It was Sister Theresa, I could tell from the sound of her quick, light step coming down the hall. “Olive, visitor in the parlor.” We’d become friendly, she and I. She saved me a boiled egg and a piece of bread from breakfast most mornings, and I ate them at the kitchen table around lunchtime. Afterwards, I helped her prepare for that night’s dinner by peeling potatoes or chopping onions. I didn’t have anything else to do during the day, and by lunchtime I’d usually caught up on enough sleep to make it through the rest of the day and night. She’d asked me about my nursing duties and it felt wrong to lie to a nun, especially one who was being so kind and helpful, so I told her it was against hospital policies to discuss the ins and outs of it all, I had to respect the patients’ privacy.
“Who’s the visitor?” I called out after she’d knocked, but she was already making her way back downstairs. It could only be Ruthie again, but I was surprised Lawrence had let her leave the house when she was due to have that baby any day now. Maybe it was one of the other girls, Pauline, or maybe Gladys. I quickly dressed, smoothed my hair, then went downstairs.
“Mother!” I said, shocked, seeing her sitting tightly on the edge of the tufted cream-colored armchair. Her face was pale. She was dressed in a black day dress and matching coat, with a single string of pearls—formal for the daytime at a boardinghouse. I quickly glanced down at my jodhpurs and sweater, something I wore most days at the house when no one except the nuns would see me. They were comfortable and sporty and reminded me of my days at the camp. My mother also glanced at my attire, then shifted in her seat and pressed her lips together.
“Olive,” she said. “Here you are.”
“Here I am.”
“We had to track you down. You know, it would have been nice to receive a letter telling us of your whereabouts.”
“I know, I’m very sorry. I meant to, I was just trying to get settled after…” I didn’t want to talk to her about the canceled wedding, about Archie. My stomach clenched at the thought of him. I couldn’t bear to be questioned about it all, not yet, and her visit had caught me so off guard.
“Yes,” she said stiffly. “I can imagine it’s”—she looked around—“quite an adjustment.”
I took a deep breath, preparing myself to be bombarded with questions: What happened? Why did he leave you? What did you do? How are you going to make this right? But instead she simply sat there, her hands folded in her lap, her face pained. It was distressing to see her like that, looking as if she might burst into tears. I wondered if my circumstances were causing her all this pain. Despite her look of upset and disapproval, some small part of me felt cared for, that she had come to find me, to check on me. Maybe she didn’t want me to be alone.
“Thank you for coming,” I said, but she just looked at the floor. “Is everything okay, Mother?” I asked finally. And when I said it, the tears sprang from her eyes.
“Oh, Olive,” she said quietly, quickly trying to wipe away her tears.
I was wrong, this wasn’t about me, this must be something terrible. I hurried to her as sudden thoughts of every possible horrible thing that could happen flooded my brain: Junior, George, Erwin, my father.
“What is it?” I asked, taking her hand in mine.
“It’s your aunt May. She died.”
“No,” I gasped. “That’s impossible.”
“We just found out yesterday morning.”
I found it hard to catch my breath, a terrible ache in my heart. She’d helped me so much, given her kindness so freely. We had kept in touch too little since I’d left Rockville more than two years ago, with the exception of the occasional letter and her declined invitation to the wedding. At the time, I remembered wishing she could attend, wishing she could meet Archie. I knew she would have been happy at the thought of me getting married.
“But she was so young,” I said, trying to comprehend it.
“I know. She had a heart condition that we knew of most of her life, so I suppose it was inevitable at some point. The doctor had warned her. But she’d seemed fine. Even though we knew about her condition, it seemed to come out of nowhere.”
“I didn’t know about it,” I said hopelessly, as if it would make some kind of difference now.
We’d been through such a tremendous seven and a half months together, it was hard to fathom. But the truth was that since leaving my aunt in Rockville, my thoughts had been elsewhere, caught up in the excitement of my glamorous new life, pushing away the thoughts of my pregnancy, the baby, what had become of her, not allowing myself to think back to that time. I had no idea what Aunt May’s days had been like after I left.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” my mother whispered.
