Sourland

rush into my face. But it was a pleasant sensation, like the feel of hot sun on bare skin, before it begins to burn.

III

Probate

“Excuse me?”

It was the third day of her new life. This life was diminished as in the aftermath of brain surgery executed with a meat cleaver yet she meant to do all that was required of her and to do it alone, and capably, and without complaint.

She was in Trenton, New Jersey. Whatever this terrible place was — the rear entrance of a massive granite building, a parking lot partly under construction and edged with a mean, despoiled crust of ice like Styrofoam — and the winter morning very cold, wet and windy with the smell of the oily Delaware River a half-mile away — she was struck by the fact that it appeared to be an actual place and not one of those ominous but imprecise nightmare-places of the troubled sleep of her new life.

In a brave voice she said, a little louder: “Excuse me? — I’m sorry to trouble you but is this the rear entrance to Probate Court?”

The girl peered at Adrienne suspiciously. She had a blunt bold fist of a face. Her eyes were tarry-black, insolent. She was about eighteen years old and she was wearing an absurd faux-fox-fur jacket. In her arms she held a raggedy bundle — a very small baby — she’d been rocking, and cooing to, with a distracted air. For a full minute or more she’d been openly observing Adrienne shakily approach the rear of the courthouse along a makeshift walk of planks and treacherous icy pavement as if fascinated by the older woman’s over-precise cautious-careful steps — Does she think that I am drunk? Drugged? Is she concerned that I will slip and fall? Is she waiting for me to slip and fall? — but now that Adrienne stood before her, in need of assistance, the girl blinked as if she hadn’t seen Adrienne until this moment, and had no idea what her question meant.

“‘Probate court’ — it’s a division of the county court — I think. Do you know if I can use this entrance? — or do I have to walk all the way around to the front?” Adrienne’s numb mouth spoke calmly. In the widow’s voice one can detect not only the dazedness of the brain-injured but a profound disbelief that one is still alive, allowed to exist. Her eyes that resembled blood-specked fish eggs scooped from a fish’s gravid belly were sparkly-bright and alert fixed on the girl’s face.

A powerful sleeping pill called Doleur, she’d taken sometime after 2:30 A.M. the previous night. In anticipation of all that she’d be required to do today, and now she was dazed, groggy; her head felt as if it were stuffed with cotton batting, in her ears was a high-pitched ringing that was easy to confuse with sirens wailing on Trenton streets. She was thinking of how in her previous life — only just visible to her now on the far side of an abyss, and retreating — that life that had been hers until three days before when her husband of thirty-two years had died unexpectedly — she’d been a diligent and responsible person. She remembered that person. She must be that person. In preparation for this journey to the Mercer County Courthouse she’d lain in bed that morning rigid and unmoving rehearsing the journey with the manic thoroughness of a deranged actress in an unfathomable and catastrophic play.

She hadn’t anticipated getting lost, however. In a maze of one-way streets, detour signs and signs warning NO TURNS. Much of the corroded inner city of Trenton appeared to be under construction as in the aftermath of a geological cataclysm. There were barricaded streets, deafening jackhammers. Because of excavation in the courthouse parking lot, the grinding of earthmoving machines, and more barricades, Adrienne had had to park a considerable distance from the courthouse; she’d had a terrible time finding the courthouse itself which was farther east on State Street than she would have imagined, in a run-down neighborhood of empty storefronts, bail bondsmen’s offices and pawnshops. This, the county courthouse!

“‘Probrate court’” — the girl in the faux-fur jacket spoke in a drawling skeptical voice — “that’s like to do with ‘probration’?”

“‘Probate.’” Adrienne spoke cautiously not wanting to offend the girl by seeming to correct her pronunciation. “It has to do with wills. Not probation but civil court. It’s a kind of court within the court, I think. The county court, I mean…”

In her anxiety she was giving too much information. This too was a symptom of her new life — an over- eagerness to explain to strangers, to apologize. I know I have no right to be here — to exist. I know that I am of no more worth than a piece of trash. Forgive me!

The girl continued to stare at her, skeptically. Or maybe — Adrienne wanted to think this — the girl’s expression meant only that she was interested, curious. Her nose was flattened as if someone had jammed the palm of his hand against it and her small mouth was an animated crimson wound. She was both sleazy and glamorous in her fox-colored fur jacket opened to display a fleshy turnip-shaped body in a sequined purple sweater, lime-green stretch pants and faux-leather boots with miniature tassels. Her skin resembled sandpaper, blotched and blemished despite a heavy coating of makeup. Her brass-colored hair had been corn-rowed and sprang out asymmetrically about her head like frantic thoughts. “‘Wills’ — like, when somebody’s dead? Died? And you find out what they left you?” The girl gazed at Adrienne with repelled respect.

“Well, yes. Something like that.”

Find out what they left you. This chilling phrase flashed in the air like a knife blade.

The girl gave the baby-bundle in her arms a fierce little shake, furrowing her forehead in thought. She was the kind of harassed young mother whose cooing is indistinguishable from chiding and whose smiles could turn savage in an instant. “Ma’am, I guess it’d be inside — what d’you callit court. If I was you I’d take this-way-in and see if they let you through. Assholes got all kinds of ‘restrictions’ and ‘penalties’ but it’s real far to the front and the damn sidewalk is all broke. I came that way.” Abruptly now there was a bond between them, of grievance. The girl was eager to complain to Adrienne about the “shitty treatment” she’d gotten at the courthouse when she’d brought her grandma to Family Services the previous month, how “nasty mean” they’d been treated and how, this morning, she had business of her own in the courthouse: “See, I’m what’s called — sup-pena’d. Y’know what that is?” Adrienne said yes, she thought she knew.

As the girl spoke vehemently, Adrienne happened to notice something astonishing and disturbing: about twelve feet behind the girl was a stroller pushed almost out of sight between the blank granite wall of the courthouse and a parked van marked MERCER CO. DETENTION and in this stroller was what appeared to be another child, no more than two years old.

“Oh! Is that your child?”

“Huh? Where?”

“In that stroller, there. Isn’t that a — child?”

“‘Child’ — what’s that? Might be just some rags-like, or some bags or somethin’, stuck there.”

But this was a joke — was it? The girl laughed a little wildly.

“Ma’am, you are right. Sure is a ‘child.’ You want her?”

Seeing the startled look in Adrienne’s face, the girl brayed with laughter. Her notched-looking teeth were bared in a wide smile. Adrienne tried to fall in with the joke, which didn’t seem to her funny. She said, “She’s very” — desperately trying to think of an appropriate and plausible word — “sweet-looking, pretty….”

“Ma’am, thanks! You sure you don’t want her?”

“Well, I — ”

“Just kiddin, ma’am. That’s my sweet li’l Lilith, she’d been a preemie would you b’lieve? — now she’s real healthy. And you’re right, she’s pretty. She is.”

Two small children! The harried young mother had brought two small children with her to the courthouse on