Lava Falls Read online

  Their friends held the opinion, after a few years of this waffling, that the couple didn’t really want children, they only wanted to talk about them. This wasn’t true. They did want children. Desperately. Which added to the feeling, which developed into a belief, that a found baby belonged to them.

  They were driving back to the Cheyenne airport in their rental car and stopped in Rawlins to look for a good bakery and some coffee. Rawlins is a scruffy, angry little town with nothing in it but dead storefronts and, on the outskirts, a couple of big box stores. Dry snarls of tumbleweed rolled down the main drag. There was no nice bakery, no decent-looking restaurant, pretty much no cup of coffee either of them would consider drinking. They went into a diner and got to-go cups of tea, despite a stale smell and the waitress’s mean squint. As they walked back to the car, John snarkily commented that everyone they’d encountered in Rawlins appeared to have fetal alcohol syndrome. Who wouldn’t drink to excess, he carried on, if forced to live in a town like that?

  And there, on a bus bench, was the baby.

  The strangest part, at the very first, was how well cared for he looked. He was strapped tightly into a car seat. His head was covered with a blue knit cap, his body trundled up in a matching blue blanket. He was quiet, his eyes open, and he stared unblinkingly up at the two men. Later, John would tell anyone who would listen that the first time he met eyes with his son, he saw a great degree of intelligence and a clear determination. Both men felt the baby drink in their kindness, felt him fix his infant spirit onto their warm, responsible, adult bodies. He did seem to welcome John and Ray, unconditionally, into his life.

  The men looked all around, but they saw no one who could have deposited the baby on the bench. Ray went back inside the diner to make inquiries. John stayed outside and stared at the little apparition. He eased off its cap and discovered, as he expected from the coffee ice cream tone of the baby’s skin, a head of black fuzz, already curling into perfect loops. Ray returned and said no one knew anything about the infant. There were no cars driving down the main drag, no pedestrians lingering on street corners. Only the waitress saw the two men take the baby.

  As he grew into a little boy, the fathers tried to imagine his story. They’d start down different narrative paths and get stopped by heartbreak or confusion. One way or another, they always concluded that some white girl got herself knocked up by some black dude, and she abandoned her baby. John consistently ended these conversations with a sentence his disbelief wouldn’t let him finish. “Anyone who . . .” he’d say, shaking his head, feeling his heart squeeze tight. His outrage fueled his love for Akasha and never left him. Sometimes Ray patted his partner’s hand or knee and cautioned against such anger. Akasha was safe now. He was loved. He was thriving.

  Meanwhile, they told all their friends and acquaintances that they had adopted Akasha through regular channels, that they’d been quiet about it because they hadn’t wanted to get anyone’s hopes up, least of all theirs. With a couple of their nosier friends, the lie became a bit more elaborate, but in the end no one had reason to question their story. Still, there were times, usually in the middle of the night, when Ray worried. What if a mistake had been made? What if there was some reasonable explanation for why the baby had been left, maybe temporarily, on the bus bench? These paths of thought led Ray to moments of actual horror: What had they done?

  “It’s possible,” he’d say quietly to John, “that someone is heartbroken.” John would chuff, roll over. “Anyone who . . .” And Ray knew he was right. There could be no good excuse, not a single one, for abandoning a baby. “A bus stop,” John would add. “In Rawlins, Wyoming. Eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. No ‘mistake’ is that cruel.”

  John was an attorney in Manhattan with Weinraub, Smythe, and Kingsley. He came from Richmond, Virginia, where his father had worked his entire life in a cigarette factory. John believed deeply in the American Dream, that his successes were earned and therefore due him. Ray, too, had worked very hard for his cello seat with the string quartet, but he thought he was more lucky than deserving. Ray believed in chance and knew that beauty could be shattered at any moment.

  The logistics of raising a child worked particularly well for the couple, especially since they could afford help. Ray traveled a lot with the quartet, but when he was in town he always picked up Akasha from school. John made time, as many nights as possible, to do homework with his son, insisting on the boy achieving at least as much as he had, preferably more. Akasha started piano lessons at the age of four and pleased them enormously with his aptitude.

  But it was Akasha’s nanny, Mindy, who was the cornerstone of their life. After hiring and firing two others in Akasha’s first year, John considered moving his mother up from Richmond, an idea that pleased no one but felt like the only option. Then the quartet’s violinist suggested his sister, a middle-aged woman who wanted to emigrate from Uzbekistan.

  “Mindy’s very bright,” the violinist said. “You won’t find a more responsible nanny.” Here he paused, narrowed his eyes in deliberation, nodded hard and added, “She’s had a bit of a bad patch recently. She needs a change.”

  None of this sounded promising. They told the violinist no. He argued, brought it up at every rehearsal, offered to pay her airfare if they promised employment for a minimum of six months. He began to wear them down, especially after John’s mother changed her mind about coming. Semi-relieved, Ray asked for more details about the “bad patch.”

  “That’s not important. Trust me,” the violinist said. “Mindy is fierce. She protects what she loves.”

