Caeli Widger - Mother of Invention

In the brief time it took Irene to remove the helmet and apply the salve, the girl had fallen back asleep.

Irene left the helmet off and climbed back into the driver’s seat. Ten minutes could feel like an eternity. She started the engine, turned on the radio, and swung back onto the interstate.

A few miles later, Irene saw the brown road sign: GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK ENTRANCE, 4 MI.

She’d never been to the Smokies. But she imagined the park as a welcoming place. The mountains old and mellow, deep green. It was summer now. Warm and fragrant, high tourist season just beginning. A safe and wholesome place, where people came to hike, swim in rivers, spot wildlife, introduce their children to the wonders of nature.

Nature. Was it responsible for what had happened to her? Or was it something larger, less tangible, a force with some inscrutable plan for the earth and its people, the sort of nonsense Irene had never believed in?

Or was she responsible, somehow?

Irene followed the signs to the park entrance. Past a welcome station, a brown hut, no guard. Drove into the park, the two-lane road winding. The baby was still sleeping. A woodsy smell entered the car, its sunroof still open, a mixture of sap and soil and flora. Up ahead, a sign for the Cades Cove Inn. GORGEOUS ROOMS, STUPENDOUS VIEWS, KIND FOLKS.

The caption gave her a flicker of comfort. It seemed like an omen. Kind Folks.

She pulled into the parking lot of the Cades Cove Inn. Full of cars but quiet. Too early for people. She found a patch of grass near the side of the rustic building, clear from the path of cars and far enough from the main entrance to give her a little time before anyone made a discovery.

She pulled on her sunglasses, although it was still mostly dark, the sun just beginning to rise, the light gently pinking. Put the Highlander in park without turning off the ignition. Climbed out of the driver’s seat and opened the passenger door. Removed the car seat along with its base, an easy latch release.

The baby did not stir. Irene placed the car seat in the trimmed grass, kissed the girl’s cheek, and returned to her car to get the note.

It was where she’d tucked it days ago. A sheet of plain white paper, folded once. She scanned the ground for a suitable rock. Found one—smooth, palm-sized—in the soil from which irises and passionflowers grew in a patch flanking the log cabin–style siding of the inn.

Back to the baby, rock in one hand, paper in the other. Knelt down beside the car seat and gazed at her daughter, nestled in footie pajamas printed with yellow and pink butterflies. She slept with three fingers in her mouth, cheeks pulsing as she sucked on them, tiny palm pressed to her chin.

Irene unfolded the paper and smoothed it on the ground beside the car seat. Then she placed the rock over one corner to keep it from blowing away.

In large black lettering, penned with a Sharpie: Please love me, because my mother cannot.

She returned to the Highlander. Closed the passenger door. Climbed back into the driver’s seat. Fastened her seat belt and drove away. She glanced over her shoulder once to see the car seat in the grass, just beyond the throw of a streetlight, as she swung from the parking lot back to the main road, closing the sunroof overhead, shutting out the tree smells, the blooming dawn. She silenced the radio.

“Goodbye,” she said. She hadn’t given her a name.

She’d exited the park and made it a handful of miles down the highway before she remembered the helmet. She glanced behind her to see it lying on the empty back seat. Like an abandoned shell that had once housed something alive.

Seeing the little cap on the black vinyl seat knifed something deep in Irene’s center, and she felt a pang of horror.

At the steering wheel, she released a howl, a ragged, foreign sound from the center of her chest, her being, a sound she didn’t recognize as her own. Her face was suddenly on fire, her body clutched with frantic electricity.

The baby needed her helmet.

The baby needed her .

She floored the accelerator, veered off the highway at the next exit, and horseshoed the car back toward the eastbound ramp of the interstate.

Back to the park. Dawn just beginning to break in earnest. The whip-poor-wills trilling, a shrimp-colored sky. The last layer of darkness lifting but still obscuring Irene’s view from behind the windshield.

But she reached the parking lot of the Cades Cove Inn too late. Near the spot where she’d left the baby was a white BMW. The driver’s side door was open, and a man was standing in the space between the door and the body of the car. He was beckoning toward the side of the building, waving his palms in front of him, as if summoning someone back from where Irene had placed the car seat.

Then he left the car, door still gaping, and walked over to the side of the inn, to the baby. Walked fast.

From Irene’s vantage at the entrance of the parking lot, the white BMW blocked her view of the spot alongside the building where she’d left the baby. Heart slamming, Irene pulled the Highlander behind the BMW. Out the window, a dozen yards from where Irene sat in the car, were the couple. The man from the BMW and a woman with the car seat hooked on her elbow. The woman was looking up at the man, speaking intently to him, while the man shook his head from side to side, with force.

The woman was swinging the car seat back and forth, gently, deliberately, as she spoke to the man. Trying to soothe the baby, Irene saw, or perhaps keep her asleep.

In what felt like a single, attenuated motion, Irene lifted the helmet from her lap, exited the Highlander, and ran to the BMW’s open door.

She dropped the helmet into the driver’s seat and, like a relay racer on her final leg, tore back to the Highlander. She didn’t look back at the couple or her little girl. Glanced only at the license plate of the BMW—California, 4EVRFIT—before driving away. This time, for good.

When the officer from Child Services located Irene, she was lying in bed in her old room at her parents’ house in Austin. She hadn’t gotten up in three days. Her parents were beside themselves. But Irene wouldn’t talk. She just burrowed in her old twin bed and slept, the weariness dropped over her like a black cloak. The officer was a pretty black woman in her thirties with a badge that read VERONICA HART. Irene spoke to Veronica Hart privately, in her childhood bedroom behind a closed door. This infuriated her parents, though it was Irene’s right, Ms. Hart explained: she was a legal adult. Irene answered questions. Ms. Hart told her that, under Tennessee’s child abandonment laws, Irene would face a considerable fine, and possible termination of future parenting rights.

“Is she okay?” Irene asked, sitting up in her bed, back against the headboard, pillow clasped over her stomach.

“The baby?” Ms. Hart sat in the chair of Irene’s old desk, where she’d written her application essay to Yale. That seemed like a different, pretend life. The officer smiled gently at Irene. “Yes, she’s perfectly okay. She’s in state custody in Tennessee. A couple on a road trip found her and brought her to a safe haven. It took us a few days to track you down. We thought you were up in Connecticut.”

“I c-c—I can’t,” said Irene, feeling her throat close like a fist.

“Can’t what, honey?”

The room blurred around her. “I can’t take care of her,” she whispered.

Ms. Hart rose from the desk and sat on Irene’s bed. She took Irene’s hand in her own and squeezed it. Irene would remember precisely the feel of Ms. Hart’s slender fingers, the clean French manicure on her nails. The gesture felt like an overwhelming act of kindness.