Chapter Twenty-Four

I STEP OUTSIDE THE BUILDING and blink up at the black and gray streaked and smudged night sky that looks like it’s been wiped with a dirty rag. The clouds are so thick not a single star or the moon is able to shine through them. They make the sky seem heavy and near instead of endless. I feel another wave of suffocation pass over me.

Not much happens in downtown Centresburg these days: shopping, dining, even banking have all moved to the mall and the roadsides leading to and from the Super Wal-Mart. The only activity that remains is drinking.

I tell myself I’ll just have one drink at the Golden Pheasant and then I’ll drive home and do the rest of my drinking at Jolly’s.

I’m within a few blocks of the bar and beginning to doubt my decision to drink in public when a very distinctive couple leaves the establishment. They’re both atypical for Pheasant patrons. She’s extremely pregnant, and he’s clear-eyed, sharply dressed, and carrying what I believe is called a man-purse in some circles. Around here we call it an-invitation-to-get-your-ass-kicked.

She laughs at something he says and they walk off in the opposite direction without seeing me. I realize instantly that it’s Shannon and Kozlowski, but the shock of seeing them and seeing them together keeps me from reacting right away.

I recognize Shannon’s car parked down the street. I run back to my own car wondering how I’m going to clandestinely tail someone while driving the only yellow Subaru within the tri-state area.

Fortunately it’s dark, and as long as I keep a fair distance behind her, she’ll only notice a pair of headlights.

I swing around the block and wait in a nearby alley where I have a good view of them.

It’s taking a little time for Shannon to ease her bulk behind the steering wheel. My original theory about Kozlowski’s lack of a license must be accurate. Otherwise, I can’t imagine him not taking over the driving duties.

I follow her out of town, keeping well behind her. It doesn’t take me long to realize she’s taking Kozlowski back to his motel.

She pulls into the Comfort Inn parking lot, and I pull into the Uni-Mart next door. She doesn’t drop him off. She gets out of the car, too, and goes inside with him.

I give them a few minutes to get situated.

I know Kozlowski’s room number from when I picked him up on Saturday. He had a few more phone calls to make before we went out, and invited me up while I waited for him.

“Who is it?” he calls out when I knock.

“I want my sister.”

There’s some hurried, hushed conversation behind the door.

“Now,” I say loudly.

Kozlowski opens the door. Shannon is sitting propped up on the bed with a couple pillows behind her and one under her feet.

“Hello, Gerald. Shannon,” I greet them. “Isn’t this cozy? Maybe I should call Pamela and the Russian and we can all sit around with our guns and checkbooks and wait for the baby to arrive.”

“The Russian?” Shannon asks.

I point at Kozlowski.

“He sent him after you.”

She pushes herself up off the pillows.

“You sent that crazy motherfucker after me?”

“I didn’t send him after you,” he replies calmly. “He came to me. He called me and said he was looking for you on Mickey’s behalf. Somehow he heard you were pregnant again and was hoping he could buy this baby. I began to think maybe we could get Mickey to offer more money than the Larsons, and we could get a bidding war going. Technically, Mickey does have a vaguely legal claim to one of your babies, since you ran out on the previous contract. I thought we could use that information to scare the Larsons. And since I also needed help finding you, I thought Dmitri’s call was a godsend. I knew if anyone could find you, he could. I told him what I knew about Jolly Mount, and by then I also knew about your sister.”

Shannon gets off the bed and lumbers toward a chair where her purse is sitting. She starts rummaging through it.

“I didn’t run out on anything,” she tells him coldly. “I changed my mind. It’s a mother’s prerogative. Mickey’s wife is nuts.”

“You’re the one who made her nuts,” he tells her. “Sending those photos of aborted fetuses was really over the top. Who’s Pamela?”

She takes out a pack of cigarettes and starts to light one.

He tells her to put it out.

“Shut up, Gerry,” she snaps at him as she tosses her lighter back in her bag. “When have I ever failed to produce a less-than-perfect baby?”

“So Dmitri is the Russian’s name?” I ask.

“No, Dmitri is the fucking Chinaman,” she snaps at me.

I maintain my cool.

“Do you want to explain Pamela to Gerry?” I counter sweetly.

She narrows her gold-brown eyes at me.

“How do you know Pamela?”

I shrug.

“This is bullshit,” she says grabbing her purse and her coat. “I’m leaving.”

“No, you’re not. I’m going to have a talk with Gerry here, then I’m taking you home with me. You’re grounded until the baby’s born.”

“Like hell I am.”

