A Girl in the Dumpster

Copyright © 2011 by Jack Apfel

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-1136-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-1135-3 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-1134-6 (dj)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011918577

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 11/17/2011

Cover paintings by Dana Sterzinger. Used by permission.

Author photo by C. J. LaPorte

Contents

Prologue

A Thursday in August

Book 1

That Same Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Book 2

Later the Same Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Epilogue

Christmas

Mid-January

For Janet

Prologue

A Thursday in August

On a summer night as hot and sticky as the air above boiling pasta, a lone woman made her way down an alley behind a block of small-town businesses. Though not as erratic as a squirrel in traffic, or as unbalanced as a whiskey drunk, she moved with characteristics of each. Beneath an oversized alpaca sweater, her large bosom heaved with the effort of breathing, though her pace hardly seemed aerobic. She wasn’t obese or even heavy, yet her legs wobbled beneath her long, wool skirt as if they were too weak to carry her weight. The woman stumbled often in her nocturnal journey, three times nearly falling—but each time, with spine-wrenching effort, she remained upright. And each time, she remained silent or nearly so, not cursing or growling or grunting, only once softly imploring the guidance of the Blessed Virgin.

The woman’s face was slathered with sweat, and her long black hair was sodden too, flopping about like broken wings when she looked back over her shoulder, which she stopped to do every yard or two. She lurched from one side of the narrow lane to the other as if she were dodging gunfire, bouncing between the small ancient stores on her left and the huge modern steel warehouse on her right. But as she neared the three-cubic-yard dumpster parked behind Nick Spilachi’s Italian Restaurant at the opposite end of the alley, her pace eased like a train pulling into a station; her path straightened and her breathing came in slower, more even puffs.

Though it might have looked like she was fleeing a man with a dagger or a woman with a grudge, by the time she got to the end of the alley it was clear that she was involved in nothing more sinister than nabbing a free meal. Spilachi’s was the largest retail establishment left in the small downtown of Candlesberg, Wisconsin, though it seated only thirty-two. It did a good business, serving meals large and ordinary enough to guarantee that food sufficient for a dozen hungry women would be discarded every night in the several large plastic garbage bags that Nick tossed into the dumpster. The woman had discovered this waste the previous night (or maybe it was the night before, she couldn’t be certain) and had immediately developed a taste for Italian cuisine.

The woman crouched into the corner the dumpster made with the chewed-up brick back wall of the restaurant and surveyed her surroundings, her eyes darting about in a pattern as random as the flight of the flies that coveted the garbage along with her. She saw only immobile shadows in varying shades of darkness between her and the diffuse light at what was now the far end of the alley. (She had not yet noticed the light in a window above a shop in the middle of the block—understandably, since it was so dim it barely illuminated the window’s drawn shade.) She jerked her head from side to side, scanning for threatening sounds. There was only the noise of the sparse night traffic on the street in front of the businesses—Main Avenue—muffled by the intervening buildings. She sucked in a large breath through her nose. The air near the dumpster was filled with the stench of garbage in early rot, but she had already adapted to that effluvium and smelled it no more. What did capture her notice was the harsh sulfuric stench of exhaust from an internal combustion engine, poorly tuned. It was an unusual odor for the alley, in her limited experience there, and the lingering foulness of the vehicle’s emission piqued her anxiety as if it were the odor of a recently discharged gun. She shuddered and crunched tighter against the brick, mumbling, No one is here to reassure herself. And again, No one is here.

And indeed, there appeared to be no one else in the alley. Whatever vehicle had expelled the pollution was gone. The restaurant, the only business on the block open past five, served only until ten and was now closed. And Nick Spilachi, having fulfilled the last of his proprietary obligations by depositing the garbage in the dumpster, was gone now too. The night before (or was it the one before that?), the woman had seen Nick take out the trash before the bells in the City Hall tower three blocks north had clanged eleven times. Assuming that Nick was a person of obsessive habit (a self-referential assumption she made of everyone), she thought it would be safe for her to pick up her impromptu takeout if she waited until they tolled that hour again. And as it turned out, she was right in her prediction of Nick’s behavior, if not in her theory of its underlying cause. The restaurateur always took the trash out at about 10:45, not because it was his obsession, but because it just happened to take about three-quarters of an hour to clean up the restaurant after closing. He was regular about his practices, though, and even a wild dog or a feral cat would have been able to discern his schedule after a night or two.

That is, if the animal didn’t suffer from the maladies that plagued the woman, dysfunctions that made it a significant achievement to intentionally return to the same location two nights in a row. The uneasiness of her approach to the dumpster was not due to her being pursued. Nor was it due entirely to the darkness and eerie acoustics of the night, or any other external condition, though these had their influence. And it wasn’t a result of intoxication. She wasn’t drunk. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a drink of alcohol. She couldn’t remember a lot of things. A dysfunctional memory, though a relatively recent issue, was now her foremost tribulation. But that hadn’t caused her odd approach either, not directly. No, that was due mainly to a much older element of her personality—suspicion. Her haste and indirectness were due to an overwhelming distrust of nearly everyone and every situation. She was suspicious that night because she had always been suspicious. It was her nature to suspect. Or perhaps it was her illness—the two, personal idiosyncrasies and disease, being for so long so hopelessly intertwined. It was an affiliated combination, her mental maladies and their treatments, that had robbed her of a competent memory. If she had a job, or a family, or a home, prospects of any sort, she wasn’t aware of them at that moment.

