The Baby Merchant Read online

  We are done talking. Hissing, I try to wrench free.

  In both versions of the movie Psycho, the mother speaks in a man’s voice. Out of nowhere I hear Jake Zorn aping my mother’s tones, “Sit down, son. Shut up and sit down.” It’s like hearing Daria Starbird on a bad day and I am knocked off center. So we have come to the thing I know in my gut, that brought me out when I should have blown him off and walked away. Zorn pushes me into the chair, giving orders like my eighth-grade teacher: “Sit down and look at the fucking tape.”

  It is not my best hour. Authority plows into me and pushes me back into my seat. “Tape of what?”

  “I know your secret, Starbird.” Zorn is like an open heart surgeon with the chest spreaders, getting ready to drive the first wedge. “I know what your mother did to you.”

  Sick. I am unaccountably sick. “She didn’t do anything!”

  But first, the incision. “Don’t shit me, Starbird. I’ve researched it and I know what she did.”

  “No you don’t.” Nobody does. It was never in the papers. “There isn’t any tape.”

  “That’s what you think.” Zorn raises the scalpel and makes the first cut. “My people found witnesses.”

  Quick, Tommy. Stop him! I try but no sound comes out of me.

  He extends the incision. Like the best surgeons, he makes a line so fine that it will be several seconds before his patient feels it and even longer before he sees the blood. “This poet in Cambridge. Doesn’t want kids, but she gets pregnant to, what, expand her poetry. See, there’s that little vain kernel inside her that will try anything because the work isn’t going well and she’d sell her soul to be famous. But you know the story.”

  “It’s only a story.” I am sick deep down, the way you get when you’ve broken a bone, surprised but still safe in the instant before the pain starts.

  “Sure, Tom. Sure it is. Shall I go on?” He stops. He is waiting for me to knuckle.

  “Don’t bother. That kind of thing happens all the time. Or used to, before the shortages.” Joke, Zorn, get it? Ha ha.

  “She tells the couple this baby is her mistake. You don’t have to listen if you don’t want to, Tom.”

  “Don’t call me Tom.”

  “Why not? After all, I own you.”

  “Get to the part about the witnesses.”

  “Oh, that.” The calculating bastard makes me wait. “It took some digging, but I found the couple in question.”

  The Levengers? “That’s bullshit.”

  He is playing nice, like any surgeon fixing to insert the chest spreader: This is for your own good, son. “So, if you don’t want me to go public …”

  “About what, me stealing babies? Go ahead …” I am flailing and we both know it.

  “No.” He slips the cassette into the VCR.

  “ … I’ve got nothing to lose. Hey, I’ll even give you an exclusive.” When you have nothing to lose, it makes you generous. Before he can hit PLAY I tell him, “As soon as I get where I’m going I’ll tape you an interview. Sixty minute special. Whatever you want. You can call it Secrets of the Bad.”

  Now it’s Zorn’s turn to create the uncomfortable silence.

  I count thirty.

  Fifty.

  He is beyond the scalpel. He lifts the hammer. “Do you really want the world to know what she did to you?”

  Too late, the operation is underway. “She didn’t do anything.”

  “What she did to you then? And afterward?”

  “She didn’t! She didn’t do anything.”

  “You know better. You know it made you what you are.”

  “Nobody knows anything, Zorn.” My guts are twisting. This is awful. “Even I don’t know.”

  He says, “Your mother knows what she did to you, Starbird.”

  He pushes PLAY.

  “Stop!”

  “And so do you.”

  “It’s our word against yours.” Whatever he’s got, we’ll just deny it. She is my mother, after all. That’s what they said to me at the agency right before they made us take each other back. She is your mother, after all.

  “And my witnesses know.”

  There they are. The Levengers. “Oh, shit.”

  Look at them, blinking into the camera, two old parties propped up on their living room sofa, patting their hair and fixing smiles. There they are, itching to tell their story, two people I don’t necessarily recognize but know, beginning a story I know too well and don’t want to hear. On the tape Jake Zorn trumpets, “These are the Levengers.” The self-appointed Conscience of Boston rolls it out for the millions: “They have an interesting story to tell.”

