Love, Alice

by Barbara Davis

  “How would he even know that?”

  “Because he saw me. I was at Magnolia Grove a few days ago, and who should come strolling down the path with a handful of flowers?”

  “He brought you flowers?”

  “No, he brought Alice flowers.”

  Theda just stared. “Who in the world is Alice?”

  “The girl. The maid. You know—the one in the Tate plot that everyone whispers about.”

  “Oh, the girl with the angel.”

  “Yes. Her name was Alice Tandy, and it turns out she was the Tates’ nanny.”

  Theda’s brown eyes went large. “How do you know that?”

  “I asked him.”

  “You just walked up and asked him?”

  “Not then. But I saw him leave the flowers. So I asked him about it today and he told me she used to be his nanny.”

  “So what’s weird about that?”

  Dovie held her answer until Chad finished delivering their drinks. “It wasn’t weird at all,” she said, lifting her glass for a first sip. “It was kind of sweet, actually, seeing him bend down and leave the flowers. But today, when I asked, he acted like he barely remembered her.”

  Theda set down her glass, fixing her with a hard stare. “Okay, the first thing I have to ask is why do you care? Is this about William, somehow?”

  Dovie fiddled with her lime. She had opened a can of worms, and knew Theda too well to think she’d be let off the hook without spilling the whole story. But first, she’d need to go back to the beginning.

  To Theda’s credit, she said nothing as the story tumbled out: the moment she first saw Dora Tandy grieving in the cemetery, her reckless decision to take and read the letter, the handful of letters Josiah had come across in lost and found, the horror Alice had endured at Blackhurst, and finally, Dovie’s promise to help Dora learn what had happened to her daughter and grandchild.

  When she was finished, she sat with her hands folded, waiting for some kind of reaction. After a long stretch of silence, Theda pushed back her empty glass, signaled Chad for another, and turned sharp eyes on Dovie. “On second thought, I think you do need a therapist. Are you insane?”

  “I know. I know. Bad idea. Lots of them, in fact.”

  “Do you have any idea what Jack would say if he knew you were thinking about snooping around in Gemma Tate’s private business? You won’t have time to resign, honey. You’ll be out on the sidewalk before you have time to clean out your desk.”

  “I know. I just couldn’t help myself. Dora’s so sad, so . . . desolate.”

  “This is about William, isn’t it? Somehow this has to do with his suicide.”

  “Maybe, but not the way you think. I know what it’s like to grieve like that, Theda, to never know if what happened was your fault. If I can help Dora Tandy to not feel like that anymore . . .”

  “You still won’t know,” Theda finished for her. “Helping this woman isn’t going to change anything. You get that, right? That you’ll probably never know why William did what he did?”

  Dovie nodded, relieved to see Chad approach with fresh drinks. “Yes, I get it. I’ve always gotten it. But Dora’s situation is different. There’s someone who knows what happened to Alice, someone I can talk to.”

  Theda laid a hand on her arm. “Dovie, I’m serious. This has got to stop. It’s one thing to bail on your friends and your social life, but this is your career we’re talking about, and from the sound of things the ice is already pretty thin. Why would you go playing with fire? I mean it, Dovie. Walk away now and forget this.”

  Dovie traced a finger around the rim of her fresh gin and tonic. “I’m not sure I can, Theda, or that I want to. I’m not asking you to understand. No one can, except maybe Dora.”

  Theda sighed. “You know I’m here for you. For anything. But I don’t like where this is headed. You know the rumors about that girl and Harley Tate. People still talk about it. And here you go, wanting to rub his wife’s nose in it, six months after they put him in the ground.”

  “I wouldn’t be rubbing her nose in anything. I have no intention of bringing that up. I just want to know how Alice died, and if she can tell me anything about the baby she gave up. So, you see, it won’t even be about the Tates. It’ll just be about Alice.”

  Theda shook her head. “Okay. But I want to go on the record as saying this is a bad idea.”

