by Maile Meloy
But gradually, as the months passed and her tiny body grew, it became clear that what she wanted was to keep on as they were, a little family in Fauchet’s spare apartment. He knew this would not work, not with a crying baby; they would be found out. His wife sometimes put guests in the apartment; it was incredible that they had been able to use it so long.
When he finally told Katya that they could not go on as they were, she seemed to collapse, as if all the strain masked by months of cheerfulness came over her at once. She was nearly eight months pregnant, and she became ill, and lay in the bed with a fever and chills. She begged him to take the baby if she died, and then she begged him to take the baby either way. She wasn’t fit to be a mother, she said; the baby would be better off without her. It was hard to tell what was delirium from fever and what was hysterical unhappiness. She refused to go to the hospital, and he was afraid to force her, afraid she would scream and lose her mind. She was sure she would die in the way she had watched her mother die, and she did not want to leave a child alone.
A few nights later, when the fever was gone, they talked seriously of the possibilities. Fauchet could give her some money. Gilbert might give her some, if he were told, but he already had trouble from his wife. Katya could put the baby up for adoption, but she had seen babies taken and sold, and sold again. Fauchet tried to tell her that it was different in France, but she held firm: no adoption unless they knew where the child was going.
At about that time Josephine Flynn in Argentina had decided she wanted a Romanian orphan, and she began hounding Fauchet to help her track down a princess she had met once at a charity ball. The princess was an abbess now, busy with causes and difficult to reach. The idea that there were government agencies that regulated adoption had never entered Josephine’s mind.
It was not, he told himself, such a foolish decision as it later seemed. Josephine wasn’t young, but she wasn’t so ancient. She could afford a staff to take care of the child. He had an unwanted baby, and he knew a woman who wanted one: he had been a businessman his whole life, and here he had a supply and a demand.
He put the solution to Katya, telling her that Josephine had a big house with a vast lawn, and horses and dogs, and kind and faithful people to help her. He had a friend at the Argentine embassy who could finesse the paperwork.
Katya spent a few days thinking about it, and one morning—recovered from her illness, eating an almond croissant he had brought from the café—she agreed.
She gave birth to the baby in a busy hospital and nursed him for three months. He was the image of Gilbert, there was no question. The idea was to wait until he was old enough to travel, and to be sure she didn’t want him, but things became more difficult. Katya was tired, and ill-equipped to take care of a child. They fought constantly. She would ask Fauchet to stay the night, and he would remind her that he was married with children of his own. She would cry, and he would tell her to take it up with Gilbert. She would refuse; he would say there was always the Bureau des Adoptions—many Parisian couples who would never sell a child waited eagerly in nice apartments. Then Katya would swear in every language she knew. She did not want her child raised by those Parisian snobs, who looked down on her. She did not want the chance of meeting her son in the street, and having him look at her with open scorn.
The baby would wake, and Katya would comfort him in a distracted way, and then she would ask Fauchet to tell her again about the lawn and the horses and the dogs and his trustworthy friend, far away, and she would beg him to take the baby there.
His friend at the Argentine embassy told him it was very complicated. He could be prosecuted for baby trafficking if he was discovered.
“But it will be better for everyone, this way,” Fauchet said. “For the child, who will have the best life. And for the father, who will not be exposed. And for his family, his children.”
The man gave in and drew up an immigration visa for an orphaned Romanian child, out of old friendship. “I know nothing,” he said, finalizing the papers. “You understand? I know nothing of your plans. Send me no gifts, no wine, no cigars, tell me nothing more.”
Then Fauchet gave Katya another chance, asking if this was really what she wanted. She was dry-eyed and said yes. So he took the baby to Argentina, under the smiles of pretty stewardesses, and presented it to Josephine. He was apprehensive about the consequences but could see no better way, now that he was so far in. He interviewed Magdalena, the new maid, about her experience with infants. He tried to be thorough.
Four years went by, while Fauchet lived with a pocket of dread in the back of his mind, reading with mild nausea any newspaper story about illegal adoptions, and reassuring himself that these were rings, profiteers, traffickers who did not have his good intentions.
Trouble finally came not from the police but from Katya, who reappeared wanting the boy back. She could not sleep from the grief; she had made a terrible mistake. Fauchet tried to talk her down, but she was inconsolable, unstoppable—she came to his office, waited outside his club, called his house although he told her to stop. She had been working in a café, making the coffees and sweeping the floor, and she had saved a little money. A sentimental man had moved to the south and given her the use of a small apartment. She was on her feet and straight now, and she wanted the baby back.
Fauchet explained that the boy was not a baby anymore. It was not possible just to change your mind and remove a child from the home where he had grown up.
“We tell them it was not legal,” Katya said. “We tell them the Romanian stole the child.”
“But she didn’t!” Fauchet said. “There’s no Romanian. You gave the child away.”
“What does he look like?” she asked, holding his wrist. She asked him this question every time. “I just want to see him.”
“Just to see him, and then you will be satisfied? Oh, Katya, you know this is not true.”
