Maria shook her head. “Me neither, such a shock. My girls came over to visit Addie that day, and when no one answered we got worried and came in through the back door. We found her in her bed. Addie had been trying to wake her.”
“Oh, Lord,” I said. “How awful.” I looked over to Addie, who was pulling a little wooden dog on a string. She was only two and she’d already been through so much. My heart ached for her.
“It’s very kind of you to have the reception at your home,” I said. Maria had insisted, since their house was bigger than Aunt May’s, and in return my mother was attempting to cook enough pies to feed an army.
“Of course,” she said. “It’s the least we can do.” She paused. “What will you do now?”
“What do you mean?” I asked. But from the way she was looking at me, I realized she knew about me and Addie.
“Your mother said they’d take her to New York.”
I nodded.
“She really is the most darling little girl,” she continued. “So happy all the time, so well behaved, so easy.”
I nodded again. What else could I add? I had no idea if she was well behaved, if she liked to take a bath, if she was a picky eater, a good sleeper, if cats made her sneeze the way they did for me.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s none of my business. We just care for her so much.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I honestly don’t know what I’ll do. But thank you for caring about Addie, for being a friend to Aunt May. It’s what they needed, I’m sure.”
“We could keep her,” she said suddenly, almost nonchalantly, as if we were discussing who should keep the leftover pies. “With us. She’s known the girls since she first came home.”
I was stunned by her offer and studied her face, taking in all that she had said, unable to respond right away.
“Well, you don’t have to say anything now. Just think about it and know that we would be more than happy to take her in.”
That night Maria, her husband and their two girls joined us for dinner, but I barely said a word. In a matter of a few hours everything I thought I knew had turned out to be wrong, and I was trying to absorb it all. Addie sat in a wooden high chair at the end of the table, and Maria’s two girls sat on either side of her, while the adults sat at the other end of the table. My mother and Maria mostly discussed preparations for the next day, that my mother would bring the pies over to Maria’s house the next morning before we all left for church, how Maria’s husband would set out drinks, and another neighbor would bring lemon cake. I didn’t attempt to partake in the adult conversation—I so desperately wanted to be seated with the children.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Addie, the way she picked up her buttered bread and ate it, her lips and cheeks getting greasy from thebutter. The way she grasped her fork in her hand and ate her carrots. I wanted to hold her fleshy hand in mine and walk her around the backyard, just the two of us, to spend time with her away from everyone else, to hear her high-pitched voice respond to things that I said. And then, as if she knew we shared a secret, she looked up at me and smiled.
There must have been fifty or sixty people at the funeral the next day, paying their respects to my aunt. I was surprised. She had barely interacted with anyone when I’d lived with her—but these were friends, church patrons, store owners, other parents from the neighborhood. It seemed that having a child in her life had coaxed her to mingle with humanity again. Several people spoke at the funeral about what a kind and generous person she was, how she helped others, how she’d watched other neighbors’ children alongside Addie when they’d needed to run an errand, how she’d brought food to one family for a week straight when their child fell ill. I had seen this kindness in her when she took me in, but I’d known then that to others she was just an odd lady, the woman at the end of the street who kept to herself. The May they spoke of at her funeral had flourished. She’d reclaimed her life with Addie in it. My mother saw it, too. She wept quietly in the pew. I reached out and took her hand.
“This was how she used to be before Henry died,” she whispered. “She was back to being May again.”
It was a moving tribute. I imagined my own eulogy. Whom had I cared for or loved unconditionally? How had I helped people? Who had relied on me? I thought of Archie, how I’d been so cruel andcowardly to not tell him the truth, how I’d convinced myself that hurting him and abandoning him with no explanation was better than being honest with him. And now he was gone. I regretted it all.
That night when everyone had left, I told my mother that she should put her feet up and I would read Addie her bedtime story and put her to bed. My mother looked at me uneasily.
“That’s all right, Olive, you don’t have to,” she said.
“I want to. And besides, you both must be exhausted after today. Let me help.”
“You’ve been on your feet all day, Doris, let her help out for once,” my father said as he settled into the armchair in front of the fireplace. I had noticed throughout the day that any time I’d tried to spend with Addie had been interrupted by my mother. This time I didn’t wait for her to discourage me.
“Are you ready for story time?” I asked Addie, who was sitting in the middle of the living room stacking three egg cartons on top of one another. She nodded, so I picked her up and carried her upstairs.
I helped her into her pajamas in Aunt May’s room, where she’d been sleeping in a makeshift bed next to my parents since I’d been staying in her room. I unfastened her two miniature pigtails and brushed her hair, and when I did, she grabbed my face with her two small hands.
“Pretty hair,” she said, pulling gently on mine.
“Thank you,” I said. “We have the same color. Look!” I swished my head from side to side, letting my short bob fly away from me. She did the same, laughing. In that moment, everything—the theater, the singing, the dancing, the nights on the town—everything seemed so frivolous and unimportant. How could I have not knownhow this would feel, to be sitting here talking to my daughter, seeing myself in her and her in me?
I read her a story, then I tucked her into bed, and by the time I was finished she was already asleep. Reluctant to leave, I kissed her forehead, noticing the softness of her skin, her innocence. I tiptoed out of the room and turned off the light, but as soon as I stepped outside the door, she was sitting up, crying.
“What’s the matter?” I rushed back to her.
But she only closed her eyes, opened her mouth and wailed.
