The Cradle Robbers (12 page)

I found my way to Labor and Delivery. It was an entirely different world from the one in which I had my babies. At Cedars-Sinai, the unit was always busy, the private rooms full of laboring and recovering women, nurses bustling about, patients in wheelchairs being whisked to and fro, women walking the halls trailing IV poles, doctors rushing from room to room to catch the last few minutes of drama. If there was someone in labor on this floor, she was having a very quiet delivery. Three women were at the semicircular nurses’ station, two wearing pale pink scrubs. A third, in scrubs of traditional green, sat up on the counter, one white-clogged foot resting on a chair.

“Hi,” I said.

They greeted me politely.

“I was hoping one of you might be able to help me out with something. A young woman gave birth here two months ago. Sandra Lorgeree. From CCI Dartmore. I’m looking to talk to anyone who might have attended her during or after her labor.”

The nurses in the pink scrubs glanced at each other. “Sorry,” one said. “We have an awful lot of births. We could never remember one of them in particular.”

The four of us gazed around the empty floor and she had the grace to blush.

The other then said, “We can’t talk to you about a patient. All that information’s confidential.”

“Sandra Lorgeree was murdered a few days ago at Dartmore Prison. Before she was killed she asked me to help find the newborn son who was stolen from her.” My specific intention was to shock them. I wanted them to go pale with horror. Their response was exactly what I had hoped for.

“Can you help me?” I said.

The three looked at each other. Suddenly, the woman in the green scrubs said in a strangled voice,
“I need some air. Call me if anything comes up. I’ve got my pager.” She leapt down from her perch and rushed to the elevator bank.

I said to the other two, “Please. Won’t you help me find this poor woman’s baby?”

“We can’t,” one of the nurses said. “We just can’t.”

I shook my head, turned, and left. When I turned into the elevator bank I saw the third woman standing in the middle elevator, holding it open for me. She put her finger to her lips and motioned me inside.

“I’m Lois Curtin,” she said when the doors had closed. “I’m the midwife who delivered Sandra’s baby. We need to talk.”

*   *   *

Al noticed us walk into the cafeteria, but made no attempt to come over to the table in the far corner of the room where Lois and I sat.

“I’m not surprised you’re here,” Lois said. “At least, I’m not surprised
someone’s
here. What’s going on with these poor women is terrible.” The midwife was a woman in her late forties, with short ash-blonde hair cut in an old-fashioned style, a lot like the wedge cut I had sported in junior high
school, when I was emulating Dorothy Hamill, before I went into my Farrah Fawcett phase. Her face was lightly lined, especially around the eyes and next to her mouth. She wore the traces of a lifetime of ready smiles.

“You know about the babies being taken?” I said.

She wrapped her strong hands around the Styrofoam cup of coffee she had poured herself before we sat down. “Yes,” she said. “That, and all the rest of it.”

I knit my brow in confusion. “The rest of it?”

“Animals wouldn’t be treated the way those women are. They bring them in here shackled, with their ankles and wrists in chains. By the time they’re admitted most of them have been laboring for hours like that. Have you ever been in labor? Can you imagine what it’s like to go through that in chains?”

I stared at her, stunned, and remained silent.

“Once the women are in my care, I try to force the guards to unlock them, but most of the time they won’t. The guard chains them to the bed by a wrist and a leg. The leg iron stays on until they are ready to push. I can’t do anything about the shackles, even if I’d prefer they walk or move.”

“That’s just despicable,” I said. “We’re not talking murderers here. The vast majority of those women are in for drug possession or prostitution. Why would the guards think they were a danger? Or are the guards afraid the women are going to try to escape?”

“As if any woman in the throes of labor could manage to escape.”

I couldn’t bring myself to drink my coffee. “This is just horrifying,” I said.

“It gets worse,” Lois replied. “I always make sure the nurses provide the prisoners with extra packages of sanitary napkins when they leave the hospital, as well as the disposable undergarments we use. Well, I found out recently that the guards take the supplies away from the women as soon as they get to the prison. The guards then dole them out as they see fit. A woman with postpartum bleeding is expected to manage until a guard decides she deserves a sanitary napkin.”

