Sins of Innocence (53 page)

“Nowhere, Mother. I’m not going anywhere.”

Bob took a slice of warm bread from the platter and carefully picked off a small piece. Flora stared at P.J. P.J. stared at her coffee mug.

“Well, excuse me for caring,” her mother grunted.

Flora helped herself to a slice of bread and slowly buttered it. She placed a napkin in her lap and calmly cut the bread in two. She set down her knife and put her hands in her lap.

“Mother,” P.J. said, “don’t pout.”

“I’m not pouting.”

“Yes, you are. You always pouted. Maybe Daddy put up with it, but I don’t have to.”

Flora tightened the muscles around her jawline and picked up a slice of the buttered bread. She put it to her mouth, took off a bite, and began chewing, her yes fixed on what she was doing. She set down the slice, plucked the napkin from her lap, and dabbed the corners of her lips.

P.J. pushed her mug away. “Dammit, Mother!” she screamed. “If you must know, Bob was asking if I was going to a certain reunion next Saturday. A reunion. To meet my son.” She slapped her hand on the table. “Did you hear me, Mother? To meet
my son
! Remember him?”

Flora pushed back her chair and stood up. She laid the napkin on the table, picked up her coffee mug, and retreated into the kitchen without a word.

P.J. bent her head and ran her fingers through her thinning hair. “Christ, now look what you’ve made me do.”

“I didn’t make you do anything,” Bob said. “But maybe it’s just as well. The two of you do nothing but pussyfoot around each other. Maybe it’s time to get a few things out in the open. Or maybe you never had any intention of patching things up.”

P.J. stood up. “I’m going to the hospital.”

“Wait a second,” Bob said, stuffing his mouth with the rest of his banana bread and washing it down with a gulp of coffee.

“No,” P.J. said. “I’m going alone today.”

“Peej …”

She stormed out of the room.

She sat on the cold vinyl chair in the procedure room, watching the slow drip, drip from the IV bag, studying the liquid as it seeped into the clear plastic tubing, threaded its way through the IVAC machine, and snaked out into the back of her hand.

“Almost done,” the IV nurse said with a wooden smile.

“For today,” P.J. mused soberly. But another week of treatments was over, and for that, P.J. was grateful. She was not, however, looking, forward to going home. Her mother, she knew, would still be there, stiff and tense. They would not speak of the reunion; they would not speak of P.J.’s son. That much, P.J. could count on. It would be, as it had been twenty-five years ago, best left forgotten. The way her mother had forgotten her own child, the one she’d given away.

Didn’t her mother ever think about that child? Had P.J. really ever thought of her own? Certainly she had in the last few weeks. It was as though she’d finally allowed her mind to wander, to speculate on what he looked like, to wonder about the direction his life had taken.

But still, P.J. could not make up her mind about going. She only knew she’d have to decide soon.

“All set,” the nurse said. She unhooked the bag from the stand and slowly pulled the needle from P.J.’s hand. The pain was bearable: P.J. was getting used to it.

“Next time we’ll go after a different vein,” the nurse commented.

“Can’t wait.” P.J. smiled. “See you Monday,” she added as she quickly slipped on her shirt, tucked it into her jeans, grabbed her Armani blazer, and left the room.

Out in the corridor, P.J. leaned against the wall.
Another week over
, she thought.
Another week past
. She adjusted the barrette that held back her hair and slowly walked down the hallway of the eighth floor. When she reached the elevators, she pushed the button and idly read the hospital directory. One line leaped out at her.
MATERNITY
.
6th Floor
. She stared at the directory until the elevator doors opened. Then she stepped in and pushed the button for the ground floor. The doors closed and the elevator began its descent. Quickly she reached up and pushed 6.

She didn’t know what she’d expected. P.J.’s legs moved slowly beneath her as she walked down the long corridor, and her heart had an eerie stillness that made her feel almost light-headed.

Behind her she heard the rumble of a cart, then the muted cry of a baby. She stopped and turned. A nurse was guiding a glass box set atop a rolling table toward P.J.

“Excuse us!” the nurse proclaimed, stopping in her path. “We’re on our way to the nursery!”

