Hagar's Mother (The Bridge Daughter Cycle Book 2) Read online

  “You are arguing against hundreds of thousands of years of human history,” Hanna said. “You’re arguing against biology and science.”

  Cynthia, fuming, shifted her weight between her feet. She’d balled her hands, and her forearms were tensed and tight. Bluish arteries beneath her skin twined down each arm like intricate, faint tattoos.

  “I read about Blanchard,” Cynthia said. She motioned to the computer.

  “Did you read about his bridge daughter?” Hanna said.

  “You should have told us the truth,” Cynthia said.

  “The truth is you’re going to have my baby and then you’ll expire.” Before Cynthia could protest, she added, “Now help your sister finish dinner.”

  Four

  As a concession for making the meal single-handedly, Hanna allowed Ruby to use her Internet tablet at the table, normally a no-no. She alternated between big bites of food and swiping her greasy fingers across the screen to watch the next cartoon. Ruby kept up with an animated web series about a family who traveled from country to country by boat and train, finding adventure at every city. Cynthia brooded, eyes on her plate. She picked at her lasagna.

  Hanna tried to coax some conversation out of the two girls, but the day felt like it had dragged on longer than it really had, and she settled on the pleasure of a quiet meal and two half-glasses of Pinot Noir. As the meal concluded, Ruby jumped up and cleared the table, carefully saving Cynthia’s mangled slice of lasagna in a Tupperware container. She set about preparing bowls of ice cream for everyone.

  “One scoop, please,” Hanna called to the kitchen. She meant for everyone, not only herself.

  “Okay!” Ruby shouted back.

  Ruby presented the desserts on a tray, setting out small cups of chopped peanuts and black cherries she’d washed and pitted and chopped into halves. Ruby always pleaded for Hanna to buy squeeze bottles of chocolate syrup at the grocery store, but Hanna knew how fast that syrup would go when she wasn’t looking. Improvising, Ruby had spooned strawberry jam into a small cup, and everyone used a little for their ice cream topping. Cynthia brooded over her dessert but couldn’t resist eating it up.

  Hanna told herself she should forbid Cynthia from eating ice cream without finishing dinner. However, it was not a night to make a fuss.

  Ruby cleared the table after dessert and asked Hanna if she wanted coffee, which she declined in favor of a refill of wine.

  “Help your sister with the dishes,” she told Cynthia.

  “I’m fine,” Ruby said, dirty bowls and cups stacked in both hands.

  “What do you say we have a Pixar night tonight?” Hanna said to them both.

  “I don’t want to,” Cynthia said, eyes on the placemat before her.

  “Spa night!” Ruby said from the kitchen.

  “I’m going to bed,” Cynthia murmured.

  Hanna reached over and brushed Cynthia’s light brown bangs from her eyes. “I think it would make your sister happy if you stayed up.”

  “It’s not fair,” Cynthia said, still on the discussion they’d had before dinner.

  Hanna said, “Lots of things aren’t fair. That’s the way things are.”

  Cynthia dropped her head and said something so low, it was as though she was speaking to her lap.

  “What was that?” Hanna said, thinking Cynthia was swearing.

  “I said,” Cynthia’s head snapped up, “‘The age-old excuse.’”

  “What’s that?” Hanna said, the dulling effects of the wine and meal snapping away.

  “‘The age-old excuse.’ When people say ‘That’s the way things are,’ you’re supposed to say, ‘The age-old excuse.’”

  “Look—” Hanna rose from her place at the end of the table and took a seat beside Cynthia. “We’ve talked about this. You’ve known you were a bridge since you were six.”

  “It was different then.” She looked toward the entertainment room, where the computer was set up. “I read about Hagar on the computer,” she said. “Abraham and Sarah’s bridge daughter.”

  “I know who Hagar is.”

  “There’s a whole history you never taught me,” Cynthia said. “There’s a lot of us out there. There’s a whole community I never knew about.”

  “Of course there’s a lot of bridge daughters in this world,” Hanna said. “That’s how babies are made.”

  “I mean a lot of us on the Internet,” Cynthia said. “We’re Hagar’s sisters. I found a message board where we meet. Girls like me!”

