The Last Refuge

“I should have known you’d figure it out,” she said, quietly.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say.

“You’re such a good figure-outer.”

We sat silently for a very long time. Amanda had her head lowered and seemed to be having trouble breathing.

“How did you know I was here?” she asked.

“You drove by and sucked me into your tailwind.”

She nodded as if that was a fair explanation.

“I tried to tell you,” she said.

“I guess you did.”

“You didn’t let me.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t want to know. That’s what you told me. You didn’t want any old baggage. Well, there’s mine, right there. My little baggage.”

“I don’t mean to intrude,” I said. “I just wanted to talk to you.”

“I bet you do.”

We sat quietly for a while.

“Do you want to know?” she asked.

“About your daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

“What else is there to tell?”

“Other stuff. It can wait.”

I looked up at the exposed rafters. They were mortised and tenoned and shaped into pseudo-Gothic arches. Tiny low-voltage quartz fixtures cast a clean but pale incandescent light. Torchieres mounted on the wall drew shadows across the orderly drawer fronts. Small bouquets were placed randomly along the floor. A larger arrangement anchored the far end of the room.

“You didn’t know. About Monica.”

“No.”

She looked at me.

“So why are you here?”

“Bay Side.”

“Oh that. You figured that out, too.”

“Maybe. Not sure.”

She took a deep breath to force the quaver out of her voice.

“You ever live in the City?”

“For over ten years,” I said. “We left when my daughter was born. Abby wanted her to have a yard.”

“I really couldn’t afford to be there, but I was determined to make it work. My mother was so mad at me for leaving home. She didn’t understand you can’t be born, live and die in just one place. Even a place like Southampton. Especially a place like Southampton—it’s so unreal in so many ways. Kids have to get out in the world and live a little. I was only a few hours away, but she rarely came to see me. To her, I might as well have moved to Calcutta. It was a matter of pride that she’d never been up the Empire State Building, or rode the boat out to the Statue of Liberty. She surely never set foot in Times Square. My God, she’d have had a coronary.”

“My mother didn’t like it, either. I think my dad built the cottage so he had a place to keep her outside the City.”

I noticed tears falling as she talked. She stopped occasionally to wipe her nose.

“I was the secretary for the editor of this semi-scholarly technical magazine. I worked my way up to editorial assistant. I was a biology major at Southampton College, but I was also good with grammar and spelling. I proofread the articles and worked with all the authors. There were only a few of us in the office. It was nice and friendly. And the work felt like it meant something. Didn’t pay much, but enough to live on, to pay rent on my apartment. I had to move a few times till I scored a semi-permanent sublet in the west seventies from this young guy who’d been transferred to Japan. I even published a few of my own articles. My boss encouraged me to write. It would take me months to research and compose. I’d agonize over it like you wouldn’t believe. But they were patient with me, him and the other editors. Like those guys in My Fair Lady, you know? Help the ignorant girl make something of herself.

“If they only knew what I did after work, which was mostly go out and fuck myself all up. You’re young, you’re pretty, you get a lot of attention. You go to the disco.”

She said it with a feigned French accent.

“You dance like a crazy person and feel like a beauty queen. You snort a lot of coke and bring home handsome young assholes in flowered suspenders who tell you about possessions you never even heard of, and want to fuck you before you’re even up the stairs to the apartment. One of these guys left me with a little present, but unlike every other girl I knew, I didn’t want to go to the clinic and zip- zip, ‘take care of it.’ I wanted to keep it, whatever it was. So I did, and the guys at the magazine were totally cool and never asked me anything or made me feel weird in any way. Instead of hassling me, they gave me two months maternity and an apartment full of kid stuff. I think they loved me, in a really nice way.”

The tears were now rolling out in full flow. She didn’t bother to wipe them off her face.

“It’s not very easy to raise a kid in the city, especially when you’re a single mom without a lot of money. But, I loved my little baby with every particle of my being. She was my light and my dream and my hope.”

She stopped to wipe her face and take a breath.

“You don’t have to,” I started to say.

“Yes I do,” she said, through her teeth. “And you have to listen.”

“Okay.”

“She was so smart—her dad was this really sharp professional guy, I think. Cute as hell, and destined for great things. I never tried to find out for sure, or pull any paternity stuff. I didn’t want that kind of thing to spoil what I had with Monica. It’s hard to explain, but some people understand. We had our own little universe, and I didn’t know if I could let anyone else in. But oh man, the cost of a nanny in New York. There were plenty of nights when I’d lay in bed and daydream about money and apartments with lots of rooms and Monica’s daddy bringing her toys and sending her to private school. I didn’t have a daddy of my own, but Mom did what she could. Whenever she had a spare twenty or something she’d slip it into some ridiculous Hallmark card and send it to me. I showed her pictures when we came home. She even forced herself to come to the City a few times. She’d fuss over Monica like you wouldn’t believe. And I was doing it, by God.

“Monica was just starting first grade. I was cutting back my hours so I could be there when she got home, and making up for the lower pay by writing articles at night. My nanny already had her next thing lined up. Getting rid of that expense more than compensated. She was a sweet woman, really. She knew what raising a kid on your own was like. She had a son. I didn’t see him much—he was in fourth or fifth grade at the time. She had him with her that day when she went out for a second to buy some milk and cereal. I’d forgotten to get any, and Monica needed breakfast. I didn’t know this, until later.

“They called me at my office. Monica was in the hospital. The nanny was too hysterical to talk to me, so I didn’t know anything till I got there. Apparently, Monica was hungry and fussy and threw a little tantrum. The nanny’s kid was alone with her, and thought he’d get her to stop crying by hitting her on the head. And then, after she was unconscious, he thought he’d hit her some more, which he did until she suffered massive, irreversible brain damage.

“I was seriously thinking about swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills, but I was afraid to leave Monica alone. What I really couldn’t do was support myself now that I had this crazy huge expense. I came home to Southampton hoping my poor mother, bless her, could look after both of us. But look, you can’t expect a person to care for somebody in a state like that. Especially an elderly woman. I might have been young and healthy and crazy with grief, but I couldn’t do it all either. Monica couldn’t do anything on her own. There was nothing there.”