The Gift Horse's Mouth by Robert Campbell

Author:Robert Campbell [Campbell, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0671675869
Amazon: B01BLYBHU0
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1990-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

Just Mary and me are sitting down to supper. Which is a treat. Sometimes I think what I do, running around trying to help people, shortchanges the people I love the most. I mean there's hardly a night goes by when there ain't somebody sitting down eating with us or knocking at the door or calling on the telephone for this or that.

I'm thinking about this and all the other things I found out that day, so when I finally hear Mary talking to me and say "What?" she says, "You were a million miles away."

"No, I wasn't. I was maybe a couple of miles and forty years from here."

"That's more than a million miles. What did you find out today?"

"Well, for one thing, I found out that Goldie Hanrahan had a child."

Mary gives a little gasp and leans forward, all ears, because all of a sudden Goldie ain't just this woman from another generation what got herself killed by misadventure or some other way, she's a mother just like Mary's going to be. That's what women got going for them that men ain't got, this connection to one another because they give life.

"When?"

"Back in '50, '51."

"Wartime," Mary says.

"Wartime sure enough even if they did call it a police action," I say.

"Was the father a soldier?"

I think about the picture of my old man in uniform, squinting against the sun on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, with his arm around Goldie's waist and a grin on his face like he was doing what a man going off to war should be doing his last days—and nights—at home.

"I don't know was he a soldier. I don't know nothing about him. I just know that Goldie Hanrahan had a baby when she was sixteen, maybe seventeen, and a few years after that she gets a job with the city."

Mary's face gets sad and maybe a little mad, too. "What are you saying, James? Did somebody pay her off with a job instead of a wedding ring?"

"I don't know that, either. But the timing and all makes it a possibility."

"What do you mean 'and all'?" Mary asks.

"She kept the baby until it was about five and then she gives it to her mother or maybe her sister to raise."

"That happens all the time, James. It's not easy for a single working mother." She sits back in her chair, leans her elbow on the back of it, turns her head away, and puts her knuckle up to her lips. She's quiet for a long time, then she sighs and turns back to the table and me.

"Where's Goldie's child now?"

"Her child would be older than me."

"Are you going to try finding him?"

"I don't know. I don't know if it's any of my business. Besides, if her mother took it, she'd be dead by now and couldn't tell me what happened to her grandson."

"But the sister would know even if she didn't take it in herself."

I just nod.

"You going to look?"

"I suppose I am. I'm going

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