Judy scooped up the heavy cloth coat, looking around nervously, and shoved it onto its hanger. Meanwhile, Maud slipped the stolen script onto the table, planning to retrieve it as soon as Judy exited the room.
“Judy!” The voice was getting closer.
“Not a word!” Judy said. “Promise?” She then picked up her basket, scooped up the script, apparently thinking it was hers, and rushed out of the cramped room. As the door slammed behind her, Maud stood in astonished silence. She had lost the script! All that trouble for nothing, and now she was going to have to find a way to sneak out without attracting notice.
Maud waited a few minutes before emerging. She looked this way and that, then realized that her presence was concealed from the set by several large crates and boxes stacked outside. She glanced around, hoping for an escape route, and her eyes alighted on a door marked LAVATORY.
Inside, Maud was suddenly confronted with her own reflection in the mirror. She saw a face furrowed and lined, imprinted by decades of worry, thinned lips pressed together in determination, eyes sharp from her wariness of soft dreams and illusions. And if Frank had been standing beside her? She pictured her husband as she had first known him: his soft lips, so quick to smile; his twinkling eyes, the first to see the humor in any situation. He had tempered her toughness, stayed her worst instincts, teased out the kindness she’d inherited from Papa, and toned down the grit her mother had taught her. What would he think if he could see her right now?
In her heart, Maud knew. Frank wouldn’t have been focusing on stealing a script when something more important—the welfare of a child—was at stake.
Her worn face in the mirror was telling her something. Reminding her that of all the roles she had played in her life—tomboy, student, wife, mother, widow, and steward of Frank’s legacy—the most important of these had been mother. Was she really so old that she had grown blind to the plain truth in front of her? No doubt that Judy’s talent, her almost preternatural gift, made her seem older and wiser than her years. Nevertheless, she was still a lonely young girl who missed her father and was looking for someone to take care of her. It was almost eerie, now that Maud thought about it, how terribly fitting it was that Judy was playing the role of Dorothy. Like another young girl long ago, Judy needed someone to help her.
After several more minutes had elapsed, Maud pushed her way out of the bathroom and crossed toward the set. Mercifully, the actors were standing around while the director fussed over some bit of minutiae with the Tin Man’s ax, and no one heeded her as she picked her way over the camera cables taped to the floor and slunk toward the sound stage exit.
As Maud drove home, she sorted through her thoughts about this confusing day. Judy and Dorothy, Dorothy and Judy. She now understood that they were one and the same. You couldn’t love the character and look past the girl who was pinned into that gingham dress. Maud’s instinct told her to take the girl—to carry her away—to find a different life for her somewhere where predatory agents and fat men with cigars weren’t all looking to take advantage of her gifts.
But Maud had learned some bitter lessons in her life—and perhaps one of the hardest was that you can’t always rescue people, no matter how much you want to.
CHAPTER
14
SYRACUSE, NEW YORK
1886
Maud staggered down a long hall, flanked by doors on each side. She flung each one open with a bang, but each revealed only an empty room. Far off in the distance, a baby was crying, as faint as the chirping of a tiny bird. The hallway telescoped out in front of her.
Frank! Maud cried out, but his name, instead of coming out fully formed, wafted out of her mouth like a puffy cloud. Frank!! The words seemed to float above her, a line of vaporous puffs. Suddenly, she was seized by fear. She couldn’t move; she was paralyzed. She twisted and turned, but she was caught up in something. It wrapped around her torso like a vise, so tight, so tight, that she shrieked out in pain.
“There, there, dear Maud.” Maud opened her eyes and saw Julia leaning over her, wiping her forehead with a cool cloth.
“You’ve had quite a fever,” Julia said. “I think it’s coming down now.”
Maud closed her eyes, but again she saw the long hallway, the empty rooms. She opened her eyes, and this time, she saw not just her sister’s face but Frank’s, peering at her with concern.
“Maud,” Frank said, in the gentlest voice. “Have you come back to us?”
“But where have I been?” Maud said. Why was she here, in this upstairs bedroom? She was…
Maud’s hands flew to her belly, but she drew them away quickly—her stomach was hot and painful.
She closed her eyes again and willed herself to concentrate, but her head was so thick and fuzzy, she couldn’t think straight. Bits and pieces came back to her. She remembered her pains coming in waves; she was standing by the window, looking at the garden.
Frank’s face was so close she could reach out and touch it, but her arm was too heavy to lift. She could see tears blackening his long lashes.
“Don’t leave us again, my dearest. I can’t lose you.”
Through the fog in her mind, through the confusion of the image of the long corridor, she remembered. She remembered that she had given birth. She could remember the lusty cry and the ruddy body slick with the white grease of birth.
Where is the baby?
Julia’s face hovered above her.
“Maud, Maudie dear? Don’t try to talk, just rest…”
Where is the baby?
Now a man with whiskers stood over her. She recognized Dr. Winchell. He murmured, “You need to rest.” She felt the sharp stick of a hypodermic, and then everything receded.
* * *
—
MAUD AWOKE TO A bright sun shining in the window. She blinked her eyes and tried to roll to her side, but she felt a sharp pain in her belly and then a gentle hand on her arm.
“Maud? Are you awake? How are you feeling?”
Frank had placed a hand on her forehead.
“You feel cooler.”
“Frank.” Maud was trying to speak clearly, but her breath came out in a whisper.
“What is it, dear?”
“The baby? Where is the baby?”
“Oh, Maudie dear, don’t trouble yourself about the baby. He’s beautiful, and I’m taking good care of him. You just take care of yourself.”
“The baby—is okay?” Maud tried to smile, but she felt herself slipping away again.
* * *
—
MATILDA APPLIED A CAMPHOR plaster to Maud’s tender, swollen midsection. Maud’s teeth were chattering, and she shook so violently that the bedstead shuddered against the wall.
“I’ve brewed you some willow-bark tea to bring your fever down.” Matilda lifted Maud’s head and spooned the tea into her daughter’s mouth.
Maud heard babies crying. The sound seemed to echo and multiply. How many babies? Why were they crying? Was one of the wails coming from her own child?
Mother disappeared and Julia arrived. Julia left and the doctor came in. The doctor left and Frank came to rest by her side. And still, the babies cried.
At one point, Frank said, “I’d like to bring Bunting to see you. Just for a moment. It would cheer him up.”
At the mention of her son’s name, she felt her face grow wet with tears, even though she didn’t know she was crying.
Bunting stood in the doorway, one foot crossed over the other, dressed in his nightshirt, his golden hair tousled. He looked like an angel. Maud tried to sit up, only to collapse with a sharp stitch in her side.
“Hello there, darling,” she whispered, but her voice was so soft he couldn’t hear. She reached down inside herself, pulling up all her strength. “Come in, sweet Bunting, don’t be afraid. It’s just your mama.” She tried to smile.
The boy darted back down the hallway. Frank disappeared after him.
Maud closed her eyes. She floated on a dark wave of pain.
Sometimes when she opened her eyes, she could see the tree outside her window. Bare of leaves, it looked like a giant hand reaching up to a white sky. Maud saw black crows perching on the branches, and she counted them, rhyming in her head: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy…But then they disappeared, and she wondered if they had ever been there at all.
* * *
—
JULIA KISSED HER CHEEK, smoothed her brow, and told her that she was leaving, going back to Dakota.
“No, you can’t go!” Maud tried to sit up, but she couldn’t. In the next moment, Julia was gone.
Songbirds sang outside the window, and the tree was suddenly green, dusted with tiny buds. The sky was bright blue, and scattered across the blue, white fluffy clouds floated like balls of cotton.