Small Plates (24 page)

Tom kissed her, and in a voice suggesting slight regret but hope for Plan B, said, “Hey, why don't we all go? Maybe see a movie in Ellsworth?”

Faith had been deliberately vague about where she was going. Orono was in a different direction from Ellsworth.

“You know you would hate it, and so would the kids. The after-Christmas sales bring out the beast in everyone and the stores will be packed, especially on a Saturday. I'll be back as soon as I can.” She kissed him hard. A kiss full of promise. Promise of Plan A.

Tom held her closer. “I swear if I didn't know that Mary and her Nubian goats existed, I'd think you made the whole thing up so you could sneak out and meet your secret lover. Mary Bethany. Bethany—the village where that other Mary was born. A baby, Christopher, turning up at Christmas.” He settled back, still with his arm around her. “I've always felt sorry for Mary—or rather Miriam, which is the Hebrew. She was as sorely tested as Job. Some sources put her age as young as thirteen when she became pregnant out of wedlock. The gospels don't tell us much about her, barely mentioning her by name, but it's not hard to imagine how the good people of Nazareth would have treated her.”

Faith agreed. “I always thought it was a little mean of God to leave her on her own for so long while Joseph was off building houses. Here she is betrothed and all, picking out pottery patterns and getting more full with child by the day. She knew she was a virgin—but it took a while before it was all sorted out. I've always imagined her as a feisty lady. She had to be.”

“Joseph stuck by her, though.”

“Yes, I'll give him that—thanks to one of those convenient dreams people in the Bible always seem to have. But when it came time for the blessed event, why did it take so long for him to find someone to deliver the baby? Mary was on her own again in that stinky barn—or cave if you want to believe James—having the baby all by herself. But speaking of Marys, I have to go. The sooner I leave, the sooner I'll . . .”

“I know, I know. Say hi to your secret lover.”

“Hi, lover.”

B
esides hitting the Bangor malls for baby things and driving to the 24 Hour Store in Orono, Faith didn't have a plan. If she found Miriam, she'd talk to the girl, make sure she knew what she was doing, and then what? Ask her where the fifty thousand dollars came from? Get her to sign some kind of papers, so Mary could adopt Christopher?

She decided to hit the malls first. Then with the car loaded, Faith headed north, away from Bangor to Orono. It wasn't far, and once there she only had to ask twice to find the convenience store.

As she had suspected, the store was a mom-and-pop operation, a cross between a market and a five-and-ten, only they were Dollar Stores now. Sammy's was located in a mixed residential/commercial area and had a little bit of everything from beef jerky to Rolex rip-offs and dusty plastic poinsettias, still on sale from last Christmas. There was no Sammy in evidence, unless the tired-looking older woman at the counter was named Samantha.

Faith picked up a slightly faded package of colored construction paper for Amy and an ancient balsa-wood model airplane kit for Ben. At the register, she added a Milky Way for Tom. She'd check the expiration date in the car. As the sale was rung up, she said, “I wonder if you might help me. I'm supposed to drop off a Christmas gift for a friend of mine. It's for her niece, who lives around here. I've misplaced the address, but the niece's name is Miriam. She's tall with long dark hair that she usually wears in a braid down her back. Do you by any chance know her?” Unless Miriam had stopped at the store on her way someplace else, she probably lived in the neighborhood.

“Sure, I know Miriam. Comes in here a lot. Always polite, not like some. She lives over there.” The woman pointed across the street. “I saw her this morning, so she's probably home.”

Faith's hunch had been correct. She looked through the window—obscured by
HOLIDAY GREETINGS
sprayed on by a liberal, but unsteady, hand—and saw a run-down house that had obviously been carved up into apartments for students fleeing dorm life—or just fleeing. She thanked the woman and walked slowly across the street.

The front door of the building swung open easily and she stepped onto a litter of junk mail. There were six mailboxes, each with several names. Some had been crossed out and new ones added above in tiny writing. Faith studied them as if they were the Rosetta Stone. She knew she wouldn't find “Miriam” or “Bruce Singer,” but she wasn't finding anything remotely resembling them. No initials
M
or
B
. No
S
's. When people put down false names, they usually stuck to their own initials. Or they chose a similar name, as in a similar occupation.