She starts toward the door. I don’t move out of her way.

“What are you going to do?” I ask. “Make a break for it? You really think you can out-waddle me?”

“You’re not funny.”

I reach into my purse and pull out my handcuffs. I always keep a pair with me. Restraining individuals was one aspect of my job I simply could never give up.

“What are you doing?” she cries as I grab her arm and clap one cuff around her wrist. “What the fuck are you doing?”

I drag her into the bathroom and connect the other cuff to the pipes under the sink while she continues to protest.

She has no choice but to lower herself onto the cold tile floor. I don’t help her. I pluck the cigarette out of her hand and flush it down the toilet.

Kozlowski smiles upon my return.

“Shannon said she could handle you. I guess she was wrong.”

“Listen, Gerry.”

“I prefer Gerald.”

“I don’t care. I’m not in the best of moods this evening. These past few days have not been very pleasant ones for me. I’ve been very worried about my sister and her unborn baby. And this Russian prick you put on her tail did this to me.”

I pull my hair away from my face so he can get a good look.

“He could have done it to her. A pregnant woman,” I add.

Kozlowski shakes his head.

“He wouldn’t have hurt her. He knows not to hurt her.”

“You lied to me.”

“I never lied to you,” he interrupts. “I may not have been forthcoming with some facts, but I never lied.”

I stare at him and wait for an example of his honesty.

“I’ve represented Shannon in a few adoptions. I get a substantial fee. She ran out on this one. I came after her.”

He shrugs and holds out his hands, palms up, as if this is the kind of situation I should be running into every day.

“Do you always take off in person after girls who run out on you?” I ask.

“I’ve never had it happen before.”

“What made you come to Jolly Mount?”

“I told you the truth. She told me this was her hometown. It was a hunch. That’s all. Running into you was pure coincidence.”

“But how did you find her once you were here?”

“Easy. She has an insane bacon craving. It’s a small town. There are only two restaurants that serve breakfast all day: The International House of Pancakes and Eatn’Park. I went to both and showed her picture around to the staffs and promised a cash reward to anyone who called me if she showed up. One of the waitresses at Eatn’Park said she thought she had already seen her there that morning with another woman. I assumed it was you. A few hours later I get a call from the IHOP. Who’s Pamela, by the way?”

“You’ll have to get Shannon to tell you. Good luck.”

I start heading back to the bathroom.

“I don’t wish Shannon any harm,” he says. “I just want my money.”

“I’ve already figured that out. The part about only caring about money. Once the baby’s born she’s on her own again,” I explain. “I’m not going to interfere with any of her decisions. But for now I’m taking her home with me, and you’re going to go back to New York and leave her alone. I’m not going to make you promise because I don’t trust you, but I will make sure you’ve checked out of here tomorrow and that you haven’t checked in anywhere else.”

“And what if I don’t leave?” he asks.

He offers what I’m sure he considers a very persuasive smile but his eyes are hostile. I think about what Vlad, or Dmitri, told me: that he finds girls and convinces them to get pregnant solely in order to sell their babies.

“If you cause any problems for Shannon or try to get in touch with her in any way while she’s staying with me, I have friends around here who will be happy to hurt you for me, once I explain who and what you are. I could do it myself, but I wouldn’t feel right since you’re a customer.”

He laughs.

“Shannon told me you used to be a cop. Is that what you’re implying? Are you telling me the cops around here are actually stupid enough to think that they can beat up a lawyer from New York City—an officer of the court—as a favor to someone and get away with it?”

“I’m not talking about cops. I’m talking about coal miners.”

I turn my back on him and join Shannon in the john, closing the door behind me so we can have some privacy. Shannon looks extremely uncomfortable on the floor, although at her stage of pregnancy I doubt any position is comfortable.

She’s sitting against the tile wall between the sink and the toilet with her legs sticking straight out in front of her and spread slightly apart. The mound of her belly forms a ledge for her breasts to lie on. Looking down at her from this angle, I figure it would be easier to pull the baby up through her throat like a rabbit from a top hat than to try the traditional route.

I take a seat on the edge of the bathtub.

She has taken off the small plastic lids from the shampoo and moisturizer samples and is whipping them against the wall opposite her, where they hit with a click and fly back at her.

“What happened to you?” I ask her.

“Spare me,” she says dully without looking at me. “Don’t think you can give me a lecture because you kept your baby. We all know you’re so fucking wonderful.”

“What the hell, Shannon?” I respond angrily. “Is that what this is all about? I got pregnant and I kept my baby so you had to get pregnant and not keep yours? What kind of twisted sibling rivalry is that?”