  “Fine, go ahead. Air it!” I shout loud enough to turn heads outside the glass door. “So what if she tried to give me away?”

  “Wait!” Zorn’s bark spins me around. I thought witnesses on tape was Four, but it isn’t. It’s only the beginning of Four. “One more thing.”

  As it turns out, the expose artist knows something I don’t. He knows exactly where he is going with this, whereas I am sitting there staring at the Levengers, thinking if he wants to humiliate me, fine. I can handle it. I may think we’re finished, but we’re nowhere near. So this is how the righteous Jake Zorn cracks me wide open and reaches in with both hands and stops my heart. “I’m not going after you, Starbird. I’m going after your mother. Walk out on this deal and I bring Daria Starbird to justice on my show.”

  BLAM.

  When I leave his office I make the calls anyway. First this. Then I’m done.

  12.

  Sasha is too pregnant to walk far. She may not be all that big compared to the others, but she’s unwieldy and short of breath and much too big to run. Never mind. No matter what happens, she’s going. Tonight.

  She is all process now.

  She knows better than to pack. In spite of the Newlife gloss, most of the old Agatha Pilcher staff is still in place, with all the old institutional attitudes— stern nurses, a bunch of grinning, nice-nasty house mothers ready to tell you that whatever happens, it’s for your own good. Departures are discouraged, so she has to act fast. No time for the conversation. Not a minute for one of those intense conferences in which the attending psychiatrist asks eight different ways if she’s sure.

  Dressed in that day’s atrocious scrubs, chartreuse with red hibiscus blooming across the belly, Sasha presents herself in the office with a gracious, shiteating smile. “Just a minute with my lockbox, please. It’s my nephew’s birthday and I need to write him a check,” which she does with a flourish, slipping it into the greeting card she filched from the gift shop. Worst luck, the administrator’s out and Viola’s in charge. Semper vigilans, you cow. She takes a good long time constructing a gushy note to this imaginary nephew with Viola looking over her shoulder, supervising every word. She keeps writing until even Viola gets tired of standing guard and turns to something else. Quickly, she scrawls a phony address and gives Viola her five— the only cash residents are allowed to carry, to discourage petty theft. “Here, I need a stamp.” As Viola paws through the stamp drawer, Sasha darts into her wallet. By the time Viola comes up with a first class stamp and fumbles in the cash box to make change, the wallet is back in place. Smiling like a good girl, she gives Viola the card to mail; if the nurse wants to sneak away and steam it open and read it, fine. By the time it comes back stamped ADDRESS UNKNOWN, RETURN TO SENDER, Sasha will be light years away. She pats the checkbook into place next to the wallet. When Viola checks the contents before locking the box, she’ll find the fifties Sasha brought when she signed in here still in the envelope. The woman is too stupid to look further, but Sasha has a few bad moments before Viola finishes fingering the wallet, the passport and what little jewelry Sasha has and snaps the key in the lock. She doesn’t guess that the driver’s license, Sasha’s plastic and her ATM card have been removed.

  Now all she has to do is make it through the day. This is hard enough on any day, but now she is in a footrace with Gary Cargill. How do you
outrun an opponent you can’t see? Where is he anyway, and what is he doing now? She hopes to God he isn’t talking to a lawyer. What custody rights does he have? Time congeals like Jell-O. She keeps throwing herself at the day but she can’t seem to get through it and she can’t move it out of the way. She can’t leave until the building, the staff and all the pregnant women in the place have gone to sleep.

  Meanwhile Gary is out there somewhere, describing decreasing concentric circles that will inevitably close on her room at Newlife like a noose at her throat. She hopes to God he isn’t smart enough to bring the law. She hopes to God he hasn’t called Grandmother, and more than anything she hopes that he won’t cut to the chase and storm the building, or sneak in or charm his way in. She has no idea what Gary will do.

  “Some man called the office today,” Eileen says at midmorning. “Said he was your husband. You don’t have a husband, do you?”