“Singer.” No “Chanteuses” or “Vocalists”—what other synonyms were there? Preferably synonyms that made sense. She went back to the cards and searched again. And there it was. Apartment 4B. One word in minuscule writing:
CARPENTER
. The Carpenters. Karen Carpenter. “Singers.” Miriam Singer; Miriam Carpenter. It was worth a try. Nothing else suggested itself. Maybe Miriam was into the 1970s—or tragic female singers. Faith pushed the buzzer. There was no answer. She pushed all the buzzers until someone let her in. After climbing the dark, narrow stairs, she knocked loudly on 4B's door for what seemed like ages before concluding that Christopher's mother wasn't home.

M
iriam had turned in her exam, avoided Professor Greene's attempts to draw her into conversation, and spent the evening getting really, really drunk at a dive bar down the street. She hadn't had a drink since she'd discovered she was pregnant, and even before that all she had drunk were wine coolers and cold duck when Bruce was in a romantic mood. At least she was in her own bed in her own apartment, she thought when she woke up the next morning with a hangover the size of Texas. She stumbled across the street for some Diet Coke and aspirin. She planned to spend the day in bed. She was due. Somehow she had managed to take a full course load, finish all her papers, take a final, and have a baby in the last two weeks.

It wasn't until she was halfway into a
Buffy
rerun that the sickening thought hit her that of course her father knew where she was because he had caller ID. Getting a street address from a phone number was a piece of cake for a real estate agent like her father.

She had spoken to him when? Not yesterday. No, the night before. The twenty-fifth. But he hadn't shown up so far—or had he? Why had she let Bruce convince her to put the phone in her name? No, he hadn't convinced her. She had never questioned it. He had told her to do it, and she did.

Groaning, she pulled her jeans back on and went to the apartment across the hall. Ellen the Airhead opened the door. From the way she looked, her night had been even worse than Miriam's. They called her the “Airhead” not because she was spaced-out on drugs, but because she was very, very stupid. She
was
usually spaced-out on drugs too, though.

“Ellen, think hard. Did a man come looking for me recently? An older man. Tall with dark hair.”

“Dark hair,” Ellen repeated obediently.

Resisting the urge to shake her even sillier, Miriam said, “How about some coffee? Why don't I make us some coffee?”

“Sure.” Ellen looked around her apartment, as if unsure where the kitchen was. Miriam pushed her in the right direction.

With a mug of instant she had no intention of drinking, Miriam led Ellen back over the previous few days and was rewarded for her patience with a flash of almost total recall on Ellen's part.

“He said he was your father.” She hesitated.

“He is my father. It's okay. Then what did he say?”

“He was, like, looking for you and I go, I don't know where she is. Not Canada. Maybe on Sanpere Island with that goat lady.”

“What!” Miriam screamed. “How do you know about Sanpere!”

“You told me.” Ellen stuck out her lower lip. “You didn't say it was a big fuckin' secret. You told me all about the nice lady with the goats on Sanpere that you and Bruce stayed with last summer. Hey, you didn't drink your coffee?”

H
e had more than twenty-four hours on her, Miriam figured as she frantically tried to find someone with a car she could borrow. It had been easy Christmas eve. She had gone to a party on the other side of town and taken the keys from the drunkest person there.

She debated whether to call Mary Bethany, but she didn't want to alarm her. For all she knew, Mary might call the police, the county sheriff's office. There weren't any police on Sanpere, which was one of the reasons Miriam had picked it. That and Mary. Mary would take care of the baby. She'd raise him to be a good man. Miriam didn't care whether her son went to college, made money, or did anything other than raise goats. All she cared about was that he be as honest and kind as Mary Bethany was.

Miriam finally located a car and arranged to go get it from her friend Cindy. They'd met Miriam's first week of school. It seemed a long time ago and definitely another life.

