Селеста Инг - Little Fires Everywhere

A week and a half later, Mal had called again, the call Mia had known was coming. Eleven days, she thought. She had known it would happen fast, but could not quite believe that eleven days ago Pauline had been alive. It was still warm, still June. The page on the calendar hadn’t even changed. And then, a few weeks later, a package arrived in the mail. “She picked these to send to you,” read the note, in Mal’s angular handwriting. Inside were ten prints, eight by ten, black and white, each glowing as if lit from behind in that peculiar way of all of Pauline’s work. Mia cradling Pearl in her arms. Mia lifting Pearl high above her head. Mia nursing Pearl, the fold of her blouse just concealing the pale globe of her breast. On the back of each, Pauline’s unmistakable signature. And a note, clipped to a business card: Anita will sell these for you when you need money. Send her your work, when you’re ready. I’ve told her to expect you. P.

After that, Mia began to take pictures again, with a fervor that felt almost like relief. She walked the city again, for hours at a time, Pearl strapped to her back in a sling she’d fashioned from an old silk blouse. Most of her savings were gone by now, and every roll of film was precious, so she worked carefully, framing the image again and again in her mind before she took it. With each shutter click she thought of Pauline. By the time summer came, she had seven shots that she thought might have something, as Pauline had always put it.

Anita did not wholly agree. Promising, she wrote in response to the prints Mia sent. But not yet. Take more risks. In response Mia sent her the first of Pauline’s photographs. Then I need more time, she wrote. Get me as much time for this as you can. Don’t give anyone my name. Anita, after a heated auction, got Mia two years’ worth of time, even after the fifty-percent commission. (She would make it count; it would be fifteen years before, faced with Pearl’s hospital bill for pneumonia, she sold another.) Within a year, Mia had sent Anita another set of prints—each chronicling something’s slow decay: a dead cottonwood, a condemned house, a rusting car—that she was ready to take on.

“Congratulations,” she said to Mia, when she called her a month later. “I’ve sold one of them, the one with the car. Four hundred dollars. Not a lot, but a start.”

Mia took it as a sign. For a while now she had been dreaming of deserts, of cactus and wide, red skies. New images were starting to form in her mind. “I’ll call you in a week or two,” she said, “and tell you where to wire the money.”

Mrs. Delaney watched from the living room window as Mia packed the trunk of the Rabbit, set Pearl’s bassinet snugly in the footwell of the front seat. To Mia’s astonishment, when she pried the house key loose from the key ring and handed it back, Mrs. Delaney pulled her into an uncharacteristic hug.

“I never told you about my daughter, did I,” she said, her voice thick, and then before Mia could speak, she took the key and hurried back up the front steps, the metal gate clanging shut behind her.

Mia thought about this all through the long drive, until outside of Provo, where she decided to stop—the first of the many stops she and Pearl would make over the years. All the long way, Pearl cooed from her bassinet beside her, as if she were sure, even at this early age, that they were headed for great and important things, as if she could somehow see all the way across the country and through time to everything that was coming their way.

Mrs. Richardson, of course, could not know all of this. She could know only the basics of the story the Wrights had told her: that Mia had shown up, belly bulging, claiming to be a surrogate for some family named Ryan—the Wrights couldn’t remember their first names. “Jamie, Johnny, something like that,” Mr. Wright had said. “Someone on Wall Street, she said. Someone with a lot of money.”

“I wasn’t sure it was true,” Mrs. Wright admitted. “I thought maybe she was just in trouble, that she was lying to us. But then that lawyer called.” A few weeks after Mia had left, a lawyer had phoned the Wrights, asking if they had a way to get in touch with her. “He sent us a card,” Mrs. Wright remembered. “In case she ever sent us her address. But we never heard from her again.” She dabbed at the corner of her eye again with a tissue.

After some rummaging, Mrs. Wright found the lawyer’s card and Mrs. Richardson copied down the address. Thomas Riley, Riley & Schwartz, Partners at Law. A 212 area code, an address on 53rd Street. She thanked the Wrights, and when Mrs. Wright pressed some extra cookies on her, she declined, embarrassed. The Wrights offered to lend her photos of Warren in his football uniform, too—maybe the paper would want to run them with the story, they’d suggested. “As long as we get them back,” Mrs. Wright added. “They’re the only copies we’ve got.” Guilt clawed at the back of Mrs. Richardson’s neck like a spider. They seemed like nice people, these Wrights—nice people who had been through a lot, nice people who could have been her neighbors in Shaker Heights. “If the paper wants photos, I’ll get back in touch,” she said. This, she told herself, was at least the truth.

“I’m so sorry about everything you’ve been through,” she said at the door, and meant it. Then she hesitated. “If you ever managed to find out where your daughter is, would you want to get in touch with her again?”

“Maybe,” Mrs. Wright said. “We’ve thought of hiring a detective to look for her, you know, see if we could get any leads. But it seems to us that if she wanted to be found, she’d have gotten in touch. She knows where we live. Our phone number’s the same as it’s been her whole life. She must think we’re still angry at her.”

“Are you?” Mrs. Richardson asked, on impulse, and neither Mr. Wright nor Mrs. Wright answered.

The number of the law firm was sixteen years old, but Mrs. Richardson decided it was worth a try. Back at her hotel, she dialed and, to her immense relief, a secretary picked up almost immediately.

“Riley, Schwartz, and Henderson,” the woman said.

“Hello,” Mrs. Richardson began. “I’m calling regarding a case Mr. Riley was working on quite some time ago.” She paused, thinking quickly. “I have some information that my client thinks may be relevant. But before I pass along any information, I wanted to be sure Mr. Riley is still representing the Ryans. As you can imagine, this information is rather sensitive.”

The secretary paused. “Which case did you say you were involved with?”

“The Ryans. The information I have regards a Mia Wright.”

There was the sound of a drawer opening and a rustling of files. Mrs. Richardson held her breath. “Here we are. Joseph and Madeline Ryan. Yes, Mr. Riley is still on retainer for them, though”—she paused—“this file hasn’t been active in quite some time. But Mr. Riley is in the office currently and I’d be happy to put you through to him. What did you say your name was?”

Mrs. Richardson hung up. Her heart was pounding. Then, after several minutes of careful thought, she flipped open her address book and dialed her friend Michael, who worked at the New York Times . They’d met in college, working on the Denisonian, and though Michael had jumped from there to the Stamford Advocate and then quickly to the news desk at the Times, while she had returned home and gone local, they had stayed in touch. He had once, she was quite sure, been in love with her, though he’d never said anything about it, and they’d both been married for years now. Recently he’d been nominated for a Pulitzer, though he’d lost out to someone from the AP reporting on the killings in Rwanda.