by Selena Kitt
Marty had tried to explain it, Leah remembered, how they became slowly indoctrinated—brainwashed was more like it, Leah thought—becoming connected as sisters, unwilling to tell their shocking, outlandish secret to the world, not only out of fear of retaliation from the church, but out of fear of compromising their sisters as well. And of course, there was incentive to stay. The virginal Marys were special and “taken care of” for the rest of their lives by the church. They and their families would want for nothing. The Magdalenes received a one-time payment of ten thousand dollars when they gave up their baby for adoption.
And of course, that worked out well for the maternity homes like Leah had been forced into. There were hundreds, if not thousands of places like Magdalene House all over the world, where Magdalene babies were born and then adopted out to infertile but rich Catholic couples who were willing to give a large donation to the church in exchange for a healthy newborn.
Marty had managed to cut ties with the Magdalenes. She’d found a way out, giving up the money she would have received from the church, initiating a secret correspondence and eventually going halfway across the world to enter into an arranged marriage in order to keep her baby.
Leah didn’t know where Marty was, didn’t have a forwarding address. She didn’t know where any of them were. They were the girls she would have asked to stand up in her wedding. They would have understood the bittersweet moment, marrying the man she loved while her baby was still out there, somewhere. They knew her more deeply than anyone, and she had never even known their real names.
All of the girls at Magdalene House had adopted fake names, and when their babies were adopted, they disappeared into the world, back to their homes, moving like shadows through their former lives, changed forever, immeasurably, but no one knew it, except those girls who had gone through it with them, whose names they never knew.
“Leah!”
She turned toward the sound of her name, hoping Erica had arrived, but it was her mother instead, stepping smiling off the elevator. Leah felt the knot in her stomach cinch a little tighter, and she instantly regretted her decision to let her mother take part in this process. She should have hardened her heart—she’d been taught by the best, after all—but it had been Donald Highbrow who had elicited Leah’s sympathy, who had softened her to this woman who had given birth to her.
“Your mother?” the saleswoman surmised and Leah nodded, although she knew it was an easy guess. They looked so much alike, they were often mistaken for sisters.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Sorry, I got caught up at coat check on the mezzanine talking to Gertie Webber from the Ladies Auxiliary.” Leah’s mother smiled, holding her white-gloved hand out to the saleswoman, and they shook hands and shared a look Leah understood and resented. The grown-ups were here, so they could start now.
“Patty Wendt,” Leah’s mother introduced herself, pulling her gloves off one finger at a time.
“Irene Showalter.”
“Showalter. Any relation to Ruby Showalter?”
Irene nodded. “My mother.”
“I thought I saw a resemblance. I went to school with Ruby Showalter. How is she?”
“She’s passed on, ma’am,” Irene informed her.
“Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” Leah’s mother patted the girl on the shoulder. “How awful to lose your mother so young.”
“Yes. Thank you.” Irene glanced toward the elevator. “Are you expecting anyone else?”
“My maid of honor.”
Leah’s mother smiled. “She’s obviously running a little late.”
“Well I can start showing you some dresses,” Irene said. “Do you have an idea of what you’re looking for?”
Only a lifetime of them, Leah thought, staring at the rows of white satin.
“Something with a high collar, lots of lace, a full veil,” Patty said, glancing at her daughter. “You do want a full veil don’t you, Leah?”
Leah blinked at her. “Umm...”
But they were already off and running, Irene leading them into the back where there were even more dresses, showing her mother a Scarlett O’Hara affair with so much tiered lace it looked as if the dress could stand up by itself.
“Eighty yards of lace.” Irene whispered this revelation as if it would shock them.
“How about this one?” Leah pulled one of the dresses out on its hanger, surprised by how heavy it was—a gorgeous white satin concoction, sleeveless with a sweetheart bodice.
“Oh, Leah, sleeveless?” Patty Wendt made a face. “Besides, you can’t be thinking of white?”
Leah blinked at her in disbelief. “Well, Mother, you’re one to talk.”
“I just meant...” Patty sank down onto one of the cushioned benches.
“Why don’t I let you two look around for a while?” Irene said, taking a step back. “I think I hear the phone ringing...”
“I’m sorry, Leah,” her mother apologized. “I didn’t mean… I just...”
“Mother, this is my wedding. Don’t make me regret asking you to come here today.”
“I know that. I’m sorry. You’re right,” she said, holding up her hands, palms out in supplication. “I just thought, you know, since you’ve already given birth, you might want something a little more reserved in off-white or cream? They have some lovely bridal yellows now...”
Leah shoved the dress back in the mix, snagging the hanger on the rod. “I’m wearing white, and you’re not going to shame me out of it.”