“Mother, I’m so sorry.” I felt terribly guilty to think that my mother had been forced to track me down, probably calling the New Amsterdam Theatre and getting the runaround before finding me here, all while she’d just learned of her only sister’s death.
I should have gone to see them as soon as I returned to the city.
“Was anyone with her?” I asked. Aunt May had lived such an isolated life, the thought of her dying alone was unbearable.
“A neighbor found her.” My mother put her head in her hands. After a few moments she took a deep breath and seemed to pull herself together. “Your father and I will take the train to Rockville tomorrow. We’ll have a few days to take care of her affairs,” she said. “The funeral is on Saturday.”
“What about the boys?”
“George will stay with Junior, make sure he gets to school.”
I nodded. It really should be me helping out.
“I thought you’d want to know.”
“Of course,” I said. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry for whatever happened between you and Archie. I sensed from the way you were acting in the Adirondacks that there may be some trouble looming. Of course I have no idea what that might have been.”
“It’s my fault,” I said. I knew she was waiting for more, but it was all I could manage. She deserved more of an explanation, she was my mother, after all, but I was devastated to hear the news about Aunt May. I simply couldn’t begin to talk about Archie.
My mother stood up and put on her coat. “I’m sure it hasn’t been easy for you.”
That night I went to the club early. I couldn’t sit around at the boardinghouse. I kept thinking about Aunt May, how I’d thought of her so fondly over the past two years but had never really let her know how grateful I was to her for helping me. We’d exchanged only a few letters, and I regretted that now. But there was more—her death seemed to seal another regret. I’d always wanted to know if she’d ever received word about the baby, if she knew whether she’d been adopted by a local family or one from another state. It would be impossible to demand such information from Birdhouse Lodge after I’d signed those papers, but I couldn’t help wondering. I hadn’t asked her, though. Instead, I’d sent the occasional bland letter about my shows, wishing her a Merry Christmas, telling her we’d love to pay for the train ride to the Adirondacks, saying I understood when she’d written that it was too far to travel.
Why hadn’t I asked about the baby, my baby? Maybe I’d been too scared to revisit that time in my life. Giving her away had seemed the only choice I had back then, but was it really? Looking back, I wondered if it had been decided too quickly, too hastily, without much regard for the permanence of it all.
Now, when I thought back on those months with Aunt May, despite the urgency of the situation, I realized they’d actually been quite enjoyable, hidden away, just the two of us talking, reading and gardening, nurturing the baby growing inside me. It was easier to think back on it now and appreciate it. Though I’d been purposefully pushing it out of my mind, there was so much I still wanted to say to her. She was the only other person who’d known me in that way, and I’d just assumed that she would always be there.
“Hey there, girly,” Texas said, swinging the dressing room door wide open as she marched in. “The early bird gets the worm, except there’s nothing but snakes out there, girly, and don’t you forget it.” She laughed. I tried to smile back at her. “Why the long face? Who died?” she said, laughing again.
“My aunt, actually. My mother just told me today.”
“Oh, doll face, I’m sorry. I’ve got to work on my punch lines. Were you close?”
“Not always, but a few years ago I went through something…” I looked up at her. Hell, it was Texas I was talking to, she must’ve been through just about everything. “I got pregnant and stayed with my aunt in Minnesota to wait it out, then I gave the baby up for adoption.”
“Oh, honey pie, that’s a tough one.”
“I had to hide the whole thing from my family,” I said, strangely relieved to tell someone. “My aunt took such good care of me, never batting an eye in judgment. I just wish I’d spoken to her again, I wish I’d thanked her better, let her know what it meant to me.”
“She sounds like a good lassie. You going to her send-off?”
“I can’t.” I sighed. “It’s this weekend, I’ve got this,” I said, motioning around the club, “and I can’t afford the train ride.”