I don’t think it was the Kotex that made me cry. I think my feelings about Sandra’s death finally caught up to me, and the image of a woman in a bleak prison cell, her baby gone from her, her legs streaming with the blood of her loss, a wad of saturated
cotton sodden between her thighs, just set me off. I lay my head down on the table and wept. I wept for Sandra and for all those other women, some of whom had made terrible decisions, others who had had miseries foisted upon them. I wept for those mothers who labored in shackles, had their babies torn from their arms, and then watched their blood flow onto the floors of their grim and lonely cells.

I felt two gentle hands smooth my hair. We sat like that for a few moments, this kind and generous woman whom I knew not at all and I; she stroking my hair while I cried. When I finally looked up, she cupped my cheek with her hand. Her touch was tender, and yet sure and strong. I could so clearly imagine her delivering a child.

“Do you remember anything about the people who took Sandra’s baby?” I asked. “Anything at all?”

“They came right away—I don’t think she’d been in labor for more than two hours when they arrived. One of the nurses came in and told me they were there, in the waiting room in Labor and Delivery. I had them sent to wait in Recovery so that Sandra could have a few hours with her son. I didn’t see
them. Her patient record will include some information. It has to indicate to whom the baby was released. It usually says the name of the foster care agency and the name of the social worker from the Department of Social Services. I remember that this case was unusual because the foster parents came on their own.”

“But those records are confidential. I can’t get them.”

A weary, sad smile flitted across her face. “You can’t, but I can.”

T
WO
days later, when I had all but given up on her, Lois Curtin called me with the names of the couple with whom baby Noah Lorgeree had been placed. I ran a skip trace on them and found them easily enough, on Alcatraz Avenue in Oakland. The address was recent, and the phone number came up listed with the bill paid through the end of the month. I had them.

“Oh no,” I muttered under my breath, staring at the computer screen.

“What?” Peter said.

I’d waited until after I put the kids to bed to begin work on the computer, and the house was pleasantly
quiet. Quiet enough to hear the symphony of competing appliances—dishwasher, washing machine, dryer.

“I have to go back up to northern California.”

The obscenity Peter used was one of those words he specifically keeps out of his screenplays in order not to run afoul of the Motion Picture Association of America’s PG rating.

“What is wrong with you?” I asked.

“What’s wrong with me? What do you think is wrong with me? This will be your third trip in a little over a week.”

This had never happened to us before. Never had Peter been anything but supportive of my career, no matter how burgeoning, no matter how little money I made, no matter how foolhardy my job would strike anyone else. All the other feminist men my girlfriends and I went to college with, the ones who marched by our sides in Take Back the Night marches, who protested sex-segregated fraternities with us, who took Intro to Women’s History as their freshman American Studies elective, those men had all ended up as versions of their fathers, working twelve-hour days and expecting to come home to immaculate homes and above-average children
whose homework was done and already in their backpacks waiting to be handed in to the teachers in the morning. Peter was one of the few husbands who didn’t mind a messy house, filthy children, and dinner from a bucket or paper bag. Not so long as his wife was satisfied and content. Most women I knew were complying with their husbands’ expectations. A few were still working, but many had left their jobs as pediatric neurologists or partners in law firms or studio executives, and had become full-time mothers. It went without saying that the stay-at-home moms did all the child care and housework, whatever wasn’t contracted out. What was stranger was that the working mothers did it, too. But Peter was different from my friends’ husbands. He did more or less his fair share, and didn’t object when I tried to carve out some sort of career in the few hours between car pool runs. Or at least he hadn’t until now.

“I don’t have a choice, Peter. The couple that fostered the baby is in Oakland.”

It was just stress. That’s the only explanation for why we ended up standing inches apart, our faces red, screaming at each other. Peter said things like, “You aren’t around when I need you,” and I said
things like, “You aren’t being supportive.” It’s even possible someone screamed, “I hate you,” at the top of his or her lungs. Like I said, it was all just stress. We were exhausted, stretched to the breaking point by sleep deprivation and worries, Peter about his lawsuit, me about Sandra’s murder and her lost son. We loved each other as much as we ever did, and we didn’t mean any of it.

