The abortive maneuver could save Hannah, or, it could simply hasten her own fatal hemorrhaging.
Please, dear dear God, don’t make me have to decide. Sweet Jesus, don’t make me have to—because I won’t do it, and then we will both certainly die.
Please father.
Please please father.
Let it all be okay.
Please—I don’t want to hurt anymore, and I don’t want my baby to hurt.
And then, suddenly, it was done.
Once again, crying and screaming for help, Hannah pushed the chubby cord aside and sloughed the thin membrane of mucous from her baby’s face—her daughter’s face—tipping her feet up higher than her little head to clear the mucous. She tapped her tiny wrinkled feet, and then Hannah heard her baby’s throaty, angry cry, and Hannah wiped her baby’s face and body with the sheets and placed her daughter carefully on the blanket in the drawer.
Only a little ways left to go now, Hannah consoled herself, proud of herself for having come so far, but still terrified by the prospect of not being found in time. Perhaps lying here for days while her baby froze from the cold through the open window while mommy maybe lay dead and decomposing (for Hannah was bleeding terribly now).
Hannah groaned for help again, tossing a last bloodied and burning book out the window, thinking she heard sirens wailing in the distance. She tossed the soiled sheets, slick with her own blood, halfway out the window.
And then she remembered the important thing that she had forgotten.
The thing that could kill their baby girl—the little girl whom Hannah had already begun in her mind to call Bridget—if she did not move quickly enough.
Her bloodied hands shaking, Hannah tied one of the shoelaces taken from her boots around the pale rubbery umbilical cord, several inches from Bridget’s navel. Hannah tied the second shoelace a couple of inches closer to herself. Setting her jaw, afraid that something might go wrong, she cut the cord between her and her crying daughter.
It was done, and Bridget was still mewling softly.
Hannah sat back now, gathering herself for the last bloody part of it — her exhausted, bleeding body’s expulsion of the afterbirth.
Hannah Paulson lay there, feeling her heartbeat and the soft gush of blood between her legs that echoed its beat. She was sweating profusely although the wind through the window was chilly and the air smelled of chimney smoke and embers. She covered her baby in the blanket and smoothed the blanket with her bloodied, shaking hand. Reminded by the blood crusted on her hand that she was still bleeding, bleeding far too much, Hannah looked between her legs. She knew instantly that it was a mistake to look when she saw how much blood there was, and her heart immediately pounded harder and black spots buzzed in front of her eyes.
The blood pounded in her ears.
More blood gushed, and pieces of something plopped stringily into the spreading puddle between Hannah’s legs. The pounding in her head and ears was deafening, and now there were things screaming in her ears—sirens like the whole world was on fire; red and blue lights spun crazily across the walls in the room in which she lay dying.
And there was the pounding, louder now; always the pounding — in her ears, between her breasts, and between her blood-soaked thighs.
“Widows are divided into two classes—the bereaved and relieved.”
— Victor Robinson
40
AFTER BIRTH
Hannah blinked a few times, looking around through sleep-encrusted eyes.
She saw she was in a hospital.
She glanced to her right and saw a man asleep in the chair by her bed: Hector Lassiter. He had several days’ growth of gray-white beard. There was a tag clipped to the pocket of his sports jacket that boasted, “I’M A NEW DAD!”
Despite her anger at him, Hannah smiled at Hector’s presumed subterfuge.
As she awakened in the hospital bed, Hannah first wondered whether her baby daughter was okay, and then, more prosaically, what exactly had resulted in their rescue. She groped around in the dark with her fresh-scrubbed right hand—the hand that wasn’t braceleted and riddled with tubes and covered with patches grounding tubes to her flesh—and buzzed for a nurse. While she waited, she said, “Hector? Hector, please wake up.”
He rubbed his pale blue eyes, smiled, stood and then leaned over the bed and hugged her tightly. “Thank Christ,” he whispered in her ear.
“My baby?”
