Daughter's Keeper (42 page)

Jorge concentrated on learning English, getting by as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, and marking the days until he would be released and his time in America would fade to nothing more than a bitter memory.

***

Olivia self-surrendered on a Monday. Instead of having the federal marshals come and put her in handcuffs, she drove with Elaine, Arthur, and Luna to the women's Federal Correctional Institution at Dublin. The prison's barbed-wire fences cast long, spiky shadows over the parking lot, and as they crossed toward the gate, they walked deeper into the gloom. Olivia clutched Luna in her arms. She had dressed the baby as if for a party, in a pale-­yellow dress with tiny white rabbits embroidered at the neck and along the ruffle. Izaya was waiting for them at the front gate, and he greeted Olivia with a short hug and a kiss to the top of Luna's head. They walked through the gate together and down a path between the cyclone fences. Elaine and Arthur followed them into the prison, through a surprisingly small steel door.

Elaine could hear her daughter's breath rasping in her lungs as they entered a narrow office. At one end of the cold, empty room was a window behind which a uniformed man stood. Olivia approached and whispered her name, and Elaine saw her daughter's back begin to tremble. Within seconds, her entire body was shaking. Luna began to fret and whimper. Elaine, who had been standing back from her daughter and holding Arthur's hand, rushed forward.

“Okay, okay, darling. Okay,” she mumbled in a monotone at once quiet and desperate. She threw her arms around Olivia, and the two women began to cry. Luna, sensing their panic and fear, joined in with an agonized wail. Arthur and Izaya looked at each other and then stepped forward. Arthur gently led Elaine to a bench across the room. Izaya took Olivia's hand and, bending over her, began whispering into her ear.

As soon as Elaine found herself alone with Arthur, she calmed down. She leaned her head against his arm and willed her tears to stop. She looked across the room at where Olivia was now resting in Izaya's arms, Luna fitted snuggly between them. Elaine could not hear Izaya's words, but she watched as her daughter slowly calmed down, her breath becoming obviously more measured and slow. Finally, Olivia smiled, tremulously, and Izaya leaned his face to hers. His lips grazed Olivia's and then clung for a breath of a second. And then almost before it had begun, the kiss was over, leaving Elaine to wonder if she had actually seen it.

“Mom,” Olivia called. Elaine walked over. Now she was trembling, and Olivia stood firm and tall.

“You'll write as soon as you get back from Mexico?” Olivia said.

“Tomorrow. I'll write tomorrow,” Elaine answered, doing her best to imitate her daughter's measured tones.

“Okay.” Olivia reached her free arm around Elaine's waist and squeezed. She leaned over and pressed her cheek against Elaine's. Her skin felt overwarm, and Elaine pressed her lips to her daughter's forehead, checking for a fever as though Olivia were still a little girl. Olivia let go of her mother and turned to Arthur. She kissed him briefly, almost briskly, and then held Luna out at arm's length.

“Mama's going bye-bye, Luna,” she said.

Luna kicked her fat little legs in their yellow terrycloth socks and smiled a wide toothless grin. “I'll be back for you. Do you understand me? My baby girl. I will be back for you.” Tears rolled down Olivia's face, but her voice was gentle and steady. She hugged the baby to her and inhaled deeply. She pushed her lips into Luna's yielding cheek, burying her mouth in her silken neck. Then she handed Luna to Elaine and looked toward the door that the guard held open for her. She turned back to her mother and daughter.

“Good-bye,” she said, and stepped through the door.

***

The week before, Elaine had bought a plane ticket for León, a city not too distant from San Miguel, the town in which Jorge's family lived. She had found the ticket on a travel website. On the same site she'd come across a list of San Miguel hotels. Her eye had been caught, inevitably, by a bed and breakfast called “Casa Luna.” She had emailed a reservation request, deciding after much thought that she would stay for five nights. That would give her enough time to meet Jorge's family, to make sure they were set up to integrate the baby into their lives, and also to let the consulate know of Luna's presence. Elaine wanted some representative of the United States to understand that Luna was to be a visitor in her Mexican grandparents' home. She wanted there to be an official record of Olivia's intention to return and reclaim her baby.

