Detour

by James Siegel

  Paul nodded.

  “Okay. When the doctor examined her today, I didn’t see it. I told myself maybe you’re wrong, maybe you didn’t really see a beauty mark before. It was dark in the room. Maybe it was a speck of dirt, a smudge. Only . . . all day today I was thinking that she smelled different than she did before.”

  “Honey . . .”

  “Listen to me. Please.” She squeezed his hands, as if she were trying to physically press her belief into him, as if it were something that could be caught, like a disease. Only he didn’t want her disease. He wanted her to stop this, to go back to being the ecstatic new mother who woke up in the middle of the night just so she could gaze at her daughter. “Joelle had this . . . I don’t know, musky smell. She had it when we picked her up at the orphanage, and she had it here. She stopped having it when Galina brought her back.”

  “Okay. Why didn’t you say anything then?”

  “Because I knew you’d think I was crazy. Just like you’re thinking now. I told myself I was crazy. But I didn’t see the beauty mark today. So maybe I’m not.”

  “Why would she switch babies, Joanna? Why? For what earthly reason?” Paul was trying to make her see how silly this all was. Belief was immune to logic; it operated by its own laws. And this scared him, if only because there was a tiny part of him that was, well . . . starting to listen to her. The fact was, Joelle had smelled a little musky. Now that Joanna had mentioned it, okay, yes, she had.

  “I don’t know why she’d switch babies, Paul. Maybe because of our fight.”

  “What fight? You mean about putting her to sleep?”

  Joanna nodded.

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Okay, it’s ridiculous. I’m ridiculous. I just think that two days from now we’re going to be leaving this country with the wrong baby. Then it’ll be too late.”

  “What do you want me to do, Joanna? Even if I believed you. What would I tell the police? What? That I know we apologized to them for insisting our daughter had been kidnapped, but guess what, now we think she was switched ?”

  “We can go back to Santa Regina,” Joanna said. “We can have them check her out for us.”

  “And what do you think María would say about that? How stable would she think we are? How much would she want us to have one of her babies? Nothing’s final yet, Joanna. They can still take Joelle back.”

  “This baby’s not Joelle.”

  “I happen to disagree with you. Okay? I happen to think she is. Because the alternative makes no sense. None. Listen to yourself. You’re basing this on a smell, for chrissakes. On something you think you saw in the middle of the night.”

  “Let me ask you something, okay?” Joanna said.

  No, he wanted to say—it’s not okay.

  “Let’s say there’s a one percent chance I’m right.”

  “What?”

  “That’s fair, isn’t it? One percent?”

  “Look, I—”

  “I’m asking you a simple question. You want to attack me with logic, fine, I understand. So I’m asking you a logical question. You love percentages, don’t you? You’re an actuary—pretend it’s one of your insurance charts. Is there a one percent chance I’m right?”

  “You want me to put a percentage on something I think is totally ridiculous?”

  “Yes, I want you to put a percentage on something you think is totally ridiculous.”

  “Okay, fine—there’s a one percent chance she’s not Joelle. And a ninety-nine percent chance she is.”

  “Okay. Are you willing to leave the country with even the chance she’s not ours?”

  For a moment he was going to say Joelle wasn’t theirs anyway—because in the usual God-given sense, she wasn’t. But he couldn’t say it. It wasn’t true anymore. From the second he’d clasped her to his chest, she’d become theirs.

  She was their daughter.

  So now what?

  TEN

  It seemed an eternity before Galina opened her door.

  Maybe because Paul was no clearer about what he was going to say to her than he was before, and so was standing there frantically trying to come up with something. In addition to hoping she wouldn’t be home, that no one would actually answer Pablo’s knock.

  Pablo had driven the three of them to Galina’s house in the Chapinero district, a working-class area of dun-colored apartment buildings and modest homes. When they’d slid into the backseat, Joanna hadn’t taken their daughter from Paul’s arms as she normally had in the two days they’d been with her.