But she wasn’t dumb. She was at least as bright as the grackles that she would have frightened away with her darting approach had she come in daylight. Like them, she knew enough to flee from danger, or what might seem dangerous because it was not expected. Although she didn’t know specifically that it was early August, she was aware that the sweltering heat for which she was inappropriately dressed would eventually give way to cooler weather and then cold, for which she was equally unsuitably clad. She knew that before fall came, she would need better accommodations than the drafty corner of an abandoned gas station like the one to which she had retreated the night before and in which she had passed the daylight hours.

After a minute or two, the vehicle exhaust had mostly dissipated, blown away by a soft southerly breeze wafting up the alley, a breeze that was comforting in its own way, like a mother’s breath on a nursing child’s forehead, telling the woman that she had time to find somewhere else to live, that this was not the time to worry about a home or other people or an impending change of season.

Though, of course, worry she did.

Through her short, sweaty fingers slipped a string of small, multifaceted plastic beads as she mumbled, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee … Comforted by the prayer, she re-pocketed the rosary in her skirt. She stepped forward to the dumpster, its top edge four feet high, level with her chin. She reached up and out to where she could see the dim outline of one of the bags Nick Spilachi had tossed in the bin, his garbage, her late inelegant dinner. The thick steel rim dug into her armpits and through the sweater scraped her chest above her bosom. She ran her hands over the surface of the garbage bag, shifting and turning it, feeling in the darkness for a good grip on the twist-tied end. But the bin was heaped full that night, an overflowing cornucopia, and just as she was about to grab onto the bag’s end, it slipped off the top of the pile and fell off the far side of the dumpster, the side lit by the light from the street, the side too close to the end of the alley for her to feel safe in retrieving it.

Holy mother of God … she muttered and staggered back against the wall as the bag hit the pavement with a crackling thump. After a few minutes of trembling in the darkness, she regathered her wits and limited fortitude, convinced herself that no one had noticed her trash faux pas, and reached into the bin again. But instead of cool plastic, she felt the warmer, rougher texture of cloth. She was disappointed at first, but oddly for her, not suspicious. It wasn’t surprising, even to her, to find something other than garbage bags in the bin. There were a number of other shops on the block, and the proprietors or employees of any of them could have made use of the convenient garbage receptacle. There was a small sewing and textiles shop among them and a resale shop, either of which might have been the source of discarded dry goods. Considering that possibility and congratulating herself on coming up with it (her dynamic imagination being so much more often a blight to her than an inspiration), her disappointment turned to anticipation. Maybe this might be a good find for her. Maybe it was a blanket with a stain that made it unsellable but which would still keep her warm on the cold autumn nights that might not be far off. Or maybe a dress that could not be repaired, but might be in good enough shape to serve as an alternative to the rough and dirty skirt she now wore. Or perhaps it was just a bolt of cloth in what had once been a popular pattern and now, with the vagaries of fashion, was considered too ugly to be sold even as a remnant, but for which she could find a dozen uses. Her mind whirled with the possibilities, and enjoying the spin, she was filled with what was as close to optimism as she’d felt since she first stumbled upon Spilachi’s late-night alley buffet.

She grabbed at the bundle. It was not quite in her reach and too heavy to grasp with just the tips of her fingers. Certainly a whole bolt of cloth, she thought. (That the textile was also dry, despite an evening downpour that had come hours after the retail shops had closed, might have been a reasonable cause to be wary, but that detail escaped her notice.) Up on her toes, she slapped at the bundle, trying to turn it for an easier grip. At her knock, a whine emitted from the package, like a sick, mournful cat begging to have its suffering ended.

Holy Mary! she yelped and again stumbled back away from the dumpster, hiding behind her back the hand that had struck the bundle, as if it independently bore the guilt of the assault. She fell back against the crumbling brick of the restaurant’s rear, shuddering, staring into the darkness in the direction of the bin, so recently comforting but now threatening in its dark mass. The woman jammed her hand into her pocket, shoving her fingertips hard into her leg as she fumbled for the beads.

Again the bundle mewled, and the cry, coupled with the pressure on her thigh, fired some dusty synapse in the woman’s brain. In a panic different from the free-floating anxiety that usually framed her thoughts, this time a panic with purpose, with intent, she dove back toward the dumpster. Again stretching up on her toes, the rusted steel scraping her again rapidly heaving chest, she clutched at the noisy package, grappling it to the edge of the bin. She gently lifted it up over the edge as if it were …

A baby? she whispered in wonder as she felt the shape of the package in her hands. She dropped to sitting on the broken blacktop with the bundle in her lap, mindless of the water filling the hollow the bin had created in the blacktop, which soaked up through the back of her skirt and into the front between her thighs. As nimbly and quickly as her thick sweaty fingers would allow, she found the edge of the cloth and peeled it back. As she pulled back another layer, she felt a tightening in her ribs beneath the recent abrasions, which fired a scrap of memory of straps being pulled taut over her chest as she lay on a cold bed. She fought back the terror the image brought and worked her hand inside the blanket, discovering a small patch of damp, crusty, matted hair, a fuzzy ear, a tiny shoulder. Her hands clumsy and shaking, as if they were nearly frozen on this steamy summer night, she folded the cloth away from the tiny form, ran her hand down it, and found a sticky pliable cord, and off to the side, an even stickier amorphous mass. Though in the darkness she couldn’t see it, some sector of her troubled mind confirmed that the form was a newborn, and that the sticky blob packed with it was its afterbirth.

But the child was no longer fussing, no longer even making the ethereal whimper. A new horror, on the verge of seizure, gripped her. Her thoughts were awash in disjointed memories and untrustworthy images. Vague recollections of childbirth came to her, but it had been so long ago, hadn’t it? She shook her head violently in an attempt to sort the demonic impulses from the rational thoughts that were trying to break through. Somewhere in the ratty cobwebs of her brain she knew what to do, if she could only conquer her compulsion to drop the bundle and run.