“She’s beautiful. And she’s better than fine.”
Apart from a mild case of jaundice, Hannah’s slightly underweight daughter was perfect, she was told, just as Hector had said. As to their rescue, well, it had been helped along by an irate emergency call from a salesman whose expensive toupee had flared after being struck by a smoldering review copy of Rourke and Evans slender psychological portrait of Papa.
There had also been the flaming blue canopy of the newsstand directly beneath the Paulsons’ apartment, and the long, billowing, bloody sheet twisting from the Paulsons’ open window.
Hector assured her no charges were being contemplated by local police. “Frankly, they’re delighted to be associated with the notoriety generated by ‘saving’ a photogenic beauty like yourself,” Hector said. “Particularly after she successfully executed the breech-birth delivery of her own child. No mean feat, that. Jesus, Hem would have loved you, Hannah. You’re a brick. I was in your apartment to fetch a few things for you. I saw the bloody scene. I’m so, so sorry I didn’t get here sooner. What you endured….”
Hannah squeezed his hand. “You’re here now, and that means the world to me. But….” She confronted Hector then with everything Mary had told her about his fourth wife, Maria.
“Stories…sick suppositions,” Hector said, looking her in the eye. “That said, Maria same as murdered our baby. I hated her when I found out.”
Hannah swallowed hard. Then she imagined this scene: Richard taking their baby out for a drive. The worse for drink, he’d wrap the car around a tree…Richard would walk away unscathed, but their baby would be dead.
She envisioned herself killing Richard for killing their baby. Yes, she could see herself doing that, could see it too vividly.
If Hector had done something to his wife, she understood it. She thought about the woman he’d slept with—Patricia, the scholar. What was there to do about that? Hannah and Hector weren’t lovers and he was a well-known ladies’ man. She sighed and said, “I’m sorry I hit you.”
“Hell, I deserved it.”
“Not really.” She wet her lips, then offered Hector her hand to hold. Brushing his cheek with her other hand, she said, “You are going to shave, aren’t you?”
Hector half-smiled. “First chance I get.”
***
Two days later, Hannah, through Hector, was declining requests for interviews from local television and print journalists.
She was also mulling offers from the promoter-husband of one of her nurses to initiate a dialogue on Hannah’s behalf with a boot company to endorse the efficacy of their shoestrings in assisting emergency deliveries. Hannah had been skeptical, but Hector said, “It’s found money, honey. A one-time opportunity. Best take it. For us fiction writers, any publicity is good publicity. Or so I tell myself. Hem always believed it so.”
A visiting fireman, one those who found Hannah, told her an inspection of the Paulsons’ apartment revealed Hannah’s attempts to phone for help were thwarted by an apparent lightning strike that had occurred sometime after the Paulsons’ departure. Probably during a final spring thunderstorm that swept across southeastern Michigan, before the drought had taken hold. The paramedic found several circuit breakers had been tripped. The phone’s internal components were fused.
Hannah nodded glumly. So much for angry assumptions about absentee, irresponsible fathers-to-be not paying phone bills.
Forty-eight hours after she was admitted, a huge bouquet arrived, but it was not sent by Richard, from whom she had still not heard a word des
pite Hannah’s brother and sister’s grudging efforts to reach him. They seemed to have no trouble finding a certain Idaho widow, however: Mary Hemingway’s card accompanying the floral arrangement was terse, but riddled with exclamation points that Hannah heard in her head Mary insisting to the florist be included:
Sweetest Hannah:
You’re my hero! Papa would be so proud of you! Grace under pressure, indeed! Please call me as soon as you possibly can (collect of course). All my best to you and Bridget (Oh yes, I emphatically approve of the name!)! Love, hugs and kisses,
Your old bird,
Mary
There were other revelations.
So much damage had been done internally to Hannah by little Bridget’s crude field delivery that doctors were uncertain whether Hannah could conceive again. If she could, the possibility and prudence of carrying another baby to term was doubtful.
