The Sabbathday River

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  It was particularly cruel, Heather would think much later, that this vision of herself—alone and alert even as the world was sleeping—had made her feel as if she saw things clearly, as if she were somehow, finally, in control. Afterward, she would think of this moment only with shame, for her presumption. By then, the enormity of her ignorance, the knowledge of her ignorance, was crushing.

  Of her dead grandmother and unhappy child she was unaware, of course—how, from where she crouched, at the bottom of the long hill and the edge of the dark pond, could she have known of them?—though she would make those discoveries soon enough. Nor could she know that eight months hence she would be here again, in this precise place, and even, almost, in this same posture, squatted in pain and wrung with misery. And as to the other thing—her conceit, naive and arrogant, that she was utterly alone on this bleak point of the deserted earth? The truth is, Heather could not have been more wrong about that, either.

  Part 3

  The Second Baby

  If you drained the ponds

  in your back yards

  you’d find more than you bargained for.

  —Peter Fallon, “If Luck Were Corn”

  Chapter 19

  A WorJ with Heather

  JUST OVER NINE MONTHS LATER, THEY LED HER into the bland and undersized interview room down the hall from Nelson Erroll’s office.

  They had come for her in the late afternoon, in three cars following one another up the little lane of Sabbath Creek Road, slowly, sturdy vehicles painted dark blue with matching flashers turned off. She had looked out the window to see them come, not really surprised, but not afraid, either, because it had not occurred to her what might actually be about to happen. Polly was next door in the living room, playing with cards by smearing them about over the couch and turning them over, one by one. She had found the cards earlier in the week, in one of Pick’s drawers, and had been instantly enthralled, particularly with the kings and queens. Heather half listened to her, and half to the radio, which said the fair weather was likely to hang on for a bit, good for the homecoming football game in Hanover, where the station was located.

  She was cooking, the first time in weeks she’d felt up to it. There were two chickens nearly done in the oven and a pot of potatoes boiling on the stove for Polly, who loved them mashed, and apples cut up in a bowl and covered with brown and white sugar, which was about all she could remember of how Pick had made Brown Betty. She felt good. After months, it seemed, of feeling terrible, one way or another, she had finally made her way through to this afternoon when she could stand in her own kitchen and feel, if not strong, then at least not unwell, and, if not happy, then at least not cataclysmically bereft. She heard Polly interrupt her baby solitaire with a sputter of discomfort. She needed a change, though she hated to be changed and tended not to complain until the problem was unignorable. From the living room she heard her daughter’s single word: “Mama!” Heather smiled. She put the lid on the pot and lowered the heat under the simmering potatoes. Then she heard cars on the lane.

  Now Polly was calling again. Not scared, really—she was too fascinated by human faces to be scared easily—but concerned. The police station wasn’t big; she had driven past it all her life and knew it was only the size of a ranch house, but she hadn’t ever been inside and she didn’t know where Polly was. The cinder blocks let sound in, though it was muffled. She could have been on the other side of the wall.

  “What happened to my daughter?” Heather said.

  The man, Robert Charter, was writing something on lined sheets in an open folder. He didn’t answer her, and some instinctive thing made her not ask again.

  The clock showed it was nearly six. Polly hadn’t eaten, of course. They hadn’t even let her bring food from home. They’d only turned off the stove and left it all there, and the chickens would probably be dried out by the time she got home, and the potatoes stuck like glue to the pot. Charter frowned down at what he had written. Then he looked up at her.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, what happened to my daughter?”

  He seemed to give this an inappropriate amount of consideration. Then he sighed. “Well, frankly, Miss Pratt, that’s exactly what we’re hoping you can tell us.”

  She stared at him. From beyond the cinder-block wall, Polly burst into a wail. Heather leaped to her feet. “Let me see her.”