“I assure you nothing I’ve ever done in my life has anything to do with sibling rivalry. And I’m not twisted.”

“And I’m not fucking wonderful.”

“Sure you are. Everybody’s wonderful in this situation except for me. I’m sure you think people like Pamela who adopt these babies are so wonderful, too, because they want the baby. Oh, they must be such amazing, loving people because they’re willing to spend all that money and go to all that worry over this baby, and I’m a monster because I don’t want the baby. They spend the money because they have it. Big fucking deal. They don’t give any more thought to the baby than they do to buying a yacht or a golden retriever. It’s one more thing for them to acquire, one more thing they can buy to fill up their stupid empty lives.”

I can’t stand the tone of her voice, the complete lack of feeling in it. I think about what Isabel said, how she thought Shannon had some disorder that kept her from loving people. I think about E.J.’s uncharacteristic display of emotion as he insisted she never cared about me or anyone else. I think about Jimmy not saying anything, because he agreed with them but he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

But I also can’t stop thinking about my little sister, snuggled up next to me, sitting on Mom’s rag rug, looking at books filled with pictures of places we were still young enough to dream about seeing but already weary enough in our souls to know we would never get to. I think about her crying softly in her bed after Dad had finished beating me. Pretend you’re asleep, I always told her. And even after he’s gone, don’t come to me. Don’t risk making the floorboards creak. I think about the way I’d find her standing next to my bed the following morning, watching and waiting: the smile and the hug I’d get once she was sure I was still alive.

“So how can you do it?” I ask her. “How can you give your own child to people you hate?”

She winces as she shifts her immense frontal weight.

“Making babies is the only thing I’m good at. It’s my profession.”

I don’t say anything, but I must be making an expression of disapproval because she says, “Don’t look at me like that. What’s the difference between rich people paying men to work in their coal mines or paying a coal miner’s daughter to have a baby for them?”

I don’t have an immediate answer for her.

“Miners like Dad ruin their health,” she says. “They get killed. They give their blood for a salary. I’m doing the same thing. I do all the work. I take all the risks and face all the danger. In the end I get paid, and it may seem like a lot, but it’s not compared to what I’m giving them.”

“So what are you saying?” I ask. “You’re a baby mine?”

She begins to absentmindedly stroke her belly.

“But it’s not the same thing,” I insist. “If a man decides to work in a coal mine, he’s making a decision about his own life. You’re making a decision for someone else. An innocent little person.

“How can you give your child to Pamela Jameson?” I continue. “What if it’s a little girl? She’ll have to color-coordinate and earn an anti-stress badge.”

She smiles a little.

“I guess you have run into Pam. I have to admit I was impressed she followed me here. She has an unnatural fear of anything natural.”

“She’s not the only one who followed you here. What about this Russian?”

“He’s a full-time thug who works as a bodyguard-driver for this small-time New Jersey politician who’s mobbed up. Gerry and I tried to work out an adoption with him. I did a couple things to try and bump the price up. Gerry was putting on an act in there trying to seem like he was appalled at what I did. He totally approved.

“But Mickey’s wife turned out to be a complete bimbo bitch, and I didn’t want her to have the kid. I hear she’s crazy now. Sits in the baby’s room and cries all the time. Her husband knows plenty of hookers. Why doesn’t he just give one fifty grand to have his baby? What’s the big deal? People are such hypocrites.”

I want to hit her. I want to beat all the callousness and flippancy out of her and start fresh with an empty Shannon skin and stuff it full of goodwill and happiness, but it doesn’t work that way. I know firsthand that a beating from a loved one doesn’t teach you anything. It doesn’t fill you with respect for the beater or, surprisingly, even hatred. It simply makes you afraid of everything. Including love.

“And the Larsons?”

“They’re the family who’s supposed to get this baby. Gerry set up the adoption. I ran out on him so I could sell the baby to Pamela for more money.”

“And you had both families supporting you throughout your pregnancy?”

“Yeah. Pretty smart, huh?”

“I’m speechless with admiration.”

She stretches her arms behind her and begins kneading her lower back with her fingertips.

“It’s not a big deal. I’m usually scrupulously honest.”

“What happened this time?”

“I’ve decided to retire. I still have more childbearing years left in me, but I’m tired. I wanted to make a real killing with this last one before I quit. That’s why I was playing these families against each other and why I didn’t want to share any of the money with Gerry.”

“Even if this plan works, you can’t possibly make more than a couple hundred grand. How are you going to retire on that? You’re only thirty-four.”