Hannah bore the news well when the doctor delivered it. Bridget’s conception had been the result of uncharacteristic recklessness on Hannah’s part. She had never really envisioned herself a mother; never craved children. But when the prospect was forced upon her, Hannah had determined to do her best. One child was all she could handle, she told herself. Certainly all that she could afford now. But later that evening, she felt differently.
Hector, sitting vigil by her bed said, “I was an only child. There are worse things to be.”
“I don’t want her to be lonely.”
“Loneliness gave me my voice as a fiction writer,” Hector said.
“I don’t want her to be lonely.”
“There’s always adoption,” Hector said, stroking Hannah’s hair.
Her growing concerns about money finally induced Hannah to sell her story and a single interview to a national newspaper syndicate.
She was also edging closer to attempting to strike a deal with the boot manufacturer to tout their shoelaces. Apart from the money such a sellout would garner, Hannah kidded herself the notoriety might further jump-start her writing career.
Hannah pressed the button to call for her nurse. She wanted to have Bridget brought to her room—just to marvel over her. It had been less than hour since she had last breast-fed her daughter. She had done that several times in front of Hector, unashamed.
Nurses confided to her that when he wasn’t by her bedside, Hector was often in the nursery, sitting in a rocking chair, holding Bridget.
Days passed: Hannah grew stronger. She was able to hold Hector’s arm and roam the halls; to venture down to the cafeteria for meals. Her baby was getting stronger, too.
Hector had promised to pick her up and drive Hannah and her baby home. Hector had insisted he was going to sleep on Hannah and Richard’s couch…still adamant that he meant to watch over the two of them. Stroking sleeping Bridget’s cheek with a big thumb, he had quietly added, “And I can’t go home just now. Hoover’s surveillance of me now is biblical. For the moment, the bastards have lost track of me. I’m savoring the quiet and privacy.”
The bedside phone rang a last time an hour before she was to be released from the hospital.
She sensed motion; saw Hector had returned to her room. She said into the phone, “My friend is here. Can you tell him what you told me? I—I can’t think now.”
Dazed, Hannah passed the phone receiver to Hector who arched an eyebrow as he raised it to his ear.
She said, “Richard is dead.”
“Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.”
— Jessamyn West
41
ALONE TOGETHER
Richard’s death “by misadventure” had done the divorce court’s work, but Hannah nevertheless initiated the steps necessary to revert to her maiden name, as well as to have the surname ‘MacArthur’ assigned to her daughter.
The Idaho detectives requested copies of the photographs of the man that Hannah and, eventually Richard, came to believe was following them around Idaho. Hannah said to Hector, “The film I took—the police may want it.”
Hector, still trying to decide how to tell Hannah all he knew about that, said, “I’ll mail ’em the glossies if you insist. But I already know who that fella is.”
“Who?”
“A private detective. At least what passes for that sorry-ass trade in Idaho. He’s a bottom-feeder. All private eyes are. Forget what you’ve seen in movies or read in books. They’re hired scum.”
“Hired by whom?”
Hector shrugged, not prepared to tell her it was Mary. “That I couldn’t find out and not for lack of trying.” As a dodge, he held up his hand, still a bit bruised from beating on Creedy. “The shamus’s name is Harry Jordan.”
Hannah’s blood-pressure spiked; she had this ringing in her ears…saw spots. Oh my God, what have I done? And did Hector know she had hired this Jordan to follow him and way kindly lying? If he did, it was all over…. Desolation. How could he ever forgive her?
Hector’s blue eyes narrowed. He said, “Christ, kid, you okay? Should I get the doctor?”
Hannah shook her head, feeling sick to her stomach, wondering how much her stupid inspiration had maybe cost her with this man. She said, “No, just a little dizzy. It’s passing.”