  Take a deep breath, Sasha. Smile and dissemble. “Would I be here if I did?”

  “He wanted an interview, but of course our policies …” Unlike Viola and the placement officer, the charge nurse is a friend. Eileen says, “You might as well know, Viola’s thinking about it. Is that a problem for you?”

  “Who, me? No. No problem. Just give me a heads up.”

  Imagine Starbird’s root canal and now imagine a root canal without anesthetic. Imagine the dentist pulling out the nerve, strand by strand. Think about Sasha Egan, shuffling past the day’s landmarks—lunch, Lamaze class, art, without screaming, taut and rigidly controlled. God, they are finger painting today. In a miracle of compression, she goes through all the right motions: answer nicely when somebody speaks, manage a smile for the sweet, pregnant girls in the solarium because these huge children need her to be happy, they count on it. Sit at the supper table with them and talk brightly so they won’t notice that she can’t eat.

  Go have a long shower and wash your hair, lady. You don’t know when you’ll get another chance.

  Gary is a little time bomb. Tick.

  It’s all she can do to wait until Lights Out.

  Once the building finally goes dark she has to wait another few minutes, until Eileen has finished tapping on every door on the hall in her unofficial bed check. The nurse calls good night and one by one the— OK, inmates— the inmates call good night. It’s more civil than a roll call. Egan? Mandatory answer: Here. Better, but not by much. The drill goes: Tap. Then: “Good night Mary/Janey/ Luellen.” Then, “Good night, Eileen.” And if anybody fails to answer there’s the flashlight check and if the person by that name is not in her bed, the lights go on for the full building search that won’t end until everyone has been counted and the lights go out again. Sasha holds her breath as one by one the girls respond as expected, signifying that instead of gossiping in other girls’ rooms or in the little pantry stealing food they are in their appointed places, safe in bed. Good nights ping-pong down the hall, approaching Sasha’s room. She is in bed in her underwear and tightly laced sneakers, with the covers pulled up to her chin. Tap. “Good night, Mary.” Tap. “Good night Luellen.” Tap. Eileen is at Sasha’s door now. “Good night, Sasha.”

  “Good …” Oh God please help me do this. “Night.” Remember your manners. “Eileen.”

  Two. Three. Four. Wait. Click. The hallway is finally dark except for the running lights.

  Then she waits another hour. When the rustling and sighing subside as the others drop into sleep like flies off a wall, when she’s certain even Eileen is in bed for the night, she puts on the only civilian dress that still fits her and slips out into the hall, going quietly because as they do in hospitals, the doors on this corridor stand open all night.

  Luellen’s sleepy voice curls out of the room next to hers. “Sasha? Is that you?”

  Sasha ought to ignore it and skate on by but the child sounds so pitiful. OK face it, she’s only a child. She hesitates.

  “I can see your shadow, Sasha. Come on, I know it’s you.”

  “Shh, Luellen. Gotta go.”

  “But I need you.”

  “Please, Lu. Just shhh.”

  She doesn’t shh. They never do. They just get louder. “I can’t!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Would you please just please come here?”

  The tone of urgency brings Sasha into the room. “Oh, sweetie, are you having contractions?”

  Luellen sounded urgent but she looks all right. Like a child, she knows she has to come up with a reason. “I had a bad dream.”

  “Should I get Eileen?”

  “Just stay with me, OK?”

  “I can’t, sweetie.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Then why are you all dressed up?”

  “I have to make a phone call, Lu.” She whispers to make Luellen whisper too. “Are you all right?”

  “You’re not doing anything weird, are you?”

  “Of course not, Lu. So you’re not in labor or anything?”

  “I wish!”

  “Take care then. I have to go.” She pats the girl’s covers and before Luellen can whisper wait she backs out, holding her breath. She doesn’t exhale until she’s cleared the exit at the end of the hall and is heading downstairs.