  “Officer Franks is with Polly,” Charter said calmly. “Lucy has two kids of her own. She brought some food in for Polly earlier. She knows what kids like; not to worry.” He actually smiled. “I’m glad you could come down, Miss Pratt. I’ve been wanting a word with you. Appreciate your coming in voluntarily.”

  “Voluntarily?” said Heather. “There were three police cars at my house. You said if I didn’t come—”

  “But you did,” he said simply. “And voluntarily, as I said. And I appreciate it, as I also said.”

  “So I could leave,” Heather said, as if it were a question.

  “But naturally. Only then we’d have to go right back and invite you to come in again. Better to just have our talk now, wouldn’t it be? Then we can all move on.”

  “I don’t know why you want to talk to me,” she said plainly. “I’m just telling you.”

  He studied her. It was remarkable, the degree of blankness he managed. She could read nothing from him, which scared her. But if he was really willing to just say whatever it was he seemed to want to say, then it was worthwhile for her just to listen to it now.

  “All right,” Charter said. Then he went blank again.

  She thought he was very ugly. Not just without beauty, the way nearly all men—all but Ashley—were without beauty, the way men like Stephen Trask were fine, plain, unobjectionable but without beauty. She thought he was actively, strenuously ugly, with his florid face and ridged, combed-over gray hair. He sat with his stumpy fingers splayed on the tabletop, a thick gold ring on the left ring finger, a chunky gold school ring on the right. She frowned at the school ring. She had always thought they were stupid things.

  “So, fine,” Heather prompted at last. “Say your piece. Then I have to get home.”

  He considered her for a minute before speaking. “Tell you what. I’ll just get a little background first, okay? Like your name. Full name.”

  Heather Ruth Pratt, she told him. The clock said ten past six.

  “And date of birth?”

  “May 1, 1965.”

  He looked down at the page. “Your employment.”

  “I work for Naomi Roth’s collective. It’s called Flourish. I make samplers for her, but I can work at home, too.”

  “And did you have any other employment before that?”

  She hesitated. “Well, I worked for Stephen Trask at the sports center for a few months.”

  “About five months, that would be?”

  She stared at him. “If you know, how come you’re asking me?”

  Charter smiled, as if this were funny. Then he put down his pen. “Shortly after you began working for Mr. Trask, you made the acquaintance of a married man named Ashley Deacon. You pursued him and began a sexual relationship with him. You became pregnant. You were proud of your pregnancy, even though it was the result of an adulterous affair. In fact, it’s generally felt that you flaunted this pregnancy. In any case, you neither hid it nor denied it. You had the child in”—he flipped over the slender top file to a somewhat thicker file beneath, opened it and rummaged, and read—“August of 1984. Your daughter Polly. You flaunted the child, too. You went up on the porch over at Tom and Whit’s and opened up your shirt and started to breast-feed, and you continued to do so even after people asked you to stop. You are hardly demure, Miss Pratt.”

  Heather, struck dumb, could only gape at him.

  “Shortly after your daughter’s birth you recommenced your affair with Mr. Deacon, although by now he had also begun a family with his wife.” Charter paused. “Was that smart?”

  “I want to go,”
Heather managed. “I don’t have to listen to this!”

  “Is any of it untrue?” he asked, looking concerned. “Are my facts wrong?”

  “Why am I here?” she shouted.

  “To help me,” he said. “I need your help.”

  For an instant, her panic abated. He did look concerned, even a little needy.

  “What help?” she asked. “About what? You obviously know all about me already. What else do you want to know?”

  Charter reached up to his own head, patting the wave of hair thoughtfully. “About the baby,” he said evenly. “Tell me about the baby.”

  “What?” Heather nearly shouted. “She’s not even a baby anymore. She’s fourteen months old.” A thought occurred to her. “Is this, like, a child-abuse thing? Did someone tell you I’m not a good mother or something? Because I am a good mother. I’d like to know who said that!”

  “No one has said you aren’t a good mother, Heather.” Charter’s voice was soothing. “In fact, people have gone out of their way to tell me what a good mother you are.”

