The Lost Mother Read online

  The door opened. “Thomas.” Sister Mary Sebastian steered him inside. He could barely hear her. His eardrums were going to burst. Margaret’s head was down, though she watched him with raw, swollen eyes. She was hugging a beautiful new doll. The doll’s dress matched hers.

  Mr. and Mrs. Farley sat facing the desk. They were all dressed up. The short black veil on Mrs. Farley’s red hat puffed up over her pudgy nose with every breath. Mr. Farley wore a gray suit and a blue tie with big white polka dots. He balanced a briefcase on his knees. Neither one looked at Thomas as he sat down beside Margaret. An empty chair stood between the children and the Farleys.

  “Say hello, now, Thomas.”

  “Hello, Sister,” he mumbled.

  “I meant to Mr. and Mrs. Farley, Thomas.”

  He glanced at them. “Hello.”

  Mrs. Farley managed a pained tweak of a smile. Mr. Farley nodded.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Farley have come a long way. And for a very good reason. They’re very kind people.”

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Farley said primly. She couldn’t keep her eyes off Margaret who absently stroked the doll’s long blonde curls.

  “I must tell you,” Sister Mary Sebastian said to the Farleys. “We don’t often have such happy endings, especially with the differences in religion. But because Mrs. Talcott is so agreeable to this arrangement, so very anxious, actually, it’s certainly not in my authority to present an obstacle.” Frowning a little, she adjusted her glasses. “Though I must say, I think Mrs. Talcott was most relieved to hear that the child will be raised in the Catholic faith.”

  The child. Were they getting rid of Jesse-boy? Was he coming here? What did his mother care if Jesse-boy was Catholic or Protestant?

  “Well, we know because our own faith is so important to us,” Mr. Farley sniveled. “But in the end, we’re all Christians, aren’t we?”

  Sister Mary Sebastian gave such a patronizing smile, even Thomas could tell she thought he was a fool. Of course hers was the one true religion. But if Mr. Farley didn’t care what religion his own son was raised in, why should she? Still, though, this was confusing; the tension in the air, the stiffness. Everyone sat quietly for a few moments.

  “Well,” Sister Mary Sebastian said. She checked her watch. “Mrs. Talcott’s late. I’m sure she said ten though.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Farley said. “Ten, that’s what she said.”

  “Probably the weather. Last night’s sleet turned everything to ice.” She glanced over at the tall window. “The streets must be terrible.” In front of her were two stacks of papers. She took a paper from one and read it.

  “Yes. That’s why we got such an early start,” Mr. Farley said.

  “The roads were terrible,” Mrs. Farley said. She had begun to pick at her nails. The sound used to bother Thomas, but now he almost felt bad for her.

  “It was mighty slow going,” Mr. Farley said.

  “We left at three in the morning,” Mrs. Farley said. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  Nodding, Sister picked up the next paper and read that.

  “Everything should be there,” Mrs. Farley said, and her husband agreed.

  Thomas kept trying to get Margaret to look at him. He was smiling. Their mother was coming. Maybe the Farleys were going to give them all a ride back to Vermont after they dropped off Jesse-boy. This would be the perfect place for him. Groomes would make his miserable life even worse.

  Margaret kept her head down. Her shoulders trembled the way they did when she was trying hard not to cry. He glanced around. No one was looking at him. They probably blamed him for having to get rid of Jesse-boy. After he’d hit him and he and Margaret had run away, they must have realized what a disgusting dirty boy of a son they had.

  Mrs. Farley cleared her throat. “Fred,” she said in a low voice. “The kaleidoscope.”

  “Oh, yes. Got it right here.” Mr. Farley opened the briefcase and removed a red kaleidoscope. “For you!” He held it out to Thomas.

  Thomas thanked him and put it to his eye. Tilting his head all the way back, he aimed it at the bright hanging globe, turning the end slowly. With each flash of the intricate prisms the silence in the room heightened.

  “We thought he’d like it,” Mrs. Farley was telling the nun. “Our Jesse-boy used to love those,” she added, and Margaret gave a little gasp. “Oh, you poor, little thing.” Mrs. Farley reached across the empty chair and patted her leg. “We should’ve thought. You’d like one too, wouldn’t you? Well, don’t you worry. We will. First thing we’ll do when we get back, is bring you down to Whitby’s and let you pick out the one you like best. There’s some a lot nicer than that. Right, Fred?”