  “That’s going to have to stop,” Hanna said.

  “It’s like they can read my mind!” Cynthia continued. “These other bridge daughters, they say things that I think all the time. And they have the same problems I do, the same questions.” She glared up at Hanna. “Like, how this isn’t your child.”

  Hanna took a deep breath. As far as she was concerned, the conversation had reached a dead-end. Cynthia was spouting nonsense. This was yet another talk where Cynthia had stopped listening to reason and bullheadedly decided she was right, no matter what anyone said, adult or otherwise. Before these talks had been about staying up late, or playing video games, or what kind of television Cynthia could watch, and so on. What Cynthia was saying now bordered on taboo. For the first time, Hanna wondered if she was going to have to hold Cynthia in a bridge room after all, one like those cramped locked rooms they’d seen that afternoon in Concord. She hated the idea of locking her bridge daughters in a room every night, but she also knew there was a reason such precautions had been practiced since time immemorial.

  “You should go to your room now,” Hanna said. “No Pixar for you.”

  “I don’t want to watch a stupid cartoon!”

  “No spa treatment,” Hanna said.

  “I don’t care about any damn spa night,” Cynthia said.

  Hanna rose, fuming and staring down at her bridge daughter. Cynthia looked up with a slow burn of her own. She pushed up and away from the table and marched down the hall for the bedrooms, shoulders swaggering.

  Hanna waited for it. She knew what was next.

  From down the hall came the predicted “I hate you!” followed by the predicted door slam.

  Ruby emerged from the kitchen. She wore a margarine-yellow apron and lime-green dish gloves dripping suds on the faux hardwood floor, chick-chick-chick. She stared wide-eyed at Hanna. She’d witnessed many spats between her mother and Cynthia. That didn’t stop her from always assuming the worst.

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” Hanna assured her. “Why don’t you finish with the dishes and start the machine? We’ll do spa night another time.”

  “Why does Cynthia yell at you so much?” Ruby said, almost in a whisper.

  “Because I’m her mother,” Hanna said.

  “Is she mad because she’s a bridge?”

  Hanna pushed in the chairs and began collecting the placemats. “It can be confusing, I know.”

  After Ruby rinsed the plates and bowls and started the dishwasher, she retreated down the hall. She hesitated before Cynthia’s bedroom. She knocked on the door and called out, “Spa night tonight!” Without waiting for an answer, she continued on to her own bedroom.

  A few minutes later, Hanna reclined on the couch in the center of the living room. She wore pajamas and footies and cradled a bulbous glass of wine in both hands. Ruby returned in her own bedclothes. She carried one of her wenschkinds, a baby doll for bridge daughters.

  Normally, wenschkinds were given to bridge daughters in their later months of pregnancy as a way to imagine raising the child inside of them. Although Cynthia had outgrown dolls years before, Ruby never put them aside, and asked for her first wenschkind before she even entered pons anno. Tonight, she brought out her third wenschkind, her latest, a more fashionable doll than the classic originals from Germany. The baby doll wore a bright frilly outfit with neon trim and cloth diapers with a unicorn pattern across them. She’d named this doll Ruby Jo. Her first two were Ruby Ann and Ruby Sue. Ruby carried Jo
cradled in one arm.

  “You still want to do spa night?” Hanna asked her.

  “I think Cynthia does too,” she said.

  “I doubt that,” Hanna said. “Maybe we should just put a movie on—”

  Cynthia entered, back erect and shoulders thrown back, with her hair back. She wore navy blue sweatpants and one of the undershirts Hanna bought earlier, a sleeveless white tee that made her sinewy arms and developing breasts even more prominent. Her baby bump was as taut and smooth as a globe of the world. Her shoulder blades cut sharp lines in the tee’s fabric. Hanna thought of the men at her gym that attended the martial arts classes. All Cynthia was missing was a gi. Hanna knew she shouldn’t be surprised at Cynthia’s development, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “What were you doing?” Hanna asked. A ring of sweat darkened the top of Cynthia’s tee.

  “Nothing,” Cynthia said, still breathing heavy.

