Bloodline (17 page)

I thought for a second.

“And then she got pregnant?”

“Hmm.”

“Not on the program?”

“Nope. I don't know how it happened. I guess everybody needs somebody to be close to, and Missy didn't have anybody else. So she started dating this guy.”

“Not a good kid?”

Genest looked right at me before answering.

“Off the record, right? All of this?”

“Yup.”

“I don't know who the dad was,” she said. “She never told me his name.”

“A mystery man.”

“A coward.” Genest sniffed.

“What did he think of her giving up the baby?”

“I don't know. She never told me. We talked about her options, about what she wanted to do with her life. Which was basically to make one for herself. She'd worked so hard for so long, it would've been a shame to just throw it all away.”

“And end up like her sisters, you mean?”

“Like her sisters. Except for Missy, it would have been worse. Because she isn't like her sisters. Sitting at home with a baby at seventeen would be like a jail for Missy. She is just driven to make something of herself.”

“To be a nurse,” I said.

“Four years of college, have a career. And then if she meets somebody, you know, ten years from now, then that would be the right thing. For her to just throw it all away would have been a terrible tragedy, for her and her baby. It was a tough decision, but I think Missy showed a lot of courage. Tremendous courage, really. And in the end, she made the right decision.”

“Then I'm not sure how this fits in,” I said. “But she called me this morning. She wants her baby back.”

17

G
enest had looked stunned for a moment. Then deeply disappointed. I'd told her I thought it was because Missy was in school with these older students with children. Maybe that had given her the idea that she could have her career cake and baby food, too.

“Oh, the poor kid,” Genest had said. “She's going to go through it all over again.”

“Through what?” I'd said.

And then the bell had rung, the hordes had been unleashed, and I'd never gotten an answer.

I thought about it as I drove back toward Prosperity village on my way to Missy Hewett's mom's house—at least, in the direction of the road listed under her name in the Waldo High yearbook in the school library. Nobody had asked who the old guy was poking around the shelves. At thirty-five, I could have been mistaken for some kid's grandfather.

When I reached the village, I pulled over in front of the Prosperity General Store, left the truck running, and went in. It was a little after one o'clock and the place was deserted, the chairs out back by the coffeepot empty. I stood by the counter for a minute, tapped it with
a stick of homemade beef jerky from the big glass jar. Nobody ever bought any of it, but the stuff never went bad. The perfect product.

Finally, I heard the sound of a toilet flushing and water running. The bathroom door opened and Mary the cashier came back to the counter. I popped the jerky back in the jar. “What can I do you for, Mr. McMorrow?” Mary asked, adjusting her store jacket.

She smiled. I smiled back. She was friendly and motherly and steady as a rock. I liked her.

“I need directions,” I said. “You know where the Hewetts live?”

“Joyce Hewett?” she said.

“That Missy's mother?”

“Yup, if you can call her that,” Mary said, her voice dropping. “She never lifted a finger for those kids. Once Bobby left, she just crawled in a bottle. Kids had it tough. I went to school with her oldest sister. Marlene. They were Rollinses back then. Very pretty girls, too. Shows what drinking can do to you. What're you going up there for?”

I thought for a second.

“I met Missy,” I said. “I just wanted to talk to the mother.”

“That the one in Portland or someplace?”

“Yeah. She's in school.”

“Best thing she ever did. If she's smart, she'll stay away. Those kids had to raise themselves. You'll figure it out when you meet Joyce.”

“And how do I get there?”

Mary's directions were simple. Out to South Pond Road, fifth place on the left. An old trailer up a little from the road. If I came to a big new log house, set up on a hill, some college professor's place, I'd gone too far.

I did go too far, turned around in the professor's driveway, and stirred up the two white Samoyeds in the chain-link kennel by his garage. I'd made their day.

The Hewett trailer sat perpendicular to the road at the end of a long rutted gravel driveway. At the road end of the driveway, the Hewett mailbox had been tied upside down to its wooden post with twine. I drove past it and rolled the truck slowly up the drive.

I parked beside a Chevy sedan, an old one. Stuck in the brush next to it was another old Chevy, identical to the first, except the first one was maroon and the second one was a faded, rusting red. The two tires I could see were flat. The hood had been removed and was leaning against the trunk of a spruce. Someone had spread a blue plastic tarp over the engine compartment, but the tarp had come loose and you could see the open carburetor on top of the motor.

Unless Joyce Hewett was a mechanic, she'd had some help. And it looked like the help had taken an extended vacation. Probably the story of her life.

I got out of the truck and walked to the steps. They were under a green plastic canopy which was blanketed with pine needles. I went up the steps and stopped. There was an empty vodka bottle in the corner of the entry. A crushed plastic milk jug. A black plastic bag ripped open by an animal that had pulled out some of the trash inside.

An empty cigarette pack. An empty can of tomato sauce. One of those white foam trays that meat comes on. The tray was stained dark brown with blood and it had been chewed. From inside came the sound of television. Voices from a talk show. A clink of dishes. I hesitated, then knocked on the metal storm door three times. There was no knock, just a loose jangling rattle.

After a minute, there was a flash of movement behind the door, which then swung open.

A woman peered out, squinting at the light. She was forty-five, maybe a year or two older, with dyed blonde hair pulled back from her
face. She was wearing jeans and a tight sort of sweater thing with flowers on the front. The jeans were tight, too. Her face was sort of pretty but her skin was mottled. She pushed the storm door open and stared.

“Mrs. Hewett?”

“What do you want?” she said.