  Those last two sentences were curiously compelling. Ray and John negotiated down to a promised three-month trial and braced themselves for the Uzbekistani nanny.

  Mindy worked out magnificently. She didn’t speak a word of English when she arrived, but Akasha instantly adored her. They couldn’t stop her from cleaning the house and making vats of borscht, all while singing to and playing with Akasha. Mindy learned English along with her charge, and loved him nearly as much as John and Ray did. Some might have considered her overly involved in the family, but the men were grateful. Her loyalty was prodigious. They didn’t worry about keeping secrets from her, and she was the only other person in the world who knew about Akasha’s provenance.

  So, after the rocky beginning with the bad nannies, all went well for the first years of Akasha’s childhood. Then, when he was nine years old, the boy’s mother returned to Rawlins. She walked the block with the bus stop bench, stopping in at every storefront to question the clerks. Despite the futility of her search, her hope roared. The diner sat directly behind the bus stop bench. She pulled open the door. The waitress who was wiping tables immediately divulged all she remembered: Ray coming back in to ask about the baby and watching the men load the little bundle into their car. She’d figured they were taking the baby to the police or fire station. They’d hardly looked like kidnappers with their shiny loafers and pressed blue jeans. Even so, she’d written down the car’s license plate number, as well as its color and make, and then stuffed the piece of paper into her purse. She never heard a thing on the TV about a lost baby, and no one came looking in the diner, so she’d figured that was that. She didn’t try to disguise her judgment as she told the girl who said she was the child’s mother that she was a few years late, and that she had no idea if that slip of paper still existed. It did, though, and she knew exactly where she’d tucked it, inside her Joy of Cooking at home. She figured she’d make the girl wait, as a test, and if she came back the next day, she’d give it to her.

  The mother did return the next day. The rental agency had records, and the mother found someone willing to track down that specific transaction. She showed up in the lobby of Weinraub, Smythe, and Kingsley on a Tuesday afternoon and asked to see John.

  John was the only African American member of the firm, and this young woman was also black. The receptionist assumed that she must be a relative of John’s and buzzed his office to sa
y that someone was here to see him. John assumed, because of the receptionist’s chummy tone, that it was Ray and Akasha. Once in a while they stopped by at this hour, around four o’clock, if they had some good news, like an A+ on a paper or a part in a school performance.

  But the young woman who entered his office was a stranger. She was twenty-something, dark-skinned, and very frightened. Even her shoulders were trembling. He saw that she was beautiful with long hands and big eyes and a plum-like mouth.

  “Are you John Washington?”

  He nodded.

  “My name is Francine Wynne.”

  He thought of buzzing his secretary and asking her to usher the woman out. It was entirely inappropriate that she should show up without an appointment. But something in her demeanor, a fear so raw it ran through his blood, too, caused him to gesture toward the big leather chair across from his desk. She glanced at it and dismissed the seat immediately, as if it were far too grand for her. She remained standing.

  “How can I help you?”

  When she took a breath, it was as if she inhaled pure courage. Her eyes blazed up and her mouth opened wide, the words more than ready. “I left my baby outside a diner in Rawlins, Wyoming.”

  He wanted to knock her down. Snap his fingers and make her disappear. Use language that would cut her to the quick. His mind scanned, lightning fast, over his privileges and the options they offered. He thought of calling the police, and then thought better of it. He stood. The words Anyone who skidded across his mind, over and over again, but while they usually quieted Ray, they didn’t do much for John now.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” she said. “You and some white man.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Cheyenne. I—”

  “No.” John held up a hand. “No. I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

  “It’s my baby.”

  He couldn’t believe he was having to face this moment without Ray. Overwhelmed, thrown off balance, John made his first mistake. He said, “Okay. Wait. I’ll hear you out. But not here. Can you come by our apartment? Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Her face said, Are you crazy? I just told you I’m the mother of the baby you stole. “What did you do with him?”

  A door, an opportunity. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would assume they hadn’t kept the baby. Good. They had some time. The enormous relief of this reprieve caused him to make another mistake. Another indirect concession. He opened his wallet, took out a credit card, and handed it to her. “Look,” he said. “We can talk. But not now and not here. Find a hotel. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Why not tonight?” she asked, holding the credit card between two fingertips as if it were the tail of a rat.

  “We’re busy.” It was true. Ray had rehearsal.

  “This is useless to me,” she said, wagging the piece of plastic. “Do I look like John Washington?”

  “Just call a hotel. Say I’m your husband. People use other people’s credit cards all the time.”

  He was behaving desperately. Why would he go to these lengths, give her his credit card, if he weren’t guilty? He saw that realization dawn on her face. She exhaled a long toxic sigh and her whole body loosened with a hope so visceral he felt it radiating from her core, saw it glowing on her skin, filling the room.

  “I don’t have your baby,” he lied dully. “But we can talk.”

  She set the credit card on his desk. “Keep your card.”