“How much is it?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. A train to St. Cloud, then another to Rockville, probably fifty dollars at least.”
She pulled a roll of bills out of her bustier and started counting.
“Don’t you worry about the show. The show will go on, it always does. You go and you pay your respects,” she said, placing a wad of bills on the table in front of me. “And when I’m pushing up daisies, you do the same and show up for my funeral. I want everyone I ever knew to be there. Nobody wants to be forgotten.”
I pulled up to Aunt May’s house in a taxi a little after noon on Friday. It had taken me three trains and forty-seven hours to get there. When I walked through the gate and up the pathway to her home, it hit me—this had been her whole world, this little house.
I had one small travel bag that I slung over my shoulder before I knocked on the door. I could hear people inside, so I knocked again.
“Coming,” came my mother’s voice. She opened the door almost absently, as if she were expecting it to be a delivery of flowers or something. And then she swung back around and stared at me. I, too, stood frozen, staring—not just at my mother, who’d seemed so fragile just days earlier and now seemed flushed, youthful, but at the little girl she was holding on her hip.
The girl, no more than a toddler, looked at me curiously with wide green eyes, her wispy dark hair falling in all directions against her milky-white skin. She reached out a hand toward me, then pulled it back, quickly hiding her face in my mother’s shoulder.
“Olive!” my mother said finally.
“Mother.”
“We weren’t expecting you. How did you get here?”
“Train. Three of them, actually. I wanted to attend the funeral but didn’t know how to reach you.”
“Yes, yes, of course, how nice.” All that youthful color had suddenly drained from her cheeks.
“Who’s this?” I asked, though as I said it, I felt my legs start to tremble under me.
“This?” She seemed stunned, as if I’d asked an absurd question. “This? This is Adeline…” She paused again. “Your cousin.”
“Addie,” the girl said, peeking back at me, smiling, reaching her hand out again to touch me.
“My cousin? Whose daughter?” I asked, but my mother ignored the question. I placed one hand on the door frame to steady myself and reached the other out to the girl. “Well, hello there, Addie,” I said, giving her hand a gentle shake. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Come in,” my mother said. “Your father’s going to be surprised. You come in and take a seat, rest for a minute, you’ve had such a long journey. I’d better go and let your father know you’re here,” she said, flustered—panicky, it seemed, at the thought of sharing this news. I couldn’t take my eyes off the girl, and she didn’t take her eyes off me, looking over my mother’s shoulder as she was whisked out of the room.
Several minutes later, my mother reappeared with my father by her side, the little child no longer on her hip. They stood stiffly in front of me.
“Hello, Olive,” my father said.
“Hello, Papa.” I was so tired and wished I could hug him, but I could see it wasn’t going to be that way. He was angry about my aborted wedding, just as I knew he would be.
“Good of you to come,” he said, as if I were some random neighbor coming to pay my respects.
“Yes, it’s so unexpected and sad,” I said.
“It certainly is.” There was a cold tension in the room. “Well, I’d better get back to the yard, it’s a mess,” he said, and he turned on his heel to go back out the way he came in. I looked at my mother questioningly.
“Papa,” I said, “you have to forgive me—” But he was already leaving the room.
My mother and I stood in the room in silence as I watched the door he’d walked though.
“He has a hard time understanding your choices,” my mother said. “Quite frankly, we all do sometimes. You tend to make decisions that have vast repercussions for your life and ours too. Some people can adapt to that kind of thing, and others can’t. Your father, I would say, cannot.”
I sat back down again; a swirling, unsettling feeling had come over me.
“Can I have something to drink?” I said.
“Of course.” My mother left for the kitchen, but after a few moments I got up and joined her.
“It’s so hot in here,” I said. “Can I open the window?” I leaned over the kitchen sink and opened it a few inches, feeling immediately refreshed by a rush of cold air. Outside in the backyard, my father was hammering nails into a fence post, and the little girl, wrapped up now in a hat, scarf and coat, was playing with a woman I didn’t recognize. The child’s face was striking and remarkably familiar.
