“Every few years it happens,” she said. “You’re not from here?”
“Akron, Ohio,” he said. “Originally, that is. But I’ve been on the road five years now. I like to think of myself as being from the world, these days.”
“Don’t you get lonely?” Caroline asked, thinking of herself on a usual night, sitting alone in her apartment in the evening. She couldn’t believe she was here, talking so intimately with a stranger. It was odd but thrilling too, like confiding in a person you met on a train or a bus.
“Oh, some,” he admitted. “It’s lonely work, sure. But just as often I get to meet someone unexpected. Like tonight.”
It was warm in the cab, and Caroline felt herself giving in to it, settling back on the high comfortable seat. Snow still sputtered in the streetlights. Her car stood in the middle of the parking lot, a lone dark shape, brushed with snow.
“Where were you heading?” he asked her.
“Just to Lexington. There was a wreck on the interstate a few miles back. I thought I’d save myself some time and trouble.”
His face was lit softly by the streetlight and he smiled. To her surprise, so did Caroline, and then they were both laughing.
“The best-laid plans,” he said.
Caroline nodded.
“Look,” he said, after a silence. “If it’s only Lexington we’re talking about, I could give you a lift. I might as well park the rig there as here. Tomorrow—well, tomorrow’s Sunday, isn’t it? But on Monday, first thing, you can call a towing service about your car. It’ll be safe here, that’s for sure.”
Light from the streetlamp was falling across Phoebe’s tiny face. He reached over and gently, gently, stroked her forehead with his large hand. Caroline liked his awkwardness, his calmness.
“All right,” she decided. “If it doesn’t put you out.”
“Oh, no,” he said. “Hell, no. Excuse my French. Lexington is on my way.”
He collected the rest of the things from her car, the grocery sacks and blankets. His name was Al, Albert Simpson. He groped on the floor and found an extra cup beneath the seat. This he wiped out carefully with a handkerchief before he poured her coffee from his thermos. She drank, glad it was dark, glad for the warmth and the company of someone who didn’t know a thing about her. She felt safe and strangely happy, though the air was stale and smelled of dirty socks, and a baby that did not belong to her lay sleeping on her lap. As he drove, Al talked, telling her stories of his life on the road, truck stops with showers and the miles sliding beneath the wheels as he pushed through one night after another.
Lulled by the hum of the tires, by the warmth and the snow rushing in the headlights, Caroline half drifted into sleep. When they pulled into the parking lot of her apartment complex, the trailer took five spaces. Al got out to help her down and left the truck idling while he carried her things up the exterior stairs. Caroline followed, Phoebe in her arms. A curtain flashed in a lower window—Lucy Martin, spying as usual—and Caroline paused, overcome for an instant by something like vertigo. For everything was just the same, but surely she was not the same woman who had left here in the middle of the previous night, wading through the snow to her car. Surely she had been transformed so completely that she should walk into different rooms, different light. Yet her familiar key slid into the lock, catching in the usual place. When the door swung open, she carried Phoebe into a room she knew by heart: the durable dark-brown carpet, the plaid sofa and chair she had gotten on sale, the glass-topped coffee table, the novel she’d been reading before bed—Crime and Punishment—neatly marked. She had left Raskolnikov confessing to Sonya, had dreamed of them in their cold garret, and had woken to the phone ringing and to snow filling the streets.
Al hovered awkwardly, filling up the doorway. He could be a serial killer, or a rapist, or a con man. He could be anything at all.
“I have a sofa bed,” she said. “You’re welcome to use it tonight.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped inside.
“What about your husband?” he asked, looking around.
“I don’t have a husband,” she said, then realized her mistake. “Not anymore.”
He studied her, standing with his wool hat in his hand, surprising dark curls sticking out of his head. She felt slow, yet hyper-alert from the coffee and her fatigue, and she suddenly wondered how she must look to him—still in her nurse’s uniform, her hair uncombed for hours, her coat gaping open, this baby in her arms, her tired arms.
“I don’t want to be any trouble to you,” he said.
