Mercy Street(36)

Baby Doe had been a person, a little girl who felt love and joy, who delighted in her pink leggings and giggled when her toenails were painted and who, in the end, felt shock and fear and betrayal and pain. As a fetus she’d been protected by Massachusetts law, the twenty-four-week cutoff. As a person she was utterly dependent on a woman who couldn’t raise her and didn’t want to. Once she became an actual person, Baby Doe was on her own.

THE BAR WAS A NEIGHBORHOOD PLACE, A STALE-SMELLING DIVE known for cheap beer and—in summer—extravagant air-conditioning, delivered by massive units anchored high on the wall. In February the place was the same temperature. As they did most Friday nights, the clinic staff staked out a corner table. Bolted to the gantry were dueling televisions: at one end, the NECN weatherman making dire predictions, another monster nor’easter; at the other, the Bruins pummeling Detroit.

“The Bride Game,” said Claudia. “Does anyone remember this?”

“The what?” said Heather Chen, the nurse practitioner. She was roughly Claudia’s age, old enough to recall the cozy pastimes of an analog childhood: board games, jigsaw puzzles. “I’m drawing a blank here.”

“Don’t look at me,” said Florine, the executive director. “This is not a Black thing.”

“Mary will remember.” Claudia waved to Mary Fahey, who’d just returned from smoking a cigarette. “The Bride Game. Go.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Mary sat heavily, cold air and tobacco smoke radiating from her coat. “My sister had it. They never let me play. Mostly I just watched. Remember the cakes?”

“Cakes,” Florine repeated. “I’m losing the thread here.” She was the clinic’s public face—telegenically charming, a former Miss Tennessee who’d grown up on the pageant circuit. She was also a lethal debater, a frequent guest on the cable news channels. Claudia had seen her take apart a right-wing congressman with effortless grace, like an expert chef disarticulating a chicken.

Another arctic blast as the door opened, Luis coming to join them. Claudia slid over to make room.

“The point of the game,” she said, “the object of the game, was to plan your wedding. You needed a dress and a ring and a wedding cake and I’m forgetting something.”

“Flowers,” said Mary. “Also the groom.”

“Groom, yes. And you rolled the dice and moved around the board and when you landed on a Ring space you got to choose which ring and then the cake, et cetera.”

“An actual ring?” said Florine.

“Well, no. There were no actual rings. No actual cakes. You picked a card with a drawing of a ring or a cake. It was a simpler time.” Claudia sipped at her beer, which tasted flowery. This happened whenever she sat next to Florine, who took her name seriously. That day she wore silver earrings shaped like peonies and her trademark jasmine perfume.

“The winner was the one who put a whole wedding together first. But there was a hierarchy: the best flowers, the best cake. The wedding dress, I remember, was hotly contested. There was a particular one everyone wanted. You wanted to land on a Dress space right away, to get first pick.”

“What about the groom?” said Heather.

Luis raised his palms to the sky. “I was going to say.”

Mary said, “The groom was a secondary concern.”

“The cake was secondary,” said Claudia. “The groom was tertiary. The primary concern was the dress.”

“And you were how old?” said Mitch—Carolyn Mitchell, Heather’s wife, who was younger than the rest and had a moral severity Claudia found endearing. Mitch volunteered as a clinic escort, leading patients through the gauntlet of shouting protestors in her fluorescent blue vest, like a school crossing guard for adults.

“Eight, nine.”

“That’s disturbing,” Mitch said.

“I don’t know about disturbing,” said Luis. “Disturbing is a strong word.”

“We didn’t have the game,” Florine said, refilling her glass, “but, you know, we did it anyway. I had my whole wedding planned by the time I was twelve.”

“That’s mental,” Luis said.

Mary cackled, a husky smoker’s laugh. “You’re telling us boys don’t do this. There was no Groom Game.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

A cheer rose up in the bar. The Bruins had scored a goal.

Mitch took the empty pitcher to the bar for a refill. Florine and Mary stepped outside for a smoke. Claudia turned to Luis—remembering, suddenly, what she’d been meaning to tell him.

He listened, frowning.

“Someone took her picture?” he said. “Claudia, are you sure?”

“Well, no.” She drained her glass of beer, which now tasted like beer. “That came straight from the patient. And like I said, she’s not the most reliable witness.”

“Why would someone do that?” Luis looked mystified. “I mean, what the hell for?”





8


The world is full of signs.

Excelsior11 drove at night, south and east into the Maryland panhandle, holding a bag of frozen peas to the left side of his face. Wedged behind his seat were a shovel and mallet and posthole digger. In the bed of his pickup, beneath a clean blue tarp, was a stack of freshly painted signs.