“Who did you say the little girl is?” I asked, not taking my eyes off her.
My mother clanked about, opening the tin, spooning the tea into the pot, getting the cups down from the cupboard. The kettle began to whistle, and she seemed to let it go on longer than necessary.
“Who is she, Mother?” I asked, more insistent now.
“Your cousin,” she said in a low voice. Then she finally looked at me. “Your aunt adopted a little girl.”
I felt my stomach drop, and a wave of chills coursed through my whole body. I went back to the kitchen window and leaned toward it. She was laughing now, playing hopscotch in front of the lady. Adeline. It was a beautiful name.
I looked back to my mother. “She’s mine, isn’t she.”
“Keep your voice down,” she scolded.
“She is. I could see it the minute you opened the door. How? How could she have my baby? How could she not tell me? I signed the papers. I left Birdhouse Lodge without her. Aunt May wasn’t even there. I don’t understand. Mother, please!”
My mother grabbed me by the wrist and took me back to the living room.
“I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, Olive!” she said in an urgent whisper. “I don’t know why she would do such a thing. It was wrong of her. She lived like a hermit, and that is no way to raise a child, and she knew we had made a specific plan. A specific plan!” she said, hitting her fist into the open palm of her other hand. “I told her back then that she shouldn’t have done it. She said she couldn’t stand to let some stranger take a newborn baby away.”
“Wait a second, you spoke to her about this? You knew?”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, exasperated by my persistence. “Yes, Olive, I knew. She told me a few weeks after she brought Adeline home.”
“What?” I yelled this time. “You knew about her the whole time, and you didn’t tell me? How could you not tell me?”
My mother looked at me, furious. “First of all, lower your voice or I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Your father doesn’t know about any of this, and I don’t want him to find out. And secondly, why would I tell you? You didn’t want that baby—you made that very clear.”
“I was nineteen, Mother! I didn’t know what I wanted. You made that decision for me! I was scared. All this time I’ve been thinking about her, wondering if she’s okay, if she’s loved, wondering where she is. And you didn’t think I ought to know?”
“I’ve seen what you’ve been up to, drinking, and dancing, and out all night. I hardly think you’ve been losing any sleep over this poor child. Anyway, there’s no point raking all that up now, what’s done is done, and Aunt May is gone.” She narrowed her eyes and glared at me. Was she suggesting that this was my fault? Had the whole plan to involve Aunt May in my pregnancy secret been too much for her heart?
“We’re going to bring the child to Brooklyn, and your father and I will raise her. We’ll tell everyone that May had adopted a child and, following her untimely death, it makes sense that her only sister will bear that burden.”
I sat on the arm of the chair, weak. I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach, repeatedly. A thousand questions ran through my head. Why hadn’t Aunt May told me, would I have tried to stop her? Was this her plan all along? Was she doing this to fulfill her own desires to become a mother? I had so many questions that would never be answered.
I slid into the chair and put my head back.
“Oh God, are you going to faint?” my mother asked, irritated. “If your father sees you, he’s going to wonder what’s going on.”
“I’m in shock, Mother,” I said. This onslaught of information left me weak. I felt my mother lift my limp arms and hoist me up.
“Come on, Olive,” she said, her voice softening. “Let’s get you upstairs.”
“I’m okay,” I said. “Just let me be.” But she’d already pulled me up to standing and was walking me to the narrow staircase.
Holding on to the banister, I made my way upstairs, my mother following, and sat down on the edge of the small bed that I’d slept in when I was staying with Aunt May. When I looked around the room, I realized that it was Addie’s room now. There were building blocks stacked in the corner, knitted dolls lined up on the windowsill. Squeals of laughter rose up from the backyard.
“I need to see her,” I said.
“You need to get some rest and pull yourself together.” My mother sighed, shaking her head, and left the room.