“Oh, Leah, I wasn’t trying to shame you.”
“Yes you were.” Leah flipped through the dresses on hangers, not really seeing anything except white. White, white and more white. A color she wasn’t allowed to wear anymore apparently. She was too tainted. Damaged goods.
“I’m really sorry,” her mother insisted, pleading. “Can we start over?”
Leah looked at her, crossing her arms over her chest. “I don’t know. I was kind of hoping we could, but it isn’t starting out that way, is it?”
Her mother sighed. “I really am sorry.”
“Sorry is nice, but it doesn’t change anything.”
Patty Wendt threw up her hands in disgust. “What would you like from me?”
“Honesty.”
“I thought I was being honest.”
“Right.” Leah scoffed. “You’re only honest when you can use it on someone else as an excuse to be cruel. How about trying some honesty about yourself on for size?”
Leah’s mother glanced around, smoothing her skirt, picking imaginary lint off the black material. “What do you want to know?”
“Who’s my father?” Leah just plunged ahead, not caring who overheard, whether it was Irene the salesgirl or the other bride and her bevy of bridesmaids.
“I don’t know.” Leah’s mother said this with no hesitation, lifting her chin and looking at her daughter.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Leah scowled. “For years I thought my father was a sailor named Victor Wendt who died in some accident out at sea. But it turns out that was a lie. You were never even married.”
Leah’s mother nodded, her weary eyes closing, resting her forehead against her hand. “I’m sorry I lied to you, Leah, but you have to understand, a girl in my position couldn’t be unmarried with a baby. It would have been far too scandalous. I couldn’t have held my head up anywhere in town.”
“And then you lied again and told me Robert Nolan was my father,” Leah reminded her.
“Leah, you have to understand, I really believed...” Her mother lifted her head, pleading at her with her eyes. “I didn’t know he wasn’t. I truly didn’t know.”
“Well, considering blood tests have completely ruled him out as my father, I guess you have some explaining to do. How many other men could it be, Mother?”
Patty winced, looking as if Leah had stabbed her in the gut with something small but painful, like an ice pick or a knitting needle.
Leah stabbed her again. “
I know you didn’t have an opportunity to have a wedding, but it sounds like you couldn’t even have an off-white wedding. Perhaps red is more your color?”
Her mother made a small, wounded sound, actually flinching as if she’d been struck. “You have a tongue sharper than your grandmother’s.”
Leah laughed. “Funny, here I thought I learned from the best.”
“Leah, stop.”
“So tell me. How many men were there, Mother?” Leah didn’t bother to keep her voice down. She knew the girls around the corner were listening. Irene Showalter was certainly listening. Leah didn’t care. Let them all hear the truth. “Rob isn’t my father, we know that much. So let’s narrow it down. Should we make a list? Let me find a pen...”
Leah made the pretense, snapping her pocketbook open.
“Hundreds,” Patty hissed, her eyes flashing with anger.
“What?”
“There were hundreds,” her mother whispered through clenched teeth. “I have no idea who your father is. I will never know, and neither will you.”
“What?” Leah’s knees felt weak, so weak she had to move beside her mother to sit on the bench. They both sat there, side by side, staring at the floor. “What are you saying?”
She looked at her mother, seeing how she clutched her pocketbook, knuckles starting to turn white. Her face was flushed with color and her eyes looked wet.
“Mother?” Leah prompted, her voice soft now.
“I promised myself I’d never tell you,” Patty whispered to the wall of dresses to her right, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “I promised myself I’d never let you get involved, not like Susan, not like I did.”
“What are you talking about?” Leah puzzled. It was as if her mother was speaking a different language, some sort of strange code.
“Susan was so caught up, and I got caught up right along with her,” Leah’s mother said, half-smiling at her daughter. “I never had much of a backbone. I followed her around the same way you follow Erica. Such bright lights. Like moths to flame, we are.”
Leah blinked, considering her mother’s words. She had learned far too much about her mother’s relationship with Susan, Erica’s mother and Rob’s first wife, than she had ever wanted to know. She knew they had been together—all three of them, Patty, Susan and Rob—and that was, of course, the reason Leah’s mother had once believed he had fathered her child.
But the blood test had proven that wasn’t possible.
She knew her mother and Susan had maintained their friendship through the years. They’d been close. Her mother had been devastated to lose her friend to lung cancer at such a young age. Leah tried to imagine how she would feel, if it was Erica, and it made her heart ache.
Her mother was right, after all. Erica was spunky and intrepid, just like her mother, and Leah often found herself following her friend to places she knew she shouldn’t go. Had her mother done the same with Susan? Clearly, she had. And how could Leah play judge and jury when Leah had done the same thing with Erica?