  It is a little like running away from home. The women who run the establishment at Newlife are either too trusting or too Southern to imagine theft from inside so the office lock is easy work; Sasha opens it with her ATM card. Inside, she cleans out the petty cash drawer and feeds the contents of her folder to the shredder. It takes her longer to frame the note. She leaves it on the superintendent’s desk, stapled to an envelope with jewelry still warm from her body, the only personal items she was allowed to keep when she checked in here— her diamond studs and an ancestral ring that will more than cover any debt to the institution. Then without a clue as to what she’ll do once she has walked off the Newlife grounds, she hits the roll bar on the door outside and leaves the safety of the Pilcher home for good.

  Three

  The Pickup

  13.

  Tom Starbird presents as all surface. Nobody is, but he’s working on it. He wants to live without subtext. As though there’s nothing going on inside. What you see is what you get, he insists. Item by item, he is discarding even that.

  In the studio apartment where he’s holed up for the duration, he owns: his computer. The oversized coffee mug he brought from home. His clothes. The book of the day. The management supplies a microwave and a Mr. Coffee, two plates, two knives, two forks, two spoons, two glasses and two cups. The place comes furnished with a bed, a desk and a chair. Cable TV

  It’s like living nowhere. Perfect for him. For Tom Starbird right now, this is enough. He loves the featureless fabrics and bare surfaces. Nothing to look at but a generic print on the curtains and quilt and expanses of white formica. No strong colors to distract. After the number of people and things he’s spent his life taking care of, he loves the absence of objects, the silence. The minimalism would impress a monk.

  On short notice, he turned everything he owns into cash. Essentially, money is an abstraction, so when he’s done here, to all intents and purposes he will have nothing. Invisible and undemanding, it sits in a European bank. After he signs off on Zorn and his wife, he will be free. If he wants, he can fly to Vienna and collect it. Then he’ll have enough to do or buy anything he wants.

  If there’s anything he wants.

  This is one of the things he’s here to figure out: what he wants.

  It’s not a question he is ready to address. He has to strip down to the bare walls before he can even think about it.

  What does he really want to do, beyond divesting? He doesn’t know. Just something different from this. Something he knows is right.

  Ask Tom Starbird exactly what he’s doing here and he won’t be able to tell you, although he could tell you what he is trying to make of this room: a cell, or the next best thing. Ask him whether he means cell
as in monastery or prison and he won’t be able to say. He doesn’t exactly know. Understanding is a function of process, he supposes. As a first step, he is decluttering his life.

  Once you start divesting, you get hung up on it. In its own way it’s a little bit like being drunk— get hooked on anything and snap decisions run up the heels of the considered ones. Sell it, throw it out, give it away without worrying about whether you’ll ever need it again. When he shut up shop and moved out overnight, Starbird turned his clients over to the Star Foundation, along with the responsibility for followups, which he has covered with money transferred from a bank that can’t be traced. He released Martha and the consulting pediatrician with handsome severance packages. The house in Chelsea, he deeded to the nuns, along with the books he bought and never had time to read. He transferred titles to his rolling stock— all but the Miata— to his accountant, who is welcome to keep any profits the sale brings in, although he’s pledged to turn over whatever the paintings and drawings and his beautiful maquette collection fetch at Sotheby’s.

  Starbird is empty handed now, and by design.

  Closing out the operation, he swept the hard drives on the office machines and turned over the keys and closed the door without looking back. He has brought nothing with him but a small bag: black suit, black python boots and a half-dozen shirts. He lives in sweats and washes his underwear in the sink. For a man who two weeks ago ran a risky, complex and highly profitable business and maintained a town house and an office, who loved to collect eighteenth-century drawings and twentieth-century art, this is an astounding moment of liberation.

  The freedom is seductive. The absence of responsibility to objects, sublime. As for people, that takes work. He would like to be in a desert where no people are. This is the state he is creating here. Nothing to take care of. Nobody around to speak, to need, to hope. No things he should have done or not done and nobody here to reproach him. No conversation. Nothing to distract him from the business at hand. If he can truly clear the space, who knows what great thoughts will come in like strangers into an empty room? What will he begin to know? Starbird is sneaking up on the existential.