  “Weights?” Hanna said.

  “Yeah,” Cynthia admitted.

  Due to her pregnancy, Cynthia only lifted ten pound dumbbells, but Hanna still found it impressive. Will have to put an end to that, Hanna thought, knowing from the parenting blogs she followed the girls’ doctor was going to warn against any physical exertion at their next visit.

  Ruby went to the play cradle set up in the corner of the living room, a plastic pink one with flowery stickers across its side. She put Ruby Jo down and tucked her in. Cynthia fell onto the far end of the couch away from Hanna.

  “When do we get this started?” she said under her breath.

  “Give your sister a moment,” Hanna said to her, slipping off her footies. “This is important to her.”

  When Ruby finished, satisfied the doll was asleep, she padded to the hall bathroom. She returned with a zip-up kit and bath towels. On hands and knees before them, she scurried like a mouse between their feet, eyeballing their toes and heels and nails, tut-tutting when she found dirt or dead skin or, on Hanna, traces of athlete’s foot. She produced a wide emery board from the kit and scraped off the undesirables, careful to let the skin flakes fall to the towels she’d spread before them.

  “Why do you like to do this?” Cynthia said to her.

  “We have to stay clean,” Ruby said, face intent on Cynthia’s right foot.

  “Your sister’s all about healthy skin,” Hanna said to Cynthia.

  Hanna helped Ruby to her feet. Ruby went to the bathroom and ran hot water in the tub. Hanna gave Cynthia a look for her to assist. Sighing, Cynthia pushed up from the couch and joined Ruby in the bathroom. They emerged moments later carrying rectangular foot tubs, blue plastic with ribbed bottoms, half-full of hot water. Hanna dipped one foot into hers, retreated because it was too hot, then acquiesced when Ruby ordered them in.

  Sooner than she expected, her feet acclimated to the water’s temperature. From the kit, Ruby produced a vial of perfumed oil and a plastic bottle of witch hazel. She poured a splash of each into the foot tubs. Within moments, the living room was fragrant with an antiseptic yet flowery scent. Hanna leaned back into the couch cushions and sipped her wine and sighed with relief. Cynthia swirled her feet about in her own tub, seemingly bored.

  While they soaked, Ruby went behind the couch and squeezed and kneaded their shoulders. Her hands were not strong enough to soften the knots and strains of Hanna’s week, but this was the experience Ruby enjoyed providing the two of them.

  Ruby returned to scurrying on hands and feet, examining their soaked and softened feet once again. She dried Hanna’s feet with the towel and massaged her toes and the ball of her heel. Then she squeezed a goopy bead of antifungal cream from a tube and rubbed it over Hanna’s feet, being sure to work it in between her toes.

  “Thank you,” Hanna said when Ruby finished. Ruby moved on wordlessly to Cynthia’s feet, giving them a similar treatment, although she did not require the antifungal.

  Cynthia looked to Hanna with a relaxed jaw. “I’m sorry about before,” she said.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Hanna said.

  Ruby hurried between the couch and the hall bath, dumping out the water and throwing the towels into the hamper for the next wash.

  “Can we watch a movie?” Cynthia asked.

  “I think it’s time for bed,” Hanna said to both of them. “It’s a school night.”

  Ruby was already checking on Ruby Jo. She lifted the sleeping baby doll from the cradle with the utmost care not to wake her, then padded to her bedroom with a whispered ’night!

  —

  Hanna searched the rear hallway closet, careful not to wake the girls. The bald light bulb revealed shelves of old blankets and linens and boxes of child board games gone undisturbed for years. She found in the rear an old portable stereo, one with AM/FM reception and a cassette player. The detachable power cord was missing. Hanna threw out the stereo’s dead batteries and dug through a kitchen drawer for replacements. She retreated to her bedroom with the stereo and her purse, which she’d left on the entryway table when they returned that afternoon.

  She found the cassette on top of the pile of clutter in her purse. She thought for a moment about her time at Erica Grimond’s house. Hadn’t she slid the cassette into an interior pocket? No matter. Hanna turned the cassette over in her hands, reading and rereading its label—Driscoll bridge?—daring herself to insert it in the tape player.

