Eve's Daughters (60 page)

“No! She’s mine!
I’m
her father!”

I struggled to sit up and the baby stirred in my arms. “If you so much as breathe those words aloud again, Patrick, I swear I’ll leave and you’ll never see your daughter as long as you live!”

“When she’s older we can tell her. . . .”

“No! We can
never
tell her. She won’t understand. One slip of the tongue and the scandal will ruin her. You’ll be ruined too.”

“I don’t care about my reputation. My daughter is more important—”

“No, Patrick. She’ll be labeled a bastard. You can’t let anyone know!”

He sank down on the edge of the bed, pleading with me. “We can move away from here to another city, another state. Emma, please marry me. If not for my sake, for our daughter’s sake.” Everything in me longed to be his wife
and to have him be a father to our child. But I loved Patrick too much. I couldn’t take him away from his ministry, his life, his God.

“No,” I whispered. “Don’t ask me again. Now swear that you’ll never tell our daughter the truth. Swear it on your Bible!” I wrung the promise from him, but I may as well have asked him to tear out his own heart. Afterward he pulled himself to his feet and walked from the room. I thought he was gone for good, but a moment later he returned and stood over us again, gazing down at his daughter.

“Have you named her?” he asked.

“I’m going to name her Eva, after my sister.”

Patrick shook his head. “No. Her name is Grace . . . like the gift of God that brings forgiveness from all our sins. I can’t imagine a more beautiful word or a more beautiful name.”

He lifted the baby out of my arms and walked across the room with her. I saw him pull a small vial of holy water from his pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s important to me that she be baptized. The sacrament is part of my faith.”

“No! I don’t want her—”

His Irish temper flared. “You’re having your own way by not marrying me, Emma. But I will have my way in this!”

His angry voice woke the baby. She stirred and gazed up at her father, blinking in the sunlight. Patrick smoothed her downy hair with his huge hand.

“Shh . . . shh . . . It’s all right. I love you, my little one . . . and so does God.”

He opened the bottle of water with one hand. “Grace Eva . . . Ba—” He couldn’t force Karl’s name from his mouth. He wiped his eyes and started again. “Grace Eva . . . O’Duggan . . . I baptize you in the name of the Father . . . and of the Son . . . and of the Holy Spirit . . . Amen.”

He didn’t need the holy water. He baptized his daughter with his own tears.

When Grace was three days old, I answered a knock on my door and found Booty standing there, his arms loaded down with a box of groceries.

“I thought you might be able to use a few things,” he said. I helped him set the groceries on the floor. I had no other place to put them. I saw canned goods, eggs, packets of flour, tea, and sugar. Booty pulled out a bar of castile baby soap and a tin of talcum powder from his pockets. “Sheila sent these
special for you. She wants you to know how sorry she is about what she said. Father O’Duggan explained about your husband—”

“It’s all right, Booty. Will you tell her I said thanks?”

He nodded. “You, um . . . you look real good, Emma.”

“A lot thinner, right?” I said, laughing. “Would you like to see the baby?”

“Sure.” He followed me like a timid schoolboy over to where Grace lay sleeping. I had fashioned a crib for her out of an empty dresser drawer. “She’s lovely,” he whispered. “I can’t begin to imagine why her father wouldn’t want her.”

I thought of Patrick’s tears and pleas, then realized that Booty was talking about Karl Bauer. If that was the lie I had to perpetuate, I’d better get used to repeating it from the very beginning. “My husband came from a very large, very poor family. That’s why he didn’t want any children.”

“Doesn’t seem fair, does it?” Booty murmured. “The ones that don’t want children have dozens of them . . . and the ones that would love a wee babe like this one can’t have any.” I looked at him in surprise.

“Are you talking about yourself, Booty? You and Sheila?”

“She miscarried four times, and two other babies died soon after birth. We don’t dare try for any more.” I felt my heart soften toward Sheila Higgins.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Aye. So am I.”

A few hours after Booty left, O’Brien and Black Jack showed up at my door. “Congratulations, Emma! Booty told us you’d had a baby girl.”

“Would you like to come in and see her?”

O’Brien looked around warily. “That punching priest isn’t lurking about, is he? He packs a wallop like a kangaroo!”

“I don’t want to hit him again,” Black Jack added. “I feel awful about the last time. I never laid a hand on a priest before, and I surely wouldn’t want to do it again . . . but he just came at me!”