“For one thing I’m not talking about never working again for as long as I live. I’m retiring from the baby game. That’s all. And I’m also not talking about retiring in New York City. I hate it there. I only live there because that’s where the marketplace is and when I do live there, someone else is paying my bills. I’ve got other money saved. I have a cheap little town picked out. I’ve even bought myself a cheap little house.”

“Is it in New Mexico?”

“Maybe.”

“So you ran away to the big city and sold babies to rich people all these years so you’d be able to afford to live in a town pretty much like the one you left in the first place?”

She doesn’t answer me.

“I don’t get it.”

“People can change their minds about where they want to live.” An edge of defensiveness creeps into her voice. “Just because I didn’t want to live in a dead-end, bumble-fuck town when I was sixteen doesn’t mean I can’t decide to live in one when I’m older. You lived in D.C. all those years and look at you now. Right back where you started. I think that house of yours may actually be uglier than the one we grew up in.”

“I came back because I wanted to.”

“That’s what I’m doing, too.”

“So why not move back to Jolly Mount instead of some town in New Mexico?”

“Ha!” she barks. “No, thank you.”

“Why come back at all? Why are you here right now? I still haven’t figured that out.”

She doesn’t say anything at first. I swear I can hear the gears turning inside her head as she works on concocting her latest lie.

“When I was thinking where I could go to hide out and have the baby without anybody bothering me, I thought of here. I thought of you,” she finally answers.

“Did you ever think about me before?”

“I really want a cigarette.”

“Did you?”

“Don’t try and make me feel bad,” she replies.

“You were gone for eighteen years. Didn’t you ever think about me? About Clay and Dad? Jimmy and Isabel? Didn’t you ever once think about how worried we must be?”

“I didn’t care.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I said, I didn’t care,” she repeats slowly, staring me straight in the eyes and willing me to look away first.

“Just like you don’t care about your babies.”

“They’re going to good homes. I suppose it’s better to have abortions? It’s better to kill them?”

“It’s not the same thing,” I cry out in exasperation. “Women who have abortions are women who get pregnant by accident. You get pregnant with the sole intention of selling your children.”

“Pregnant by accident?” she says, her face screwing up in contempt. “There’s no such thing. That’s such bullshit. Women don’t get pregnant by accident. A woman knows how to get pregnant and a woman knows what birth control is. If she has sex and she’s not using birth control, she knows she can get pregnant. There’s no accident.”

“Sometimes there are accidents.”

The disdain on her face melts away and is replaced by the bored yet wholly alert gaze of a copper-eyed cat.

“Are you talking about yourself? You weren’t dumb. You knew where babies came from. How’d you end up pregnant?”

“Sometimes there are situations where you can’t be prepared.”

“What are you saying? Were you raped?”

“No,” I reply and immediately search for a way to change the subject. “How many babies have you had? Just out of curiosity.”

“This will be ten.”

“Ten?”

Ten: I can’t process this number.

I get up from my seat on the edge of the bathtub and begin to pace in the little room.

Suddenly I crave a cigarette, too, and I’ve never smoked.

“Ten,” I say again.

“I had my first when I was seventeen, just like you,” she starts to tell me. “And just like you I wasn’t dumb about sex. I knew you got pregnant from having it and I knew about condoms. I was there in health class when we learned how to put a rubber on a banana. But when you’re out on the streets and the only way you’re going to get a meal or maybe a bed to sleep in is to screw some guy who doesn’t necessarily have one or want to use one, sometimes you make exceptions.”

I start to feel sick to my stomach. I don’t want to hear these stories. This is exactly the kind of life I pictured her having during the times I allowed myself to picture her alive.

“Why didn’t you come to me? You didn’t have to live like that.”

“When I found out I was pregnant that first time I didn’t know what to do,” she continues, ignoring what I said. “I didn’t have any money. I couldn’t have paid for an abortion even if I wanted one. I ended up at a church, which is kind of weird if you think about it since you and Dad always hated churches.”

Screw the angels, I think to myself.

“They directed me to this church-sponsored home for pregnant teens. It was a great place. Clean. Good food. Your own bed. Hot showers. A doctor who came once a month and gave us checkups.

“After I’d been there a little while, ladies started coming to visit me. They were different than the women who worked there. These ladies were always nicely dressed and perfumed. They always came one at a time. At first they said they were just there to give me someone to talk to, that I should think of them as a sort of mother or an older sister. They’d bring me little things. A candy bar. A lip gloss. Then as time passed they started to talk more and more about the baby and what I was going to do with the baby and how they were so concerned about the baby. The gifts got better, too. Soon I was getting clothes, and CDs, and makeup.”

