The Circle Game

by Tanya Nichols

  “Oh, come on, she’ll be okay.”

  “No, not today. Like I said, I’ve got a lot going on, and I need to work.” It was tempting to avoid dealing with the message from Julie Randall. But she was the one that had sent the first letter, and she needed to plan her next move.

  “Alright, go on, be responsible.”

  “Rain check,” she said, then added “since it’s raining.”

  “No problem,” he answered, drumming his fingers on the table, pa dump um, a jab of comedy backbeat with a teasing grin.

  “You know what we could do for a bit of fun, if you don’t mind. On the way back, will you take me by that grave, the one that’s a bed? I’d like to see it. What’s a few more minutes?”

  “Sure, I’ll take you there. If I can find it; it’s been years.” He raised a finger to the waitress, signaling her to bring the check.

  Twelve

  1968

  Juicy looked down into the crib and let the tears roll down her cheeks. How could she have let this happen? Her baby’s right eye was swollen and purple, and the right side of her head was covered with a large gauze bandage. Her little cheek had scratches and abrasions, freshly cleaned and shiny with some antibacterial ointment. The worst thing was her tiny right arm sealed in a plaster cast, bound with a sling to keep her from flailing it about. She slept now, her breathing heavy from exhaustion and probably pain medication, but Juicy remembered how she had screamed in agony, how she’d picked her injured baby up so fast she’d probably hurt her even more, the dirt and blood that stuck to her scalp. What kind of mother lets her baby end up like this? Mrs. Fiero was right. It was her fault.

  A nurse remained in the room with her, silently writing notes in a chart. Juicy could tell by the way the woman peered over at her that she blamed her, too. The nurse would know this was all Juicy’s fault and that she was giving her baby away to someone who deserved to be a mother. Juicy could feel the shifting eyes that studied her from head to toe before looking away and the flash of a phony smile.

  “Will she be okay?” Juicy finally asked. “I mean, her head is hurt. Is that serious?”

  The nurse turned away from her paperwork and moved alongside Juicy. “The doctor seems to think she’ll heal quickly. You know, those little bodies can handle more than we think they can. They’re small, but they’re strong and resilient.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Juicy whispered, stroking her baby’s chubby leg. “I’m so sorry. For everything.” She looked at the nurse closely, her eyes pleading for mercy, though she herself didn’t feel she deserved the kindness she sought. “Can I hold her? Please, just for a moment. Please. I won’t hurt her.”

  “She’s very tender, but you know that.” She looked toward the door, as if she expected someone to walk in. “Okay, what I want you to do is sit in this chair.” She nodded toward the green vinyl chair in the corner. “I’ll hand her to you. You don’t seem too steady on your feet, and I’d hate for you to fall down with her in your arms.”

  Juicy sat and watched the young nurse gently lift the sleeping child from her bed and hand her over to her waiting arms. Her body was warm and heavy with sound sleep. She smelled different, the scent of Phisohex instead of Baby Magic drifting from her head. Juicy closed her eyes and tried to take in every detail of her daughter, imagining her in six months, six years, going to school, riding a bike, falling down and running to her with teary eyes and skinned knees. She tried to give her all the love in one moment that she would need a lifetime to give. She wanted her to have a life filled with birthday parties, swing sets, Barbies, Easter dresses in the spring, and mugs of hot chocolate on cold winter nights. She wanted her baby to have two parents that loved and cared for her as much as Juicy did right now, but parents that could give her things Juicy could not, parents that could pamper and spoil their baby in every way. God knows she wanted to do that herself, but that vicious social worker was right. She would probably just end up screwing this little girl’s life up, too, like she had her own. She was a loser, a monster, a fuck up. She had shoved her baby under a table while she screwed a bar full of disgusting men, and why? Because her boyfriend told her to. Because he stole a little bit of money from his friends and he’d rather give her up than face their wrath. Her life had been shattered for a measly hundred and fifty-five dollars. She didn’t deserve to be loved by this child, or anyone, for that matter.