Book 1

That Same Thursday

1

Sleep didn’t come easily to Anne Hedlin anymore; at age sixty-seven, she couldn’t remember when it had. And on hot, clammy nights like this one, in a bedroom with only one window for ventilation—ten feet across from which was that infernal Consolidated Supplies warehouse that blocked any chance of a direct breeze—falling off was even more difficult. For more than an hour she’d been lying in bed reading, trying to tire her eyes, with little success.

Her apartment above the Bit O’ Everything Resale Shop—of which she was sole proprietor, sole employee, and, on too many occasions, sole soul within—had been built at the beginning of the twentieth century, back when small-town shopkeepers more commonly lived above their establishments. The room in which Anne was reading and squirming, trying to get comfortable, was the larger (but only by a quarter) of two bedrooms in the five-room flat. It was to the back, away from the traffic of Main Avenue, which at the time the building had been constructed would still have been mostly horse-drawn. Though the traffic was much heavier and noisier now, it was still mostly ignorable at that time of night. And there was that scandalous blunder across the way, the enormous warehouse built in the 1980s when traffic congestion was already jamming the narrow downtown streets, leaving little room for an increase in truck traffic. In addition to blocking the wind, it also blocked all of the noise from the east, small consolation for the loss of the view of the quaint Candlesberg residential neighborhoods that had been visible from Anne’s window when she’d moved into the building twenty-seven years earlier. The quiet the building provided was a blessing of sorts—but one among many that Anne, by lifelong habit, left uncounted, the opposite of the way she kept mental account of the accumulated merchandise in her store down to the last rusted wrought-iron door hinge, Depression-glass pickle dish, and brown-stained quilted Victorian tea cozy.

So it had been mostly very quiet as she lay there reading an ancient, water-stained, musty hardcover edition of Main Street by Sinclair Lewis that she’d grabbed from a box of books that someone had dropped off at the door to her shop (in spite of the sign in the front window that warned against such unsolicited deposits). A vehicle in ill repair had chugged and coughed through the alley a quarter-hour earlier at 10:57. (In her sleeplessness, Anne had been frequently looking at the brass-plated windup alarm clock on the nightstand beside her bed, and for no reason other than frustration with her insomnia, the time of the vehicle’s intrusive passing had stuck in her head.) Some hooligan who’d gotten lost coming home from one of the bars a few blocks to the north, she’d surmised. But now, even with the thick summer air to amplify the tiniest disturbance, the night was again eerily still. So much so that, having finally drifted off into a half sleep, her first thought on hearing the pounding that came up from the shop below was that it was a ghost banging beneath her bed. The notion came out of nowhere but seemed so immediately real that, when the book that had dropped from her hands to her chest in her doze fell to the floor with a ka-lump, she nearly went apoplectic. She grabbed the flannel blanket that she’d earlier kicked off and awkwardly covered herself up to her chin with it, her fingers crushing its satin edge with the force of eagle talons gripping a rabbit, though in her distress she felt more like the rabbit.

Her heart had just begun to slow from its pounding when there came another round of banging. It took a third round for her to realize that the disturbance was not a spirit or even a prowler, but someone rapping on the back door of the shop below. She struggled with the blanket as she got out of bed, outrage at the intrusion and at being so foolishly frightened making her clumsy as she stumbled to the window. She gave the bottom of the brittle yellowed shade a yank. It retracted with a floop and a cacophonous rattle. Scrunching her cheek flat against the pane, she tried to get a look at who or what it was that was causing such a racket down there. She saw only darkness. Another knock came. She checked the clock: 11:17. Middle of the night, she grumbled as she stabbed her feet into her slippers. She headed out into the living room toward the stairs, punching her arms into a well-worn terry-cloth robe as she went.

The single bare incandescent bulb high in the stairway ceiling had burned out again back in June. With the summer’s long hours of daylight and her early retreats to her apartment each evening, Anne hadn’t been inconvenienced enough by the lack of light to ask anyone to bring a ladder and change the bulb for her. Now, as she felt her way down the steps in the dark—the sag of each worn, creaking, and cracking fir tread a new threat to her balance—she wished that she’d asked a neighbor or even that worthless bum George (for three years now the new husband of her late brother’s widow, Alice) to replace the bulb. She clutched the handrail to steady herself, but with its mounting brackets insecurely moored in the ancient plaster of the wall, its wobbling and rattling only added to her insecurity and annoyance.

Knocks sounded twice more as Anne made her way down the decrepit stairs, the interval between bursts of rapping getting shorter each time, the impatience of the knocker agitating her just that much more. I’m coming, I’m coming, she grumbled.

Even in the dark, you could tell that the Bit O’ Everything dealt in old. It had the stale smell of an attic or an infrequently opened closet. And it was cluttered, stacked high and dense with every sort of potentially reusable, and thus potentially resalable, item (except underwear, socks, and shoes, which Anne did not believe could by any means be made sanitary enough for resale). The light from the street coming through the windows that spanned the front of the store didn’t make it a third of the way back into the interior before being swallowed up by the shop’s accumulated wares. There was a switch for the ceiling lights by the back door, but that was fifteen feet from the bottom of the steps, five yards of stuff away. Anne ventured through the flotsam with little hesitation, but only because the same things had been in the same places at the back of the store for so long that she could have found her way through them blind. And there was that persistent knocking compelling her forward.

