The Sabbathday River (27 page)
Read The Sabbathday River Online
Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz
“What?” Heather said.
He leaned forward, his palms flat against the wooden tabletop. She watched his fingers spread.
“It makes you strong. It makes you healed.” Charter shook his head solemnly. “I've seen this, not many times, it's true, because not many people are brave enough to own their guilt. But those few times, it's been like salve to a wound. The wound of their guilt,” he said. “The person who says, Yes, I've done this. Yes. It was wrong and I know it was wrong, and I'm sorry. This person will be forgiven by the person whose forgiveness she needs most of all, and that's herself.”
“But,” Heather said, perplexed, “surely the person who ought to forgive her is the one she hurt, right?”
“That's important,” he said, pleased to have engaged her at last. “But don't underestimate the importance of forgiving yourself. And you need to ask forgiveness before you can get it. And you need to admit what you did before you can ask forgiveness. It's so simple, Miss Pratt.”
Heather stared at him. Her bearings were gone. She wanted forgiveness. She wanted sleep, and her daughter's warm back under the palm of her own hand. God, she wanted to be done with this.
“I didn't do anything wrong,” she whispered. “Oh, I didn't. I'd say so if I did. And I'd ask for forgiveness, too.”
Charter closed his eyes. He shook his head, frowning. For a few long breaths he said nothing at all. Then he sat back in his chair.
“There's something else,” Charter said. “I mean, I think you deserve to know.”
Heather looked up, not hopeful, but mildly curious.
“Well, there's Polly.” He shrugged.
“Polly,” she said dully.
“Well, yes. I can hardly see how they'll let you just take her home again, without our getting this cleared up.”
Erroll turned to look at him. Charter put a hand up without turning and continued.
“They couldn't do that. You see that, don't you? We have to get this settled first, and telling the truth about what really happened is a big step to getting it settled. The sooner you do it, in other words, the sooner you'll be able to move ahead with things. But until then ⦔ He sighed.
“I can't have Polly back?” She was numb.
“We need to do this, Heather.”
“I wantâ”
“I know,” he said reassuringly. “I know that. But first we need to. Remember what I said. We go forward now. We don't go back.” He paused. “You see, a lot of people would feel that a mother who had the kind of experience you had really had to have been suffering, and she might need a doctor's care. They couldn't feel right about letting her go back to taking care of a little child until a doctor said it was all right. You understand?”
“No,” Heather said bluntly.
“You love her,” Charter said.
She nodded. She loved her. Polly was the only thing she could love now.
“And you want her back, don't you?”
“Yes. Please.” She cried.
“Then you know what you need to do, don't you?”
And she did. For the first time, clear as water, she did. Whatever it took. “All right,” she told them.
Charter got to his feet and opened the door. A minute later he was back with a little man and a typewriter. They all watched the man plug in the machine and roll the paper up.
“We're going to take your statement now,” Charter said affably. “Do you want to do it yourself or do you want me to help you a bit.”
“Help me,” said Heather.
“Okay. I'll say something and you say yes if it's true. Remember that this is your sworn statement, and you'll be signing it. So it's important we don't put anything in that didn't happen just that way. You understand?”
She understood.
“My name is Heather Ruth Pratt and I was born May 1, 1965. Correct?
“Yes.”
“I live in the farmhouse on Sabbath Creek Road. This is the house left to me by my grandmother”âdown at his notesâ“Mrs. Polly Bates Pratt.”
Heather nodded.
“This is correct?” Charter said, a little peevishly. “I want to be sure.”
“It's correct,” she said. Charter looked at the man, who typed.
“I am employed as a craftsman at Flourish, Incorporated, in Goddard.”
“Yes,” Heather said.
“I had a sexual relationship with Ashley Deacon, who is a married man, from October of 1983 to January of this year, 1985. I am the mother of a daughter, Polly Pratt, born in August of 1984, now fourteen months old.”
Heather nodded. The little typist worked, his head down.
“At the end of last year or the beginning of this year, I became pregnant for the second time. I did not seek prenatal care for this child. I did not tell anyone I was pregnant.”
“No, that's right,” Heather said. It all felt so far away.
“On the night of ⦔ He took out a pocket calendar and studied it. He looked up. “Does September 17 sound about right? That was a Tuesday night.”