“I thought she was enamored with the promise of the money at first, but I didn’t understand how involved she already was, how her own mother had planned it from the start,” Patty went on, still talking in that strange language Leah couldn’t quite decipher. She was speaking English but the words didn’t make any sense. “And in the end, she was so much in love with him and she couldn’t see any other way.”
“What are you talking about?”
Patty took her daughter’s hands, trying to get her message across. “He was handsome then, Leah! So handsome! But it was more than that. It’s hard to explain. He wasn’t just charming—he was… he was…magnetic!” Patty’s eyes were shining, a faraway look on her face. Then she focused back on her daughter, squeezing her hands. “You know, I watch you girls react to that young Elvis Presley, and that’s how we were with him. He was like a living god...”
“Who?” Leah asked. “Rob?”
“No.” Patty laughed. “Father Patrick.”
“Father… Patrick.” Leah sank against the cushioned seat back, staring off into space, whispering the words. “Father Patrick… is my father?”
“He could be.” Patty looked down at her hands and her voice shook. “So could one of a hundred other priests.”
“Oh no. Mother, no.” Leah groaned, putting her head in her hands, feeling a wave of nausea pass over her. “Not… the Magdalenes?”
Patty gasped. “You know?”
“Erica...” Leah whispered, dumbly nodding her head.
“Erica?” Leah’s mother furrowed her brow, looking puzzled. “But Rob made an arrangement. Father Patrick swore he would never initiate Erica.”
“Well, he lied. Are you surprised?”
Mother and daughter stared at each other, letting their newfound knowledge sink in. The shop was quiet. Even the gaggle of girls around the corner had gone silent, or maybe they had simply left.
“You didn’t give me up,” Leah said, realizing all at once what this meant.
“I couldn’t,” her mother choked. “I took one look at you and…I fell in love.”
“Really?” Leah felt a lump growing in her throat. “Are you sure you loved me, and not just the idea of having a baby? Someone who was all yours, someone you could make all the decisions for, so you could get it right the second time around?”
“No, Leah.” Her mother turned toward her, their knees touching. “Please don’t think that, not for a minute. I sacrificed everything for you, don’t you understand? I could’ve walked away with ten thousand dollars if I’d given you up! I defied everyone and everything by keeping you.”
“Huh.” Leah considered this. “Maybe that’s why you did it.”
“No! The easy thing was giving you up. I chose the hard thing. I became a widow so I could raise you without the scandal of having you out of wedlock. And I did that for you. I made up a father because you deserved one. I did that for you. I worked every day to make a living for us, when I could have walked away with the money and gone anywhere. And I did that for you.”
Leah considered this too. “I think you did it for you.”
“Oh God, Leah, I don’t know what you want from me. No matter what I say, it doesn’t matter. You’ll always believe the worst.”
“Can you blame me?” Leah croaked, feeling that dam in her throat about to burst.
“No.” Leah’s mother went to touch her daughter’s cheek, but Leah pulled away, not wanting her to see how hurt she was.
“Why did you stay here?” Leah asked, thinking of her friend, Marty, who had left the Magdalenes, had taken her baby halfway across the world to escape. “Why would you stay in this town?”
“Nothing’s that simple.” Leah’s mother sighed. “Donald offered me a job in his law office. He even paid to train me. And then your grandmother died and left me the house. I couldn’t afford much on my salary. And you were a growing girl, and there was tuition to pay.”
“Did you stay at Magdalene House?”
Her mother lowered her head in assent. “Yes.”
“But you didn’t give me up?”
“No, I… I ran away.”
“You ran away?” Leah frowned. “How? Where did you go?”
“I saved my money and on one of our trips to town, I snuck away and took the bus back to Detroit.”
Leah remembered those trips to town, how all the girls had worn fake wedding rings, pretending they were married, but of course everyone knew. They were naughty, wicked girls. Pariahs to be avoided at the very least, targets to be taunted if anyone was so inclined.
“So Robert and Susan helped you?” Leah asked, knowing the answer. They had not only helped her then, but they had continued to help her, paying for Leah’s dance lessons, taking the growing girls school shopping for their expensive uniform clothes every year. There were trips to California and Florida and New England the Nolans had included them in, like family, all because they shared a secret.
“Yes,” her
mother said. “I gave birth to you at home. I wouldn’t go to the hospital. I was too afraid they would find me and take you. After you born, Robert took me to see Donald Highbrow. You know the rest.”
“Was Joan Goulden working at Magdalene House when you were there?” Leah remembered sitting across a desk from the woman they called “the ghoul” because she wore so much makeup it was impossible to tell her age. She could have been forty or eighty for all they knew. She was just “the ghoul” to them, a caricature of a person, with about as much personality and heart.