She found the switch and flipped it up. The shop flickered into light from six fluorescent fixtures screwed to the fourteen-foot stamped metal ceiling, blinding Anne for an instant and further disorienting her. She was in such a dither by then that it didn’t occur to her to ask who was at the door or what he or she wanted. Even if she had thought to ask, she probably wouldn’t have bothered. This was Candlesberg, after all. Though it wasn’t the charming small town she remembered from her youth, its crime rate remained the lowest of any town its size in a five-state area. Her trust was based on long experience, not on any belief in the inherent goodness of people, a faith she certainly did not hold. She wriggled the door’s stop-chain out of place, snapped open the dead bolt, and yanked at the knob of the ancient six-panel wooden door. Swollen from the summer humidity, it resisted her first attempt, but swung open wide with her violent second yank.

Expecting to find only the wind to have been knocking after all of her fuss, and already short of breath from her trek downstairs and her fight with the door, Anne nearly stopped breathing at the sight of the shadowed figure in the doorway. It took her visitor’s strained plea of Help? to bring Anne back to her senses.

What? Anne asked, still not entirely convinced of what her eyes were telling her—that the figure in the faint light was flesh-and-blood human. From the skirt and general shape of the visitor, Anne assumed the figure was female (a teenage prankster was her first guess, which riled her even more).

The baby … it needs help, the person said in a deep, raw, scratchy voice, indefinitely feminine and certainly not that of a young girl.

Baby? Anne asked, puzzled by the voice and even more so by the woman’s assertion.

The woman held out a bundle that until that moment Anne had not noticed she carried. Just as Anne looked down at it, the package emitted a weak but insistent mewl. At the cry, Anne’s reason, only barely gathered, scattered like leaves blown by the wind she had earlier suspected would be rattling the door.

Recovering a little, one hand clutching her chest, she fumbled for another light switch, the one next to the door. The sixty-watt bulb above the doorway on the outside didn’t illuminate much, but it was enough to bring Anne around to the full reality of the situation: At her back door was a short woman, maybe in her thirties or early forties, with long black hair matted to her head with sweat, stuffed into dirty clothes that Anne would have thrown out if they’d been illicitly dropped at the shop’s door. The intruder’s pale, puffy face was twisted with what Anne interpreted as urgency as she held out an old olive Army blanket folded up on itself. From within the bundle a cry emitted like that of …

A baby? Anne said, her wits straining at the idea.

Yes, the strange woman said, holding her package out further toward Anne. A new one. Just born.

Instinctively, Anne stepped into the doorway and reached out for the bundle being offered to her. She felt the weight of it, though it was slight, come into her hands. She looked at the visitor and then down at the bundle she now held. Cradling it in the crook of her arm, she folded back the edge of the blanket to reveal a tiny face, patchy with dried blood and mucus. Offended at the exposure to the night air, the infant let out a cry, weak as a hatchling’s in a nest, but clear in its insistence.

Anne looked back up at the woman and, words failing her, asked for an explanation with her expression. But the woman only nodded, just once, as if she assumed she had already been understood. She turned around and started off up the alley in the direction from which she had originally entered it.

Wait! Anne cried. "You can’t just leave a baby here." The newborn wailed its peep of a wail again as if to second the sentiment.

The woman stopped but did not turn back. Anne saw her shoulders drop and thought she heard a sound like a deflating tire come from her.

If you need help, I’ll be glad to call someone, Anne said, more softly, the presence of the child in her arms dissolving the anger she had built up at the woman’s intrusion on her solitude.

The woman only shook her head.

Is there anything I can do for you? Anne asked, more to keep the woman from running away than out of any sincere desire to be of assistance. The woman took another few steps away down the alley. Covering the baby’s face with the blanket again and stepping out into the night, Anne said, Your baby needs to be seen by a doctor. You should be too.

The woman moved faster, though not in what anyone would mistake for a run. She was already twenty pained steps farther down the alley when Anne, from some unexplainable inspiration, called out, Are you hungry?

Her words echoed off down the alley like a shout off the walls of a canyon, surrounding the woman, stopping her cold. Yes, she was hungry. Starving. Her only full meal of the day had been interrupted before it’d begun by that bawling little creature. And she knew that when word got out about the baby, it wouldn’t be safe for her to return to the dumpster that night or many more nights to come. There would be police around the neighborhood. And social workers. Her mind whirled at the prospects she came up with, without questioning the reliability of their source. Her shoulders shook and her stomach growled, which forced her to the conclusion that, risky as it might be, if the older woman was offering her food, it might be her only chance to eat that night.

She turned back to Anne and said, quietly, Yes. I’m hungry.

Gently, as if she were talking to an invited guest or a patron in her shop who looked willing to buy, Anne said, Well, let me get you something to eat … and then maybe …

But the woman, anticipating Anne’s suggestion, cut her off with, But I won’t see a doctor. Doctors were evil, that much of a belief she could put together in her shaky mind. Evil and mean.

But you really should … Anne insisted.

The woman looked Anne square in the eye and said, No doctor for me. Then turning away toward the warehouse, she added softly, But maybe for the baby.

But … Anne started and then nodded her head in concession. She was usually not one to back down from a point, but she certainly didn’t want to chase the woman away and be stuck with a baby either.

The woman took a couple of lumbering steps back toward the resale shop, steps that seemed painful or fatigued, which Anne attributed to the infirmity of having just given birth. She’d noticed the wet area of the woman’s skirt, assumed it was from her water breaking in labor, and from that could think of no other source for the baby than from this odd little woman’s womb.

The woman stepped up past Anne into the resale shop and stood looking warily toward the front of the store.

I can make you a sandwich, Anne said, stifling her urge to scrunch up her nose at her visitor’s distinct aroma of body odor and garbage. Then more sternly, she added, But you’ll have to eat it on the way to the hospital.