Heather shrugged. “It sounds right.”
“On the night of Tuesday, September 17, I went into labor in the middle of the night. I went outside into the field behind my house.”
“The back field,” Heather corrected, as if this were important.
“The back field,” Charter agreed. “I had my baby alone and unassisted.”
“Yes,” she said. “That's right.”
“I did not bring my baby into the house after it was born.”
Heather looked at him. “What?”
“Oh, was that wrong?” he said. “Did you bring the baby into the house?”
“Well, no. I said what happened.”
“So all right. I did not bring my baby into the house. I returned to my house without the baby.”
“You forgot to say that it was dead.” Heather frowned.
“But you need to confine the statement to what you know,” Charter explained. “You said yourself, you're not a doctor. Didn't you say that?”
“I'm not a doctor,” Heather agreed.
“So then we can't enter an opinion about that. Now let's go on with the statement, yes?”
She nodded.
“I went back to the field with a sharp object, to make sure the baby was dead.” He paused. “Which one?”
“Excuse me?” She looked confused.
“Which one of these?” He gestured, as if he were trying to sell her one. “Will you show me the one you used?”
“I don't remember,” she said, because the fact was she didn't remember anything about a sharp object at all.
“Try,” he said stiffly, and of course she wanted to please him. After all, he was the one who was going to get Polly back for her. She leaned forward out of her chair and looked at them. They were so hard and pointed. She didn't like the look of any of them. Pick had not liked her using the ice pick on the refrigerator; she'd warned Heather that she could get electrocuted that way. The nails and the awls she didn't recognize. But the needlesâHeather remembered how they'd flashed in the firelight when Pick worked, and that lavender sweater twitching, growing as the two needles clicked. Blue needles, Heather recalled, that time. She thought of her grandmother's hands on those needles, misshapen and stiff, but moving, clicking. If Pick were here, she thought, this would not be happening. Whatever this was, it would not be happening.
Heather got up out of her seat and touched one of the blue knitting needles. She felt its round chill inside the plastic, intractable and hard.
“Thank you,” Charter said. He picked it up by the corner of the
plastic bag and hurriedly jotted something on the label. He turned back to the typist. “I stabbed the baby once in the chest. Yes?”
plastic bag and hurriedly jotted something on the label. He turned back to the typist. “I stabbed the baby once in the chest. Yes?”
Heather shrugged.
“Yes? I think you'd better say yes or no.”
“Yes,” said Heather.
“Then I carried the baby's body across the field to the Sabbathday River.” He paused. “Did you throw it in? Or just lay it in?” He waited. “I don't want to get it wrong, Heather.”
She looked up at him. It was the first time he had used her first name. It must mean he liked her a little, she thought, utterly grateful. She didn't want to disappoint him now.
“I laid it in. Like ⦔ She trailed off.
They all waited silently.
“Like Moses,” Heather said. She started to cry again. “When she found that baby, Naomi, I just felt so ⦔ She pushed at the tears, moving each out of the way for the next. “I felt it was mine. I knew, deep down. I felt ⦔
“Sorry?” Charter suggested.
“Oh, God,” cried Heather. “I am so sorry.”
They listened to the typist finish his clatter. He rolled the statement out, and Charter looked it over. “You'll need to sign,” he said, sounding tired. She felt awful to have put him through this, all of them. The men who'd been out at her house, and Erroll, who was pale from going without sleep. And Naomi. What would Naomi think of her now?
“What's going to happen?” she said.
“We'll take you down to Peytonville,” said Charter. “You'll be able to rest, and see the doctor.”
“And Polly?” For an instant, she wondered if they would let Polly come with her.
“We'll find a place for Polly till this is over,” said Erroll, breaking in. “Maybe you know someone.”
“There are channels,” Charter said icily. “Proper channels. We can't justâ”
“But it would be better for Polly to be with someone familiar. I think we can all agree on that.” He didn't look at his superior. He looked at Heather.
“Thank you,” she said. “It would be.”
“But who?” Charter was sharp. “You said yourself you don't have any friends.”
Heather started. Had she said that? Was it true?