I smiled into her expressionless face.

“I'm Jack McMorrow. I live in town. I met your daughter, Missy.”

She still stared.

“Could I talk to you for a minute?”

“About Missy?”

“Yeah.”

“She in trouble or something?”

I thought for a second.

“No, not really. I just had a couple of questions about her. I'm a reporter.”

Joyce Hewett looked at me for a moment without answering.

“Come on in,” she said suddenly. “It's cold out there. At least I'm cold. Always cold.”

I followed her inside, into the living room of the trailer, where the talk show was playing on a big console television. On the screen, a very made-up blonde woman was leaning toward another woman, who was also blonde but not as made up.

“It was different the second time we got married,” the other woman was saying. “I felt like I'd won his respect.”

“What a crock,” Joyce Hewett said, walking past the television and into another room. And then, from the other room, “The only time they respect you, honey, is when you're on your back.”

She came back into the room. I stood in the middle of the floor in front of the TV, but then, everything was in front of the TV.

“No offense,” Joyce Hewett said as she walked by me.

“None taken,” I said.

She walked to the counter of the kitchen, which was at the end of the living room, in the same space. When she passed, I smelled perfume and a faint odor of alcohol. She picked up a mug and sipped from it and something told me it wasn't hot cocoa.

“Coffee? A drink?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

“Then have a seat,” Joyce Hewett said, and she did.

She sat on a couch beside a pile of folded laundry. I sat in the matching chair. I looked at her more closely and saw that she'd put on makeup: black eyeliner and wet-looking red lipstick. The talk-show lady was still talking. Something about sex on a second honeymoon.

“A little old for my daughter, aren't you?” Joyce Hewett said.

“A lot old,” l said. “But I'm not seeing her. I talked to her. To do with a story.”

She took a long sip of her drink.

“Missy's a college girl now,” Joyce Hewett said. “I don't know what I can tell you because I never see her.”

“She's busy at school, I'm sure.”

“I didn't see her before that.”

“She didn't live here?” I asked.

“She slept here up until this past summer. Then she moved to Portland. My youngest, and I barely know her anymore. Life's hard sometimes, don't you think?”

“Sometimes.”

“Most of the time,” Joyce Hewett said.

She crossed her legs. Looked at me across the top of her mug.

“What'd you say your name was?”

“Jack. Jack McMorrow.”

“And you're doing an article?”

“Yeah.”

“About Missy?”

“About kids like her,” I said.

“And what kind of kids are they, Jack?” Joyce Hewett asked.

I felt uneasy. How much did she know about her daughter?

“Kids who grow up fast, I guess,” I said.

She didn't say anything. Sipped again. Looked at me.

The talk-show woman was talking about sex.

“You sure I can't get you a drink?”

“Yeah, I'm sure. Thank you.”

Joyce Hewett got up from the couch.

“I'll make you one, in case you change your mind,” she said.

She went to the refrigerator, opened the top door to the freezer, and took out a bottle of vodka. Smirnoff. I watched her as she went back to the counter and poured the vodka in a black mug and splashed some orange juice on top. She was on the small side, slim, with narrow hips and a big chest. A girlish-looking woman who still would have attracted a lot of attention in a bar full of truckers. Maybe that was her problem, I thought. And mine.

She turned and brought me the drink. I took it and put it on the glass-topped table next to the chair, on top of a
TV Guide.

“Vodka,” Joyce Hewett said. “I hate brown liquor. Won't drink it. Reminds me of my father.”

She picked up her mug and brought it back for a refill, then went back to the couch and sat down.

I smiled. Paternally, I hoped.

“So,” Joyce Hewett said, with a faint leer. “What are you gonna write about my daughter?”

I took the plunge.

“The story's about girls who have babies.”

“And give 'em away?” she said.

“Sometimes.”

“You know that's what she did.”

“She told me.”

“Missy must like you to tell you about that. You sure you two didn't have a little.”

“I've only met her once. Kids at the high school gave me her name.”

“What? She famous over there now?”

“She was a good student, wasn't she?”

“Oh, yeah. Head always in a book. Couldn't even get her to look at me. I guess you could say we didn't see eye to eye.”

“Was she here when she was pregnant?”

“Part of the time. Didn't want Mama's help, though. I guess she learned about that from books, too.”

I didn't say anything. She took another sip. The talk show was over and the credits were rolling.

“And then she gave it away,” Joyce Hewett said. “My fourth grandchild. Can they do that? Maybe you could find that out. They'll tell you. Ask 'em if they can just do that, without the grandmother's even having anything to do with it. I mean, it's my grandchild and it's just gone. I never even saw it. Never even laid eyes on that baby. That can't be right, can it?”

“I don't know.”

“What kind of law is that? Take somebody's grandchild away. What is this? Nazi Germany? I said that to Missy. I said, ‘What is
this? Nazi Germany? Don't I have a right to see my grandchild?' She said all they need is her permission and the permission of the father. If they can find him, I mean. She never even told me who it was. I mean, it's like the whole thing never happened.”

“Where did she have the baby?”

“Portland, I think. She'd left by then. After she finished school she was here but we wasn't getting along. Something new and different, you know? She must've been due in the middle of June.”

“She didn't leave school?”

“Hell no. My daughter in school, walking around like a bred heifer. I said to her, ‘Don't you have any pride?' She didn't say anything. That was her way, you know? Look right at you and not say a word. My other girls, you have it out, ‘You this, you that,' and then it's over. Missy just looks at you and walks out of the room. So it's never over, you know what I mean?”