The woman shot a brief glare of irritation at Anne and then dropped her gaze to Anne’s slippered feet. Her impulse was to turn and run off into the night. But again, hunger got the better of her. In a whisper, but still insistent, she said, Just for the baby. I won’t let any doctor touch me. Doctors would try to lock her up again and give her drugs, pills that gave her headaches and made her joints scream, pills that gave her awful dreams even when she was awake, pills that paralyzed her, pills that ate at her insides and closed her soul. She was remembering things now, and they weren’t pleasant.

But … Anne started and then gave up again. Just for the baby, she conceded, wondering why she was bothering at all. She wasn’t a social worker or a nun or any other sort of do-gooder. What was it to her if this intruder got medical attention or not? Why was she troubling herself at all? The baby in her arms squirmed then and let out another cry. Up that way then, Anne said, indicating the stairway with a nod of her head.

The woman looked at the piles of merchandise between them and the bottom of the steps, the narrow path through them. She shook her head no.

It was Anne’s turn to sigh, with an undertone of a deep groan of frustration. I’m too old for this sort of nonsense. She felt the baby squirm within the blanket in her arms and said, Okay. You hold your baby, and I’ll go get dressed and get you something to eat. She held out the bundle toward the woman, who accepted it as if Anne was handing over a ticking bomb.

Anne made her way back to the stairs, grumbling as she climbed them, Call the police. Let them handle it. Gracious, middle of the night …

But in a few minutes, she was back downstairs in gray slacks and a pleated pale pink blouse, her gray hair hastily brushed so that in the back it was still pressed flat against her skull. The woman, to Anne’s half surprise, was still there, holding the baby in one arm, swaying from side to side and mumbling to the child or to herself. Anne held out the sandwich she had thrown together and said, Here.

The woman took the sandwich and stared at it. After a long moment, apparently deciding that Anne was not trying to poison her, she sunk her teeth into it.

Now let’s go, Anne said, closing the back door, locking it, and leading the woman—who was busily gnawing on the sandwich she held in her right hand with the baby tucked into the crook of her left arm—to the front of the store and out the door onto Main Avenue.

2

Anne glanced over at the passengers in her 1997 Buick LeSabre. The woman held the baby loosely across her thighs, her right leg bouncing vigorously. Anne couldn’t tell whether her jittering was to comfort the child or just nervousness—the woman seemed such a nervous sort. Whatever the reason for her jumping limb, the woman otherwise sat very still, staring out the side window. So far, she had said very little, responding to Anne’s few inquiries with monosyllabic answers or silence.

What’s your name, dear? Anne tried once more to engage her passenger, thinking it a reasonable, noninvasive question.

The woman shot a glance at Anne, acknowledging the inquiry, but she turned back toward the window without answering.

They’ll want to know that much when we get there, Anne said gently, trying not to further spook her passenger.

The woman nodded but still stared out the window, as if her name might be written on one of the passing storefronts. My name? It was a simple request. No big deal. Except that the name that came to her did not seem like it belonged to her. Her memory was so unreliable that she did not trust it even for that most basic of information. Finally, she mumbled, Heddy Maelstrom.

What’s that, dear? Anne asked.

My name’s Heddy Maelstrom, Heddy said, a single decibel louder.

Heddy Maelstrom, Anne repeated. That’s an interesting name. She turned into the hospital parking lot nearest the emergency room. Shoving the shift into park, she said, quietly, almost a question, Well, Heddy, we’re here.

But Heddy made no move to get out of the car. She sat and stared out the window at the five stories of St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital. Heddy Maelstrom, she said to herself, and then again, Heddy Maelstrom, like someone trying to memorize a new password.

Anne came around to the passenger side of the car, opened the door, and with no help or resistance either, as if she were taking it from the empty seat, took the baby from Heddy’s lap.

When Heddy made no move to get out, Anne asked, Aren’t you coming in? The doctor may have some questions about your baby.

I’ll wait out here, Heddy said, barely audible. Looking through the windshield at the other cars in the parking lot, a thousand fears passed through her as she imagined what dangers lay within. But her fear of doctors and hospitals trumped all. If that’s all right with you? she said, glancing up, her hand already on the armrest, ready to pull the door closed. I don’t like hospitals.

I suppose it’s all right, Anne said. If you won’t reconsider?

Heddy shook her head and gave the door a tug, rearticulating her intent.

Anne stepped out of the way and let her passenger close the door. She shook her head and, with the baby snuggled close to her chest, started for the ER entrance of the hospital. Just be there when I come back out, she thought as she passed through the automatic door. Please, just be there.

3

Look, I can’t examine her against her will, Dr. Paul Furston, an obstetrician/gynecologist, insisted to Anne.

They were in an exam room in the Emergency Department of St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital, where the physician had just finished examining the baby, and the discussion had turned to Heddy. She doesn’t look like she’s a danger to herself or anyone else, so if she won’t let me examine her, there’s nothing I can do. She doesn’t look like she’d be much help to anyone else either, especially to a newborn, Anne thought. The doctor had gone out to the parking lot to look at Heddy, at Anne’s insistence, and made his own attempt at convincing her to come in. Heddy had locked the car door when she’d seen his lab coat. He hadn’t recognized her as one of the few mentally ill homeless persons that haunted the streets of Candlesberg and the emergency room. From his description, nobody else in the ER had either. But just because she was new in town didn’t mean she didn’t merit the classification. What did you say her name was?

Anne was holding the baby, now diapered and wrapped in a hospital blanket. Instinctively, she began swaying gently from side to side. Without looking up from the baby, she said, She said it was Heddy Maelstrom.