She tried to think. Celia and Stephen would take Polly, of course, but Heather didn't think Stephen would help her now, and Celia didn't like her. Heather closed her eyes.
Even Naomi would be ashamed of her now. Especially Naomi, Heather thought. And yet the memory of Naomi's words to her nine months before suddenly came back again, unbidden. About how strong she was, and what a good example. A homegrown feminist, Naomi had called her, not that Heather was wild about that word. For the briefest moment something inside Heather surged with hope. If only there could be someone to say these things to Polly, too, even though Polly was too young to really understand. Someone to speak well of her, though it seemed incredible that anyone ever might.
But Naomi was from another place. Not from here. It wasn't, she knew, a place where people stabbed their infants and laid them in the river, but even so Naomi might understand what Heather had done. It was more than Heather herself ever would.
She held the paper in her hand, but the words blurred before her, obscured by the one good thing she could do. It made her blindingly happy.
“I want Polly to go to Naomi Roth,” she told them. It was not a request. She smiled easily. Then she took a pen and confessed to the murder of her child.
The World Overhead
THE DINNER PARTY ENDED EARLY. NAOMI WOULD have denied it, if asked, but she keenly wanted Judith and Joel to leave, and soon they did. She couldn't have blamed them; there'd been a damper on the evening since Mary Sully's call, and Naomi, in her bitterness and disbelief, had tumbled out all the story she knew to her guests, alternately raging and mourning. Heather was marked, she told them, by being different. Only that. She saw how the women at work threw themselves into shunning her, and how Heather merely ignored their judgment. She saw how Heather, while not precisely beautiful, had that indefinable shimmer that drove women wild. Heather, she told them, could not possibly have done what Mary said she'd done. Heather was the town's designated sacrifice, its lottery winner under a shower of stones.
They stared at her, looked at each other, and said good night.
Once they'd gone, she piled the dishes, running the melted Häagen-Dazs down the drain and shoving the pot of leftover stew straight into the fridge. In the aftermath of the ruined party, her house seemed small
again, its absurd shape and proportions restored from the brief interlude of voices and laughter and shared food to this, its customary detachment. It had always been one of the features of her A-frame that it sat in its wooded depression unseen by any other house, as if the world had passed overhead while itâwhile sheâsat here, hunkered down in hiding. She thought, sometimes, of how the immense iceberg had covered all New England before retreatingâ“retreating” was the word they usedâback to its lair in the polar cap, carving mountains out of the land in its wake. She imagined what it would have been like to live down here at that long moment and look up into the great ice overhead, a frozen caul over the world with a single, tiny living thing hidden away beneath. In planetary time, Naomi thought, looking dumbly at the smears of stew, the crumbs of bread on her dining table, this wouldn't figure much. But Heather.
again, its absurd shape and proportions restored from the brief interlude of voices and laughter and shared food to this, its customary detachment. It had always been one of the features of her A-frame that it sat in its wooded depression unseen by any other house, as if the world had passed overhead while itâwhile sheâsat here, hunkered down in hiding. She thought, sometimes, of how the immense iceberg had covered all New England before retreatingâ“retreating” was the word they usedâback to its lair in the polar cap, carving mountains out of the land in its wake. She imagined what it would have been like to live down here at that long moment and look up into the great ice overhead, a frozen caul over the world with a single, tiny living thing hidden away beneath. In planetary time, Naomi thought, looking dumbly at the smears of stew, the crumbs of bread on her dining table, this wouldn't figure much. But Heather.
She shook her head. It came to her that she might just do nothing, but she couldn't seem to hold the thought. She got her coat and keys, and went outside.
Nelson Erroll lived on the far side of Goddard from Naomi, south of the town center itself and en route to Haverhill, in a yellow farmhouse that had been his father's. The house had a barn with three huge but withering silos that shot up like a colossal trident. It sat just off the main road, pretty but a little lost, as if no longer sure why it was precisely there; its many acresâonce given over to sheepâwere long gone, sold to a Boston academic who feared development around his summer retreat farther up the mountain. Nelson lived alone, though he had once had a wife and twin sons. These, too, were long gone, since Carol Erroll had moved down to Keene with her second husband, and only a succession of school pictures, framed in a line on the piano top, gave immediate evidence of the sheriff's earlier life.