“I know. It wasn’t your fault. Come on in.” I led them over to see Gracie.

“Wow! I never seen a person that small!” O’Brien said. “She have a sunburn or something?”

“All babies are red at first,” I said, laughing. “Do you want to hold her?”

O’Brien appeared horrified by the idea, but Black Jack’s sinister face softened into a smile. “Could I?” he asked.

The sight of that huge, powerful man holding little Gracie in hands the size of cinder blocks brought tears to my eyes. “What’s her name?” he asked.

“It’s Gracie . . . Grace Eva.” I couldn’t force myself to say Bauer any more than Patrick could.

“We’ve come to find out if you need anything,” O’Brien said. “We feel real bad about the still and all.”

“I knew the risks.”

O’Brien smoothed back his thatch of red hair. “We want to do something for you. We was wondering how things stood with the kid’s father.”

Again, I caught myself picturing Patrick. I forced myself to change the image to Karl. “My husband has filed for divorce. He didn’t want a baby in the first place—which is why I left him—so I don’t think he’ll cause any problems. But thanks for the offer.”

He grinned and draped his arm around my shoulder. “I’m available whenever your divorce is final.”

I laughed and gave him a quick hug before freeing myself. “I plan to live here very quietly with my daughter. Your life-style is a bit too exciting for me, I’m afraid.”

“We’re gonna give up rum-running for a while till the heat cools. We’re operating a blind pig downtown now.”

“A what?”

“A speakeasy . . . you know, a rum joint that operates behind a legit place.”

“It still sounds illegal to me.”

He laughed. “Yeah, well . . . you know what they say about leopards changing their spots. If you ever need work, Emma, look us up. We’d trust you with our lives, right, Black Jack?”

Black Jack hadn’t heard a word we had said. He held Gracie in his arms, his eyes fastened on her tiny face as if hypnotized. I rested my hand on his shoulder. “You’d make a marvelous father, Black Jack.”

“You think so?” he whispered.

“I know so.”

After they left, I found two brand-new twenty dollar bills stuffed inside Gracie’s diaper. I couldn’t help wondering if they were counterfeit.

THIRTY-THREE

I didn’t talk to Patrick again for four years. He kept his promise to the bishop not to contact Grace or me. He anonymously paid half our rent, but we rarely saw each other—and even then it was at a distance.

Grace was such a quiet, timid child that the Mulligan sisters allowed us to stay in the apartment. They even watched her for a few hours every day when I went to work part time at the diner again. I was working there one afternoon when Dora the cashier pulled me aside.

“Did you ever see a bigger waste than that?” she asked, nodding toward one of the tables. I looked and saw Patrick sitting alone in a booth by the window. “A man as handsome as Father O’Duggan wasted on the priesthood!” Dora shook her head. “But I suppose if he wasn’t a priest he’d be breaking women’s hearts, right?”

“Yes . . . I suppose so,” I stammered.

“Well, don’t just stand there, girl . . . take the man some coffee. He’s sitting in your booth.”

My hands shook as I retrieved the coffeepot. I would probably spill it all over him. Patrick looked up as I approached. “Coffee?” I asked.

“Thanks.”

Sure enough, I slopped it all over the saucer as I poured. I had to pull napkins from the chrome holder on his table to wipe it up. “Anything else? Do you want a menu?”

“I need to talk to you, Emma,” he said softly. “Do you have a minute?”

I glanced around. My other customers didn’t need anything, and the cashier was momentarily hidden behind a man who was paying his check. “I guess so. For a minute.”

Patrick exhaled. “I had to pay a call on old Mrs. Mulligan today. I saw Grace. The Mulligan sisters didn’t introduce her to me, in fact they quickly shooed her off to the kitchen, but I knew right away who she was.”

I glanced around again to see who was watching. “She has your eyes, Patrick. The color of the sky.”

“Aye . . . and my hair. I had to resist the urge to caress her curls and feel the wrinkled texture of them. Her hair is so much like my own that if I bent my head to hers, no one could ever tell where mine ended and hers began.”

“That’s why you have to promise me you won’t go near her,” I whispered urgently, “that you’ll stay away from her.”

“I came to ask you if I could see her once in a while, talk to her—”

“No! You have to stay out of her life!” I looked over my shoulder and saw the cashier watching us. When I turned back, Patrick was staring into his coffee cup. His broad shoulders sagged.