Really? the doctor said. Cute. Probably not her real name. But, even so, she’s obviously an adult and has the right to refuse medical treatment.

"But she just had a baby," Anne protested.

Women have been doing that for thousands of years without the help of doctors, Dr. Furston said. We’re a recent luxury. Seeing that his attempt at charm was lost on Anne, he said, Look, she said ‘no.’ And if she went through childbirth on her own and had the strength to bring the baby to you, well, it probably went okay. The placenta was intact, and whatever bleeding she had seems to have stopped. She’s probably been through it before.

You think she’s had other babies like this? In an alley? The thought horrified Anne. She clutched the baby closer to her chest.

"Not necessarily in an alley. I’m just saying that I think she’s been through labor before, that’s all. It’s easier the second, third, sixth time. She doesn’t seem uncomfortable. I didn’t see her flinching like she’s having cramps. And from what I can tell in the parking-lot light and through the dirt on her face, she’s a little pale, but she doesn’t seem anemic. From what you said of her clothes, there wasn’t that much blood loss. I think she did all right."

"But she had a baby," Anne said again, as if the physician still didn’t understand that childbirth required more than a salami and cheese on rye to recover from.

Yes, she did. And I’m not denying the importance of that. The risk. I think somebody should stay with her, at least for a couple days. But as skittish as she is about doctors and hospitals, I doubt if she’s going to be much more cooperative with a nurse or a social worker.

I suppose not, Anne said, gently rocking the baby from side to side.

"But she seems to trust you," Dr. Furston said.

Anne looked up at the physician with a steely glare. What do you mean?

She trusts you. She came here with you. She got in your car.

What are you getting at? Anne spoke quietly so as not to disturb the baby, but her eyes were squinted nearly shut with suspicion.

I was just thinking that, since you seem to be the only one she trusts, maybe you could just keep an eye on her for a day or two, the doctor said. I could give you a list of things to look for if she’s having trouble, what to do if she does.

But I’m not a nurse. And I don’t know where she lives, Anne protested. How could I watch her?

She probably doesn’t live anywhere. She’ll need someplace to stay.

"So you’re suggesting that I take a woman and her newborn baby, strangers, into my home? Is that what you mean?" Though she was still holding the baby, Anne’s voice had risen and sharpened to the coarseness of rusted steel wool at what she saw as the absurdity of the suggestion.

The baby can stay here at the hospital, Dr. Furston said.

Why? Anne gasped. Is there something wrong with her? She clutched the child close again, feeling a lump of panic inflate in her throat. This came as a surprise—she didn’t think of herself as the type to become so immediately attached to anyone, even a baby. Up until then, she’d been certain that any maternal instincts she’d ever possessed had been cooked off years ago in the hot flashes of menopause.

We keep all newborns overnight, especially dirty babies.

What do you mean by that? Anne asked, clearly insulted on the baby’s behalf.

A dirty baby? That’s one who’s born outside the hospital. We keep them in a special part of the nursery, just in case they’re infectious. We’ll check her for strep, AIDS, venereal diseases, especially since we know so little about the mother and the conditions of birth. And she’s small, probably a couple of weeks premature. We’d get some nutrition into her. Do some other tests. Watch for any complications. Make sure she can suck all right. Things like that.

Fine. Good, Anne said. The baby can stay here. But when a nurse reached to take the baby from her, Anne ignored the woman, giving up the infant only when Dr. Furston lifted the bundle away and handed the child to the nurse.

Noticing how Anne’s eyes followed the nurse and baby even after the exam-room door had closed after them, the doctor said, She’ll be well taken care of here.

Oh, I’m sure she will, Anne said. Turning her attention back to more immediate matters, she said, I won’t be charged for this, will I? I’m sure my insurance won’t cover it.

No, Dr. Furston sighed. "The hospital has provisions for indigent cases. As a matter of fact, she could just leave the baby here. Wisconsin has a Safe Haven law. She could just leave the baby anonymously, and we’ll take her, no questions asked. That might be the best in the long run."

No, Anne said.

Yes, the doctor said. She can just leave the baby and walk away. Better than tossing her in a dumpster.

Well, of course it is, Anne said, shocked that he would even suggest that Heddy, or anyone, would do such a thing. But I meant ‘no, I don’t think she wanted to abandon her baby.’

But you said she gave her to you and just walked away. That sounds like abandonment to me.

I’m sure she just wanted what’s best for the baby, that’s all. She didn’t know what else to do.

I don’t follow.

Anne didn’t really understand what she was saying either, or why she was saying it. I just think she’d want to keep the baby, if she had the chance. What mother wouldn’t?

So you’ll take her in?

Yes, Anne heard someone with her voice say. Until you can work something else out.

Well, the Safe Haven law is only good for the first seventy-two hours. After that, giving her up will be more complicated.

Fine. I’ll take her. For a day or two, Anne said. Just take good care of that little girl.

We will, the doctor said, as if it should have been a given. Smiling, he added, Good thing she’s a girl too, under the circumstances. Baby girls are tougher.

Is that so? Anne said, unimpressed

The doctor cleared his throat and said, I’ll write you up a list of things to watch for, things to do for her postnatal care.

Thank you, Anne said with more doubt than gratitude.

"Thank you, the doctor said, obviously glad to have the problem of what to do with Heddy solved, at least for the time being. But there is one other thing."

Her shoulders dropping to indicate her forbearance was nearing its capacity, Anne grumped, What?

Just some paperwork. Truth is, I shouldn’t be talking to you at all about your guest’s condition without a signed HIPAA form.