Hastily, she threw some things in a knapsack. She was pretty sure Mary wouldn't be fooled by whatever story her father cooked up, but she needed to give her some sort of letter that would say Christopher was hers. That she was surrendering her parental rights to Mary. That would keep her father away. Mary could use some of the money for a lawyer if she had to.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. She blew a stray strand of hair out of her eyes angrily. How could she ever have called her father!

She was ready to go. Bruce hadn't been back. There was no beer in the fridge—or empties on the counter. Suddenly she looked at where she had been living for over a year—the stained and sagging couch, a few beanbag chairs, a coffee table scrounged from the trash. It was covered with white rings and cigarette burns. The place stank of stale air and more. The doorknob was greasy. She turned it and pulled the door open. Pulled it open and stepped back into the room.

“Hello, Miss Miriam. Glad to see you're finally home. We've been looking for you.”

“For you—and the money.”

Duane and Ralph, Bruce's local suppliers. Miriam let the knapsack slip from her shoulder. She let her whole body sag. Then she sprinted past them, slamming the door behind her, and ran out of the house into the street as fast as she could.

I
'm sorry, but I don't operate my bed-and-breakfast during the off-season. They should have told you that at the market.”

Mary had been startled by the sudden appearance of a big fancy car coming up the long dirt drive that led to her house from the main road, but not so startled that she hadn't quickly erased all evidence that a baby was living in the house. It wasn't hard. She had prepared herself for the possibility—the eventuality. She took Christopher himself out through the shed and across into the barn, placing him in one of the mangers well away from the goats. He was such a good baby, but he might cry, and if he did, the nannies would more than drown him out.

“I must have misunderstood. My name is Dan Carpenter, by the way. I own a real estate agency down in Portland and I'm up here to check out a property.”

Mary's eyes narrowed. Skunks, that's what they were. The local agents had given up on her long ago, but there were new ones all the time. Telling her what she could get for waterfront on Eggemoggin Reach, what a genuine Down East saltwater farm would fetch. She knew what it would fetch. More skunks. Skunks who would have the farmhouse down in two minutes and put up some sort of hotel-looking place with a tennis court.

“I am not interested in selling my property, Mr. Carpenter. Good day.” Mary started to close the door.

“No, wait. Please. I'm sorry. You've misunderstood me. I'm not interested in your property. I mean of course I'm always interested in property, but that's not why I'm here. I simply need a place to stay for the night.”

“They should have sent you to Granville. There's a motel that stays open year-round there and I can't imagine they'd be full, even with the holidays.” Mary started to close the door again.

But Dan Carpenter was very good at what he did. He was used to people trying to close doors in his face—and equally used to getting his foot in them. Finding Mary had been simple. He'd stopped at the market, bought a snack, and asked about a woman who ran a bed-and-breakfast at her goat farm. “That would be Mary Bethany,” offered the teenager with a singularly repulsive Goth look who was minding the till. Dan had been in luck. Anyone older from the island would have either asked him what his business was that meant he had to stay the night or more likely, simply grunted, rung up his purchases, and taken his money.

“She won't let you stay, though. Isn't open now. Better go to the motel in Granville.” The boy was a veritable hydrant of information.

But Dan had gone to Mary's after looking her address up in the phone book thoughtfully offered for free by the local island newspaper.

Dan Carpenter had cracked tougher nuts than Mary. “Please, I'm sorry to have troubled you, but could I call the motel? I don't want to drive all the way down there and find they haven't any room at the inn.” He gave a little chuckle, presumably to show how very, very harmless and how very, very charming he was.

Mary opened the door grudgingly. “I'll call Patty and see. You sit here.” She pointed to one of the kitchen chairs and turned to the phone on the wall.

“Did I hear a baby crying? Are your grandchildren visiting for the holidays?”

Instantly Mary swung around. “Those are my goats, mister. I don't have any grandchildren and there are no babies in this house. Now, why don't you take yourself down to Granville? I don't think I care to call Patty after all.”

Dan Carpenter started walking toward Mary. She grabbed the phone again and he stopped.