  “People? What, are you doing a survey or something? On what kind of a mother I am? What kind of detective are you, anyway?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I’m no kind of a detective. I’m a district attorney. I work in Peytonville. I’m just here to find out about the baby.”

  Heather went chill. She had finally realized what this might mean.

  “The baby,” she said, her voice hushed. “You mean that baby Naomi found.” She waited for his confirming nod, then permitted herself a small moment of relief. “But, Mr. Charter, I don’t know anything about that baby.”

  He nodded, as if he’d been expecting these very words. “Then you’re denying you gave birth to that baby. The one Naomi Roth found in the river.”

  “Well, of course I am. Of course I am!”

  He wrote something down. She tried to make out what it was, but he flipped the folder over it. Then he looked up again. “But let me get this straight. You’re not denying that you had another baby. Not your daughter Polly. A second baby.”

  She tried to keep her face still. “I do deny that, yes.”

  And why shouldn’t she? What business was it of his? It’s not as if he could change anything.

  “You absolutely deny it.” He waited, intent.

  The clock said six-thirty.

  “Let’s go back,” he said, resuming his easy tone. He never took his eyes off Heather. “Let’s talk about Ashley, all right?”

  “Will it get me out of here faster?”

  “Very probably. Did Ashley make it clear to you that he was married?”

  “He never lied to me,” Heather said, since she still felt that to be true.

  “But that didn’t stop you from pursuing him.”

  “I didn’t pursue him,” she said hotly. “We fell in love. We both did.”

  “You no more than him?”

  Heather shrugged.

  “Who initiated sex?” He looked at his hand as he wrote, not at her.

  “We made love,” Heather said with strained dignity.

  “In his car,” Charter noted.

  And other places, she started to say, but there was only the mill attic, and Heather didn’t like to remember that time. Certainly she didn’t want to talk about it now.

  “And what contraceptive were you using?”

  “Obviously,” she said tightly, “we weren’t using any.”

  “And whose idea was that?”

  She paused to collect her thoughts. “Well, we were both happy about the … about me having Polly, if that’s what you’re implying.”

  He put down his pen. He looked affronted. “But I’m not implying anything, Miss Pratt. That’s not my job, either here or in court. I just have questions and I think you might have answers, that’s all. So I ask and you answer, and then everybody can leave. Is that all right with you?”

  “Fine,” said Heather. “You want to know all about my love life, you ask any question you want. But I don’t know anything about that baby, so if you’re trying to find out about it, you’re going to be pretty mad about wasting your time with me.”

  “Well, that’s all right.” Charter sighed. “Don’t you worry about that. Now tell me, was Ashley supportive of your pregnancy?”

  “Of course. He saw how happy I was, and that made him happy, too.”

  “So the idea of having children by his wife and his mistress born within a week of each other, that didn’t seem to bother him, then.”

  “You’d have to ask him,” Heather said evenly.

  Charter went to his thick folder and dug in. Delicately, he searched. There were many sheets of yellow paper. Heather, realization dawning on her, looked on in horror. Pages of words, about her and Ashley. People who had sat and talked about her, about her personal things, to this ugly man.

  “Yes,” he said, evidently confirming his own memories. “‘Sure it bothered me. But I couldn’t do anything about it. And it was up to her. If she’d gotten rid of it I would have been happy, but I wasn’t going to make a big thing.’”

  Heather couldn’t speak. Her eyes were wet suddenly, and uselessly she willed herself not to cry.

  “I’ve upset you,” Charter observed. “I am sorry.”

  Heather said nothing.

  “Not very gentlemanly, was he?”

  Fuck you, she thought, surprising herself.

  “Still, he was more than willing to go on having sex with you, anyway. A lot of men probably wouldn’t even have done that.”

  Heather wept. She couldn’t help that. But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of answering him.

