So I told him about the conference between Mom and me and that lawyer — Nathanson — and how we made arrangements to give my baby away when she was born. Nathanson must have gotten some of his instructions from David’s father, but Blake Cantrell never once came and talked to me. By the time all this happened, David was already shipped back to Montana by his family, to finish out the school year, then work around the ranch. I missed him terribly then, and I wish I’d had Dad’s P.O. box then, because I knew he was writing me from Montana, but not one letter got past Mom. I wrote him every day, but found out later, of course, that he didn’t get my letters, either. Of all the minor cruelties surrounding the time, that stealing of the letters always seemed the cruelest.
The agreement that Mom and I made with Nathanson was that the baby would be given up at birth to an unidentified couple that Nathanson had located in upstate New York. I was not told their name. I signed several documents, Mom signing each time first because I was a minor. The empty lines across from our names were for Blake Cantrell and David. I tried to sneak a look at who was getting my baby, but I couldn’t see any names in the thick legal paragraphs. They all assured me it was for the best.
And as I wrote about these times to David — what, twenty-five years later? — it all came sweeping back to me, all the strangeness of that trip back to New York, the little house that was waiting for me on the lake, the nanny, Ruth, who turned out to be a fine lady and friend, the long summer months when I finally started to show, then got big, then the rainy morning in September when we left the lake and went to the hospital.
The delivery room was so bright and metallic; I remembered lying on my back and the terrible pain that came in waves. And the doctors and nurses behind their green masks, little eyes peering down on me, their voices steady and so matter-of-fact. Then the rising pitch in those voices when things started going wrong, the hemorrhage and the cesarean section, and finally, through the fog of anesthetics and the horrid sounds of instruments being applied to me, there, from between my upraised knees, this tiny bloody form that they pulled out, tangled and not moving and barely human it looked, and after all the kicking it had done inside me, so still and peaceful. And that one dreamlike glimpse of Little Warm — I had taken to calling it Little Warm because that’s how it felt inside sometimes — was the first and last I ever had. A few minutes later, they gave me something to put me out and when I woke up I was in a hospital bed, all cleaned up and changed into my favorite nightgown and Mom was standing there over me. The doctor came in a few minutes later and told me that Little Warm had been born “still.” It took me a moment to understand what he meant, but then it sunk in.
I think I knew that there would be something wrong with her — I had a terrible virus during my second trimester and David had it, too. I wondered what the fever would do to Little Warm.
As I lay there and looked up at Mom, there seemed to be some great cool depth opening up inside me, and I fell into it, eagerly, like running into the ocean on a hot summer day. I cried so much. Mom said it would get better, that nature had done what it had to do, and Little Warm was in a better place than she could ever be in the real world.
For nine months, Dear One, David and I had had a daughter.
Joseph looked up from the journal and stared out his window, past the cypress trees to the pale eastern sky. He heard the door downstairs slam. This part of the story always made him the saddest and the most furious, the fact that the world can push around a soul so pure and young as Ann’s, the fact that she was so alone then, so small against the system. He thought with disgust about David Cantrell, out on some ranch mending fence while Ann went through the fires of childbirth, thousands of miles from home, surrounded only by those so ready to he and cheat and use her for themselves.
How little she knew, he thought. He looked down at his fingertips, already starting to split along the whorl lines, not so much split as just open up. Next, he’d start hitting his fingers on things and the cracks would widen, bleed, widen more.
What a terrible thing it had all become.
I had to wait three days to write again. My memories of Little Warm make me ache, as if it all had happened a year ago instead of a quarter century. And Raymond has been so moody these last few days — snapping at me about the house and my cooking, looking at me for long minutes with nothing to say.
David and I arranged to see each other again in late February, the twenty-fifth, I think. He sent a limousine that waited for me in the alley while I hobbled down in my heels, trying to get around the puddles.
When I climbed inside, there he was, offering me his hand. The coach smelled like leather and cologne; it was like stepping inside a man’s body, it felt so... inner. I sunk into the seat as the car moved away from the curb.
He told me I looked nice, and I told him nothing special.
In truth, I was so nervous, I could hardly keep myself in one piece. This moment was all I’d been thinking about since the day we set it up — an entire week to feel, well, a lot of very different, very strong things.
First, I was scared. I was scared that Ray would find out. I’d made sure he wasn’t working the peninsula shift; I’d made sure the limo wouldn’t be on the boulevard, in case the neighbors, or Mom, or Phil Kearns, or someone else I knew just happened to come by. My sense of betrayal was deep, and I fought it by telling myself that I was simply meeting a very old friend for a very innocent talk. Then why the new nylons? I wondered as I unrolled them up my legs. Why the hesitation about perfume — which one, which mood, how much — I wondered as I touched just a little behind each ear. Why these heels? Why did I stand in front of the mirror when I was finished, up on my tiptoes, turning a little to see if my butt was still high and firm and the silk dress was flattering? (It was.) I know why. It was because I was betraying Raymond’s trust, a trust that he had offered to me for twenty years of marriage. Every commonsense, conventional voice inside me told me to call this off, honor my pact as Mrs. Cruz, resist. But the other voices were there, too, assuring me that meeting an old friend — especially one with whom I had undergone so much — was an act not of betrayal but of affirmation. These voices told me my fear was not of Raymond but of myself, a fear that I could not be trusted, a fear of testing my commitment, a commitment.that I could reconfirm by going ahead with this. Dear One, if only I can tell you someday to be careful of the things we tell ourselves, of the things we’ll believe. The strange part is that in many ways, they’re true.
Also, I was just excited as all get-out to be dressing up, meeting a nice guy I used to know well, getting out of that cold, miserable little apartment and, well, to be letting someone else do the driving. I felt like a young woman again, not some tired
lady with two jobs, pushing forty and putting her husband through law school. I felt so light, so... interesting.
I’m glad you came, he said.
I asked him if he thought I’d chicken out. I told him I almost did, because it wasn’t my habit to cruise around in limos while my husband was at work.
He said he didn’t set this up to compare notes on how guilty we felt. He was hoping we could just keep it light, maybe do something silly.
Like what? I demanded.
Like this, he said.
He flipped open the cooler beside him and pulled out two champagne glasses. Mine had a purple rose tied to the stem with a purple ribbon. David had sent me roses like that in high school — it was our flower. I laughed and so did he. He poured some bubbly and we toasted.