But again, maybe this was a case of supply and demand: in the past four years, Josephine’s mind had deteriorated rapidly. There was a question now of who would take the child. Magdalena was good to him, but she wanted to marry and have children of her own. Saffron was a self-involved, delinquent debutante, threatened by the existence of the child and no more suited to motherhood than the little retired prostitute. Katya had rehabilitated herself, through great effort, he could see that. In a reckless moment, under threats from his wife about the constant phone calls—in some of the calls Katya alluded to Russian friends who would help her if he didn’t—Fauchet thought it might not hurt to have Katya lay claim to the child. Josephine might even be relieved to have a place for the boy to go. He set off to Argentina to facilitate another transfer, if he could.
But when he got to the estancia, Saffron was there with the Americans, who would never understand, and Josephine had forgotten that he had found a good home for the boy. She announced proudly, when Fauchet arrived in her bedroom the first afternoon, that she was leaving the child everything, and that Saffron would be his guardian. She had seen some Argentine lawyer, who had done up the papers. Before Fauchet could straighten out the situation, she was dead. It was no longer a simple transaction, to return the boy to Katya. It was a horrible legal difficulty. Saffron would uncover everything, and there was no knowing what she might do. He felt he had boarded a very fast train, the wrong train, and now it was impossible to climb off.
Fauchet put out his cigar and eased himself out of his chair at the base of the stairs. He went to his room and undressed, concentrating on the buttons and laces so that his mind wouldn’t spin on the question of the child. Naked, he climbed under the thick, soft sheets. He had kept his leanness without the foolish exercise people did now, and had no great trouble with his joints. All this running and jumping, and drinking too much water to flood the kidneys—eventually these people would collapse in a heap.
In bed, supported by the good mattress, he felt that his body had not fully betrayed him. He could almost imagine it to be the body of his youth. H
e ran a hand over his belly, distracting himself with solipsistic thoughts. The skin was looser, that was true. He remembered the first time, as a young man, that he had slept with an older woman, and noticed that her skin was different, looser and thinner than his. And he remembered the day, many years later, when he realized that he had undergone the same transformation. Suddenly he had the skin of an older man.
There was a knock at the door, and he thought it might be Josephine, before he remembered that she was dead.
Then he thought it could be Saffron, coming to have the conversation he had proposed.
Then he thought it was more likely to be Katya, venting her anguish at seeing her child as a stranger speaking a strange language—wanting to cry and pound his chest about what they had done.
The door opened before he had a chance to react to any of these possibilities, and pretty Magdalena slipped inside, her white nightgown dimly glowing and her black hair invisible in the dark. He felt himself breathe with relief. Sweet Magdalena.
“¿Puedo entrar?”she asked.
“Sí,”he said.
She closed the door and stepped lightly, barefoot, to the bed, where she pulled the nightgown off over her head. He could just see the shadows outlining her round breasts, the dark nipples, the black triangle. She folded her nightgown expertly, unable to break the habit of folding things, and climbed into the bed beside him. Her skin was warm and taut and young.
“Sweet girl,” he said.
Her breathing was quick, which he mistook for arousal. She said, “I am thinking about what will happen,” and he realized why she had come.
He waited.
“Everyone will go?” she said. “The house, too?”
“Yes,” he said. “But there’s money for everyone.”
She shook her head. “You will protect the boy?”
“I can try,” he said.
“Saffron will never love him.”
“I know.”
“I understand he has to go, but not to her,” she said.
“I’ll do my best.”
“You have to.”
“I will.”
She sighed with relief, and wriggled close to him in the warm bed.
37
THE ARGENTINE LAWYER who had drawn up Josephine’s will was coming to the house, and Jamie had promised Saffron he would go to the meeting about it at breakfast. He asked Abby to come, so he would have someone to talk to afterward.
“Talk to Saffron,” Abby said.
“She’s not in any shape to be objective.”
“Have you told her that Katya’s the mother?”
“Do I look that stupid? She’ll go nuts.”
“Why should she?” Abby asked. “She doesn’t care about the kid.”
“She will when she finds out he gets her inheritance.”
The lawyer was sitting at the breakfast table in a black suit with a briefcase on his lap, looking uncomfortable. He was thin with a wide, high forehead, and he spoke only Spanish. Fauchet had a copy of the will in front of him. Everyone drifted in, or was sent for. Saffron was there in a bathrobe, wild-eyed and sleepless. Magdalena sat at the table, looking uncomfortable to be among the guests, with T.J. on her lap. Hector the butler stood against the wall, and Gautier was there in his apron, looking like he had more important things to attend to, like poached eggs. Then Katya came in, looking jet-lagged and uncomfortable with the idea of morning. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her face looked more drawn than it had the day before.
“Wait, why is she here?” Saffron asked. “This is private business. Who are you?”
“I am Katya,” the girl said defiantly.
Saffron looked to Fauchet for help.
“I tried to talk to you,” Fauchet said.
“About what?”
“About Katya.”
“So talk.”