“I suppose this is the punishment for my sin, the penance I’ll be forced to pay every day of my life. To see my daughter, to ache with love for her, but to be unable to hold her in my arms.” He looked up at me and I saw the sorrow in his eyes. “Like Cain in the Old Testament, ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear’”

“I’m sorry. I have to go. Dora is watching us.”

“Emma, wait. Is she okay? Does she need anything? Is she . . . is she happy?”

I thought of Grace’s rippling laughter, the sound of her feet clattering up the stairs to bring me a bouquet of dandelions. I was luckier than Patrick; I had Gracie. I could snuggle beside her to read bedtime stories and feel the warmth of her arms around my neck as she kissed me good-night.

“I wish you could know her,” I said. “She’s a beautiful child—contented, curious, loving. She’s the joy of my life.”

“Are you okay?” he whispered.

“Yes. I’m okay too.”

A customer at the counter signalled for more coffee.

“I have to go. Please stay away from Grace.”

I carried the coffepot to the man and refilled his cup. When I glanced at the booth again, Patrick was gone, his cup of coffee untouched.

That winter I became ill with pneumonia. I had felt the illness trying to overpower me for several days, but I thought I could fight it off. Who would take care of Gracie if anything happened to me? I couldn’t get sick. I couldn’t. Then the fever gripped me with blazing fists and I nearly died.

When I first awoke and realized that I was in the hospital, I became hysterical. “Where’s Gracie? Where’s my baby? I have to go home to my baby!” I would have run out into the snow to find her, barefoot and in my nightgown,
if one of the nursing sisters hadn’t hurried into the room to calm me.

“Shh . . . it’s all right Mrs. Bauer. I’m sure your daughter is being cared for.”

“Where is she? Please tell me where my Gracie is!” My chest ached with every breath I drew. I felt as though I were drowning.

“I don’t know where your little girl is, but she was with your priest the night he brought you in.”

“With my priest? Was it Father O’Duggan?”

“Yes. He’s been coming to the hospital every day to see how you’re doing. I’ll tell him to look in on you when he comes today. He’ll ease your mind about the child. Try to rest until then.”

But I couldn’t rest until I found out where my Gracie was. It felt as though hours had passed before I finally heard his voice in the corridor outside my ward. He walked through the door behind the nursing sister, and our eyes met. I warned myself to be careful what I said to him with a room full of other patients and the nun hovering beside us.

“Here he is, Mrs. Bauer,” the sister said cheerfully. “She’s been so worried about her little girl, Father O’Duggan. I told her you could ease her mind.”

“Gracie’s just fine,” he said. “She’s in very loving, capable hands. How . . . how are you feeling?” I knew by the stilted way he spoke and by the way his hands clutched the brim of his hat that Patrick was struggling with his emotions. I willed the nun to go away and give us some privacy before he broke down, but she stayed close to his side.

“Father O’Duggan, could I . . . I mean . . . I would like to make a confession.” I hoped it was the right thing to say. I saw by the relief on Patrick’s face that it was.

“Of course,” he said. “Would you excuse us please, Sister Mary Margaret?” The nun smiled sweetly and drew the curtain closed around my bed. Patrick’s tall body slumped with emotion as soon as we were alone. “Thank God! . . . Emma, I was so afraid you were going to die!” He groped for my hand.

“Don’t, Patrick. Please don’t.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, then backed up a step. “I’m sorry.”

“Where’s Gracie? Is she all right?”

“Yes . . . she’s fine. I took her to my mother’s house.”

“What?” I stared at him, horrified at the thought of our secret being exposed. “Why did you take her there? Does your mother know?”

“Hush, Emma. She knows, but no one else does. I only asked her to keep
Grace the one night because there was no other place for her to go except the orphans’ home. But from the very first moment they met, Gracie stole Mam’s heart. Mam won’t even consider letting me take her someplace else. And Gracie is happy there. I wish you could see them together, baking cookies—”

“Stop!” I covered my face, weeping. “Please stop . . .” I couldn’t bear the image of Gracie nestled in her grandmother’s arms. I knew she would never see Mam again once I got well.

“Is there some other place you’d rather I take her?” he asked quietly. “Do you want me to contact your parents in Bremenville?”