Naomi drove her car around the back of Erroll's house and parked out of sight of the road, alongside the silos. By the time she reached the kitchen door he was waiting for her, peering out into the dark and looking, if not concerned, then mildly curious. He made her out on the second step and nodded, without exactly smiling. Naomi didn't feel like smiling either.
“Sorry I didn't call,” she said when he opened the door.
“Doesn't matter,” Erroll said. “I wouldn't have heard the phone. I've been sleeping.”
She looked reflexively at her watch. “It's only ten.”
“I was up all night.” He shrugged. “Slept most of the day today.”
“Up all night,” Naomi said viciously. “And doing such hard work, I'll bet.”
He frowned at her. They stood in the kitchen. The air, suddenly cold, wafted in the open door.
“This is such shit,” Naomi said.
Erroll sighed. He shut the door. “I was going to make some dinner,” he said, his voice tired. “Want something?”
“I've eaten. Nelson, this is completely insane. Don't tell me there's anything to this.”
“Sit down,” he said, and Naomi did. He went to the refrigerator and rummaged, eventually extracting a single steak in its Styrofoam Stop & Shop tray. He dug the plastic away with his fingers. “Sure you don't want one?”
“No,” she said. “Thanks.”
He took down a skillet from over the stove and put it on the electric coil. He filled the kettle and it hissed when he turned the heat on beneath it. Then he came to the kitchen table and sat down opposite her.
“Tell me,” Naomi said. “
Explain
this to me. You
can't
, I bet.”
Explain
this to me. You
can't
, I bet.”
“I can't,” Erroll admitted. “But that doesn't mean it's not true. I was there, Naomi. I was in the room. She did it.” He shook his head. The top of his head shone in the fluorescent kitchen light. “I didn't want to believe it either, but it's true.”
“It can't be. Now look, I'm
not
being naive. But Heather loves her daughter so much. She would never hurt a baby like ⦔ She closed her eyes, the better not to see that single, perfect hole over the infant's heart. “She couldn't.”
not
being naive. But Heather loves her daughter so much. She would never hurt a baby like ⦔ She closed her eyes, the better not to see that single, perfect hole over the infant's heart. “She couldn't.”
Erroll shrugged. He got up and put his steak into the skillet, then poked it once or twice with a fork.
“This fucking town. They just
decided
it was her. Because she's a single mother and they can't deal with that. Because she doesn't go around beating her breast with shame all the time!”
decided
it was her. Because she's a single mother and they can't deal with that. Because she doesn't go around beating her breast with shame all the time!”
“Because she was pregnant, Naomi. Because people knew she was pregnant and then suddenly she wasn't pregnant anymore and there was no baby. Because we had a baby without a mother and a mother without a baby! That's
all.”
all.”
“She wasn't pregnant,” Naomi insisted. “She just put on some weight over the summer.” She paused. Nelson was looking at her. “She was just depressed and she gained weight! It isn't a crime. I mean, her grandmother died and she didn't have anybody. Wouldn't that make you depressed?”
“Sure,” he agreed. “But that isn't the point.” He frowned. “You've got to understand, Naomi. After you brought the baby's body in, and word about it got out, the phone started to ring. Within forty-eight hours we had fourteen calls about Heather. Especially from women who insisted she must be pregnant. We were looking at all kinds of possibilitiesâ”
“I
heard
,” Naomi snapped. “Like through-hikers. Women on welfare. Women living in sin.”
heard
,” Naomi snapped. “Like through-hikers. Women on welfare. Women living in sin.”
He shrugged and flipped his steak. It spat grease into the air. “We had to. We wanted to be thorough.”
“Lesbians. Single mothers. Women who live alone.”
I'm surprised you didn't accuse me
, she almost said. But then she remembered: they had accused her. They had accused her first.
I'm surprised you didn't accuse me
, she almost said. But then she remembered: they had accused her. They had accused her first.
“Naomi, we had to bring her in. After all those calls. And we talked to Ashley. We found out the dates and everything. She could have been pregnant. And the fact that she didn't tell him about it, or anyone else.” He looked at her. “You have to see that was, at least, suspicious.”
“It wasn't her. Jesus, Nelson, we're talking about a
stab wound
!”
stab wound
!”
