“Jim’s — child. How funny that sounds. So f-funny.” She was clutching the guardrail as if she were afraid she was going to fling herself into the sea against her own will. “Was it — is it a boy or a girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Haven’t you even asked him?”
“That wouldn’t do much good. Jim doesn’t know, either.”
She turned to Adam, and her eyes looked blind, as if a film of ice had formed over the pupils. “You mean he hasn’t even seen the child?”
“No. The woman left town before her delivery. Jim hasn’t heard from her since.”
“Surely she must have written him a letter when the baby was born.”
“There was a mutual agreement between the two parties involved that no contact be made, and no correspondence entered into.”
“But what a terrible thing, not to see your own child. It’s inhuman. I can’t believe that Jim would evade his responsibilities like—”
“Now wait a minute,” Adam said crisply. “Jim evaded nothing. In fact, if he’d taken my advice, he wouldn’t have admitted paternity at all. The woman had a flock of other children whose paternity was in question. She also had a husband, although he was allegedly out of the country at the time. If she had brought charges against him — and I doubt that she’d have had the nerve — she would have had a tough time proving anything. As things turned out, Jim quietly admitted paternity, and financial arrangements were made with Mrs. Rosario, the girl’s mother, through me. That’s all there was to it.”
“All there was to it,” she repeated. “You talk like a lawyer, Adam, in terms of cases and bringing charges, of proving or not proving. You don’t talk about justice.”
“In this case, I think justice was done.”
“Do you call it justice that Jim, who so desperately wanted to father a child, should cut himself off from his own flesh and blood?”
“The arrangements were his.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Ask him.”
“I can’t believe that any man, let alone Jim, wouldn’t want to see his own child at least once.”
“Jim did the only sensible thing under the circumstances,” Adam said. “And the circumstances weren’t in the least what you seem to imagine in your sentimental way. No sentiment was involved. The girl thought nothing of Jim personally, nor he of her. The child was not the product of love. If it’s still alive — and neither Juanita nor Mrs. Rosario would be in a hurry to inform us otherwise — it’s half Mexican, its mother is mentally unstable—”
“Stop it. I don’t want to hear anymore.”
“I must present the facts bluntly to prevent you from sentimentalizing and perhaps doing something foolish which you might regret.”
“Foolish?”
Adam pushed back the hood of his sea jacket, as if the day had suddenly turned warm. “I think you hired the detective to find that child.”
“So you know about Pinata?”
“Yes.”
“Does Jim know, too?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t care,” she said listlessly. “I don’t really care. I guess it’s time we laid our cards on the table. You’re wrong, though, about my reason for hiring Pinata. Why should I hire someone to find a child I didn’t even know existed?”
“You knew. You were told.”
“I can’t remember.”
“You were told.”
“Stop repeating it like that, as if forgetting were a cardinal sin. All right, I was told. I forgot. It’s not the kind of thing a woman likes to remember about her husband.”
“Some part of you remembered,” Adam said. “Your dream shows that. The date on your tombstone was the day the first payment was made to Mrs. Rosario. It was also the day that Juanita left town, and, possibly, the day Jim confessed the affair to you. Was it?”
“I don’t — I don’t know.”
“Try to think about it. Where were you that day?”
“Working. At the Clinic.”
“What happened when you had finished working?”
“I went home, I guess.”
“How?”
“I drove the car — no. No, I didn’t.” She was looking down at the water as if it were the deep dark well of memory. “Jim called for me. He was waiting in the car when I went out the back door. I started to cross the parking lot. Then I saw this young woman getting out of Jim’s car. I’d seen her around the Clinic before. She was one of the regular patients, but I’d never paid much attention to her. I wouldn’t have then either, if she hadn’t been talking to Jim and if she hadn’t been so terribly pregnant. Jim opened the door for me... ”
“Who was the girl?” Daisy said.
“Her name’s Juanita Garcia.”
“I hope she has her hospital reservations all set.”
“Yes, so do I.”
“You look pale, Jim. Are you feeling sick?”
He reached out and took her hand and held it so tightly that it began to feel numb. “Listen to me, Daisy. I love you. You won’t ever forget that, will you? I love you. Promise never to forget it. There’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to make you happy.”
“You don’t very often talk like this, as if you were going to die or something.”
“The girl — the child — I’ve got to tell you—”
“I don’t want to hear.” She turned and looked out of the car window, smiling the little smile she put on in the morning and washed off at night. “It gets dark so early, it’s a pity we don’t have daylight saving time all year.”
“Daisy, listen, nothing’s going to happen. She won’t cause any trouble. She’s going away.”
“The paper says there’ll be snow on the mountains again tomorrow.”
“Daisy, give me a chance to explain.”
“The mountains always look so much prettier with a little snow on them... ”
The Stranger
17
I have nothing to live for. Yet, as I move through the days, shackled to this dying body, I yearn to step free of it long enough to see you again, you and Ada, my beloved ones still...
They had already visited five taverns, and Fielding was getting tired of moving from place to place. But Juanita was all set to go again. She sat on the very edge of the stool as though she were waiting for some whistle to blow inside her as a signal to take off. Aawouhee...
“For Pete’s sake, can’t you settle down?” Fielding said. He was beginning to feel the drinks, not in his head, which was marvelously clear and sharp and full of wit and information, but in his legs, which were getting older and heavier and harder to drag in and out of doors. His legs wanted to sit down and rest while his head informed and amused Juanita or the bartender or the guy on the next stool. None of them was in his class, of course. He had to talk down to them, way down. But they listened; they could see he was a gentleman of the old school.
“What old school?” the bartender said, and his left eye closed in a quick, expert wink directed at Juanita.
“You miss the point, old chap,” Fielding said. “No particular school is involved. It’s a figure of speech.”
“It is, eh?”
“Precisely. Speaking of old schools, Winston Churchill went to Harrow. You know what people who went to Harrow are called?”