  She was making a statement.

  This isn’t my daughter. You hold her.

  Well, Paul thought, they’d see.

  “Hello, Galina,” Paul said when the door finally opened.

  She seemed surprised to see them, but not in a way Paul construed as alarmed. In fact, she smiled, then leaned over and whispered a sweet hello to her very favorite baby. Paul felt like turning to Joanna and saying see, satisfied now? Joanna didn’t look any different than she had during the ride over, which was nervous and unhappy.

  Galina invited them in.

  The door opened onto a small living room. It had a brown leather couch and two worn but comfortable-looking chairs facing a television. A lumbering yellow dog barely shifted from its sprawled position on the floor. Galina had been watching a soap opera; at least Paul assumed that’s what it was. A perfect-looking young woman was kissing a perfect-looking young man.

  “Please sit,” Galina said, gesturing to the couch. Do you see this, Paul kept up his running, albeit silent commentary to Joanna, she’s inviting us in. She’s asking us to sit on her couch.

  Galina brought out cookies and four cups of industrial-strength Colombian coffee in what must have been her fine china. She turned down the TV.

  They made small talk.

  “How did the baby sleep last night?” Galina asked.

  “Fine,” Paul answered. “She woke up once around two, I think, and then went right back.”

  “You’re lucky. She’s a good sleeper.”

  “Yes,” Paul said. Joanna remained conspicuously silent.

  “You have a lovely house, Galina,” Paul said, continuing to search for anything to talk about except the actual reason for their visit.

  “Thank you.”

  “What’s your dog’s name?” he asked.

  “Oca,” Galina said. At the sound of his name the dog lifted his head and sniffed the air.

  “Did Pablo take you to the doctor yesterday?” Galina asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “Wonderful,” Galina said. She smiled; her laugh lines fairly cackled.

  Then Joanna spoke.

  “Her fever was gone.”

  “That’s good,” Galina said.

  “I wonder what it was ?” Joanna added.

  “Who knows?” Galina lifted her hands up in the universal gesture of the human limitation to understanding the mysteries of the universe.

  Which is what Joanna was trying to do, of course. Understand, at least, one mystery.

  Paul knew that he was expected to take over.

  If he sat back and said nothing, Joanna would accuse him of nonsupport, of aiding and abetting the enemy. Except the enemy was treating them to coffee and cookies and the general hospitality of her home. The enemy had run to a farmacia to buy Joelle a thermometer when she was sick. Still, he was counted on to do certain things. Support her, for example. Something he hadn’t done when she’d insisted Joelle, the real Joelle in her mind, had been put to sleep the wrong way. Something he was firmly and unquestioningly expected to do now.

  “Uh, Galina . . . we were wondering about something,” he started.

  “Yes?”

  “This is going to sound a little silly, okay?”

  “Okay.” Galina repeated his American slang with evident amusement.

  “My wife . . . both of us, really, have noticed
this difference. About Joelle.”

  “Difference. What do you mean difference?”

  “Well, I said this is going to sound silly, but the fact is, she kind of smells different. Than she did before.”

  “Smells?” She looked over at Pablo, as if for confirmation she’d heard him correctly. Apparently, she had. Pablo looked as confused as she did.

  “She had this kind of musky smell,” Paul blundered on, “and now she doesn’t. It seemed to change after, uh . . . when we thought she was . . . when you went to get her the thermometer.”

  “Yes?”

  “We were just wondering about it,” Paul said. “That’s all.”

  “All right.”

  Evidently, Galina still had no idea what he was talking about.

  “We were hoping maybe you can account for it?”

  “Account for what?”

  “Why she seems to be . . . different.”

  Galina put her cup of coffee back down on its china saucer. The sound seemed to echo unnaturally. Maybe because the room had suddenly turned uncomfortably quiet, the only sound a vague murmur emanating from the lowered TV. If the five of them were on that soap opera, Paul thought, there’d be a dissonant organ chord now to signify the portent of something dramatic. In this case, Galina’s growing realization that she was being accused, albeit clumsily, of something she still didn’t understand.