She bit her tongue until it hurt. God, what an idiot she was! After all, Jordan was the only private eye in the local yellow pages. She’d gone and hired the very Idaho flatfoot who somebody else had hired to follow Richard and her. The deal was cut over the phone and she paid by wire.
Brilliant.
If she’d just seen him, face-to-face….
Jordan must have had a good laugh at her expense. Well, she’d sever that relationship, now. Never call Jordan back; never make contact. Maybe later, if there was some kind of governing authority over private detectives, she’d filed a complaint about Jordan’s deplorable ethics.
She’d keep what she’d done from Hector; chances were he’d never find out she had also hired Jordan. If he did, and then learned she’d hired him to snoop around after Hector as well as Richard? Catastrophe.
As the Idaho police pressed ahead, there was also the matter of the Paulson “estate.”
The late-Mr. Paulson’s first wife was dead and the second and third “Mrs. Paulson” had remarried. Hannah and Bridget would likely split any inheritance—if there was indeed anything to be had—with Richard’s estranged son.
Presuming Richard hadn’t disinherited his namesake in some yet-to-be-found will.
That was presuming Richard hadn’t died intestate, and, if not, that he had revised his will after marrying Hannah.
Early prospects weren’t reassuring: Richard had made no funeral arrangements—never purchased any burial plots, and his other, living ex-wives expressed little concern to Hannah regarding what was to be done with Richard Paulson’s body.
In the course of the next two weeks, Hannah spoke twice to Mary: Once when the elder widow called to express her condolences to Hannah; once more when she offered Hannah two plane tickets and a bedroom in her Ketchum home so they could commence Hannah’s authorized biography of Mary.
Hector tried again to dissuade her from writing the book. Hannah dug in her heels. Hector said, “If you’re going to pursue this goddamn thing, you’re going to need someone watching you. I mean, until this other dark stuff is sorted out.”
***
Weeks later, Hannah was wrapping up the last of the tedious logistics necessary to close out the lingering paper trails of Richard Paulson’s life. Hannah arranged to buy a single plot in the Ketchum Cemetery for considerably more than 1961’s going rate of $25. Richard was to be cremated and buried in an annex several dozens of yards distant from his Papa’s “place of rest.”
Because there was only an urn to bury, Richard’s internment also came cheaply. They dug the professor’s grave with posthole diggers.
Surprised by her own single
-minded attachment, Hannah nursed and cradled and cooed to her baby, putting her down rarely and reluctantly—only when Bridget slept, and she had the time to work on her own stories and to resume a milder form of her pre-pregnancy exercise regimen.
Physical exertion made Hannah sometimes tired enough to sleep without dreams of Richard and strangely still bodies of water, but mostly it made her feel thin: A farewell to swollen fingers and ankles, morning sickness, backaches, overactive kidneys, ugly smocks, and elastic waistbands.
Always at the back of her mind was the question of Papa and his death—this prospect of contributing to his legend and the fabric of Hem’s literary legacy with her own book that might reshape the way the world regarded Hemingway.
She thought of things Richard had said when building his case against Mary…things Hannah had drawn out from Hector in unguarded moments.
In her mind, her visualization of the crime scene stubbornly took root:
An entryway peppered with the brains, blood, teeth and powder-burned bone shards of America’s greatest writer.
But no true inquest.
Closed autopsy reports.
No paraffin tests performed on Mary’s aged hands.
Mary, alone in the house with Hem at the time of the shooting.
The remains, apart from the corpse, were quickly cleaned up by friends and burned. The expunging of any evidence of the death was so swift and thorough that Papa’s sister, Sunny, marveled that she could find no evidence of the carnage that had stained the foyer just hours before her arrival.
The weapon was destroyed before it could become a morbid souvenir.
That woman and that sad crazy old man, alone together in that concrete bunker.
As the rain drifted from a downpour to drizzle, Hannah dialed Mary’s number.
The elder widow eventually said, “So, when do we get down to it?”
“Right away,” Hannah said. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Print the Legend: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 29