  “No,” he said quickly. Already he was thinking of how Akasha would feel, ten years down the road, if he found out about this encounter. How John had denied his mother, forced her to sleep in the train station, or worse. It wouldn’t matter that it was she who had abandoned him. Akasha would blame John. That’s how these things worked. So he called the Larchmont, a nice place near their apartment in the Village, and booked her a room for the night. A big one, too, as they were out of anything modest. Then he called the restaurant down the street and gave the maître d’ his credit card number and said that Francine Wynne could order whatever she liked.

  When he hung up the phone, she asked, “Is he safe? Is he happy?”

  John grabbed his overcoat and walked out, leaving Francine standing in his office and his secretary in the dark about what had just happened.

  That evening, Akasha had a lot of homework, and they spent two hours doing math and writing a paper on Sojourner Truth. Perhaps the latter’s influence, her name alone, affected the outcome of the situation. When Ray came home, they put Akasha to bed and Ray read him a story. Mindy, having overheard John tell Ray they had to talk, and noting the high level of anxiety in his voice, did not go out that evening, nor did she retreat to her room. Instead, she busied herself in the kitchen, well within earshot, while John told Ray what had happened. Shocked at the news, Mindy gave up any pretense of housekeeping and leaned against the doorjamb to listen. Ray looked physically ill. He reached for a pillow and held it against his stomach.

  “I’ve been working it through,” John said. “Look. What’s she going to do? Let’s say she goes to the police. They’re going to believe her? Or do anything about it if they do? Even if she managed to use the right channels and got someone to officially challenge our parenthood, who’s going to give Akasha back to a woman who left her baby at a bus stop? Who? I say we tell her we have Akasha and that we aren’t giving him up. We shame her, right here, tomorrow night. Let her scuttle right back to that stanky state of Wyoming.”

  Ray looked at John with an expression that said he expected more of his partner. To willingly shame someone? No.

  “I am Akasha’s mother,” came a heavily accented voice from the kitchen doorway.

  Both men turned to see a red-in-the-face Mindy standing boldly with her hands on her hips. “No one will take him away. I will swear it in a court of law! I have an Ethiopian friend who will say he is the father. I am sure of it. We give him a little money, maybe. But it is done.”

  Mindy’s love of Akasha flowed right into their own. They were moved by her offer. “Come sit with us,” John said. She marched into the living room as if they were taking her up on her plan.

  “DNA,” Ray said. “If this were ever officially challenged, DNA would settle everything in a nanosecond.”

  “He looks just like her,” John said. “No one would need DNA.”

  “Then we will move,” Mindy said with so much feeling her voice was guttural. “California,” she suggested. “Or Chicago. Somewhere big.”

  John looked at Mindy for a long time, taking her proposition seriously. He would do it. He’d give up the firm, the money. He was pretty sure Ray would give up the quartet, too. They’d go into hiding. At least for a few years. Until Akasha was out of college. After all, Francine Wynne was just a girl herself. There was plenty of time for her to know her biological son, but later, when Akasha could decide for himself. Anyway, John and Ray were the boy’s parents now. She obviously couldn’t begin to give Akasha what they were able to provide. It would be unethical to turn a child over to this woman who . . .

  “Tomorrow night,” Ray said to Mindy. “Do you have somewhere you can take him?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.” She nodded vigorously, a very willing accomplice.

  The next day, Ray helped Mindy clear away all traces of Akasha from the apartment. It wasn’t enough to shove his baseball bat and books into a closet. What if she came with something like a search warrant? They stuffed the boy’s possessions into the car and carried a vase of flowers into Akasha’s bedroom, replacing his sea creature curtains with taupe ones. Detail by detail, they transformed the place into a vacant guest room. John picked up Chinese food on his way home from the office. They decided against wine.

  Francine Wynne showed up right on time, at seven o’clock. She wore a pale green dress and black pumps, nylons too, as if she were coming for a job interview, though she covered the outfit with a ridiculously bright pink polyester parka. Still, Ray was struck by her beauty. She wore her hair short. Her eyes were
keen. Her mouth looked just like Akasha’s. Actually, every inch of her looked just like Akasha, including her thin, elegant build.

  John braced himself against any possibility of sympathy. He saw her eyes scan the room, tripping on the paintings and pausing on the leather furniture. Assessing, he was sure, how well she could take them to the cleaners.

  “Come in,” Ray said, waving a hand at the dining room table. “Have a seat.”

  “I want to see him.”

  “We don’t have him,” John said. “He’s not here.”

  “What did you do with him?” Later, much later, both men would remember fondly her expression right then. She embodied the capacity to kill. The ferocity of her love, even in absentia, was like a seed she planted in the heart of their family. It would take years to sprout and bloom, but for now, they clung to their plan of resistance.

  Ray waited for John to deliver the lie. It wasn’t that John was less truthful than Ray. He certainly wasn’t a liar. But he was an attorney. He was adept at using language to achieve his own ends. As a musician, Ray stayed closer to the visceral truth in a moment. John had a much greater ability to see gradations and shadings.