  “Yes. There are, and we’ll do that. This afternoon.” He checked his watch. “If we get back in time.”

  “And if not, first thing in the morning then. Right, Fred?”

  “First thing!” he agreed.

  Margaret whimpered and laid her brow on the doll’s head. Sister Mary Sebastian had been watching her. “Try to be happy, dear. It’ll be fine. You’ll see,” she said. “And you already know the Farley family. Some children leave here with perfect strangers.”

  “Yes, dear. We’ll take such good care of you.” Mrs. Farley patted Margaret’s leg again. “You know we will, now, don’t you?”

  “Why? What do you mean?” Thomas asked, of no one in particular. And no one answered.

  Sister Mary Sebastian removed her glasses, put on another pair. “Why don’t we begin?” she said to the Farleys. “You can start reading through these papers. And then when Mrs. Talcott comes everyone can sign.” She handed a sheaf of papers to Mr. Farley and one to his wife.

  Thomas gripped the edge of Sister’s desk. “My mother’s taking us back, isn’t she?”

  The Farleys busied themselves, reading. Mrs. Farley’s lips moved from line to line. Sister Mary Sebastian folded her arms into her sleeves. “Perhaps we’d better start explaining things to Thomas,” she said to them, though she looked right at him now. “I’d been hoping to do it with your mother here, but we’re running late, and I know Mr. and Mrs. Farley have to get back as soon as they can.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Farley said. “Poor Jesse-boy. His cold was deep in his chest. But Otis and his wife are there. They’re so good with him. You remember Otis,” she said to Margaret now, telling her how Otis and his wife were expecting a baby in the spring. “Won’t that be nice? Jesse-boy’s so excited. A brand-new baby to look forward to,” She couldn’t wait, she added with an eager shiver.

  Mr. Farley told Sister Mary Sebastian his wife loved babies. Yes, Mrs. Farley agreed. The papers in her hand shook. Baby anythings. And Jesse-boy was the same way, wasn’t he, Fred? Oh, yes, kittens, lambs, calves. Puppies. Ducklings, she added almost feebly.

  “Yes,” Sister Mary Sebastian said with a glance at the brown metal clock on the wall. Ten thirty-five. Sister was a very busy woman. Behind her the crucifix seemed to grow from the top of her head. Christ’s eyes were closed, his head sagged to one side, chin slumped at his shoulder in defeat. “Now Thomas, as I was saying, you’re certainly old enough to understand what’s going on here. In fact, I’m sure you already do.”

  Margaret was crying. Mrs. Farley opened her purse and offered a lacy handkerchief. But Margaret couldn’t see it through her tears.

  “Thomas is a very bright boy,” Sister Mary Sebastian told Mrs. Farley as if this one last plea might work.

  “Oh, yes. He is. We know that,” Mrs. Farley said, trying to minister to Margaret, who shrank away from her.

  “No!” Margaret burst out. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay with Thomas.”

  “You have to, dear,” Sister Mary Sebastian said.

  “No, she doesn’t,” Thomas said. “Not if she doesn’t want to. She can stay with me. She’s supposed to. I’m her brother!”

  “Now, Thomas, listen,” Sister Mary Sebastian said. “Listen to me. I know this is hard. I know it’s painful to have to be separated from your sist
er, but right now Mr. and Mrs. Farley can only take one child. Maybe sometime in the future they can take you too—we’ve certainly discussed it—but for now, with their son doing so poorly, they can only take Margaret.”

  “No! Don’t make her go there. Please!” he begged the nun, who’d obviously been through this enough times to have her speeches and heart well-prepared. “She hates it there!”

  “See! I knew he’d do this,” Mrs. Farley told her husband. “He’s a very selfish boy. And he wasn’t very nice at all to our son last time,” she informed Sister Mary Sebastian in a tremulous voice. “And … well … for other certain reasons I’d rather not speak of here. Especially in front of this poor little girl.” She was sniffling.

  “I’m not going!” Margaret sobbed. “I won’t go there!”

  Thomas reached for his sister’s hand, but she shrank from him too.