But try explaining that to a four-year-old.

Isaac stood in one of the balcony nooks overlooking the living room. He was sucking on the neck of his pajama shirt and rocking back and forth, holding on to the iron railing. His low moans were virtually inaudible from so far above our heads. I noticed him only because he was wearing a pair of Ruby’s bright-orange-and-pink-striped long underwear, and the flash of brilliant color caught my eye. The pajamas were much too big for him, and the long cuffs drooped over his wrists and ankles, covering his hands and feet.

“Oh, baby,” I crooned, looking up at him.

Peter followed my gaze. He swore softly under his breath. We ran up the stairs and within a few moments I was holding Isaac, who by now was crying uncontrollably, his little bird body shaking with
sobs. Only his cheeks retained any baby softness now; the rest of him was all knobby, little-boy bones. Snuggling him was like cuddling a Tinkertoy.

“Sweetie,” I said. “Mama and Daddy were just having a little argument. We’re okay.”

He burrowed his head into my belly. Peter patted ineffectually at his back.

“It’s all right, buddy,” he said.

Isaac moaned.

“You’ve seen us fight before, kiddo,” I said. “Lots of times. Mama and Daddy fight, and then we make up. Just like you and Ruby. See, now we’re making up. Watch.” I pried his face loose from my waist and lifted him out of my lap. His eyes and nose were streaming and I wiped them with the tail of his shirt.

“I love you, Daddy,” I said brightly.

“I love you, too,” Peter replied, equally falsely.

“And I’m so sorry for all the mean things I said.”

“Me, too.”

Isaac looked from one of us to the other, part of him wanting desperately to believe that it could be over so easily, part of him disgusted with what was obviously a sham.

“See?” I said. “Mama and Daddy are all made up.”

“For good?” Isaac whispered.

“Of course.”

“For forever?”

“Of course.”

Peter said, “That doesn’t mean we’re not going to fight again, bud. That happens, God knows. Especially when a person is married to someone like your mother. But I’m going to try to be more patient in the future.”

I opened my mouth, all set to resume with a fresh blast of fury, but caught myself in time. Peter smiled at me and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”

I saw him then, as I hadn’t for the past few minutes. It’s strange what happens when we fight. When we argue it’s as though I am no longer able to recognize that standing before me is the person I love. Instead, I see only this
opponent.
Now, suddenly, when he made a joke and whispered a real apology, the red haze lifted from my eyes and I could recognize him again.

“I love you,” I said. This time there was no falseness in my tone.

“Me, too.”

“Me, too,” Isaac interjected.

“Bedtime for you, my friend,” I said as I heaved him up into my arms. “And for me, too.”

“Juliet, why don’t we all go with you?” Peter said as he walked us down the hall to Isaac’s bedroom. “There’s an animation studio up near San Francisco that’s in the running for the TV series. I wouldn’t mind checking out their setup. And the kids have never been to San Francisco. We can ride the cable car.”

“What about school?” I said.

“So they’ll miss coloring and Legos for a couple of days. It won’t kill them.”

I rested my cheek against the top of Isaac’s head. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll go online and find a hotel as soon as I get him to sleep.”

T
HE
next day—as I wolfed cucumber sandwiches and tried to convince the wretchedly behaved royalty with whom I was forced to experience San Francisco’s finest Prince and Princess Tea to stop lobbing scones at one another’s heads—I could not help but contrast this San Francisco vacation to the ones Peter and I had taken in years past. Back then we’d chosen our hotels based on criteria other than the availability of cribs and children’s room service menus. We’d spent our days wandering through the Hayes and Noe valleys, shopping the hyper-funky boutiques. We’d gone to old movies
at the Castro Theater and roamed the streets snapping bad photographs of adorable Victorian houses.

“Look, Mama!” Isaac interrupted my reverie. “Ruby braided my hair with her princess stick.”

She had indeed managed to interlace her scepter, a foot-long, rainbow-colored lollipop, through his feathery hair.