She begins to perk up as she tells the story.

“More time passed and they began to tell me how they couldn’t have children of their own but how desperately they wanted children and how much love they had to give. How each one of them had a beautiful home and a beautiful husband and could provide a beautiful life for some poor unfortunate child who would otherwise have a hellish life of poverty and neglect with his worthless piece-of-trash biological mother. Of course they didn’t put it in exactly those words. Quite the contrary, they were extremely sympathetic to my situation.

“Right before the baby was born, the gifts reached their peak. I got a fake fox jacket, a Walkman, a pair of suede Nine West ankle boots, and a gold tennis bracelet. The diamonds turned out to be fake but I was an amateur back then.

“I ended up giving the baby to the woman who gave me the boots. It had nothing to do with the boots. I laid the four gifts out on my bed and did Eeny Meeny Miney Moe.

“Once the baby was gone, that was the end of the ladies and the gifts and the church’s hospitality. I was out on the streets again, and while I was out there it occurred to me if I got pregnant again I’d be invited back. I’d be warm and well fed and taken care of. More ladies would come bearing gifts. Then I did a little more thinking and thought, why do I need some stupid home for knocked-up girls? I bet I could do a lot better on my own. I bet I can do better than a coat. I bet there are women out there who would buy me a car, maybe even a house in exchange for a baby. I bet there are women out there who might even be willing to skip all this ‘pretending to care about each other’ bullshit and just give me cash.”

She finishes her account. By now her enthusiasm has vanished, and she’s returned to her earlier dull detachment.

I feel thoroughly nauseated. I don’t blame childless women for trying to find children, and I don’t blame teenaged girls for making mistakes that lead to making children they’re not prepared to care for, but I can’t forgive my sister’s lack of compassion for anyone, including herself.

Where did it come from? How did I not see it during all those years we spent together?

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I’m sorry all that happened to you. But you didn’t have to run away in the first place. You could have come to me.”

I walk over to her and stroke the top of her head the way I used to when she was little.

“Shannon. I need to know. Did Dad start hurting you again after I left with Clay? Is that why you ran away? Did you blame me for that?”

She looks up at me from the floor.

“You still don’t get it, do you? I didn’t run away from Dad. I didn’t run, period. I left. I went looking for something else. The only reason I didn’t do it sooner was because you were there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t leave you. You left first.”

“That’s not fair. I wanted you to come with us.”

“Not really. You had Clay to take care of. You put him first and that’s the way it should have been. He was your son.”

“Please don’t talk that way. You know I loved you, too.”

“You didn’t love me.”

“How can you say that?” I ask her, trying to keep my voice from sounding panicked. “I took care of you. I cooked your meals and did your laundry. I read you books and helped you with your homework. I tucked you in at night and nursed you when you were sick.”

She doesn’t look impressed.

“You did the same stuff for Dad. A guy who treated us like shit. That’s not love; that’s duty. You were a soldier with an assignment. That’s the way I always thought of you. Shae-Lynn the soldier. And I was one of your missions.”

She falls silent for a moment when I don’t respond.

“When I was a kid, I used to wish you’d be a wreck,” she goes on. “Just once I wanted to see you break down and cry, or throw something, or tell Dad to go to hell. It never happened until Clay was born. Then all of a sudden you turned into this rabid mother bear. I used to tell myself you couldn’t have loved me because how can you love if you can’t feel? You didn’t start to feel until Clay was born.”

“That’s not true,” I tell her.

“I know we were kids. I know we were helpless,” she adds. “But still. You took it for so long. And then one day, you had the power to stop it. I always wondered if you’d always had the power but you just decided not to use it to save me.”

I feel completely at a loss. All I can do is deny her accusations, but I can’t find the words to explain why she’s wrong.

It wasn’t about power. I never had any power. It was about the differences between motherhood and sisterhood.

Clay was my child. My responsibility. He is my creation.

Shannon was my sister. My equal. She is my reflection.

I could mold him, but I could only make changes to her surface.

“I did everything I could for you,” I tell her quietly.

She glances up at me and nods.

“Yeah. I guess I know that.”

She jangles the handcuffs against the sink’s pipes.

“What about now? Can you take these off? I gotta pee.”

I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above her before I stoop to unlock the cuffs, and I realize she might be right: Maybe I am a soldier, but an ordinary one, not a warrior, living with a soldier’s fatigue and limitations and very small chance of glory.