  “What are you saying?” she asked now. “Are you suggesting . . . what? ”

  “Nothing, Galina,” Paul said, a little too quickly. “We were just curious, that’s all.”

  “About what ?”

  “About why she smells different.”

  “I don’t understand. What are you asking me?”

  We’re asking you if you stole our baby, Galina. If you switched her.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  Paul felt like asking Joanna that himself.

  “We wanted to know . . . ,” and here Paul suddenly went blank.

  “She had a beauty mark,” Joanna said.

  “What?” Galina turned to look at Joanna.

  “She had a beauty mark when we got her. It’s not there now.”

  “Beauty mark?”

  “My daughter had a beauty mark on her left leg. And she used to smell like . . . well, like her. The beauty mark’s gone. She smells different. I want to know if it’s the same baby. ”

  Okay, Paul thought, Xena, warrior princess, was in full battle mode. The cat had been let out of the bag. Only it wasn’t a cat as much as a Tasmanian devil, something large, carnivorous, and repulsive-looking. Probably the way the two of them looked to Galina right at this moment. After all, her back had physically stiffened—one of those clichés that evidently rang true. Her gentle gray eyes had turned hard as glass.

  Paul found himself trying to look anywhere but at her, searching for a hole he might be able to hide in.

  There was a box of cigars sitting on her mantel.

  It had a photograph of a man in a white panama hat.

  Paul wondered if Galina smoked cigars. A pair of brown slippers nestled like cats on her front welcome mat. The dog, who’d roused itself from its semicomatose state, had picked up one in his mouth, then dropped it by Pablo’s feet, where it landed with an uncomfortable thud.

  He forced himself to turn back to Galina. She still hadn’t said anything—Joanna’s accusation had turned her mute. She looked more or less horrified.

  Later, much later, Paul would wonder if there’s such a thing as peripheral hearing. Something that impinges on the ear but only announces itself later on.

  He was trying not to stare at Galina’s pained expression. He was wondering whether he should apologize to her. He didn’t notice the muffled sound emanating from the inner recesses of the house.

  Galina did. Which accounted for her expression.

  Joanna had noticed it too.

  Because she reached out and dug her fingernails into his arm. He almost cried out. Which would’ve made it two people crying in the house instead of just one.

  Him and the baby.

  There was a baby crying in the house.

  He’d finally heard it.

  He’d finally processed it. Because when he looked down at Joelle, she was sleeping. Which meant that there was a baby crying in the house, yes, only it wasn’t this baby.

  “Who’s that?” That’s the first thing he said. Stupid, okay, but then, he was obviously a little slow on the uptake today.

  Galina didn’t answer him.

  “Whose baby is that?” he said, even though he was starting to have a good idea whose baby it might be.

  “Pablo. Can you go see who it is?”

  Pablo didn’t move.

  “Galina?”

  She hadn’t changed expression. Or maybe she had. The hardness in her eyes was still there, and there was something else now, a scary sense of focus and fortitude.

  “Galina, is that our daughter? Is that Joelle ?”

  It took Paul a while to realize that Pablo still hadn’t moved. That Galina still wasn’t answering him.

  Paul stood up with the baby in his arms—the question was, whose baby? He felt faint. “Okay, I’m going to see who it is.” Announcing his plan out loud as if seeking approval.

  He reached out to give Joelle to Galina and then, of course, stopped himself. Galina wasn’t exactly his nurse anymore; it was possible this baby wasn’t Joelle. He felt as if he were teetering on the edge of a deep and dangerous abyss—physically and emotionally hovering right over the edge. The room itself seemed to be swaying.

  Then things flew into motion.

  Joanna stood up and said I’ll go look, and immediately began walking toward the sound of the crying baby. Pablo roused himself from his chair.

