Grace

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 would 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 would 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 that 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 have 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 is 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 that 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.

Leah’s mother nodded, looking at the carpet. “She was younger then, just starting out.”