Bless the Child (2 page)

M
aggie rapped sharply on the glass door of the shop she’d owned for ten years, and waited anxiously for Amanda Bradshaw to let her in. There was no traffic on Madison Avenue at 8:00 A.M., the usually bustling street seemed surreal in it’s serenity.

“Tell me that’s
not
a baby in your arms!” Amanda’s drawl was startled, concerned; she’d caught the haggard, sleepless look in Maggie’s eyes. She was Maggie’s store manager, but that didn’t preclude the genuine friendship that had grown up between the two women over the years.

“You think
you’re
surprised?” Maggie answered nervously, shrugging off her coat while juggling Cody. “Jenna materialized out of the rain, handed me this baby and vanished again. I’ve been up all night . . .”

“The baby was fussy?”

“No,
I
was fussy! My brain’s on circuitry overload, Amanda. Where has Jenna been all this time? Is she still on drugs? Is she planning to come back? I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole, and found a baby at the bottom!”

Amanda’s tall, lanky body always seemed to Maggie to move in fluid medium of some indeterminate kind; a secret grace, born of generations of privilege, she supposed. The beautifully manicured hands now reached inside the receiving blanket gingerly, to uncover the baby within.

“Oh my, she’s precious, Maggie. There’s almost something luminous about her isn’t there? How on earth could anyone on drugs ever produce such an exquisite little peach?”

Maggie gazed at the tiny life in her arms and sighed. “I’m hooked on her already, Amanda. It doesn’t take more than ten minutes to fall in love with her.

“And the charming Jenna?” Amanda probed, her lips tight with disdain.

“What’s her story?” She’d watched Maggie desperate and relentless efforts to rehabilitate Jenna fall on barren ground too often to have illusions about the girl. One heroin addict in thirty-six is ever cured, the doctors said; she didn’t think Jenna would be the one.

“Whatever it is, or was, I may never know. She’s gone again.”

“As in disappeared?”

Maggie nodded drained. “She said she needed a place to leave the baby.”

“And you’re it?”

“I’m it.”

“Well, now, that’s a fine fish fry. And you’re just supposed to leap into the breach, change your whole life around, and become Mother Cabrini?”

“I think that’s the general idea.”

Amanda’s well-defined eyebrow lifted eloquently. “And that selfish little twit just reproduces like a hound dog and hits the high road? That must frost your petunias for fair, Maggie.”

“Amanda!” Maggie answered aghast. “I love Jenna! All I want to do is try to help her, but she keeps slipping away from me . . . She seemed really strung out last night. Desperate and all alone. I’m afraid even if we found her, she’s not in any shape to take care of this little cupcake.”

“And you are?”

Maggie stared at the baby for a long moment before answering. “I think so,” she said hesitantly. “Isn’t that crazy? I really think I could do it.”

Maggie looked younger than her forty-two years, Amanda thought, despite the sleepless night. Her face was pretty, not beautiful, but the features had aged with charm, so that the youthful firmness of jaw had mellowed into simple strength, and the laughter in her eyes had somehow survived hardship and remained, so there seemed always to be a smile trying to spring free. But there was sorrow, too, mostly veiled. It was a face that hid its private vulnerability and let the world see only generosity of intent

Maggie searched her friend’s eyes for understanding. “It’s been so long since I had anyone who needed me, Amanda . . . anyone to truly love. It’s hard to explain but this little one and I already know each other in some special way.”

The South Carolinian smiled indulgently. “But of course you do, darlin’. Why, you’ve been together at least twelve hours now.”

Maggie groaned. “Oh God, I sound like a grandmother, don’t I?”

“What a ghastly notion . . . we’ll have to come up with another name for your condition. Why, you look young enough to be her mama, darlin’ . . . lots of women have babies at your age.”

Maggie smiled fondly at her friend’s blarney. She’d hired Amanda because of her spectacular knowledge of antiquities and for her impeccable social connections that brought the crème de la crème of purchasers into the shop. But it hadn’t taken long to discover the deeper, rarer qualities. The genuine good-heartedness, the bawdy sense of humor beneath the well-bred surface, the piercing intellect that could skewer a bogus thought, or object, with the same rapier skill.

“I’ve been thinking all night about how Fate makes you really lay it on the line sometimes, Amanda. No molly-coddling, no equivocation, just Who the hell are you, Maggie? It asks. My mother used to say, ‘Character is who you are in the dark’ and I’m beginning to understand what she meant.”

Amanda leaned against the edge of a nineteenth-century table and smiled. “Well, darlin’, we’ve had an acute excitement shortage around here for the past few months. I guess we’re up to a little lunacy.”

“I’m forty-two years old,” Maggie went on earnestly. “That’s far too old to raise a child. Jack’s gone, and it isn’t right not to provide a daddy for this baby. So there are big question marks here . . .” She hesitated, then plunged on.

“Since Jack died, and Jenna ran away . . . I’ve felt hollowed out by their loss, Amanda. By grief . . .by guilt . . . even by expiation, I suppose. And by a million emotions that have reworked me, so I’m not who I was before.”