  Paul offered up the baby in his arms so he could go join his wife, but it seemed to take an enormous effort to lift her.

  “Sit down, Paul,” Pablo said gently.

  He was offering to look himself. He was telling Paul to sit down and take care of the baby. Pablo was being Pablo.

  Paul gratefully reclaimed his seat as Pablo followed Joanna into the hall. The baby was crying louder, screeching even. And Paul finally and completely acknowledged what Joanna had feared was true.

  He recognized that crying.

  He remembered it from the first day in the hotel room when their daughter had wailed endlessly for food. Until Galina had shown up and made everything all right again.

  Galina was still stiffly seated in her chair—only she appeared to be physically closer to him than she’d been before. How was that possible?

  For a minute or so nothing happened.

  The baby continued to cry from somewhere in the house; Galina continued to stare at him with an odd and unsettling calm.

  Then Pablo reappeared, walking back into the living room while supporting Joanna with one strong arm. She was leaning against him, her head laid back on his shoulder as if she were very close to fainting. Where was the baby?

  Joanna clearly looked distraught, while Pablo appeared helpful. There was undoubtedly a causal connection between those two things, but Paul wasn’t sure what it was.

  Something was wrong.

  Look closer.

  Her head on his shoulder. It took Paul a few seconds—seconds in which the world changed from A to Z—to understand that the reason it was lying back on Pablo’s shoulder like that was that Pablo had his wife’s dark luxuriant hair wrapped tightly in his fist.

  Pablo was pulling Joanna into the room by her hair.

  Her mouth was open in a half-muted scream.

  He threw Joanna down onto the couch, flung her backward as if she were a piece of luggage he’d thrown into the car at El Dorado Airport.

  “Sit,” he said. The way one barks commands at a dog. A stupid, stubborn dog, a dog who should know better.

  Paul felt rooted to the couch, a spectator to a horrifying drama that had suddenly and inexplicably become real. H
e was waiting for the intermission, when he could stretch his legs, shake the cobwebs out of his brain, and thank the cast for their stunningly convincing performance. The play continued.

  Galina stood up.

  She methodically began closing the wooden shutters on each side of the room as she talked to Pablo in a steady stream of Spanish. As if he and Joanna weren’t even in the room. She seemed to be chastising him—Paul’s Spanish was beginning to come back like a long-repressed memory, and it seemed like he could understand every fifth word or so. You. Called. Not here. For one regrettably stupid moment Paul wondered if she was yelling at Pablo for throwing Joanna down on the couch like that.

  For not getting their baby.

  For turning on them.

  But that was like hoping you’re asleep and dreaming when you’re completely and terrifyingly awake.

  Paul handed the baby to Joanna—the baby he’d thought was his daughter and that he now knew wasn’t—and stood up to protest Pablo’s treatment of his wife, to reason this out, to get Joelle and have Pablo take them back to the hotel this instant.

  “I told you to sit down, Paul,” Pablo said.

  Somehow he delivered this statement over Paul’s prone body. This was an enormous surprise to Paul. That he wasn’t standing. He was lying down on a wooden floor smelling of wet fur and shoe polish. How had that happened? He heard Joanna’s sharp intake of breath.

  “I’m okay, honey,” he said. Oddly enough, he didn’t hear the words. His tongue was strangely obstinate; it had decided to lie down on the job. Just like the rest of his body, which felt absurdly heavy. There was a strange metallic taste in his mouth.

  He tried to lift himself up from the floor. No go. He felt vibrations traveling through the floorboards, some kind of rebalancing of weight from one place to another. He heard heavy shuffling and sensed a quickening in the air itself.

  They looked like marines.

  Five men in mottled green uniforms who’d suddenly flowed into the room like a brackish river breaching its banks. Young faces with stolid expressions of dumb determination. Each of them carried a rifle.

  “Please,” Paul said.

  The room was eerily dark; Galina had closed all the shutters but one. It felt like the moment before everyone yells surprise.