Inside the glass box lay a tiny infant, bundled in a small blue blanket. His eyes were closed, his red face scrunched with discomfort, his cap of dark silk hair askew. P.J. caught her breath.

“Newborn?” she asked.

“Twenty minutes ago,” the nurse answered.

The little face wrinkled again. The baby cried.

“Where …” P.J. hesitated. “Where is his mother?”

“Still in the birthing room. Getting cleaned up.”

Every nerve in her body went numb. She looked at the shriveled person, his arms and legs tucked inside his blanket, his face contorted with fear. Then an overwhelming grief poured through her, and she touched the side of the glass.

“It’s not right,” she heard herself whisper. “You shouldn’t have taken him from her. Not so soon.”

The nurse scowled. “Excuse us. He really must have his bath now.”

P.J. stepped aside and leaned against the wall.
It isn’t
right
, she repeated to herself.
They shouldn’t have taken him from his mother
.

She watched as the nurse steered the cart away and disappeared into a doorway. P.J. followed in that direction. Beside the door was a glass wall: Behind it were seven bassinets, each holding a bundled infant. They were all blanketed in blue.

P.J. studied each tiny face. Four were crying. Three were sleeping.

She looked at the cards attached to each bassinet.

MacMillan. 7 lb 10 oz

Firoucci. 6 lb 4 oz

Zombik. 8 lb 7 oz

Each card gave the name, the weights, the facts. What it didn’t say was who the babies’ parents were, what kind of home they would have, how happy a life theirs would be.

And their mothers, P.J. thought. Where are their mothers? They looked so frightened. They are so alone.

She scanned the cards again. Was there one who weighed seven pounds eight ounces, as her son had? No. Was there just one who looked like him? She didn’t know.

When are they going to give them back to their mothers?

Seven babies. Seven boys.

Not one of them was hers.

She pressed a hand against her chest where once her breast had been, and from somewhere deep inside, the pain that she had pushed down deeper, deeper, over the years, began to slowly rise and grip her with a swelling ache of reality. There would be no more babies for her. Her baby was gone—twenty-five years ago. He had been her only one, and he was gone. He was no longer hers; he never really had been. Babies came only to other girls—girls who cared about houses, husbands, station wagons, dogs. Not to girls like her. Not to girls whom no one really loved.

She sucked in a breath and felt wetness on her cheeks. It was then that P.J. realized she had not stood in front of a nursery since she and Susan had, so many years ago. She
had, she knew now, made excuses when friends had given birth, had never once stepped into a maternity ward—not since 1968. She had, she knew now, avoided this pain.

But what right did she have to now claim her son? And what did she expect to gain? Did she think he could typify another of her achievements—a grown son, no different from the Clios that adorned the shelf in her office? She would probably lose Bob. She would most likely lose all contact with her mother. And she would risk losing the one thing in the world that she was really good at—her career. She was forty-five years old. She was sick. It was too late for her to start over in another agency, for another climb to the top.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” said a voice next to her.

P.J. turned to look at a young woman in a crisp white bathrobe, her dark curls neatly combed, her face glowing.

“Baby Zombik. Isn’t he beautiful?” she repeated, pointing to a bassinet. “He’s mine.”

P.J. turned back to the row of babies. “Yes,” she said. “He’s beautiful.”
And he is yours
, she wanted to add.
Not mine. Mine is … gone
.

The next morning P.J. sat on the sofa, her long, legginged legs curled beneath her. She shuffled through papers Bob had brought from the office, trying to concentrate. She knew now the only choice left for her was in her work. She knew she had to forget this nonsense of babies born and babies gone and get back to doing the one thing she was good at, cancer or not.

Bob had not come over last night. “A late meeting,” he’d said when he’d called. But after the morning’s argument P.J. could hardly blame him.

She turned back a page and reviewed the notes for a new cosmetics campaign. Throwing herself into the work wasn’t going to be easy. Most days it was hard for P.J. to believe she’d ever be going back to work, and that the partnership, which Hansen and Hobart had decided to “put on hold,” would ever be hers. She almost laughed
now when she thought of the cleverly worded memo they had included with an array of white roses:

Look forward to signing you up as a full partner upon your return. Get well soon
.