“You’re really wrestling this one to the mat, aren’t you, darlin’?” Amanda said quietly. “But you’d like to try . . . am I right? Against all odds, and common sense, and the will of the majority . . . and the devil take the hindmost . . .” Her soft laughter was throaty and well intentioned. “It’s no wonder I love you, Maggie. You look so straight and sensible on the outside, but underneath you’re as soft as a bowl of corn mush. How, might I ask, are you going to mind a baby and work all day? As far as I know, Jack didn’t leave you in real high cotton. Besides, you need this place to keep you in touch with people. Left on your own devices you’d become a hermit for sure.”

Maggie didn’t reply.

“And, maybe more importantly, have you brooked the wrath of Maria Aparecida, yet? Amanda persisted, as if that might be a formidable bridge to cross.

Maggie winced and shook her head. “You know she’s an old softie, really. It isn’t her fault she’s built like Pilar in
The Sun Also Rises
.”

“And with a temper to match, if I recall.”

“Only when justified . . . and maybe on alternate Thursdays . . . besides, she’s been a godsend, since I’ve been alone, Amanda. Having Maria as my housekeeper is the only continuity I have from the old days.”

“You don’t need continuity from the old days, Maggie. You need a new life in the
now
.”

The baby in her arms opened its eyes and mouth simultaneously, and cooed; Maggie shifted her gently to a shoulder. “Looks to me like that’s just what the Fates have provided,” she said with a soft smile.

“You’re insane of course, “ Amanda replied pleasantly. “But an awfully good person.”

She shooed Maggie and the baby out the door and stood watching them walk down Madison toward a cab. It was probably just the silvered light of early morning in New York, or maybe a little too much Courvoisier after dinner last night, but she could have sworn they both shimmered softly in the morning sun.

“Nossa Senhora!
You could have told me we were expecting, “ Maria announced wryly. Maggie laughed as the powerfully built woman swooped the baby from her arms and plopped it onto her mighty bosom like a landing pad. Cody gurgled responsively.

“I would have, if I’d known,” Maggie replied, as she shook her rebellious curls out from under the hat she’d donned against the chilly morning. Her hair was brown with golden highlights and the soft curls had a mind of their own. She’d taken pains in her youth to beat them into submission; now she was grateful they asked so little of her.

“Jenna?” Maria muttered with the intimacy of a longtime servant who knows all the family secrets.

“She came and went last night.”

“And the drugs? She is still hooked?”

“That would be my guess.”

“So this little sparrow is at least of our blood,” the woman pronounced with satisfaction. “This is good. When we adopt, there is no surety of the blood.”

Maggie nearly laughed aloud. You never knew what to expect from Maria. A generous heart and a volatile temperament, but honorable to the bone. She couldn’t remember how many years the woman had kept house for her. Twenty-something. She must even have been young once, although she’d never seemed anything but the same indeterminate age to Maggie.

“If we raise her, there will be a lot of extra work, Maria, I can’t ask you to—“

“What you mean, dona Maggie,
if
we raise her?” Maria interrupted. “She is our
family.
What else would we do, give her to the ‘SPCA?”

The large woman cuddled the tiny baby with the expertise of the genuinely gifted. Without asking Maggie’s leave, she padded toward the kitchen, the baby still perched on her pouter-pigeon bosom. “
Coitadinha, Coitadinha!”
she murmured as she walked.
Poor little thing..
Maggie didn’t speak Portuguese, but after all the years with Maria Aparecida she’d picked up a few dozen phrases. She stared after them, thinking maybe the lord knew what He was doing after all.

Maggie kicked off her shoes and sat down on her bed with a sigh, determined to think things through. Since Jack’s death, the silver-framed nest of photographs next to her bed had become the haven she went to for tough decisions. She lifted a favorite photo from its hallowed place and her husband’s face stared back at her with laughing eyes, crinkled just a little at the corners. Funny how she’d never noticed the silver in his hair when he was alive . . . such robust, abundant hair, he’d had, for running fingers through . . . Tears suddenly blurred her vision of the man shed loved so long, and she swiped at them, annoyed they were still so near the surface. “Oh, your bladder’s very near your eye, child,” her Irish father had said often, when she was small . . . She missed him, too. How many of those she’d truly loved were gone? Jenna was lost now, too . . . perhaps forever.

What was it the doctor at the last rehab had told her? “You didn’t
cause
your daughter’s addiction, Mrs. O’Connor. You can’t
contro
l it, and you can’t possibly
cure
it. Until you get that into your head you’ll never find any peace.”

Didn’t he understand that getting it into your head was easy, it was your heart that refused to cooperate? And your soul that longed to save her. That’s why she hadn’t given up . . . that’s why she would never give up.

“My sweet, sweet Jenna,” Maggie whispered to the tall fair-haired girl in the suspended animation of the silver frame. “I miss you so. I love you so.”

Not my will, but Thine, Lord.
She tried to mean it as she breathed the old childhood prayer. You must learn to accept the Will of God, Maggie, Mother Superior had chided her years before, when she’d questioned why God didn’t cure her mother’s terminal illness, no matter how hard she prayed. “You think that God had better pay attention to your demands. That’s the sin of pride, Maggie! You have no right to interfere with God’s Plan. You can’t see far enough or wide enough to know what it is He has in mind.”