Theresa took my hand, and I felt some of her nail polish rubbing off on me. The hand was just about as cold as Libby’s had been in the car. “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”
“We live out here on the west side, right off Archer,” Mrs. Butterworth said. “You know where that is?”
“I think so,” I said.
“Well, you want to take a ride out on Sunday, why you just drive right out. I gave her the address. You got it, don’t you, honey?”
“Uh-huh,” Theresa said; she picked up her purse from the bed and waved it at her friend, indicating, I suppose, that the Butterworth address was safely locked away. It was the same plastic bag she’d been carrying that night I had met her, back in the winter.
“I think we’d better be going,” I said.
“You kids take it easy now,” Mrs. Butterworth called.
We started down the aisle of the ward, Theresa still with one metal curler in her hair which she must have forgotten about in the tension and excitement of leaving. Some of the women who were awake sat up in their beds and said goodbye. Theresa took hold of my arm and moved between the beds, saying goodbye and so long and see ya. At the end of the corridor I saw the nun holding a bundle in her arms. She pushed the elevator buzzer and we all stepped in. The sister did not offer to show me the baby’s face within the blankets, and I did not ask to see it.
On the way down Theresa looked up at me. I tried to smile again, but she didn’t have it in her to smile back.
At the main floor the nun accompanied us to the front door. A taxi immediately swung up the crescent drive; I saw first the face of the driver, a Negro, and then Sid in the back seat.
We stood out in front of the new building, where the four nuns had been standing when Sid had driven by earlier. As yet Theresa had looked neither at the sister nor at the child; either she looked at me or at no one.
I turned to the nun. “Fine,” I said. “Thank you.”
She only stared with her very severe eyes.
“May I have it, please?” I asked. Theresa looked straight ahead, as though she were not with us. Down below, the back door of the taxi opened.
I could see that the nun was holding her teeth together; finally she gave me the baby, then turned and went back into the hospital. I did not know how much, or what, Theresa had told her.
“Right down there,” I said to Theresa. “Mr. Jaffe’s in the taxi.”
She preceded me down the stairs, and I realized how strange it must look for me to be carrying the baby and Theresa to be carrying her little suitcase. But she was well ahead of me — I was making my way down like an old man, one step at a time — and there was nothing to be done about it. I looked into the blankets now, to be sure there really was a baby there, and of course there really was. All of a sudden I found myself grinning euphorically; everything was going as it should. It even seemed more sensible that it was me who was carrying the baby, not Theresa.
Down below, Sid stepped out of the cab and Theresa got in. Then he ran around the back of the cab and went in the other door. On my side the door remained ajar, and I stepped into the cab at last, easing myself and the baby through, and then I was seated beside Theresa. When I looked back to where I had begun my journey, I saw a nun standing on the top step. Suddenly she threw us a kiss — she must have thought we were another party. I smiled at her through the window. Within the blanket I felt the baby stir.
“All right,” Sid said to the driver. As we started down the entryway, Theresa sighed. It was over.
“Well, how are you feeling?” Sid said to her. I saw that he had taken her hand and was patting it. Nail polish was sticking to everyone’s hand now; that alone seemed to be preventing things from being absolutely perfect. I knew the thought to be an irrational one even as it passed through my mind, and yet it rather set me on edge again. After all, the girl had put the polish on for me.
“I feel fine, Mr. Jaffe. I—”
The taxi stopped, swaying us all forward. Without turning, the driver reached around with his left arm and opened the door on Sid’s side; we were almost directly across the street from Sid’s four-door automobile. As planned, I handed the baby to Sid; I wondered why we had not arranged for the two of us to sit side by side, so that we would not have to pass the bundle over Theresa. Jaffe stepped out of the car and then the driver reached around again and closed the door. It all happened very quickly.
“What …” Theresa said feebly. She looked at me and then out the window to follow Sid crossing the street. He stepped into the car across the way and Theresa leaned even further across me; evidently she wanted to see whom he was handing the baby to. Then she turned back to me, stunned, but not crying.
“Do you feel all right?” I asked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” Looking down, she saw the nail polish on my jacket and on both our hands.
“That’s all right,” I said. “It’s nothing at all.”
The driver sat with his large hands on the wheel, while the motor ran and the meter ticked.
“But you feel all right?” I asked.
She dropped her fingers limply into her lap. “Sister Mary Frances is very strict,” she said.
“That’s all over.”
“I don’t think she liked that I said I was married.”
“Well, that was silly of her.”
“I said the baby was in the incubator. I said you were away on business—”
“That’s all right, Theresa.”
“Otherwise,” the girl said, looking down still at her hands, “who would I have had to talk to?”
The driver was looking at us now in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t know what more to say. “Do you have any pains? Anything at all?”
After considering an answer for a while, she said, “Uh-uh. No.”
I reached into my wallet and took out a five-dollar bill which I handed across to the driver. On the other side of the street I heard Jaffe’s car start up.
“Mr. Jaffe gave you the money, didn’t he? For the next couple of weeks?”
She whispered so the driver would not hear. “Yes.”
“Okay then.”
“… Mr. Wallace?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to take me home?”
“The driver will take you home, Theresa. Right to the door. Everything’s going to be all right.”
She never gave me an answer.
I said to the driver, hesitating. “Would you help her into the house?”
“Yes, sir.”
For lack of anything more I could think to do, I reached into my wallet and handed the fellow another dollar.
Just before I left the cab I said, “You’ve been very brave, Theresa. Good luck to you,” and then I was headed across the street. I saw that in the other car Jaffe’s head was turned and he was speaking to the Herzes. On the street, I turned back; there was Theresa’s face in the taxi window. She was saying something — she seemed to be shouting something. I thought the worst: she is going to push the door open, she is going to come running across the street to demand her child back. In fact, her window did begin to roll down, and I heard, or imagined I heard her calling my name. My first name. I did not remain on the street to find out. I moved around the back of Jaffe’s car, opened the door and slid in beside him just as the automobile was beginning to move. When Jaffe looked over at me I saw that he was startled. I wondered if I had nail polish on my face, if I looked as though I were bleeding — if he thought that there had been some violence between Theresa and myself. Then I realized that he had not been waiting for me. But he said nothing, and we drove away.
In the back seat Libby had begun to talk softly to the baby. It sounded as though she were doing what she thought she was supposed to be doing, and it added a final pathetic note to the day’s dealings. And yet, despite Libby’s theatrics, despite the misunderstanding between Jaffe and myself, I knew that a series of events in which I had taken a hand had at last come to a happy ending. I turned to the back seat to appreciate the tableau of baby, mother, and father, but what I saw was out beyond the rear window: Theresa’s taxi moving off in the opposite direction. I thought of the girl going back to Gary alone, and 1 knew that nothing had really ended. In not staying with her I had made another mistake.