Nights I sat on the floor and listened to the sounds that made their way from the front house to the back: the baby crying, the chatter of dinner plates in the sink. It was spring, and their windows were up, and I opened the front door of the cottage so I could hear Caroline’s lovely, odd voice singing to the baby, their whole house a radio. Never lullabies, just love songs: The Tennessee Waltz, After You’ve Gone, Careless Love. One night I heard all of a song about a woman who’d killed her lover and was pleading for the electric chair—Judge, Judge, please Mr. Judge—a morbid song for a baby, but it seemed to work: I heard Caroline finish and then Oscar’s awed voice saying, after a pause, she’s asleep.
My years of simple living and careful saving meant I had enough money to buy a car, as well as all the knickknacks I stocked the cottage with. Oscar had a friend with a huge used Nash who sold it cheap. The front seat was divided in half, and each side would fold back to meet the backseat, forming (it was pointed out to me by the leering mechanic who looked it over) a bed, single or double depending. I figured we could fold down the passenger’s seat, and James could sit in the back, with his legs in the front.
I was not much of a driver, having grown up and gone to school in cities, so I drove around town for practice. The Nash was the first car I’d ever owned, the first car I’d ever driven to amount to anything. It made me feel as though I were a Victorian lady who’d finally been allowed to wear bloomers — I could go anywhere, I realized, I could just start driving. But the only place I wanted to go was Boston, to visit James.
And so I did. Every Sunday for four months I drove the two hours to Boston, checking my rearview, the speedometer, the gas gauge, the odometer. One of the reasons I’d never had an interest in a car before was certainly fear; so much could go wrong. But those simple controls were as reassuring to me as footnotes. They explained, they quantified. If I had gas, if I drove at a sensible clip, if I noted the car directly behind me and the one passing me on the left and kept all of these things in mind, surely everything would be fine.
When James finally came home from the hospital — after four long months of healing and therapy and visits from friends, weekly visits from me — he lived somewhere new. He had a new relative, Caroline and Oscar’s daughter, Alice Sweatt Strickland. And he had me.
“How is it?” I asked. He walked slowly into the cottage, leaning on the cane. The town would hold a welcome home party for him that night at the high school auditorium; they’d wanted to greet him at the cottage — they thought having made and eaten pancakes meant they deserved full credit for the building — but I’d dissuaded them. Let him get settled, I said. James was not quite graceful with his new cane, with the braces I could hear squeak with each step. Oscar stepped across the threshold, followed by Caroline with the baby.
He reached over to the lamp on the closest table and snapped it on. The tables were the faultiest pieces of furniture: the carpenter had made them regular-size with extralong spindly legs.
James sat down on the bed and let the cane fall to the floor.
“It’s incredible,” he said.
“Look,” I said. “Here’s a closet. And you should try out the desk — if it isn’t high enough we can raise it.” I turned the faucets of the little sink on the back wall, as if I had not tried them every night for a month. “Works,” I said.
“Well, sport,” said Oscar. “What do you think?”
“It’s good,” said James. He stood up with a great deal of effort; I saw that we’d have to raise the bed on blocks. It hadn’t occurred to me that the bed would have to be high, as well as big. He walked along the perimeter of the room, leaning on the walls.
“Don’t you need your cane?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“We couldn’t afford a bathroom,” said Oscar apologetically. “But we figure that way we get to see you every now and then.”
“Wouldn’t want you to forget us,” said Caroline. “You’ll come over for meals, too.” She walked with James to the window. “See the rose?” she said. I didn’t know whether she was talking to James or the baby.
“It’s pretty,” said James.
Everything was suddenly pretty: the June light coming through the window, the filmy curtains that, I noticed, matched Caroline’s skirt.
Caroline cupped the baby’s head in her hand.
“Oscar?” she said. He walked to them, and they stood there for a moment, looking out the window.
“Jim,” said Oscar. “Your mother—”
“My mother is dead,” said James.
I wonder now whether they really meant to tell him then. Perhaps Oscar was about to say, Your mother is proud of you, or, Your mother called this afternoon. I didn’t even know whether James had known all along, or whether he’d just figured it out. I’d spent so long wishing they would tell him that I’d never imagined how it would happen.
James looked at Caroline, leaned on the wall for support, and put his hands out for the baby. Caroline lifted Alice to his arms.
Alice — higher in the air than she’d ever been — opened her eyes, looked at James. Caroline put her hand on his hip. “She misses you,” she said.
“She doesn’t know me yet.” He put his nose to the baby’s stomach.
“Your mother misses you, I mean.”
“My mother’s dead,” James repeated.
Caroline moved her hand in a slow circle on his hip. The baby made a noise as if she were about to cry, but she didn’t. “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t miss you,” said Caroline. “Because she does.”
Did she think that would do? Did she think, now it’s over, now he knows and we don’t have to pretend. I did, I admit it. That was easy, I thought.
James said to the baby, “When were you going to tell me?” We were silent. Maybe we thought the baby would answer. She opened her mouth, but it was only to yawn.
“We meant to—” Oscar said.
“When?” said James. “When you figured I’d forgotten about her?” He was still looking at the baby, and Caroline put her hands out.
“Don’t drop—” she said. James lifted Alice higher, as if it hadn’t crossed his mind before, but maybe he would. Maybe he would drop the baby. Instead, he swung her around and set her in her mother’s arms.
“How long have you known?” asked Oscar.
James folded his arms across his chest. “How long has she been dead?”
“You’ve known all along?”
“How long has she been dead? Because I don’t know.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope. “No such patient,” he read. “I wrote this to her two months ago, got it back two weeks later. So then I called, and they said nobody named Alice Sweatt was ever there. So. She’s been dead for—”
“Four months and thirteen days,” said Caroline.