Addie was running, arms out in front of her, chasing the birds. She seemed so happy. I couldn’t believe she was mine. I opened the window so I could hear her better.
“Look, look,” she was saying to the woman who was outside with her, urging her to look at the birds, too. “Birdies,” she said, then more squeals as she chased after them again.
I picked up one of the knitted dolls. It was a cream-colored bear wearing a hat and gloves and dark green pants. Someone had knitted this for her, and I felt so incredibly thankful. She had been loved. Aunt May had given her a start in life. And whether she meant to or not, Aunt May had given me a gift, too, one beyond what I could have imagined. This was an absolute miracle.
Once I’d taken some time to collect my thoughts, I drank down the water my mother had left by the bed and went back downstairs. Outside, I sat on the ledge of a low wall in the backyard near Addie and the neighbor.
“What are you playing?” I asked.
“Birdies,” she said, pointing at them as I’d seen her do from the window.
“Big birdies,” I said. “They look like they might be crows.”
She clapped her hands together.
“I’m Maria,” the woman said, “I live next door. You must be Olive. I was a friend of your aunt’s.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” I remembered her now. I’d seen her a few times when I stayed with Aunt May, but I didn’t think we’d ever spoken. I had been hiding myself back then, while Aunt May purposefully avoided people, saying it was too hard to meet new people after her husband died.
“I have two girls, they’re seven and nine. They love playing with Addie. And we all adored May. She was such a kind, quiet lady.”
I nodded. “She really was. I can’t believe she’s gone.”
Maria shook her head. “Me neither, such a shock. My girls came over to visit Addie that day, and when no one answered we got worried and came in through the back door. We found her in her bed. Addie had been trying to wake her.”
“Oh, Lord,” I said. “How awful.” I looked over to Addie, who was pulling a little wooden dog on a string. She was only two and she’d already been through so much. My heart ached for her.
“It’s very kind of you to have the reception at your home,” I said. Maria had insisted, since their house was bigger than Aunt May’s, and in return my mother was attempting to cook enough pies to feed an army.
“Of course,” she said. “It’s the least we can do.” She paused. “What will you do now?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. But from the way she was looking at me, I realized she knew about me and Addie.
“Your mother said they’d take her to New York.”
I nodded.
“She really is the most darling little girl,” she continued. “So happy all the time, so well behaved, so easy.”
I nodded again. What else could I add? I had no idea if she was well behaved, if she liked to take a bath, if she was a picky eater, a good sleeper, if cats made her sneeze the way they did for me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s none of my business. We just care for her so much.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I honestly don’t know what I’ll do. But thank you for caring about Addie, for being a friend to Aunt May. It’s what they needed, I’m sure.”
“We could keep her,” she said suddenly, almost nonchalantly, as if we were discussing who should keep the leftover pies. “With us. She’s known the girls since she first came home.”
I was stunned by her offer and studied her face, taking in all that she had said, unable to respond right away.
“Well, you don’t have to say anything now. Just think about it and know that we would be more than happy to take her in.”
That night Maria, her husband and their two girls joined us for dinner, but I barely said a word. In a matter of a few hours everything I thought I knew had turned out to be wrong, and I was trying to absorb it all. Addie sat in a wooden high chair at the end of the table, and Maria’s two girls sat on either side of her, while the adults sat at the other end of the table. My mother and Maria mostly discussed preparations for the next day, that my mother would bring the pies over to Maria’s house the next morning before we all left for church, how Maria’s husband would set out drinks, and another neighbor would bring lemon cake. I didn’t attempt to partake in the adult conversation—I so desperately wanted to be seated with the children.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Addie, the way she picked up her buttered bread and ate it, her lips and cheeks getting greasy from the butter. The way she grasped her fork in her hand and ate her carrots. I wanted to hold her fleshy hand in mine and walk her around the backyard, just the two of us, to spend time with her away from everyone else, to hear her high-pitched voice respond to things that I said. And then, as if she knew we shared a secret, she looked up at me and smiled.
