Chapter 23 #2
One afternoon, Betty White had a blind woman on her show.
This woman, Elena was her name, had been born with sight in Mexico, and she could still see fine when she came to the United States as a child.
She grew up in the States, got married, and got to be such a good cook that she and her husband started selling Mexican and Spanish dishes right out of their house in California.
When everybody went crazy for the food they served, Elena and her husband opened a restaurant, and it took off.
She’d been running the restaurant and expecting their second child when she started to lose her vision.
She told Betty White that she got pretty down about it for a while, and the restaurant closed.
But she taught herself to cook without her sight, and then she started teaching cooking classes, and because she was so good at that, everybody said she should write a cookbook.
She went ahead and wrote a cookbook, hoping she’d make enough money to get herself a guide dog.
But everyone went completely crazy for this cookbook, and she made enough money for a guide dog and also a few extra houses, and then somebody decided she should have her own television show, though only people in California could watch it.
She told Betty White that when she was on set, she had strings tied to her ankles, and stagehands would tug on one ankle or the other so she would know which camera to face.
And she talked about raising her kids, how she’d taught them to cook as well. All after losing her vision.
Of course this made me think of Carol. Miss Berry had made it seem like I was a fool for even half believing a blind girl could take care of a baby, but here was a blind lady with two kids, a bestselling cookbook, and her own television show. So Carol had been right to think she could do it.
This is an ugly thing to admit, but I felt a little better, knowing that Carol’s blindness wasn’t what kept her from keeping her baby.
That meant she was the same as I was, no better, no worse.
I still had her address in Greenwich, and I started thinking about writing to her, to see how she’d done with moving forward.
I sort of felt I’d done it. Some days more than others.
I wondered if Carol felt the same guilt, the same worry.
I kept my letter to her short, and vague enough so whoever read it to her might think I was just some girl she’d met on vacation or at summer camp.
But I wrote out my phone number, along with the hours I’d be available, meaning the hours Russ wouldn’t be home.
Those hours mostly fell when long distance rates were most expensive, but I remembered she had a typewriter with Braille keys, so I also wrote out my address, not just on the envelope but in the letter as well.
I got it out to the mailbox that very day, just before the mailman came.
A week later, I was watching Betty White when the phone rang.
“Is it really you, dear?” I couldn’t believe it, that I was hearing her voice. She sounded exactly the same. “Mrs. R. Crandle of Dolphin Drive?”
I jumped up and down, holding the cord. I told her I was sorry she had to call when the rates were so high. “If you want to call back before nine tomorrow, I’ll be here.”
She said that she would, but she at least wanted to say hello while she finally had me on the line.
“Cruel Nora, waiting so long to write. And why did I never guess Florida? Of course it was Florida. I’m in New York, by the way. I got my own place last year, better for everyone. But Mother was good and forwarded your letter. She’s not always a brute.”
“You’re in the city?” I hoped to sound sophisticated, asking it the way Mrs. Lifton would have.
“Yes. Listen, what’s become of you, dear? How are things?”
I told her I’d gotten married, and I was living in a nice house right on the water.
“The cad returned from Korea? Or some new lucky egg?”
“Someone new,” I said. “Better.” I reached up to smooth my hair and felt one of the rollers. “Are you married?”
“Not married, no. But a certain young man keeps me entertained.”
“Oh!” I said. “Tell me more.” The conversation wasn’t going the way I’d imagined it, with both of us talking of guilt and worry, or of the strangeness of what we’d done. But this was nice, too, talking about happy things, talking as friends. “I bet he’s madly in love with you,” I said.
“Correct.” She laughed. “The obsession is mutual, I’m afraid.
I find his taste in music offensive, but I hear he’s terribly handsome.
” A woman in the background, maybe speaking to Carol, said something I couldn’t discern.
Carol sighed into the phone. “Ah, speak of the angel. Here he is now. David? David. There’s a dear. Come say hello to Mommy’s friend.”
I went right down to the carpet, my legs folded beneath me, the receiver pressed to my chest. Still, I heard the high-pitched “Heyyo?” and then Carol’s laughing praise.
Through the sliding glass door, I could see Russ’s new motorboat, waiting at the dock.
He’d applied vinyl letters to spell out The Last Laugh on both sides of the hull.
Carol said my name, then said it again. I put the receiver back to my ear.
“I’m here,” I said. Faintly, I heard the woman who’d spoken to Carol before say something else.
“It’s fine, Birdie. I’ll ring if I need you to take him. Nora. You won’t believe this, but my son is strong-willed.”
“You kept him?” My voice rose up as if asking a question.
“Of course.” She sounded offended. “I told you I would, though I admit it wasn’t easy.
What a gadfly that Berry was at the end.
She kept going on about how selfish I was being, and the adoptive mother I was devastating.
Apparently a soft-spoken angel who played the piano.
With perfect vision, of course. And a husband who loved to sing.
A built-in cousin down the street, born just a week before.
Berry was perplexed that I could be so heartless.
If I loved my child, how could I rob him of all that, just thinking of myself? ”
I reached up for the phone’s cradle, my finger hovering over the button. It was my own fault. I’d believed Carol had been weak as well. I’d let that ease my conscience.
She laughed. “As if calling me selfish would have ever worked. I said, ‘Yes, thank you, dear. It’s a trait I hope my child inherits. If he doesn’t, I’ll have to teach him the value of it.
Selfishness I mean.’ Oh, I could smell her smoldering.
But she didn’t give up. She’d go home and come back the next morning, freshly perfumed and ready to do battle again. ”
The child, David, said something, and Carol paused to tell him he would need to either wait in her lap or go back to Birdie. I heard the whine of a buzz saw from across the street, then Carol’s voice again.
“On the third morning I just started screaming that someone had to let me telephone my mother, and finally a nurse let me. Once Mother arrived, it was all over. She saw that I wasn’t giving in. We hired one of the nurses to come back with us, and that was the—”
“I signed,” I said. “I signed away my baby.”
She was silent. I felt myself falling, though I was already on the floor, my forehead pressed to the carpet.
“Well, I assumed so, Nora. That was your plan all along—”
David’s voice broke in, high and insistent. Shirley showed the same impatience whenever Mae was on the phone.
“We’ll go soon, darling. Nora? Are you still there?”
I sat up. “I have to go,” I said. “My husband and I, we’re having another couple over tonight.”
This was true. Peg and Buddy would arrive at six. But I was just making a salmon casserole, and I’d already sautéed the celery and whisked the cornstarch into the milk. I could have done the rest while on the phone.
“I’ll call back. Tomorrow, you said? Maybe earlier?”
I touched my hand to my hair, to the rollers. “No,” I said. “Please don’t call here again.”
She thought she’d misheard. She made me say it again.
“But you wrote to me.”
“I didn’t know,” I whispered. And then she understood.
“Now hold on, Nora. I wasn’t trying to be cruel. I didn’t know that—”
“I don’t want you to call back.” My voice was calm, certain. “Okay, Carol? I don’t. I shouldn’t have given you my number. Will you promise?”
She was quiet. The buzz saw went quiet as well. For what seemed a long time, maybe half a minute, there was only the sound of David’s crying. I felt cold to it, unmoved.
“All right,” she said. “I promise. But Nora—”
I shook my head. Nothing she could say would console me.
And for all I knew, with Carol being Carol, consolation wasn’t what she had in mind.
I felt as if I were hanging from a cliff, my fingernails dug into the earth.
Any added weight would do me in. She might not understand that.
So I pressed the button, ending the call.