently, Galina still had no idea what he was talking about.
“We were hoping maybe you can account for it?”
“Account for what?”
“Why she seems to be . . . different.”
Galina put her cup of coffee back down on its china saucer. The sound seemed to echo unnaturally. Maybe because the room had suddenly turned uncomfortably quiet, the only sound a vague murmur emanating from the lowered TV. If the five of them were on that soap opera, Paul thought, there’d be a dissonant organ chord now to signify the portent of something dramatic. In this case, Galina’s growing realization that she was being accused, albeit clumsily, of something she still didn’t understand.
“What are you saying?” she asked now. “Are you suggesting . . . what? ”
“Nothing, Galina,” Paul said, a little too quickly. “We were just curious, that’s all.”
“About what ?”
“About why she smells different.”
“I don’t understand. What are you asking me?”
We’re asking you if you stole our baby, Galina. If you switched her.
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you here?”
Paul felt like asking Joanna that himself.
“We wanted to know . . . ,” and here Paul suddenly went blank.
“She had a beauty mark,” Joanna said.
“What?” Galina turned to look at Joanna.
“She had a beauty mark when we got her. It’s not there now.”
“Beauty mark?”
“My daughter had a beauty mark on her left leg. And she used to smell like . . . well, like her. The beauty mark’s gone. She smells different. I want to know if it’s the same baby. ”