Sunburn: A Novel(62)

Four weeks later, the hospital, perhaps keen to close the fiscal books on 1994, had offered $3.3 million. Barry took $1.5—more than 40 percent, by the way, but he nickeled-and-dimed her for almost every paper clip along the way. That left her with $1.8 million. Still, not bad. Twelve years ago, her father’s lungs, wrecked with mesothelioma, had earned him only $250,000 and he was too far gone to enjoy a penny of it. When her mother had died in Florida while Polly was in prison, she left what little she had to her nieces and nephews. Polly’s aunt, who still lived in Dundalk, came to see Polly in prison and said, “Well, what can you expect? You broke her heart.”

Polly took her aunt off her visitors’ list, which left exactly no one. She had no family. She had lost whatever family she had when she was convicted and the state, at her behest, took custody of Joy.

Polly knew the night Joy was born that something had gone wrong, that the doctor had dithered in failing to order a C-section. But Joy’s condition wasn’t immediately apparent and Polly decided she was just a nervous Nellie. For a few weeks, she was a normal new mother. Exhausted and terrified, but all first-time mothers are exhausted and terrified. There were even unexpected fringe benefits. Ditmars treated the mother of his child quite differently from the way he had treated his bride.

Until it turned out that the child was disabled.

The day they learned how severe Joy’s cerebral palsy was, Ditmars went out drinking with his work buddies, leaving Polly home alone to weep and wonder at what she had done, what she hadn’t done, saying good-bye to every small dream she had held for her child, even dreams she never realized she had. In the final weeks of her pregnancy, she had been in Marshalls and seen a pair of Mary Janes, a child’s size 5, and even though she knew it would be years before her child could wear them—and, even though she didn’t know her unborn child’s gender, at Ditmars’s insistence—she had to buy those shoes. They were $65 marked down to $7. How she had marveled at that original price, wondering what it would be like to be the kind of person who could spend $65 on shoes that a little girl might wear three, four times before growing out of them.

Five months later, the night of the diagnosis, she held those shoes to her face and wept. Maybe Joy would wear them one day, but she would never walk, not a single step. She would probably not speak, doctors said. Her body, as Polly understood it, would look the way Polly felt—twisted, stunted, useless.

When Ditmars came home and found Polly asleep at the kitchen table, that box of shoes nearby, he focused on the original price, even though the Marshalls price and the final reduction were visible. He began hitting her with the shoes, calling her a whore, saying it was her fault, that she hadn’t taken proper care of herself, that she was probably sneaking coffee and beer and God knows what else during her pregnancy. They were flimsy little leather shoes, but they hurt as he slapped her face with them. They left welts and Polly, who had long learned to hold her head high no matter the bruises or the welts or the cuts, hated those half-moon shapes on her cheeks.

Now, almost fifteen years later, that $3.3 million doesn’t seem like enough, but it wasn’t the doctor’s fault that Polly married Ditmars. That was her choice, her mistake, and she shouldered it, almost without complaint. She had tried complaining to her mother in the early years, only hinting at how badly Ditmars treated her, but her mother said, “Marriage is hard.” Now that her mother is dead, Polly feels more generously toward her—so funny how that works—and she can see her side of things. Her mother probably felt bad that she couldn’t help Polly. Just because she moved to Florida, it didn’t mean she didn’t love Polly.

Three point three million. Okay, 1.8 million. It sits, one hundred miles to the west, waiting for her in a money market account in Barry Forshaw’s name. Monday through Friday, Adam is about the same distance to the west, doing whatever it is he does. He says he has found a short-term gig as a claims adjuster. Polly can’t be bothered to ask the questions that would expose his lies. Eventually—when, why are things taking so long, why does everything she need have to take so long?—he will know he should have trusted her.

She hears Adam’s pickup truck rolling up the driveway. It’s not a bad trip, not on a Friday night in November, especially as he doesn’t leave until well after rush hour. I come to Belleville for you, I don’t want to sit around waiting for you to get off. He brings her cash, every week, to help pay the rent. She doesn’t want to take it, but she needs it. Things are so slow, her tips so small. How had Cath made it, during the winter months? Polly suspects she was skimming receipts. She wonders if she should float that idea with Mr. C as a way of making a case for a raise, but it seems mean, tainting a dead woman’s reputation.

“Hey,” Adam says, coming through the door.

“Hey.”

He picks her up, carries her to their bed. She thinks, as she often does, of the quilt, the iron bed, the kimono, back in the apartment she loved. I was happy then. She notices the tense, the wistfulness she feels toward the summer, particularly the day of the auction, when all was anticipation. Things are so complicated now. It wasn’t supposed to be this complicated. There wasn’t supposed to be an Adam. But he planted himself in her path and she can’t shake him, even though she knows she should. Eventually, he will trust her, come to see that he was wrong to doubt her.

But how can she trust him?