  This tape, she reminded herself, was not from her bridge mother. It was from another bridge daughter, little Erica Grimond, a girl who passed away over thirty years before giving birth to the Erica Grimond she’d spoken with that afternoon. This is the diary of a bridge daughter long gone, she told herself. There were no secrets here, she assured herself.

  When Hanna was young, she asked her mother occasionally about the girl who’d given birth to her. As an adult, Hanna had read the parenting books and motherhood blogs on how to answer those very questions. Every child learned at some point that a little girl who looked exactly like him or her gave birth to them and vanished. Children naturally wanted to know more about this mysterious girl. What kind of food did she like? Did she go to school too? What was her favorite color? And the parenting books and blogs all said more or less the same thing, each with their own spin:

  Tell the child the truth about bridge daughters.

  Tell the child the bridge daughter is gone now and won’t return.

  Tell the child the bridge daughter is not their mother. You are their mother.

  The young Hanna cried herself to sleep many times over this thought: A little girl died to make me. The sacrifice the other Hanna made, greater than anything she could manage. The first Hanna was brave. The second Hanna, secluded on the farm with her mother, was scared and weak.

  Young Hanna entertained many childhood fantasies of meeting her bridge mother. In them, she showed her resurrected twin all the wonderful things that had changed since she died. Compact discs, cordless phones, Tuesday night bottomless Cokes at the Pizza Hut. She reintroduced the first Hanna to their mother and father and Uncle Rick. They hold a picnic on the farm in her honor and celebrate her return. The second Hanna would slip away from the picnic and no one would notice. The second Hanna would run away from home and the first Hanna would take her place. She would not be missed.

  What did Freud say about our bridge mothers? Something about little boys wanting to sleep with their bridge mothers, then growing up to become men wanting their wives to be their new bridge mothers. Little men, Hanna amended.

  And what did little girls want from their bridge mothers? On that topic, Freud was maddeningly silent.

  Lot of college nonsense, Hanna thought. She slipped the cassette into the portable stereo and pressed the Play button.

  After a long moment of silence, Hanna held the stereo under the reading light by her bed. She verified the tape capstans were rotating. She double-checked the volume knob and turned it to full. The cackle of empty tape came up on the speakers. She turned the knob back down and ejected the cassette. She�
��d not played a cassette tape in ten, maybe fifteen years.

  Holding the cassette under the reading lamp, she realized her mistake. The tape was halfway through. She did not start it from the beginning, but rather from the middle.

  With a moment of consideration, she guessed what had happened. Hanna noticed a formidable stack of cassettes in the box at the Grimond house. Most likely, Erica was listening to them one after another and labeling them quickly, much like one would seek to efficiently sort through a newly discovered cache of old family photos. Erica Grimond must have listened to the tape, ejected it without rewinding, labeled the cassette, and set it aside.

  Hanna rewound the tape and pressed Play again. She adjusted the volume knob until the voice of a little girl emerged, thirteen-year-old Erica Grimond, bridge daughter, circa 1983.

  Dear diary, little Erica began,

  Today that bridge across the street came over. She was nice. We made sandwiches and coffee together. She does not know how to make sandwiches, I can tell. She has it easy across the street. She has her own bedroom. She has books and real-girl toys, not the bridge toys I got after Sis had her finality. I hope we become friends. She is different than the bridges at church. She is a good friend.

  Wait, someone’s coming—

  Sharp clicks and pops came from the speakers, the unmistakable sound of the tape recorder being stopped and then started again.

  That was close, little Erica continued.

  I told the girl across the street about bi-grafts. She pretended to know what they are. I can tell. She doesn’t know about them. I told her about how I’m going to have one. She better not tell anyone. I made her pinkie-promise. I’ll be mad if she breaks a pinkie-promise.

  She wants me to think she’s going to get a bi-graft. She told me she wants to run away and get one. She’s soft. That’s the word Sis would have used, before she died. The girl across the street, she will never get one. But she got really excited when I told her about getting a bi-graft. She’s smart but not strong like me. I hope we stay good friends though.