The morning of her departure, she checked and rechecked the contents of her suitcases, her ticket, and their passports. She ran into the kitchen for some large Ziploc bags to stuff into the diaper bag to hold any clothes Luna soiled during the flight, and found Arthur standing in front of the freezer, dumping bags of frozen breast milk into the trash bin.

“What are you doing?” Elaine screamed, her shrill cry reverberating through the kitchen.

“What?” he said, turning around, a plastic baggie in his hand.

“You can't throw that away!” She rushed to the trashcan and hauled out the bags that had already begun to defrost. She wiped the outsides clean and set them back upright in the freezer.

“Didn't you already pack as much as you could fit?” Arthur asked. Elaine had filled a cooler with dry ice and breast milk, ­desperately hoping that the ice would keep the milk from defrosting. She had crammed as much as she could into the cooler, but she'd nonetheless left a freezer full of rock-hard baggies.

“Yes.”

“Then why are we saving the rest?”

“Because…” Elaine swiped away the tears that had begun to roll down her cheeks. “Because you don't throw away breast milk, Arthur! You just don't.”

He backed away from her and leaned on the counter.

“Why not?” he asked, gently.

“Didn't you see her pumping with that god-awful machine? Didn't you see how much time, how many hours, days, it took to get all this?” She waved at the stacks of frozen milk. “We can't just throw it away.”

“Honey,” he said. “You're being ridiculous.”

Elaine shoved the freezer shut and leaned back against it. “I'm being
ridiculous?
”

He shrugged. “Irrational, then. I mean, what are you planning to do with it? Make ice cream?” He laughed at his own joke.

Elaine pressed her back into the cool metal and crossed her arms in front of her chest. She dug her fingers into the soft flesh of her inner arm, hoping the pain would distract her enough to prevent her from reaching and slapping Arthur across the face.

“My daughter is in jail,” she said.

He didn't reply.

“Olivia is in
jail
!
” she shouted, and then snapped her lips shut around the words.

He walked over to her and touched her shoulder. She jerked away, but didn't leave the fridge. He stood awkwardly in front of her.

“I know, Elaine,” he said. “I know.”

“No. You
don't
know. You don't know anything about this. You don't know how I feel. You don't
want
to know.”

“I do. I do know.”

She laughed, grimly. “Oh please. She's my daughter, Arthur. Mine.” Hot tears ran down her cheeks, and she swiped at the mucus dripping from her nose with the back of her hand. “No one else's.”

He shook his head and made as if to touch her again. He stopped his hand before it reached her. He lowered it, awkwardly, and said, “This isn't your fault.”

“What?”

“It's not your fault. Olivia made her own choices. You had nothing to do with this.”

Elaine stared at him. “Do you think it helps me to hear that?”

“It should.”

“Should it? Why? Why should it help me to feel absolved from responsibility?”

He scowled. “Because I know you, and I know you're probably feeling guilty. And you shouldn't.”

The tears dried on Elaine's face. “Oh, Arthur. Do you really think you know how I feel?”

In a single step he bridged the gap between them. “I do,” he said, and hugged her.

She stood stiffly in his embrace and then sighed. “How can you? How can you, when I don't even know myself?” She said the words into the soft cloth of his T-shirt, and she was not entirely sure that he had heard.

Then she leaned back, out of his embrace. “Just don't touch the milk,” she said.

***

Elaine arrived at the airport laden like a pack mule. In addition to her own small suitcase, she had an overflowing duffel bag filled with Luna's clothes, toys, bottles, blankets, and all the bright plastic apparatuses of American babyhood. Luna sat in her car seat, which was itself nestled in a rolling stroller. Elaine dragged the cooler out of the trunk and let Arthur heave out her two oversized suitcases.

Elaine eyed the line of people waiting for the curbside check-in.

“You'd better not stay,” she said. “You're liable to get a ticket.”

“Right.” He leaned over and held her chin in his hand. “I love you, Elaine.”

She looked up at him. He smiled at her, and she realized, with some surprise, that it had been some time since they'd said those words to one another. She had been so involved with Olivia and Luna, focused so exclusively on this trip and what it meant. She did love Arthur. He was the one man in her life with whom she'd ever felt comfortable, secure—they were two parts of one well-matched whole.

