Edith’s Journal, December 10, 1971 (cont.)
It was snowing when I got outside. I’d wrapped the baby in the blanket and tucked him inside my coat, but still I worried that something so small wouldn’t survive outside in the cold very long. I could feel him like a second heart beating against my chest.
There was no one around but I headed toward the service buildings like Libby had told me to. The old laundry was there and the powerhouse, but neither was used anymore. It was the least pretty part of campus, so no one much came here. I walked toward the big smokestack of the powerhouse. If I turned right there, I would come to the lake. I stopped on the path and looked up at the smokestack as if it could give me a sign. Miss Mayhew told us in her lecture on St. Peter’s that when a new pope is chosen people wait in the plaza to watch the smoke come out of the Sistine Chapel’s chimney. Black smoke meant they were still undecided; white meant they had chosen a new pope.
But the powerhouse wasn’t used anymore, so I didn’t know how to choose. If I went right I would take the baby to the lake. I could lay him in the reeds at the edge of the water like Moses, only I didn’t have an “ark of bulrushes daubed with asphalt and pitch” and it wasn’t warm here like it had been in Egypt. And there was no pharaoh’s daughter washing clothes downriver to find a baby and bring it up as her own.
That’s what I needed: a pharaoh’s daughter. Then I could leave the baby and know he would be all right and Libby and I could go to Europe together. Later, when Libby was herself again, I would tell her what I had done and she would be glad that I hadn’t left the baby to die. But where could I find a pharaoh’s daughter?
I looked left, away from the lake. I saw a building on a hill with a light on: Baldwin, the infirmary. There would be a nurse on call there. A nurse would know what to do. I could put the baby on the doorstep and knock on the door, then run and hide. I’d watch until someone came and then I’d run back to Main.
I took one look back at the powerhouse—and saw that there was white smoke coming out of the smokestack! It was a sign that I was making the right decision. I couldn’t risk going on the path, though, because it was getting light and someone might see me. So I climbed up the gully behind Baldwin. The snow made it slippery, and the baby put me off balance. Just before I reached the back door I fell. I kept my right hand on the baby and put my left out to brace my fall—and landed so hard I felt something crack. I felt nauseous and had to sit for a few minutes to catch my breath. It was light and the snow was coming down harder. It was pretty, like being inside a snow globe, and part of me just wanted to stay there. I unbuttoned my coat to make sure the baby was all right. He looked right up at me and then he looked up at the sky, at the big heavy flakes falling down, and I thought it was such a perfect moment, why not just stay in it forever?
But then he began to cry, so I got up and kept going up the hill. There was a light on at the back door and a car parked in the lot. That would be the visiting doctor, I thought, and I was glad because he’d be able to make sure the baby was all right. I walked across the lot and unbuttoned my coat. The baby stared up at me as if asking me what I was doing.
“It’s all right,” I told him. “Someone will be here soon.”
And then the door opened. I looked up, expecting the doctor, but it was a woman. It was Nurse Landry. Thank God, I thought. She was just the right person to help me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I am out of the building before I can even think whether I should be trying to alert someone that there’s a fire. But if I call for attention they’ll hold me and I can’t bear that. Chloe is in a burning house. Already she could be breathing smoke, already she could be—
I can’t even think of her engulfed in flames. But of course, now I have thought of it and the thought renders my body as weak as water. I stumble but somehow keep upright, racing past the buildings that Edith had called the infirmary and the one she’d called the powerhouse, all parts of her make-believe college where forty-five years ago she carried her roommate’s baby to the infirmary. How she must relive that trip every day of her life! Will I remember this trip the same way? With remorse that I hadn’t been able to save my baby?
No! I won’t let that happen!
I look up and see an orange glow above the tips of the pines and smell smoke. I scramble down the gully, careless of the branches that whip against my face, and dive into the gap beneath the fence.
He hasn’t left Chloe in the house, I tell myself, he loves Chloe—
He only loves her because she’s his.
It’s such a strange thought that I flinch—and something catches at my hair, as if the thought itself has reached out and grabbed me. What does that even mean? I plead. Of course we love our children because they are ours—
Is that why you love Chloe? Because she belongs to you? Would you stop loving her if she didn’t belong to you?
No, I think. Even if I had to hand