There must have been fifty or sixty people at the funeral the next day, paying their respects to my aunt. I was surprised. She had barely interacted with anyone when I’d lived with her—but these were friends, church patrons, store owners, other parents from the neighborhood. It seemed that having a child in her life had coaxed her to mingle with humanity again. Several people spoke at the funeral about what a kind and generous person she was, how she helped others, how she’d watched other neighbors’ children alongside Addie when they’d needed to run an errand, how she’d brought food to one family for a week straight when their child fell ill. I had seen this kindness in her when she took me in, but I’d known then that to others she was just an odd lady, the woman at the end of the street who kept to herself. The May they spoke of at her funeral had flourished. She’d reclaimed her life with Addie in it. My mother saw it, too. She wept quietly in the pew. I reached out and took her hand.
“This was how she used to be before Henry died,” she whispered. “She was back to being May again.”
It was a moving tribute. I imagined my own eulogy. Whom had I cared for or loved unconditionally? How had I helped people? Who had relied on me? I thought of Archie, how I’d been so cruel and cowardly to not tell him the truth, how I’d convinced myself that hurting him and abandoning him with no explanation was better than being honest with him. And now he was gone. I regretted it all.
That night when everyone had left, I told my mother that she should put her feet up and I would read Addie her bedtime story and put her to bed. My mother looked at me uneasily.
“That’s all right, Olive, you don’t have to,” she said.
“I want to. And besides, you both must be exhausted after today. Let me help.”
“You’ve been on your feet all day, Doris, let her help out for once,” my father said as he settled into the armchair in front of the fireplace. I had noticed throughout the day that any time I’d tried to spend with Addie had been interrupted by my mother. This time I didn’t wait for her to discourage me.
“Are you ready for story time?” I asked Addie, who was sitting in the middle of the living room stacking three egg cartons on top of one another. She nodded, so I picked her up and carried her upstairs.
I helped her into her pajamas in Aunt May’s room, where she’d been sleeping in a makeshift bed next to my parents since I’d been staying in her room. I unfastened her two miniature pigtails and brushed her hair, and when I did, she grabbed my face with her two small hands.
“Pretty hair,” she said, pulling gently on mine.
“Thank you,” I said. “We have the same color. Look!” I swished my head from side to side, letting my short bob fly away from me. She did the same, laughing. In that moment, everything—the theater, the singing, the dancing, the nights on the town—everything seemed so frivolous and unimportant. How could I have not known how this would feel, to be sitting here talking to my daughter, seeing myself in her and her in me?
I read her a story, then I tucked her into bed, and by the time I was finished she was already asleep. Reluctant to leave, I kissed her forehead, noticing the softness of her skin, her innocence. I tiptoed out of the room and turned off the light, but as soon as I stepped outside the door, she was sitting up, crying.
“What’s the matter?” I rushed back to her.
But she only closed her eyes, opened her mouth and wailed.
“You were asleep, Addie. Please, don’t cry,” I whispered, knowing my mother would be upstairs momentarily.
“Mama!” she cried loudly. “I want Mama!”
“Oh, I know, sweetheart,” I said, crouching on my knees and hugging her.
“Mama!” she screamed even louder, swatting me away. “I want Mama!”
She’d seemed so content all day, so compliant with me when I read her a story. How had this suddenly taken such a turn? I wondered. Was it the darkness?
As I’d expected, my mother appeared at the door, rushed past me and picked up Addie, who continued to cry. But within a few moments she became quieter. She’d stopped screaming “Mama!” and had her thumb in her mouth, still sobbing, more softly now. I backed out of the room quietly, feeling foolish for having thought I would know how to comfort her. I had no idea how to help.
I sat down in the dark on my bed. In the course of twenty-four hours, everything that I thought I knew about the adoption had turned out to be wrong. The story I’d been telling myself, the secret I’d been keeping, it was all a lie. Here she was, my flesh and blood, sleeping in the room next to me, suddenly in need of a mother more than ever, but she didn’t know who I was. And I didn’t know how to be her mother. My life was a shambles—but whether she meant to or not, Aunt May seemed to be giving me a second chance.