  “Fine. You’re on the record. Now, can we change the subject? I’ve had quite enough of the Tates for one day.”

  Chad reappeared with a pair of menus, in case they had changed their minds about ordering food.

  “He’s nice,” Theda purred as she watched him walk away. “Nice eyes.”

  Dovie cleared her throat. “Those aren’t his eyes you’re staring at, Theda.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to look, honey. And speaking of looking, don’t you think it’s time you started?”

  Dovie’s eyes went wide. “After everything we just talked about, that’s the advice you have for me. Start looking?”

  “No, honey. My first advice was for you to forget the silliness with the old woman, but you’re not going to listen to that. So I moved on. Maybe if you had someone in your life—if you had a life period—you wouldn’t have time to get yourself into this kind of trouble.”

  “New subject,” Dovie said drily.

  “Okay, how’s your sister?”

  “Robin? She’s perfect, as always. Already fat as a butterball, though she’s not due until December. They’re going to name her Gracie, after my grandmother. Grace Elizabeth.”

  “Nice. I’m glad the old names are coming back. We’ve had enough Kaleys and Kirstens for a while. But somehow I doubt a daughter of mine would thank me for naming her after my mother.”

  “Anyika is a beautiful name.”

  “Maybe, but it’s not exactly playground friendly, is it? And my grandmother’s name is even worse.”

  “How is Mama Hettie these days? Still going strong, I take it?”

  Mama Hettie was Theda’s grandmother, or her granmammy in the Gullah dialect. Thirty years ago, Hettie opened a restaurant called the Porch out on Highway 17, which had quickly become renowned for its shrimp and grits.

  “Old thing’s still in the kitchen every day,” Theda said, grinning. “I swear she’s getting younger. It’s all those spices and roots she cooks with. Gullah women think you can cure just about anything with food, and I’m half convinced it’s true. She’s been asking about you, by the way. She wants to know when you’re coming back. She thinks you’re mad because she wouldn’t give up her shrimp and grits recipe.”

  “I know,” Dovie said with a wisp of a smile. “It has been a long time. I just haven’t been in a going-out mood lately.”

  “There doesn’t have to be a guy, you know. Your friends miss you. Hell, I miss you.”

  “We see each other every day, Theda.”

  “Yeah, but that’s work. I miss us going out and doing stuff. I miss this.” She held up her glass, waiting for Dovie to follow suit. “To rejoining the living.”

  Dovie raised her glass briefly before setting it back on the bar without sipping, hoping it had escaped Theda’s notice that she had neatly sidestepped the toast. It wasn’t that Theda was wrong about her need to rejoin the living. It was that at the moment, she had more pressing things on her mind, like reading the last of Alice’s letters before she went to see Dora tonight.

  ELEVEN

  Blackhurst Asylum for Unwed Mothers

  Cornwall, England

  June 3, 1962

  Little one,

  My cough has grown worse. There’s more blood now, and last week I slumped over in the supper line when I couldn’t get my breath. That’s how I ended up in the infirmary. It’s a terrible place filled with weeping and coughing and terrible smells, but it’s the rumors that keep me aw
ake at night, gruesome whispers about girls who came here and never left, about sloppy procedures and hushed-up deaths, about tiny bodies dumped like dead puppies into the old cistern behind the kitchen, where no one is allowed to go. Maybe it’s all just rumors, but maybe it’s not. I only know I don’t want to be one of those girls who doesn’t live long enough to bring her child into the world, and is never heard from again.

  The sisters prod my belly with their cold, hard hands and tell me you’ll be arriving any day, words that should fill a mother’s heart with joy. But there is no joy for me. Only dread. As long as you’re in my belly they can’t take you from me. Until then, you belong to me.

  There’s a girl I’ve just met, a young novice named Marianne, who has just been assigned to the infirmary, and will talk to me now and then, when there’s no one to overhear. She’s a kind girl, but sad, too, like so many of us here. One day I told her my story, about the day your sweet father was lost at sea, and Mam threatening to disown me if I didn’t agree to give you up. There were tears in her eyes as she listened and remembered another young man, another child, both lost to her now.