  Juicy rocked back and forth in the stiff chair and gently placed her lips onto Ginny’s soft hair. Little curls wisped around her ears and at the nape of her neck. “You’re too beautiful for me,” she whispered, breathing in the scent of the sleeping child. “I’m going to give you something better than me.” She kissed her small forehead and lightly touched her soft skin, running her fingertip down her nose. The baby stirred and let out a little cry. “Shhhhh,” she said. “Sleep, little Baby Girl. Sleep.”

  Tears welled in Juicy’s eyes and one spilled onto the baby’s head. “Don’t ever think I didn’t love you, please. I do love you. I do.” Juicy rested her cheek lightly against the baby’s forehead and closed her eyes again. “I’ll never forget you, Sweet Ginny. I’ll never forget you.” For a long time, she quietly rocked and held her, careful not to hold her daughter too tightly for fear of hurting her any more than she already was. She folded Ginny’s tiny fingers around her index finger and swore she’d remember the way that felt and looked for the rest of her life.

  “Ma’am, she really should be back in her bed.” The nurse touched Juicy on the arm and bent close to her. “Why don’t I take her from you now?” She slowly slid her hands under the baby’s neck and bottom and lifted her out of Juicy’s arms. “Here we go, Angel, back to bed.”

  Juicy sat in the chair, her empty arms frozen in the curve of a sleeping baby. She wept silently, but her arms would not move. She could not lift a hand to wipe the tears or reach for a tissue. The tears ran down her cheek, and her chest heaved and shook uncontrollably as snot ran from her nose and onto her lips. Still, she could not move her trembling hands. The nurse came to her, placed one arm around her shoulder and another firmly on her forearm. “Come on, Honey. She’ll be fine. You need to take care of yourself now.” She guided Juicy up from the chair and placed tissues in her hands, then physically lifted the weeping woman’s hands to her face to wipe away her tears. The kind nurse gripped Juicy’s arm, keeping her steady, keeping her upright and connected to another human being.

  Slowly, Juicy regained some control and the nurse let go of her, allowing her to stand on her own. Juicy moved close to the crib, placed one hand on her baby’s chest and said one last time, “I love you, Baby Girl. Good-bye for now.”

  Thirteen

  2005

  Bernie leaned back in her chair and watched sheets of rain lash against her window. The letter from Julie Randall rested on top of the Luna file. She needed to put the intriguing letter and the lunch she enjoyed with Don out of her mind and get to work. It was time to focus on building a list of probing questions for Thursday’s depositions, not wallow in daydreams and fantasies.

  The downpour outside offered a few minutes of distraction to allow everything from the day to settle and dissipate. For years, the most exciting things in her life were the battles of her clients, taking on their struggles as her own. She’d worked hard to keep a safe distance from the dangers of intimacy. Now, it seemed the threads of her carefully stitched cocoon were being stretched to the limit. Any minute now, one weak spot would snap and the whole thing would unravel and fall apart. There she’d be, naked to the world. Everyone would know she was just as scared and lonely as they were.

  It seemed ironic that Julie Randall and Don should both drop into her life at the same time, the same day, even. It was too much, she reasoned, but she wasn’t ready to turn either one away. Julie Randall was still a mystery, and the more she learned of Don Fielding, the more she wanted to know. The only thing to do was turn the page, keep digging at what was and what might be. A flash of lightning lit the dark sky, thun
dering loudly.

  Don had inched his small truck through the gloomy cemetery then parked along the curb next to the old concrete bed, its pillow and comforter immune to the pounding rain and howling wind. It stood solid and cold, an image of rest in a garden of headstones and brass name plates.

  “It’s just like I pictured it,” Bernie said.

  “It’s creepy, isn’t it?” Don said.

  “I don’t know. I guess if I wanted to be buried, I might like the idea of having some unique marker, but I don’t like graves. I want to be cremated.”

  “Me too. Or just tossed in a hole, earth to earth,” he said.

  “You mean dust to dust.”

  “Yeah, sort of, but I like the idea of turning into rich dark soil, the kind that grows good tomatoes. People are always getting rid of dust.”