What’s that? Anne asked, suspicion creasing her brow.

It’s just a form she would sign allowing me to talk to you about her medical issues.

So you expect me to get her to sign some paper allowing me to talk to you? How do I know she can even read or write?

An X on the page is good enough if you have a witness cosign it.

And if she doesn’t sign? Anne asked, already decided that one more complication would be one too many.

She’ll sign it, the doctor said with a twist of a smile. She trusts you.

So you said, Anne said. So you said.

As she stepped out of the door of the hospital Anne felt exhaustion from the late hour and the weight of her predicament envelop her like the thick night air. Crossing the parking lot back to her car, she couldn’t help thinking that it might all be much easier if the woman, Heddy Maelstrom, was gone when she got there, just up and disappeared like the ghost Anne had first thought was at her door. But a few yards from the LeSabre, she could see the silhouette of the woman in the front seat and resigned herself to the situation.

Heddy woke with a start when Anne opened the driver’s-side door. She had been debating whether to leave or not since Anne and that doctor had left. After ten minutes, she had finally decided to bolt, but then didn’t quite have the nerve to unlock the door. She felt at least somewhat protected in the car, and the nearly empty expanse of blacktop between her and the shadows of the park across the street was intimidating. So she’d settled as well as she could into the Buick’s passenger seat, its springs stiff with age and from little use. She’d closed her eyes and considered her options. Almost instantly, she had dozed off.

It’s all right, dear, Anne said, noticing her passenger’s trembling. Your baby is going to stay in the hospital for a while. They’ll take good care of her. And you’re coming home with me.

The sleep, though brief, had momentarily erased the events of the last hour from Heddy’s mind, and she hadn’t a clue as to who this strange woman was next to her. The mention of a baby did fire scraps of recollections: the feel of the blanket-wrapped package from the dumpster, the baby’s kittenish crying, her own terror. But she couldn’t piece those into a coherent picture of how she’d ended up in this car with this woman. And not knowing was not good. Her hand fumbled for the door handle to yank it and make an escape. But before she could find the lever, Anne had shifted the car into reverse and was backing out of the parking space. I’m being kidnapped! Heddy thought, though try as she might she couldn’t think of any reason for anyone to do that. She wedged herself tight against the door, her trembling hand too late finding the handle. She stared at Anne with eyes wide with panic and dread.

Anne glanced over at her and could only think: Good Lord, what have I gotten into?

4

With much coaxing and a bit of actual tugging, Anne had gotten Heddy to get out of the car and come back with her to the Bit O’ Everything. And with much more persuasion and a bit of gentle pushing, she’d gotten the woman up the dark stairway into her apartment. Hoping to build on previous success, Anne made her reluctant guest another sandwich and placed it on the kitchen table. Come sit down and eat, Anne invited.

Heddy did as directed, as much out of fear as hunger. Her eyes did not rest for a moment as she chewed, taking in the strange surroundings of the older woman’s home, making particular note of the path she had traveled from the stairway through the living room to the kitchen.

Would you like something to drink with that? Anne asked in the most kindly tone she could muster at two a.m.

Heddy’s darting eyes came to rest on her host. She stared at her for a moment and then nodded her head. Yes, thank you? she said, her mousy inflection revealing more of her uncertainty.

Assuming that Heddy didn’t need to make any more choices, having doubts as to whether she was even capable of making them, Anne did not ask what beverage she preferred and simply poured her a glass of milk.

Thank you, Heddy said, still a bit of doubt in her response. But then she knocked back the glass of milk in one long chug.

Without asking, Anne filled the glass again, and with only the slightest of nods in acknowledgment, Heddy polished off half the second glassful.

Taking this as a sign that her guest was getting full, or at least full enough to move on to other matters, Anne said, I’ll go run some bathwater. I’m not saying you’re dirty or anything—though it was certainly what she thought—but the first thing on Dr. Furston’s list is for you to soak your … your … The doctor’s term was clinically correct but still sounded vulgar to Anne. "… your bottom."

Of all of the strange things a doctor might say to her, this seemed about the strangest to Heddy. But the thought of bathing was not unwelcome. Thank you, she quietly repeated, as if she were a foreigner who knew only those two words in English.

But they were the right words to Anne’s ears, and though she grumbled something about the lateness of the hour as she happened to glance up at the clock above the sink, hearing them, she felt just a little less put upon by this intruder into her solitary life.

5

Heddy checked the deadbolt again on the ancient, thickly painted door of Anne’s bathroom. The door was warped, and she’d had to force the bolt into its catch. It was a momentary curiosity to her that the lock was obviously seldom used. She could not imagine using a bathroom without locking the door first, no matter how alone she might supposedly be. Later, she would recall the many times when she had not been allowed to lock the bathroom door, the desperate times when others had thought it too risky to let her even close it. But for now, privacy seemed an undeniable right.

With the door secured to her satisfaction, she was free to look about the room. It was small, barely five by eight, but it was comforting in being so. Claustrophobia sometimes overwhelmed Heddy, but more often it was the openness of spaces that brought out her deepest fears. There was no cause for that here. There was barely space for walking in front of the vanity and toilet to the claw-footed cast-iron bathtub. And there was no window, a mixed blessing: no one would be looking in, but then again, she had no second choice for egress should panic demand one. But for the moment, the privacy aspect of the situation was more vital. The tub was full of water, slight wafts of steam rising above it, like spirits inviting her into the bath. She so wanted to shed the filth that she had accrued in her time on the street. But to accomplish that, she would have to undress, and the thought of being naked in these strange surroundings, close and reassuring as they were, was not consoling. She leaned down to test the temperature of the water, at first touching it with her fingertip and then immersing her hand in it up past her wrist. Her skin sang with the heat, but soon acclimated. She pushed her arm in further, enjoying the intensity of the heat on her forearm, relaxing into it. She checked the lock again, and with a burst of will and a fervent prayer for righteousness, she quickly removed her skirt and sweater and undergarments. She stepped into the tub, crouched, and, in a tidal splash, re-clothed herself in the purifying waters.