“Trouble?” she said. “I’d still be stranded in a parking lot except for you.”
He grinned then, went to his truck, and came back a few minutes later with a small duffel bag of dark green canvas.
“Someone was watching from a window downstairs. You sure I won’t be causing you any grief, here?”
“That was Lucy Martin,” Caroline said. Phoebe had been stirring, and she took the bottle from its warmer, tested the formula on her arm, and sat down. “She’s a dreadful gossip. Trust me. You just made her day.”
Phoebe wouldn’t drink, however, but began to wail, and Caroline stood, pacing the room, murmuring. Al, meanwhile, got straight to work. In no time at all he had pulled out the sofa bed and made it up, sharp military folds at each corner. When Phoebe finally quieted, Caroline nodded at him and whispered good night. She closed the bedroom door quite firmly. It had occurred to her that Al would be the type to notice the absence of a crib.
During the drive Caroline had been making plans, and now she pulled a drawer from her dresser and dumped its neat contents in a pile on the floor. Then she folded two towels in the bottom and tucked a folded sheet around them, nestling Phoebe amid the blankets. When she climbed into her own bed, fatigue rolled over her like waves, and she slept at once, a hard and dreamless sleep. She did not hear Al snoring loudly in the living room, or the noise of snowplows moving through the parking lot, or the clatter of garbage trucks on the street. When Phoebe stirred, however, sometime in the middle of the night, Caroline was on her feet in an instant. She moved through the darkness as if through water, exhausted and yet with purpose, changing Phoebe’s diaper, warming her bottle, concentrating on the infant in her arms and the tasks before her—so urgent, so consuming and imperative—tasks that now only she could do, tasks that could not wait.
• • •
Caroline woke to a flood of light and the smell of eggs and bacon. She stood, pulling her robe around her, and bent over to touch the baby’s tranquil cheek. Then she went to the kitchen, where Al was buttering toast.
“Hey, there,” he said, looking up. His hair was combed but still a little wild. He had a bald spot on the back of his scalp, and he wore a gold medallion on a chain around his neck. “Hope you don’t mind my making myself at home. I missed dinner last night.”
“It smells good,” Caroline said. “I’m hungry too.”
“Well, then,” he said, handing her a cup of coffee. “Good thing I made plenty. It’s a neat little place you’ve got here. Nice and tidy.”
“Do you like it?” she asked. The coffee was richer and darker than she usually made it. “I’m thinking of moving.”
Her own words surprised her, but once they were out, in the air, they seemed true. Ordinary light fell across the dark-brown carpet and the arm of her sofa. Water dripped from the eaves outside. She’d been saving money for years, imagining herself in a house or on an adventure, and now here she was: a baby in her bedroom and a stranger at her table and her car stranded in Versailles.
“I’m thinking of going to Pittsburgh,” she said, surprising herself again.
Al stirred the eggs with a spatula, then lifted them onto plates. “Pittsburgh? Great town. What would take you there?”
“Oh, my mother had family there,” Caroline said, as he put the plates on the table and sat down across from her. It seemed there was no end at all to the lies a person could tell, once she got started.
r /> “You know, I’ve been meaning to say I’m sorry,” Al said. His dark eyes were kind. “For whatever happened to your baby’s father.”
Caroline had half forgotten that she’d made up a husband, so she was surprised to hear in his voice that Al didn’t believe she’d ever had one. He thought she was an unwed mother, she marveled. They ate without speaking much, passing remarks now and then about the weather and the traffic and Al’s next destination, which was Nashville, Tennessee.
“I’ve never been to Nashville,” Caroline said.
“No? Well, hop aboard, you and your daughter too,” Al said. It was a joke, but within the joke was an offer. An offer not to her, not really, but rather to an unwed mother down on her luck. Still, for a moment Caroline imagined walking out the door with her boxes and her blankets and never looking back.
“Maybe next time,” she said, reaching for the coffee. “I’ve got some things to settle here.”
Al nodded. “Gotcha,” he said. “I know how that goes.”