  She’ll take her vows soon, as girls here do from time to time—girls without hope, or support, or means of steady work. She became all of those things when her family turned her out and told her never to come back. I have never asked, but I sometimes wonder if she regrets the choice to give her life over to these so-called Sisters of Mercy, whose idea of Christian service is robbing young women of their children and then selling those children to strangers. After what they took from her—what they’ll eventually take from us all—I simply can’t fathom it.

  She told me how things work with the babies born here at Blackhurst; how they’re taken away and sent—sold, in truth—to rich American couples; how easily passports can be arranged when enough money is put into the right hands; how church coffers are padded while authorities turn a blind eye. All in the name of Christian charity.

  America.

  The mere word fills me with despair. It can’t be right, whatever my sins, to send you so far away, where there’s never any hope of glimpsing your face at a park or in some small crowd, a frozen moment when our eyes meet and hold for the tiniest fraction of a second—and you know me. Yes, I’ve held to that secret hope, silly as it is. But now I know it can never be, and must find a way to keep you in my heart. Always, always in my heart.

  All my love,

  Mam

  Blackhurst Asylum for Unwed Mothers

  Cornwall, England

  June 16, 1962

  My dearest little one,

  They have taken you. My water broke just after breakfast, but you took hours to come, as if you, too, wished to put off our parting. The pain was like nothing I’ve ever felt—a white-hot knife slicing up through the middle of me, splitting me in two. The wages of my sin, I heard one of the good sisters say through the haze of pain and exhaustion. There are drugs now that they can give for the pain, but nothing like that was offered during all those long hours. No kind word, or comfort given, only cold eyes and prodding hands, eager to be done with their distasteful task. I was to remember this—the pain and the shame—they told me, the next time I thought about bringing disgrace to my family.

  I’ll never forget the moment you finally slid free, the rush of relief mingled with despair, the terrible sense of emptiness, of endings. And then, almost before I realized it, you were gone, hurried away to some other room, where the babies are kept and mothers aren’t allowed. I could hear your tiny squall as they carried you away, growing fainter and fainter. I fought to sit up, to see your little face when they pulled you free, to glimpse you just once before I lost you forever, but the sisters had me pinned to the mattress, and there wasn’t enough breath left in me to fight them.

  I wept for you then, sobbing and writhing like a wild thing. I begged them to bring you to me—my baby, my angel—but they wouldn’t. They just turned away, slipping from the room in their silent shoes, the distasteful business of bringing another mistake into the world finished at last. Next came the papers, shoved into my hands before I had even stopped bleeding. When I refused to sign them, Sister Mary Agnes was called in to explain how things went for girls who were determined to be troublesome. They would send me away, she told me without batting an eye, to a place Mam couldn’t pay my way out of, even if she could have afforded it. I asked if I could at least see you, to hold you just once before I signed my name, but they said no. They wouldn’t even tell me where you were. They said you weren’t my concern anymore.

  They call themselves the Sisters of Mercy, these women with their withered hearts and scathing eyes, but where was all their mercy then, when they ripped you from me, and my heart was breaking?

  Lately, I find my mind drifting to the cliffs. You’re gone now, and there’s only me to think of. It would be over quick enough, a moment or two suspended in the empty air, a brief spattering of blood and bone, and then . . . nothing. No sadness. No emptiness. Just . . . nothing.

  Another sparrow smashed on the rocks.

  Only Marianne has shown anything like pity, but her kind words and downcast eyes only fan my anger. She’s one of them now, a bystander in the theft of my child, and doubly guilty since she was once made to endure the same crushing loss. I pleaded with her, to tell me if you were a boy or a girl, if you were fair like me or dark like your father. She just shook her head and said knowing would make it harder.