  “And when the baby was born, was he there? Oh no …” He consulted the same papers, flipped a page ahead. “His own son had been born a week earlier. It would have been hard for him to get away, I suppose. But surely he contributed to Polly’s upkeep? Even if he couldn’t spare time away from the wife, he would surely have given you some money to help out. Just,” Charter said, “to demonstrate his responsibility.”

  “No money,” Heather managed. “I wouldn’t have asked.”

  “Just to demonstrate … his paternity, then.”

  Through her tears, she seethed. “Ashley knew he was the father.”

  “Did he?”

  From afar, Polly wailed. Heather leaped to her feet. “Give me my daughter!”

  “No,” Charter said simply. “Not right now.”

  “Right now!” Heather screamed. “Right now!”

  He sat, impassive.

  “Polly is crying.” She waited for him to deny this, but he didn’t.

  “Nonetheless, Lucy can take care of her. I’m sure we won’t be much longer.”

  This gave her pause. She felt this bright thing—home, her own child in her own arms—danghng before her. Anything was worth that. Even this. She glanced at the clock. It was seven o’clock. Polly’s bedtime was seven-thirty. She could still make it back to the safety of her own routine.

  “All right.” She breathed deeply.

  “Five months after your daughter’s birth, you and Mr. Deacon were having sex in his car in the woods near the Sabbathday River. His wife and some of her friends followed you and confronted you. You fled the scene—”

  “Fled the scene?” she asked incredulously. “I left. With Ashley.”

  “Yes. Shortly thereafter, he terminated your association and returned to his wife. Sue Deacon has just had a second baby. Maybe you knew.”

  Heather nodded, though she hadn’t heard. She’d seen Sue once, over the summer, from her car. She’d known Sue was pregnant.

  “And you, by coincidence, were also pregnant.”

  “No,” Heather said. She shook her head once, twice. Then she said it again. “No.”

  “You were pregnant a second time, with Ashley’s child.”

  “No.”

  “Conceived at the end of your affair. Perhaps even at your last sexual contact with him.”

  “I
said no. How many times?”

  “This time, it seems to me, you wouldn’t have been so happy about being pregnant. Your boyfriend had gone back to his wife. Your grandmother, I understand, had passed away. You were all alone, and you were pregnant.”

  “This is completely untrue.” She gave a choked laugh.

  “This time you did not flaunt your pregnancy. You didn’t tell anybody about your pregnancy. Not even the father of the child. Conversely, you did not choose to terminate your pregnancy. May I ask why not?”

  “Because there wasn’t one,” she said tightly. “I wasn’t.”

  “You did not seek medical help. The midwife who delivered your daughter did not hear from you. Over these past few months you stayed mostly at home, and when you went out you wore large shirts and sweaters, even in the heat.” He paused, and even smiled. “That must have been uncomfortable!”

  “I never lost the weight,” she said, her voice ragged. “From Polly. I never got it off. And I … I’m still nursing my daughter. You know, not all the time, but once or twice a day. It keeps you fat. I read that.”

  “Really,” Charter said. “I didn’t know that.”

  They looked at each other. Heather was starting to get her face under control, though it stung a bit.

  “Well, I must say, you don’t look fat to me,” he offered.

  “I’ve … I had the stomach flu last week. I didn’t eat for a few days. And I threw up,” she added.

  “How awful for you,” he said dryly. “And still you didn’t call the doctor?”

  “Well, no. It was only a stomach flu.”

  She looked up at the clock. Polly would not make her bedtime.

  “Would you like to see a doctor now?” Charter said. His voice was quiet but his tone intent. Very carefully, Heather shook her head. “But why not? Stomach flus can be very unpleasant.”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  “And Polly didn’t catch your flu?”

  “No.” She smiled brightly. “Lucky.”

  “Very.” He frowned down at his hands. “Oh no, Miss Pratt. How long are we going to go on like this? How much time are we going to waste?”