  “Hmmm. I never thought of it that way. I think you’re right. Earth to earth.”

  There was no witty banter, and when they spoke, they spoke in hushed tones, respectful of the company of the dead. Inside the small cab, the windshield wipers chided their idle time, swoosh . . . slap . . . swoosh . . . slap, while the rhythm of raindrops and a hum of the engine filled in a backbeat. For a long while, they sat quietly, almost reverently.

  Turning into garden soil. Bernie liked that. Her father liked to garden. He took a week off in the spring, her spring break, and together they would plant zucchini, tomatoes, bell peppers, and eggplant. All summer, her mother would plan meals around their homegrown vegetables. She would send Bernie out to the garden with a basket and tell her to pick their dinner. From that basket would come pots of Ratatouille, spaghetti, sliced tomato sandwiches, and fresh salsa. It was all delicious. She wished her mom and dad could have turned to earth. They both would have liked that. She wished they were at home eating a plate of ratatouille right now.

  It was the mother she didn’t know, the one who wrote to her on pretty pink stationary, that confounded her. How different her life would have been if only Julie had not given her away. After years of blaming an unknown woman for her traumatic childhood, Bernie realized that her simple criticism might be faulty. That version of truth was now muddied with words on pink paper. Julie was out there, a real person, a woman who collected bridge tolls, a mother to two other people. Bernie bit her lower lip as she gazed out at the steady rain pelting rows of headstones and monuments. She couldn’t help but think of her first ride in a limousine, a slow drive to a different cemetery twenty-five years earlier.

  Staring out the window at the field of buried lives, dozens of dead mothers and fathers, Bernie wished she could talk to Don about her struggling emotions. She wanted to hear what he thought of her “if not for her” reasoning and the potential to actually meet her birth mother. Would meeting Julie Randall be opening a Pandora’s Box of trouble, or would Bernie get insight that would choke out some of those burning embers? Maybe Don would see things only an outsider can see.

  * * * *

  Crystal knocked on the door as she walked in, disrupting Bernie’s daydream. “I’m getting ready to go, thought I’d better check if you need anything.”

  “Oh, no. I’m set.” She tapped the stack of files in front of her and slipped the letter into her desk drawer. “Did you get a court reporter for tomorrow?”

  “Yes. I confirmed with everybody; they’ll be here at 10:00.”

  “Good job.” Bernie knew she didn’t even have to ask if Crystal had done these things. It would always be done before Bernie ever thought of it. But this was their ritual at the end of each day, and this was the kind of comfort that kept Bernie’s world in order, as she liked it to be.

  “Are you going to work late here or take that stuff home?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think I’ll stick around for a bit, wait for traffic to die down.”

  “Are you sure you don’t need anything? I’m not in any hurry tonight.”

  Crystal wanted to talk to her, to get her boss to confide in her and share details hinted at by the confidential letter. Bernie knew that. She knew Crystal wanted to know about Julie Randall, the lies, the truth, or whatever the story was. But to tell Crystal now would be to snip that last thread, and she wasn’t ready to be standing emotionally naked in her office on a dreary rainy night. In time, she thought, in time. But not now, not tonight. “Nope, I’m pretty well set. You go on home.”

  “Okay. Well, good night then. Don’t forget to set the alarm.”

  Bernie sat and listened to the storm rumbling outside, gusts of wind and steady rain. Occasionally, a roll of thunder would sound in the distance. This was her favorite kind of storm, loud and full of electricity and power. Even as a child, she wasn’t afraid of the howling wind and shafts of lightning. She would wrap a blanket around her shoulders and lie down next to the sliding glass door to see how black the sky could be, waiting for a flash of light. Her mother used to tell her she was a natural-born weather girl, but Bernie knew even then that she wasn’t perky enough for that job. She picked up a pen to draft an outline of questions for the following day just as a loud crack of thunder rumbled through the house, followed by a sudden blackness.

