Peter Clement - Mortal Remains

“Nobody who’s still alive. The heyday of the place was in the fifties, before the pill. You’d be surprised at the number of women who had to find so-called homes like that, or worse, deal with some butcher in a back room with a pair of knitting needles. Thank God the kids in the sixties freed sex from the prudes.”

He knew from experience that to get anything from Nell, he had to first let her ramble about whatever was on her mind – her way of downloading mentally to make room for whatever he had on his mind. As she talked, he idly gazed around the interior of her living room. The log walls were aged a deep brown, but she’d kept them polished to a rich luster with wood oils. Small windows, a necessity to keep out the cold in the era before thermal glass, prevented what little afternoon light remained from making its way inside. Yet the place wasn’t gloomy. A fire in the stone hearth at their feet provided its own special illumination, and oil lamps – tall, elegant, and bright enough to read by – filled the house with a golden glow. Not that the cabin didn’t have electricity. Her son put in recessed lighting along with baseboard heaters decades ago, yet she favored the softness of flame.

To his left a partially drawn curtain hung over the entrance to an adjacent room, where a brass bed covered with a handmade quilt – any antique dealer would kill for it – filled most of the space. Photos of her children and grandchildren adorned the walls. She’d positioned them so they kept watch on her while she slept. Off to one side a small extension housed a modest bathroom with an old-fashioned steel tub.

At his right a doorway opened into an equally tiny kitchen dominated by a magnificent woodstove. On it she’d prepared meals for her two children during the years she raised them alone, her husband having been killed in the Battle of the Bulge during the final months of World War II. Even now she preferred its steady heat for baking to the gas range that her daughter had had installed so she needn’t haul wood anymore.

That someone so old should live in such isolation appalled a lot of people in town, including the county social worker. Yet her son and daughter, each living on an opposite corner of the country, never pressured Nell to put herself in a home, and Mark supported the decision. He also certified her fit to drive the Subaru station wagon parked outside, provided she passed a road test in Saratoga each year. Geriatric wards, he thought. However much they dressed them up with balloons, sing-alongs, and bingo, they were death row, and definitely not for her. One day somebody would find her lying where she fell, and he’d make a final house call. Better that than sentencing her to die a day at time. It was the kind of judgment call that kept physicians second-guessing themselves, and every snowstorm he worried about her falling or lying helpless somewhere, unable to use the panic button she wore around her neck.

“… back then, if you loved the wrong man at the wrong time, you were treated worse than a murderer.” She ended with a cackle that might have split stone.

“When I phoned to invite myself for a chat today, Nell, you said you could tell me secrets about that home for unwed mothers.”

“Supposing I did. Maybe I just said that to lure you here because I like your visits. Have some more tea.” Before he could decline, she’d refilled his cup to the brim with tea she’d made from leaves, not a bag. “And a scone,” she added, waving a platter of them fresh out of the oven under his nose. “Remember what I said about being good in the kitchen?”

He grinned, and took one. “Umm… that’s scrumptious.” He was swallowing as he spoke. “You must have been something in the bedroom, Nell,” he added, figuring he could indulge her raunchy sense of humor for once.

She smiled, and for a second there flashed as youthful a sparkle as he’d ever seen in her eyes. “My husband and I were very much in love, Mark,” she said in all earnestness. “Like your mom and dad. They had that special thing, too.” She sat erect, proud, like a queen on a throne, secure where she’d reigned supreme as a mother and wife.

Any doubts Mark had about letting her stay here until the end of her days vanished in that instant, at least until the next big snowstorm.

An easy silence fell between them. He took it as permission to get on with his questions. “So tell me, Nell, did you ever hear anybody who worked in the home hint at shady stuff going on?”

“You mean illegal? No, not that I can think of.”

“Then what secrets did you mean?”

“The local love nests, who did it with whom, and which ones ended up with a love child. But I’m not telling you any names. Oh, I know some of the other dried-up old biddies around town might like talking about that stuff, having nothing better to do for sex. Not me. There’s no pleasure to be had in raking over that kind of heartache.”

“You knew local women who had babies there?”

She paused before answering. “I knew of a few.”

“Did you ever talk to any of them about it? How they were treated? What it was like?”

She grimaced. “Yeah, I talked to one. Talked to her a lot. She… she was a friend of mine.”

“And what did your friend say?”

“What do you think she said? It broke her heart. She felt sad and cried all the time. Was miserable.”

“Can you tell me any specifics? What she told you they put her through?”

Nell fixed her gaze on the fire and took a sip of tea.

Mark had learned long ago that unlike most small-town gossips who gave as good as they got when it came to passing on juicy tidbits, she preferred to hoard her information and force others to coax it out of her, thereby increasing the value of her revelations. But the look of distaste on her face told him her reluctance to talk now was sincere. For a moment he feared she might not tell him anything at all. “Look, I don’t need to know her name. Just what she said about how the place operated.”

Nell hadn’t appeared to hear him. Just when he’d resigned himself to not learning anything helpful, she said, “The worst moment was when they whipped the baby away without letting her see it. She didn’t even know if it was a boy or girl.”

Mark said nothing, hoping she’d continue.

“Afterward she spent most of her time in her room. They gave a woman a couple of weeks to recuperate back then. She could have gone outside to walk, but could hear the babies crying through the open windows in the nursery. They kept them on a separate floor, away from the mothers, of course, but they didn’t ship them off to the orphanage or hand them over to adoptive parents right away. ‘To let them stabilize,’ one of the nurses told her when she asked why. Knowing she might be listening to her own child proved too much. The crying noises began to sound like screams. Even in her own room the sound came through, but there she could at least bury her head in a pillow to keep from hearing it…”

Nell’s words reinvoked the slimy cold sensation he’d felt while standing in the desolate remains of that delivery room. It was all legal, though, charitable even, according to the times, and Nell probably wasn’t going to tell him anything that would explain his father’s interest in the home. Nevertheless, he settled back, sipped his tea, and continued to listen, just in case.

“… even little things she found to be a humiliation, such as how her file was red, and all the other women’s were green, to tag her as a local. Someone told her, ‘It’s for your own protection, so we can keep your records in a special lockup, away from the prying eyes of any staff who live nearby and might know you.’ I suppose the idea made sense, but it just added to her feeling she had something to be ashamed about.”