“But thanks,” she said. “I appreciate the thought.”
“My infinite pleasure,” he said seriously, and then he stood up to go.
Caroline watched from the window as he went to his truck, climbing up the steps into the cab and turning once to wave from the open doorway. She waved back, happy to see his smile, so ready and so easy, surprised by the tug in her heart. She had an impulse to run after him, remembering the narrow bed in the back of the cab where he sometimes slept and the way he’d touched Phoebe’s forehead so gently. Surely a man who lived such a solitary life could keep her secrets, contain her dreams and fears. But his engine caught, and smoke billowed up from the silver pipe on his cab, and then he was pulling carefully out of the parking lot and onto the quiet street and away.
• • •
For the next twenty-four hours, Caroline slept and woke on Phoebe’s schedule, staying up just long enough to eat. It was strange; she had always been particular about meals, fearing undisciplined snacking as a sign of eccentricity and self-absorbed solitude, but now she ate at odd hours: cold cereal straight from the box, ice cream spooned from the carton while standing at her kitchen counter. It was as if she had entered some twilight zone of her own, some state halfway between sleep and waking, where she would not have to consider too fully the consequences of her decisions, or the fate of the baby sleeping in her dresser drawer, or her own.
On Monday morning she got up in time to call in sick to work. Ruby Centers, the receptionist, answered the phone.
“Are you all right, honey?” she asked. “You sound awful.”
“It’s the flu, I think,” Caroline said. “I’ll probably be out a few days. Anything happening there?” she asked, trying to make her voice casual. “Dr. Henry’s wife have the baby?”
“Well, I sure don’t know,” Ruby said. Caroline imagined her thoughtful frown, her desk swept clear and ready for the day, a little vase of plastic flowers on the corner. “No one else is in yet, except about a hundred patients. Looks to be everyone else has got your flu, Miss Caroline.”
The minute Caroline hung up there was a knock on the front door. Lucy Martin, no doubt. Caroline was surprised it had taken her this long.
Lucy was wearing a dress with big bright pink flowers on it, an apron with ruffles edged in pink, and fuzzy slippers. When Caroline opened the door she stepped right in, carrying half a loaf of banana bread wrapped in plastic.
Lucy had a heart of gold, everyone said so, but her very presence set Caroline’s teeth on edge. Lucy’s cakes and pies and hot dishes were her tickets into the center of every drama: deaths and accidents, births and weddings and wakes. There was something not quite right about her eagerness, an eerie kind of voyeurism in her need for bad news, and Caroline usually tried to keep a distance.
“I saw your visitor,” Lucy said now, patting Caroline’s arm. “My goodness! Quite a good-looking fellow, wasn’t he? I just couldn’t wait to get the scoop.”
Lucy sat down on the sofa bed, now folded up. Caroline took the armchair. The bedroom door, where Phoebe slept, stood open.
“You’re not sick, dear?” Lucy was saying. “Because, come to think of it, usually you’re long gone by this time in the morning.”
Caroline studied Lucy’s eager face, aware that whatever she said would travel swiftly through town—that in two days, or three, someone would come up to her in the grocery store or at church and inquire about the stranger who had spent the night at her apartment.
“That was my cousin you saw last night,” Caroline said easily, amazed all over again at this sudden facility she’d developed, the fluidity and ease of her lies. They came to her whole; they didn’t even make her blink.
“Oh, I wondered,” Lucy said, looking a little disappointed.
“I know,” Caroline answered. And then, in a preemptive strike that amazed her when she thought about it later, she went on. “Poor Al. His wife is in the hospital.” She leaned a little closer, lowered her voice. “It’s so sad, Lucy. She’s only twenty-five, but they think she might have brain cancer. She’s been falling down a lot, so Al brought her in from Somerset to see the specialist. And they have this little baby. I told him, Look, go and be with her, stay in the hospital day and night if you have to. Leave the baby with me. And I think because I’m a nurse they felt comfortable with that. I hope you haven’t been bothered with her crying.”