  “Shit,” she said. She sat motionless for a moment, waiting to see if it was a blip of some kind, a dark pause to be followed by a sudden flash of light and buzzing electronics. But the room remained pitch black, no light anywhere, the constant rain the only sound. There was no telling how long it would take PG&E to get the lights back on.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” she said again, realizing the situation was far beyond her control. The universe was clearly making all decisions for her these days. No work would be done in a cold, dark office; she had to go home. Even if there was no power at her house, there she had candles and a fireplace. Bernie reached down and fumbled for her purse and keys, wishing she kept a flashlight in her desk instead of in the supply room. She pulled her jacket on and felt for the file she was working on, but opted to leave it behind. She could prepare for a driver deposition blindfolded, which it seemed she was. She inched her way out from behind her desk and moved slowly toward the door.

  Bernie closed her eyes to navigate the dark office, measuring her steps, estimating the distance between her stretched-out arms and the wall, the door, the fragile lamp on the end table in the waiting area. She was comfortable in the self-inflicted blindness. Even as a child, when a full bladder woke her from her dreams, she would slowly inch her way down the dark hallway with her eyes tightly closed to the darkness of night. Only when her hands could feel the doorway and then the light switch would she open them to the light.

  She opened the front door and her eyes as she stepped out onto the porch where sheets of rain blew under the shelter and stung her skin. She turned and locked the door and realized she had not set the alarm. How could she in the dark? She thought of giving it a try, feeling the numbers, her fingers moving rapidly and automatically without the need of sight, but the cold wind was slicing through her; she just wanted to get home. The darned thing probably didn’t work in a power outage anyway, not to mention that it was too cold and wet for thieves and prowlers to be scurrying about. “Keep an eye on things, Mrs. Gordon,” she called from the bottom step, and with her head down and her coat pulled tightly around her, she hurried to her car as fast as she could.

  The steady stream of headlights splashed off the roadways as traffic stalled and stopped at every intersection where drivers struggled to take their turns without the aid of signal lights. Left to their own will, there was uncertainty and hesitation about when to move forward, when to yield. The rain had eased off and now fell only lightly, but the city was waterlogged after the day of cloud bursts and downpours. Bernie listened to the slapping windshield wipers and again thought of Don and their visit to a stranger’s grave, a concrete bed with ruffles and a pillow for headstone. That man is entirely comfortable in his skin, she thought. Why his wife divorced him, Bernie could not begin to imagine. “Mrs. Fielding,” she said to no one, “you must have been crazy to let that one
get away.” She must have found someone else, Bernie reasoned. Don was smart, creative, gentle, and kind. It had to be the wife. No doubt she broke his heart.

  It wasn’t a Friday, but on such a black and bitter night, Bernie felt compelled to drive to the Nazareth House and the comfort of Noni, even if it was a brief visit. Guilt consumed her. She had stayed away from the old folks’ residence for nearly three weeks. Of course, she had called, complained to her grandmother about an intense workload, and made up a story about a terrible head cold that she didn’t want to share. But the truth was she didn’t want to talk about Julie Randall or lie about the letter she had sent or the one she carried home in her purse. The trip to the cemetery had reminded her of how much Noni had given up for her, how much she had now because of her grandmother’s endless hovering. Two blocks away, there was electricity; the traffic signal blinked from green to yellow to red, and beyond that the mission-style residence seemed to glow in the night.

  Sister Rose was in her office and Bernie nodded to her as she passed the open door.

  “Bernadette,” Sister Rose called. “Can I speak with you for a moment?”

  Bernie turned back at the sound of her name and leaned into the administrator’s doorway. “Hi Sister Rose.”

  “Good evening, Bernadette. Come in and sit down, please.” She stood and motioned toward a rust-colored Queen Anne chair near her desk.

  “I’d better take my coat off; it’s pretty wet out there.”

  “Yes, I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “I was on my way home and thought I’d check in on my grandmother. See if she was okay in this storm.” Sitting in the small office, faced with a large crucifix on the wall and a statue of Mary on the desk, reminded Bernie of her days at Saint Helen’s School. She had given up on church years ago, but the rituals, prayers, smells, and symbols were etched in her brain forever. Noni had made sure of that.