Addie was quiet now. I heard my mother leaving her room. Before I could talk myself out of it, I walked down the stairs and into the living room.
“Mother, Father, I have something I need to say,” I announced as soon as I entered the room. “Adeline is my daughter. All you need to do is look at her to know it’s true. I became pregnant just before you moved to New York. I know it was a terrible thing to do, out of wedlock with someone I didn’t even know, but it happened.”
A look of horror came over my mother’s face, but I looked away.
“I stayed with Aunt May during my pregnancy and gave her up for adoption through the church.” No one said a word. My mother now had her head in her hands, and my father’s mouth was agape. “It was a terrible thing to do, to make an innocent child pay for my mistakes, I can see that now, but it was the decision I made. I didn’t know until a few days ago that Aunt May had adopted her, but now, deep down in my heart, I wonder if she knew or hoped that I would come back for her.”
I waited briefly for someone to say something. No one did.
“Well,” I continued, “I have decided I will take her back to New York with me when I leave tomorrow, and we’ll be together.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Olive,” my mother said. “Look where you’re living. I doubt they’re going to let a single show girl bring up a bastard child in a Catholic boardinghouse.”
I cringed at the use of such vulgar words to describe Addie, asleep now right above us.
“I’ll work something out,” I said. I thought of the club. How would I make this work? The money was decent, but I could make the money only if I was working five nights a week. How could I do that while caring for a two-year-old? I hadn’t thought it through, but I was angry now.
“Hold on a second!” My father’s voice boomed over both of ours as he stood. “Doris, you knew about this?”
“Yes, I knew. My sister told me. Now sit down, Ted.”
My father sat back down again and stared at the fireplace. It was the first time I’d ever heard my mother speak to him that way, and I’d never seen him so obedient.
“What will you work out?” my mother continued. “With what money?”
“I’m performing again.”
“Where?”
I paused and glanced at my father, but he was motionless, looking stunned, staring straight ahead. I didn’t want to tell them, but I didn’t want to lie anymore either. “The Three Hundred Club, it’s a speakeasy, it pays well.”
“Well, that’s exactly my point. How are you going to raise a little girl if you’re out all night at a club? What are you going to do? Bring the girl to your shows, keep her in a cot backstage?”
“If I have to, I will,” I said, realizing how ridiculous that sounded.
“Don’t be absurd. Admit it, Olive, you’re not fit to be a mother. You were unfit then, and you’re unfit now. You’ve made your choices, now you have to live with them.” She rubbed her temples and took a deep breath.
“Mother, that’s unfair,” I said quietly, questioning myself, questioning her. Was she right?
“We are fed up with your impulsive ways. Honestly, we’ve had it up to here.”
I didn’t know what to say. This was how they thought of me, this was how they’d always thought of me. I pictured them sitting at the dinner table at night, discussing how disappointing I had turned out to be, how I simply sought pleasure, thrills and happiness, nothing more. Putting my own interests first, before everyone else.
“We’ll raise the girl—she’ll be your cousin, and that’s all there is to it.”
My father stood, still staring at the fire. “This is a disgrace,” he said, turning to glare at my mother and then at me. “You’re a disgrace to this family,” he said quietly, and he walked out of the room.
That night I lay in bed devastated, sobbing, biting the sheets so no one would hear. My own child was miraculously back in my life, but I was too much of a failure to be a mother to her. They were right, there was no way I could give her a good life—a single woman working in a nightclub. She wouldn’t have a fighting chance. What was I thinking? It was heartbreaking to lose her all over again. How I wished I could turn back the clocks and start over.
The next morning, I picked up the small knitted doll sitting on the windowsill and held it to my cheek. Then I left before the sun came up and caught the train back to New York City, alone.