  “You have to, dear,” Sister Mary Sebastian said again softly. “It’s already been decided. It’s what your mother wants. She’ll be here any minute now, and she’ll tell you the same thing. She wants you to have a good life. And so do the Farleys. They’ve driven all the way down here to bring you back for Christmas. And for their son’s birthday. Just think, you’ll be with your lovely new family for Christmas. And I know, Thomas,” she said, looking over her glasses, with stern emphasis on each word, “that you’ll be happy if your sister’s happy.”

  “She won’t be with them! They’re the ones that caused all the trouble in the first place. That’s why my father can’t take care of us. Because they made him go to jail!”

  “Now you just hold on there, young man,” Mr. Farley said. “Your father stole something from me. He broke the law and he was punished. And just so you’ll know, he’s not in jail. He got out a week ago. But he’s not sitting in this chair, now is he? No, because he’s not a fit father—”

  “Even his wife says the same thing,” Mrs. Farley told the nun over her husband’s angry voice.

  “—which is why you’re on the road you’re on, young man, beating a poor boy who can’t even defend himself, with a knife no less, then setting my barn on fire besides. Burned the whole back wall and half the roof,” he told the nun. “Here, see for yourself.” He unfolded a stained, wrinkled paper and handed it to her. She looked at the paper, then as quickly, folded it. “That’s the sort of boy we’re dealing with. Rough and depraved! Not worth a tinker’s damn! Just like the—”

  “Fred! Please don’t,” Mrs. Farley gasped. “The mother will be here soon. Let her deal with him.”

  Sister Mary Sebastian looked hard at Thomas, not shocked so much as warning him to toe the line here.

  “No, because this is what we don’t want Margaret exposed to anymore. She’s just too dear a child,” Mr. Farley was telling Sister Mary Sebastian. “And she means so much to our son.”

  “Yes, she’s such a comfort.” Mrs. Farley patted her eyes with the handkerchief.

  “They get along so well,” Mr. Farley added.

  “But that’s not true, Mr. Farley,” came Margaret’s small voice. “Thomas didn’t draw that picture. Jesse-boy did. He showed me it and that’s why Thomas hit him.”

  “Margaret, that’s a terrible thing to say. Jesse-boy would never do something like that. And you know that.” Mr. Farley’s lean face strained purple.

  “Well, he did. And she knows because he did it before too. Lots of times, and she caught him. And she cried so he promised her he’d never do it again. But he did. Only that time Thomas hit him.”

  Mr. Farley stared at his wife. She smiled blankly, placidly back. “Nonsense. Of course not,” he said to Sister Mary Sebastian. “The boy’s an invalid, right, Phyllis? He’s lucky he can breathe some days.”

  “Poor thing.” Tears leaked from Mrs. Farley’s closed eyes.

  From the hallway came a noise, voices: the room seemed to shudder as if a hard wind had suddenly struck the outer walls. “No, no, you can’t,” a woman protested. “You just-wait outside. Wait! Wait! Do you hear me, sir? Sir! Sir!” she was demanding when the door was thrown open.

  There he stood in soiled dark clothes, the coarse cloth stiff with sweat, grease, and blood, stained and still flecked from yesterday’s butchering, because with the call he had risen from a dead man’s dreamless sleep, buttoning his shirt as he ran to meet the car, sure this was a nightmare, had to be, because of all the hard luck and loss in his life, this was the most incomprehensible, that she would do such a thing, give away their children, her own flesh and blood. Her life and future. And his.

  “She’s not right, not thinking straight at least,” Gladys had said from behind the wheel.

  “But even a sick animal doesn’t abandon its young!” he had roared back, then said the same to her, Irene, when they finally got there.

  She kept trying to shush him, worried her neighbors might hear, “So please, please whisper,” she begged while he told her flat-out what he’d held inside for so long, all the pain and anger, and the wanting, the ache of how much they loved her—especially the boy and girl. He could not say their names, for weeks had not, because their absence made his failure too real.

  Now, with the badgering nun still at his heels, he looked around, frantic, wild-eyed, afraid almost, as if in the fury and rejection he’d lost everything, didn’t know where he was, maybe didn’t even know them, his children.

  They jumped up and ran at him. And then he did something Thomas had never seen before. He knelt down and held out his long, hard arms and held them so tightly it hurt. They pressed close, breathing in his tobaccoey reek and the harsh smell of blood.