Fauchet sighed and looked at the two women, and then at the will on the table. He said nothing.
“I am the mother to this boy,” Katya told Saffron.
“Bullshit,” Saffron said.
“I am,” Katya said simply.
“He doesn’t look anything like you. He’s a Romanian orphan.”
“He is not Romanian,” Katya said, indignantly. “What proof he is Romanian?”
“That’s where he came from!”
“He came from me, ” Katya said. “I was in Paris, very sick, I could not care for him. But I did not want to give him.”
“There was the princess.”
“There is no princess.”
Saffron looked to Fauchet. “What do you know about this?”
He shrugged. “I tried to tell you.”
Saffron turned on Katya again. “So are you going to describe his strange birthmarks?”
“He has no birthmarks,” Katya said proudly.
Saffron looked to Magdalena, who nodded that this was true.
“Oh, my God,” Saffron said, sitting back in her chair. “Why am I surprised? This is so like my mother. So what do you want?” she asked Katya. “Money? You can’t just show up and take him. An adoption is an adoption.”
Katya flushed with anger, and Jamie noticed how beautiful she was, with the color suddenly in her face. The lawyer from Buenos Aires looked like he wished he were somewhere else. Fauchet asked if he could start explaining the will. Everyone settled into an uneasy silence. Jamie was glad the boy couldn’t follow English enough to understand.
Fauchet started with the servants, who would all receive pensions. Gautier would get a little more. When his part was finished, he disappeared back to the kitchen. Hector slipped out and followed him, and Magdalena, trapped with T.J. on her lap, watched them go longingly.
The house, Fauchet said, was Saffron’s to live in if she wanted, while the child was still a minor, but if it was sold—
Saffron laughed bitterly and said, “To what sucker?”
—Saffron would split the money from the sale with le petit .
“Jesus,” she said.
The house, Fauchet explained, was the one thing Josephine hadn’t been able to wrest from beneath Argentine inheritance law. It would go to the surviving children equally. Everything else that mattered she had moved to Swiss bank accounts, and she had left it all in trust to the adopted boy. Saffron had been appointed as his guardian, but was given no control over the money.
Saffron stared at Fauchet. “You’re kidding me.”
“I wish it were so,” he said.
“My mother told me the adoption wasn’t legal,” she said. “She was worried that the kid would get screwed under Argentine law, and that I had to make sure he was taken care of. And all the time she had this ?”
“This will is very recent.”
“She lied to me.”
“Or she was confused,” Fauchet said. “She may have forgotten.”
“My son receives this house?” Katya asked.
“ Halfthis house, on the assumption that he’s not your son, he was Josephine’s son,” Saffron said nastily. “If he’s your son, then under Argentine law he gets your house when you die.”
“Saffron, my dear,” the old Frenchman said. “This is ugly.”
“But it’s true, right? Let’s let her have him, and then he doesn’t have rights to anything.”
“Saffron.”
“Stop saying that!”
“This is a difficult time,” Fauchet explained to Katya.
Katya looked around at the group at Josephine’s table. Then she said, “This woman is old, yes? She dies in comfortable bed.”
“She was my mother !” Saffron said. “And she wasn’t that old!”
Katya gazed calmly at Saffron. “My mother is dead when I am eight years, of a terrible sickness,” she said. “My father is dead, too. I live with many people until one bad family sells me to some Russians, and this is difficult time. Three babies they were giving me the bad abortion. In Paris the doctor says maybe I cannot have more. So this time, I consider to keep him, an
d then I am sick and so confused, and cannot.”
The table was silent.
“ Thisis difficult time,” Katya said.
“Oh, Jesus,” Saffron said, and she put her face in her hands.
Katya said, “I consider he is mine.”
38
YOU COULD WRITE a murder mystery,” Jamie said.
“That’s what Katya’s story made you think?”
“That’s what the whole thing made me think.”
He was lying across Abby’s bed, and she was sitting in the little desk chair. The breakfast meeting had ended unfinished. Saffron was talking to Fauchet in his room.
“Rich woman dies mysteriously in remote house full of potential heirs,” Jamie said. “They all have to figure out who did it without getting killed for knowing.”
“That’s been written a thousand times.”
“But not set in Argentina,” he said. “And yours will have sex in it, and people speaking different languages, and the weird adoption plot.”
“Poor Katya,” Abby said. “To survive the Russians and then have to face off with Saffron.”
“She can take Saffron,” Jamie said. “She won the breakfast round. She was good, wasn’t she?”
“Do you think she’s the mother?”
“Sure,” he said. “Here’s a question for your mystery. Could Katya have done it even though she didn’t arrive until after the murder?”
“I’m not writing a mystery.”
“Her late arrival could be an alibi. Maybe she’s been hiding in the pampas with an evil gaucho. Can my character solve the mystery?”
Abby shook her head.
“Can I be the romantic hero?”
“You’re not being very serious.”
“I was serious all yesterday, and all this morning,” he said. “I’m tired of seriousness. What are you writing? Can I read it?”