“She showed us the weapon, Naomi.”
Naomi, stunned, looked at him.
“She showed us the weapon she used. It's her, Naomi. I'm sorry.” He speared his steak and dropped it on a plate. “I know you like her, but it's her.”
She watched him eat, his head down, the skin of his scalp alive with reflected light. He seemed famished. She didn't begrudge him his meat.
“Just like that,” she said, more to herself than to him.
Erroll looked up. “Sorry?”
“Just like that? You sat her down, she said, âYes, I killed my baby with a knife'?”
“No, not just like that.” He shook his head. “I can't really discuss the specifics of what was said, Naomi, and I'm going to count on you not to let this go any further. But I will tell you that at first Heather did deny being pregnant. She later admitted she was pregnant and said she'd
had a miscarriage, but it seemed pretty clear to me that âmiscarriage' was a term she'd taken on to make it a little easier for her to live with herself.”
had a miscarriage, but it seemed pretty clear to me that âmiscarriage' was a term she'd taken on to make it a little easier for her to live with herself.”
“What are you, a psychologist now?” She regretted it as soon as the words were out, but she couldn't take it back.
“No, Naomi. I'm not a psychologist. It's only my opinion. A layman's opinion, all right?”
“Sure,” she said.
“It just seemed to me that she was sad. She was sorry for what she'd done. At one point she even told us she'd had this miscarriage, and put the baby's body in a little pond in back of her house. So the baby you found couldn't have been hers.” He shook his head. “I think it made her feel better to think that.” He sighed. The skin under his eyes was barely there, so thin, like tissue bared to bright light. It pulsed, tightening and opening, as he looked at her, and she unexpectedly found herself listening to her own breath. “I feel awful about this, you know.”
“I know,” Naomi said. “I can see that.”
They looked at each other.
“I'm glad you came over,” he said. “I mean, I know you didn'tâ”
“I was furious,” she cut him off. “I'm still furious. God.” She looked out the kitchen window. The moon glinted off the silo-trident. “What're they going to do to her now?”
“I hope she'll get some help,” Erroll said, pushing his plate away.
“
Help
,” Naomi said with disdain. “You know the kind of help they'll want to give her. The stake at dawn.”
Help
,” Naomi said with disdain. “You know the kind of help they'll want to give her. The stake at dawn.”
He smiled a little. “Hey, we've moved on a little bit since that kind of thing, no matter what you city types might think.”
She nodded. She hoped it was true.
“Where have they got her?” she asked suddenly.
“In Peytonville,” Erroll said.
“Can I see her?”
“In a few days, I'm sure it's possible. And I think that would be nice. I think that would mean a lot to her.”
“Good.” Naomi nodded, instantly regretting the offer. The truth was that she didn't want to see Heather. In fact, she desperately didn't want to see Heather. The hand that had raised a weapon over that babyâshe didn't want to see that hand. But nobody else would go, Naomi knew that much. And maybe Heather needed to see that Naomi, who had
after all taken the baby from the river, could be forgiving of what she'd done.
after all taken the baby from the river, could be forgiving of what she'd done.
“There's something else,” said Erroll. He was pouring water out of the kettle and spooning in instant coffee, two cups. “I was going to call you in the morning, anyway.”
Naomi took a cup and asked for milk to cover the taste.
“It's Polly. Heather wants you to have her.”
She sat there, overwhelmed. The brownish bubbles of the instant coffee gathered on the surface.
“She wants
me
?”
me
?”
“She asked for you. I think she knows that you sort of believe in her. I mean, believe she's a good person, whatever she's done. Anyway, I didn't ask her why, but she was very clear about it. Of course,” he looked at Naomi, “you don't have to agree. You can say no. They can find a foster arrangement for Polly. It's not like you have kids of your own and it's just one more.” Naomi's throat caught. She took a scalding gulp and coughed. “And, you know, we don't know how long we're talking about here. That's another thing.”
He paused. He ran one hand through the ridge of his pale hair. It came to rest on his thigh.
“You think about it,” he said kindly. “Nobody expects you justâ”
“I'll take it,” Naomi said. “I mean Polly. I'll take Polly. Of course I will.” And she got up and left before he could see her face.
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