  “Excuse me, sir.” Sister Mary Sebastian loomed over them. “You can’t just barge in here like—”

  “I’m their father. These are my children. And I’m taking them home with me,” he said, from his knees, as afraid to let them go as they were of being released.

  “Where? To live in your truck?” Mrs. Farley cried out shrilly. “He doesn’t have a home,” she told Sister Mary Sebastian. “That’s why we’re here. Her own mother wants us to take her.”

  “My wife’s got no say in this,” Henry said, rising over the children. He held them in front of him, arms pinned over their shoulders. “And she knows it. That’s why she didn’t come.”

  “Oh why, because you threatened her?” Mrs. Farley turned to the nun. “She’s probably afraid. He’s a very violent man.”

  Henry Talcott stared at the round little woman. Thomas pressed harder against him, as if to hold back his father’s rage.

  “Watch yourself there, Henry,” Mr. Farley warned, pointing. “Don’t you make a wrong move now or you’ll regret it. I promise you.”

  “The only thing I regret is never telling you what a lying, cheating, spineless son of a bitch you are, Farley.” He took a deep breath. “Guess I just did, didn’t I?”

  “How can you talk like that in front of these children?” Mrs. Farley gasped. “See?” she said to the nun. “This is all this poor girl has. A father who curses like that. And a mother who doesn’t care or even want them!”

  “No,” Henry Talcott said. “That’s not true. It’s me she doesn’t care about anymore. And it’s not that she doesn’t want them. She just knows how much I do.”

  16

  Gladys was waiting in the car. She had driven Henry down in Dr. Creel’s car. In the middle of the night the old doctor had been called to Jesse-boy’s bedside. Otis’s wife said the boy was so excited over Margaret’s coming that he’d gotten his asthma so worked up he couldn’t catch his breath. Gladys told Henry, then brought him to Farley’s house, where he demanded that Otis tell him exactly where the Farleys had gone. Otis hadn’t known for sure, just that it was an orphanage. And that the little girl’s mother was signing her over for the Farleys to adopt. Next, Henry stood in the sleet banging on Lena’s door. It was still dark, and scared as she was of Henry, she was even more afraid of being saddled with her sister’s kids again. She refused to tell him anything. From there Gladys drove
Henry down to Collerton. He went to the rooming house, the only address he knew. It was with even greater delight that the gloating rooming-house lady directed the children’s father to the pale blue cottage on Kressey Court.

  Gladys drove them back to Vermont. Margaret slept up front in her father’s arms. Thomas had the whole backseat to himself, with the doctor’s black watch plaid Pendleton lap blanket covering him. “You all right back there?” Gladys would call every now and again in her rough voice, as if all that was after them, all that mattered was the cold wind blowing at the iced-up glass. Didn’t she know how alone he felt back there? He was safe now, and still alone. But maybe that was the price a boy had to pay for growing up before he was ready. Before he wanted to.

  Years later, he would realize watching his own children, then his children’s children, that it wasn’t just him, but everyone it happened to. Because that’s what growing up is. That’s what it feels like. Like being alone. And strong. Even when you don’t want to be, or think you can’t. You just suddenly are. And that was how Margaret would describe it also, years later at his seventieth birthday party. “To my wonderful brother,” she said, her champagne glass raised. “He always took care of his little sister. And oh God, I was such a selfish little thing. But then one day I had to be strong too. Just like you, Thomas. But it was easy, because you showed me how.”

  How many of us are there now? Too many to count, it seems some days. Gladys and Dad never did get officially married. I found out years later when I was looking for their marriage certificate one day at city hall. No such document existed, I was informed.

  Our lives together began with us living in Dr. Creel’s three spare rooms upstairs. Too old to be climbing the stairs every night, Dr. Creel slept down in the little parlor next to his office. Gladys did all the nursing and records; though not much bookkeeping, Dr. Creel would complain. Because there’s none to do, she would snap right back. Most of his patients couldn’t pay, so he’d overcharge the few who could. This didn’t settle well with the more affluent patients. Oftentimes the aging doctor fell asleep at a sickbed in the wee hours of the morning. So when a new younger physician moved into a fancy office downtown, more and more of Dr. Creel’s patients switched over.