For a few instants Lucy was stunned to silence, and Caroline understood the pleasure—the power—that comes from delivering a bolt from the blue.
“Poor, poor things, your cousin and his wife! How old is the baby?”
“Just three weeks,” Caroline said, and then, inspired, she stood up. “Wait here.”
She went into the bedroom and lifted Phoebe from the dresser drawer, keeping the blankets wrapped close around her.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” she asked, sitting down next to Lucy.
“Oh, she is. She’s lovely!” Lucy said, touching one of Phoebe’s tiny hands.
Caroline smiled, feeling an unexpected surge of pride and pleasure. The features she had noted in the delivery room—the sloping eyes, the slightly flattened face—had become so familiar that she hardly noticed them. Lucy, with her untrained eye, didn’t see them at all. Phoebe was like any baby, delicate, adorable, fierce in her demands.
“I love looking at her,” Caroline confessed.
“Oh, that poor little mother,” Lucy whispered. “Do they expect she’ll live?”
“No one knows,” Caroline said. “Time will tell.”
“They must be devastated,” Lucy said.
“Yes. Yes, they are. They’ve completely lost their appetites,” Caroline confided, thereby heading off the arrival of one of Lucy’s famous hot dishes.
• • •
For the next two days, Caroline did not go out. The world came to her in the form of newspapers, grocery deliveries, milkmen, the sounds of traffic. The weather changed and the snow was gone as suddenly as it had come, cascading down the sides of buildings and disappearing into drains. For Caroline, the broken days blurred together into a stream of random images and impressions: the sight of her Ford Fairlane, its battery recharged, being driven into the lot; the sunlight streaming through cloudy windows; the dark scent of wet earth; a robin at the feeder. She had her spells of worry, but often, sitting with Phoebe, she was surprised to find herself completely at peace. What she had told Lucy Martin was true: she loved looking at this baby. She loved sitting in the sunlight and holding her. She warned herself not to fall in love with Phoebe; she was just a temporary stop. Caroline had watched David Henry often enough at the clinic to believe in his compassion. When he had raised his head from the desk that night and met her eyes, she had seen in them an infinite capacity for kindness. She had no doubt that he would do the right thing, once he got over the shock.
Every time the phone rang she started. But three days passed with no word from him.
On Thursday morning there was a knock
on the door. Caroline hurried to answer it, adjusting the belt of her dress, touching her hair. But it was only a deliveryman, holding a vase full of flowers: dark red and pale pink in a cloud of baby’s breath. These were from Al. My thanks for the hospitality, he’d written on the card. Maybe I’ll see you on my next run.
Caroline took them inside and arranged them on the coffee table. Agitated, she picked up The Leader, which she hadn’t read in days, slipped off the rubber band, and skimmed through the articles, not really taking in any of them. Escalating tensions in Vietnam, social announcements about who had entertained whom the previous week, a page of local women modeling the new spring hats. Caroline was about to throw the paper down when a black-bordered square caught her eye.
Memorial Service
For Our Beloved Daughter
Phoebe Grace Henry
Born and Died March 6, 1964
Lexington Presbyterian Church
Friday, March 13, 1964, at 9 a.m.
Caroline sat down slowly. She read the words once and then again. She even touched them, as if this would make them clearer somehow, explicable. With the paper still in her hands, she stood up and went to the bedroom. Phoebe slept in her drawer, one pale arm outflung against the blankets. Born and died. Caroline went back into the living room and called her office. Ruby picked up on the first ring.
“I don’t suppose you’re coming in?” she said. “It’s a madhouse here. Everyone in town seems to have the flu.” She lowered her voice then. “Did you hear, Caroline? About Dr. Henry and his babies? They had twins after all. The little boy is fine; he’s precious. But the girl, she died at birth. So sad.”
“I saw it in the paper.” Caroline’s jaw, her tongue, felt stiff. “I wonder if you’d ask Dr. Henry to call me. Tell him it’s important. I saw the paper,” she repeated. “Tell him that, will you, Ruby?” Then she hung up and sat staring out at the sycamore tree and the parking lot beyond.