  She offered to pray with me then, but I told her to save her breath. I didn’t want her prayers, or anything to do with a person who could be part of such a barbaric business. I called her a traitor and a fool, and asked her if she’d forgotten what it was like to carry her own child all those months, to love it as her own flesh and then have it torn away. She hasn’t forgotten, of course. I could see the anguish of it in her eyes as I flung the words at her. She’ll never forget, and in that moment I knew I wouldn’t, either—if I let them separate me from my child.

  And so, little one, I have decided I will not let them separate us—at least not for long. It sounds preposterous, I know, but I’ve made up my mind to do whatever must be done. I won’t be at Blackhurst forever. I’m growing stronger every day, and my cough is much better, hardly any blood at all now. Soon I’ll leave this place, and then nothing will keep me from getting you back. I don’t know how yet, my little one, but someday our eyes will meet and you will know that you belong to me, now and forever.

  All my love,

  Mam

  TWELVE

  Dovie checked her watch as she pulled into the empty spot in front of room number 12. It was a quarter to eight, but there was no light visible in the motel room window, no sign that Dora was inside. Perhaps she’d gone for a walk, or gone to sleep early. She knocked, waited, then knocked again. A few seconds later, a slice of watery light appeared in the chink between the curtains and she could hear the chain sliding.

  “You came,” Dora said, pulling back the door.

  “I’m sorry I’m late. I had something I needed to do after work.”

  Dovie surveyed the room as she stepped inside, the rumpled bedspread and dented pillow, the half-eaten frozen dinner beside the bed, the milky cup of tea gone cold. “I’m sorry. Were you sleeping?”

  Dora flapped a blue-white hand. “I’m an old woman. I spend half my life sleeping and the other half trying not to drop off. Would you like some tea?”

  “Yes, please, but let me get it. I’ll make us both a cup. Have you got any digestives left?”

  Dora pointed toward the tiny cupboard above the sink. After a few minutes, Dovie located the unopened package, then set about making the tea while Dora turned on a second lamp and began tidying the bed. When the tea was finished brewing they settled at the tiny kitchen table, sipping in silence until Dovie finally spoke up.

  “I have some news.”

  Dora lifted her eyes over her thick
white mug. “About my girl?”

  “Yes, about Alice. It isn’t much, but it’s more than we knew before.”

  Dora set down her tea, waiting.

  “She worked as a nanny for a family here in town. A very wealthy family.”

  “A nanny,” Dora repeated, as if tasting the word. “For rich people.”

  “Yes. Their name was . . . is . . . Tate. I don’t know anything more than that, but at least now there’s someone we can talk to, and maybe leads we’ll be able to follow up on. She’s buried in the Tate’s family plot, so it’s fair to assume she was still working for them when she died, which means they can at least tell us what happened to her.”

  Dora’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears, but behind the shimmer was hope. “And the baby? Maybe they know what happened to the baby?”

  Extricating another biscuit from the package, Dovie stalled for time, breaking off a small piece and popping it into her mouth. While it seemed likely that Gemma Tate would know how Alice died, she had doubts about her knowing about Alice’s time at Blackhurst. An illegitimate child wasn’t the kind of thing a young girl shared with a prospective employer. Still, there was a chance that Alice had shared her story, as well as her dream of reuniting with her child, which meant there was a chance, albeit a slim one, that Gemma might be able to provide information about the fate of the child. It was the asking that was going to be tricky.

  Dovie washed down her biscuit with another sip of tea, aware of Dora’s eyes on her, luminous with newfound hope. It was good to see, but she needed to understand that there was no certainty that Mrs. Tate would be willing, or even able, to help them. One thing the poor woman did not need to know was why Mrs. Tate might be reluctant to talk about her son’s nanny. Dovie didn’t know if the rumors about Alice and Harley Tate were true, or even if Gemma knew for certain, but the last thing she wanted was for Dora to get wind of them.

  “Dora,” Dovie said gently. “Have you ever thought that you might learn things you don’t want to know?”