Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

had hours from one to four on Fridays, the same as the late Dr. Bechman. It was still early and no one answered the bell. I crossed the street and leaned against the park fence to wait.
    An hour earlier, floating in the pool after doing laps, letting my mind wander along with my body, I thought not about Madison Spector or her missing mother. I thought about my sister Lillian, on the day her son was born. My brother-in-law, Ted, had called to give me the news and I’d gone straight to the hospital to see the newborn Zachery, his tiny dimpled hands in fists he held to his face, like a boxer protecting a glass chin. The moment I picked him up, I felt a lurching in my chest, something opening to embrace him, to make room for this small being in my heart. It was difficult to take my eyes off him, but when I did, I saw my sister watching him, too, the expression on her face one I’d never seen before.
    “It’s as if the whole world was in black and white,” she whispered, “and now, all at once, it’s in color.”
    I was sitting on the edge of her bed, the baby’s head against one arm, his almost weightless body on my lap, watching his lips work, practicing for his first big meal.
    “I saw him being born,” she said. “And the strangest thing happened.” My sister pale, her hair still damp against her brow, her hand on my arm, the backs of her long fingers against the baby’s head. “It was as if I was finally ready to start my life. No one ever told me,” she said, taking her hand away, reaching for the cup of water on her nightstand. “No one ever said I would feel like this.”
    Waiting for someone to show up and open the office, I wondered how Sally had felt when Madison was born, if she, too, felt that her life was about to begin. Or did she feel it had just ended? Instead of the brightness my sister had experienced, my sister who always felt she’d been born to be a mother, did Sally feel the world closing in? From that moment on, everything she wanted to do would have to be preceded by an answer to the question “What about the baby?” Had the tiny person she held in her arms represented not the freedom to be herself, the way it had for my sister, but a kind of prison, a taking away of everything she’d ever wanted?
    Turning the comer from MacDougal Street, a woman caught my eye. Was it the brisk, no-nonsense walk, the fact that she was heading for the place I was watching, or was it something else, some hard-to-pin-down quality that said receptionist! Did she somehow appear to be the person whose voice was on all three recordings? Or was it the white uniform, white stockings and white shoes? I wondered if she really was a nurse or if she just played one on the bus coming to work and, perhaps, in the office, doling out sage advice and urgent warnings along with the little white card with the next appointment on it.
    I crossed the street and met her at the gate that led to the garden floor of the town house. When her eyebrows rose, I realized I hadn’t planned what I was going to say. I wasn’t related to Madison. I hadn’t even been hired to do the work I was attempting to do. I had no right to ask anything. Could I tell her I had some questions to ask her because I was just curious? When I didn’t speak, she reached for the latch to open the gate, but her manners and her training took over and she didn’t continue on inside.
    “Yes?”
    “I’m not sure,” I said, trying to gather my thoughts. Since lying when I was on the job was one of my specialties, in fact, lying for a living was as good a definition of undercover work as I’d ever heard, I was surprised to find myself tongue-tied. I knew what I wanted, but for once in my life, not how to try to get it. “It’s about Madison Spector,” I finally said. “I’ve been hired to find her mother.”
    She didn’t say anything but she was shaking her head, holding her hand out the way you might hold a cross out to ward off a vampire. She looked startled, almost afraid, then angry, her face a slide show of emotions.
    “I was the one who found him,” she said. She shook her head again. “Whatever it is you want, I’m not the person to ask.”
    “I’m only trying to understand a child who doesn’t talk,” I said. “Her father thinks that if I can find her mother, Madison might be willing to speak again, might be able to tell us what happened.”
    “Oh, we know what happened.”
    “Do you?”
    “I guess you’re new on the