She had closed her eyes and was trying to remember a prayer of contrition when there was a tap at the door and a disembodied voice inquired, Is the water too hot, dear?

While all of this fuss was going on, Anne had stood on the other side of the door, shoulders and eyelids sagging with fatigue. Are you all right? she called when she received no response to her first question. And when she again got no answer, she jiggled the doorknob and pushed, finding the door locked. Are you all right? she called again, her voice a stew of impatience and anger and concern.

Finally, from the other side of the door came a weak reply: I’m okay. The water’s fine. Thank you.

Anne let out a harrumph and said, Don’t fall asleep in there. I’ve made up a bed for you in the next room down the hall here.

Thank you, the door again peeped.

You’re welcome, dear, Anne said, calming a little. Do you need anything else?

No. Thank you.

Okay. Well, if those clothes don’t fit, we can find something else in the morning. She had gone downstairs to the shop and found a large T-shirt and some sweatpants that she thought would fit her guest well enough for the night and left them on the vanity.

Thank you.

You’re welcome. I’m going to bed. It’s late. Good-night.

Good-night, Anne thought she heard come from the bathroom door when she was a step or two down the hallway. She dismissed it as wishful thinking on her part.

But Heddy had said it, and added another Thank you that Anne had not heard. Heddy was grateful. And tired. Anne’s concern that she might fall asleep in the tub had been justified. She barely made it out of the bath and into her new clothes and to the cot in Anne’s spare bedroom before crashing into a sound sleep.

But in her bed, Anne again lay awake. Even before the eruption of snores from down the hall, she had been unable to doze off. She picked up the novel she had discarded so many hours earlier and again began to read.

Friday

6

At three fifteen that morning, Angie Penski came home. Morning, that is, for most of Candlesberg—for Angie, it was the last frayed strand of a very long night. She let herself in the front door of the three-bedroom ranch with her own key, the one she’d had duplicated off the spare kept under the metal flap of the electrical outlet next to the door. One night back in the spring when she hadn’t been home by her midnight curfew, which she considered a joke, her mother, Carol Penski, ten years divorced from Angie’s father, had taken the spare inside and locked the door, leaving her seventeen-year-old daughter out in the cold. Angie was too smart to let that happen again.

It wasn’t the prospect of being out all night that had been a problem for her. Oh, no, she loved all-nighters. Or she used to, anyway, back when nights held the prospect of thrills and adventure, back when coming in at five in the morning felt like a victory for her adolescent rebellion, back when she had a choice. It was being forced to stay out, the lack of choice, that was the problem. The remainder of that night of the lockout she’d spent trying to sleep curled up on the bench glider on the paving-block patio at the back of the house. Carol had let her in around seven that morning, after she’d looked out the kitchen window to check the temperature and, to her mortification, seen her daughter in her black leatherette raincoat scrunched up on the glider in full view of the neighbors across the way. Whether either mother or daughter had any regrets about the incident was never established. Without a word, Angie had gone down the hall to her bedroom, where she’d crashed until three that afternoon. And Carol, also silent, which was almost unheard of for her, had let her. When Angie got up later that day, Carol was already gone. Figuring that her mother, an independent Realtor, was out showing a house, Angie showered and dressed. On an impulse, she checked to see if the key had been returned to its hiding place. And when she found out it had been, she went out and got her own copy made.

Now, as she eased through the house with the stealth of a cat burglar (although after the night she’d had, she felt more like something the cat had dragged in), she thought it was weird that her mother hadn’t had the locks changed yet. But she figured that would happen eventually, and Angie had made plans for that probability too. She wasn’t going to spend another night in the backyard crumpled up on some damn hard, knotty swinging bench. As insurance, she’d insisted that her boyfriend, Jake Laakso, give her access to a spare key to his apartment in case she needed someplace to crash on short notice. He had been reluctant to do so. But because Angie had good technique for making such requests, and because she’d timed her demand well—Jake was stoned and horny, and she was wearing only her jeans and those already unzipped—he’d told her where the key was hidden.

Such was the basis of her relationship with Jake: get what you want and need however you can. Most of her life ran that way now, on manipulation and cunning. Her capability for both had once been a source of great pride to her, but the happenings of the past year had taken much of the shine off her conceit, even as her expertise increased. By the time her taste for the wild life had gone bitter enough for her to consider abandoning it, she’d realized that, sadly, at only seventeen, she could not see any way out of it. She was stuck with life the way it was.

Stuck with Jake too. She’d met the carpenter’s helper and part-time punk/metal/grunge/anything-loud-and-basic rocker at the Cavern Club, a joint just outside of town named after the Beatles’ most famous early venue, though the only resemblance it bore to that more famous site was its general seediness. The Candlesberg Cavern could have been January on a calendar of decrepit and dilapidated buildings still in service. And it had a reputation even seedier than its appearance. The Cavern was housed in an old warehouse abandoned by the owners of a drapery manufacturing company when it had gone bankrupt. Little had been done to fashion it into a social setting beyond replacing the industrial machinery with a large stage at one end of the long room, six inches above the dance floor and painted flat black, and a thirty-foot-long plywood bar with a tomato-red Formica top at the other end. The Cavern had repeatedly been denied a liquor license, so