“I love you, too,” she said.

Arthur smoothed her hair behind her ear with his index finger.

“Elaine, I know what you're doing for me. I understand the sacrifice you're making.”

“It's not a sacrifice,” Elaine said. “We can't handle it. We both know that. Luna will be safe and happy with her other grandparents.”

But as she spoke, she realized that of course it
was
a sacrifice. She was sacrificing her second chance at motherhood, her chance to do it right, on the altar of her relationship with Arthur and of her own selfishness and fear.

Arthur hugged her. She stood stiffly for a moment, then wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him back.

“I'll see you in a few days,” she said.

Elaine and Luna arrived in León late in the evening. She and Luna were waved through customs with barely a glance from the official. As soon as she walked out the door, she saw a young man with a sign that read “Good Man.” She waved him over.

“Miss Good Man?” he asked.

“Yes,” Elaine smiled and followed him to the pristine Ford Explorer he'd pulled up to the curb. She settled herself and the baby in the backseat, and she watched the lights of the roadside markets and houses as they passed. At some point, she fell asleep. Elaine was woken by a gentle clearing of the driver's throat.

“Casa Luna,” he said. “I put your bags in the room. You go in now.” Elaine stood for a moment in the doorway of the hotel, looking up and down the silent street. The dim bulbs from the streetlights illuminated rows of houses strung together directly on the curb. The windows were shuttered and the doors were shut tight. The open door of the hotel cast a glow on the cobblestone street and looked like the only open eye in a row of sleeping faces.

Elaine carried Luna, in her car seat, into the silent lobby. She stopped, enchanted. The hotel was made up of a few old stone buildings around a patio, with a bubbling fountain embedded in one wall. Creeping vines, full of flowers, climbed the walls and dangled from the roofs. There was a fragrance of jasmine and roses, and the night air was alive with the buzz of cicadas and the distant barking of dogs.

The night watchman led Elaine to a room at the far end of the courtyard. The wide doors were leaded glass, covered with a white curtain. She carried the car seat and the sleeping baby in and found her bags already laid out on the oversized oak bed. She kicked off her shoes. The tile floor felt cool and smooth on her stocking feet. She quickly and quietly unpacked her things. Diane, the American innkeeper, had provided a basket for Luna to sleep in. Elaine neatly lined the long, oblong basket with Luna's baby blanket and considered moving the sleeping baby into the makeshift crib, but in the end she left her in the car seat. Elaine stripped off her travel-worn clothes and stood for a long time in the brightly tiled shower, letting water course over her body. When she finally turned off the water, she heard Luna stirring. She wrapped herself in a thick white towel and went to the baby.

Twenty minutes later, when Luna finished the bottle Elaine had heated under a stream of hot water in the bathroom sink, Elaine gently laid her in the basket and climbed into the bed. The lumpy mattress was oddly comfortable; Elaine fell quickly asleep. She was awakened soon after by Luna's wails. The baby cried for a long time, refusing milk, uncomforted by rocking. Every time she quieted and Elaine tried to place her back in her basket, she began to scream. Elaine found a small stuffed bear in the diaper bag and nestled it in the baby's arms, but she merely howled and tossed it aside. Finally, Elaine took Luna into her bed. She settled the baby into the crook of her arm. Luna wiggled for a moment and then fell still, her warm breath ebbing and flowing against the side of her grandmother's breast. To her surprise, Elaine, too, fell asleep, and they woke, hours later, sun streaming into the room, in a warm, damp embrace.

***

Elaine telephoned Jorge's sister, who gave her directions to their house in the hills above the city. Aida told Elaine what the carfare should be and instructed her to arrive that afternoon at five. Araceli and Juan Carlos would be expecting her. With the entire morning and early afternoon to kill, Elaine decided to take Luna out and explore the colonial city. They'd gone about a block before she stopped, frustrated. Cobblestones and narrow sidewalks made it virtually impossible to maneuver the bulky stroller. Luna squawked indignantly at the rough jerks and fitful stops and starts. Then Elaine remembered the Baby Björn and dragged the stroller back to the hotel.