Clearly they’d kept their options open. No sense committing themselves, financially or otherwise, to someone who might not live to see the end of the year.

But Bob kept encouraging her, telling her over and over how important she was to the agency, and that she’d be back to work before she knew it. Today it seemed almost possible, for, surprisingly, she felt good. Not great, but good. And to feel good the day after chemo was something she’d come not to expect.

The whir of the vacuum came from the other room. P.J. groaned silently, wishing, once again, that her mother would leave. The apartment, once cozily contemporary, now had a feeling of fifties order and decor. The first week her mother had been there, she’d dismissed P.J.’s housekeeper, and since then, the place reeked of lemon furniture polish and ammonia. It seemed the only time her mother stopped cleaning was to make casseroles for dinner and, of course, to complain:

“I don’t understand why you don’t move to a smaller place.”

“How on earth can you wash crystal without the proper cloths?”

“Don’t you think it’s a little extravagant to send all your clothes out to be laundered?”

And on and on.

Even yesterday, when P.J. returned from the hospital, Flora had jabbered on about how hard it was to clean “these new fiberglass bathtubs.” There had been, of course, no mention of the reunion. P.J. suspected it would never again be brought up. Her mother would simply chatter on about senseless things, as though their discussion had never happened, as though the reunion wasn’t going to happen.

But the worst times for putting up with her mother were when P.J. was sick, weak from throwing up. At those
times her mother was incessantly quiet, and while P.J. lay in her bed, willing the time to pass until the nausea subsided, she was constantly aware that her mother was bustling in the other room, every so often letting out a heavy sigh that P.J. knew was one of helplessness, of hopelessness.

The vacuum moved closer to the living room now. P.J. brushed back her hair with a hand; a clump of auburn strands remained twined between her fingers.

“Damn,” she said aloud.

The vacuum stopped. “What did you say?” her mother asked.

P.J. stood up. “Nothing. I’m going for a walk.” She went to the closet and took out one of Bob’s flannel shirts, which she slipped on over her T-shirt.

“That’s not a good idea. What if you get sick?”

“I won’t get sick, Mother. I feel fine today.”

“Where are you going?”

“To the park.”

“
Central
Park?”

“Yes. Just for some air.”

“You can’t go to Central Park.”

“Mother, I’ve lived here over twenty years. I can go to Central Park. For godsake, it’s one o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Why don’t you wait until I’m finished here? I’ll go with you.”

“No. I’ll be fine. I won’t be long.”

P.J. stepped out the front door, conscious, once again, of her mother’s heavy sigh. She pushed the call button for the elevator, wondering how much longer her mother would stay, wondering how much longer this could go on. Next week there would be another bone scan, and probably more tests. These past few weeks P.J. had worked at not anticipating the doctor’s next move. At first she’d wanted to know about every test, every result. Somewhere along the line, it had ceased to matter. All that mattered now was getting through each day, each hour.

It was a perfect day. P.J. stepped into the sunlight and
took a deep breath of the crisp air. She walked to the light, and it instantly read
WALK
, as though it had been expecting her all along. The traffic halted. P.J. smiled and crossed Fifth Avenue.

She stopped at a sidewalk vendor and bought a soft pretzel, then turned into the park. As she ambled leisurely, munching the pretzel, nannies passed her pushing Neiman-Marcus strollers, runners skimmed by leaving a wake of softly scented sweat, helmeted children whizzed along on ten-speed bikes. It seemed to P.J. that even the pigeons were happy today, as they clustered around the old men on benches, greedily sucking up popcorn and crusts of bread. She took the last bit of her pretzel and tossed it toward the scavengers, laughing as they fluttered
en masse
to feast on the morsel. P.J. kept walking, soaking in the sunshine, smiling to herself. Since the cancer, walking was something she’d found she enjoyed doing. Before, she’d never taken the time. And she’d never done it herself, not without a man.

She found an empty bench and sat down, her body weary from the walk. She watched a young couple holding hands go by. It was such a simple gesture, holding hands, and yet it was so much more intimate than even sex could often be. These last few weeks had proved that to P.J.: The gentle touch as Bob smoothed her hair, the tender feelings of his fingers on her cheek—these had come to mean more to P.J. than anything he, or anyone, had ever done.