Page 64 of Home Body
“You don’t know that!” Kenyon insisted.
“Yes, I do.”
Dalia and Kenyon watched in wonder as the woman in her eighties marched up the driveway, strode up the porch steps, and opened the screen door. To their amazement, all she had to do was push on the front door to open it. It’d been left cracked open. Inez disappeared inside the house.
The two young women stared at that house, terrified they’d hear a gunshot. None came. Five minutes passed. Still, no shooting. Eventually, Kenyon turned off the car. Inez appeared on the porch and motioned for them to come in.
“Shit,” Kenyon said. “I’m not going in there with that crazy woman.”
Dalia hesitated. “I am.” She hopped out of the car. By the time she reached the front door, Kenyon was at her side.
“I’m not about to let you get shot alone.”
Tiptoeing through the squalid living room, they found Nellie and Inez sitting at the kitchen table, each tossing back a shot of whiskey. A bottle of Jack Daniels sat in the middle of the able.
“It’s okay, girls,” Inez said. “I checked the gun.” She pointed at the weapon that leaned against the wall. “She doesn’t have any ammo. Go ahead and sit down. Have a shot if you want.” She shoved the bottle in their direction.
Dalia and Kenyon sat down like two prisoners in court, afraid to touch anything. They ignored the invitation to imbibe. Nellie threw back a shot and stood up facing the window over the sink. When she spoke, it was as if she’d forgotten they were there as she talked to an imaginary ghost outside.
“I love him,” she said as if the man she referred to was still alive. They were pretty sure she meant Dr. Upton, who’d died fifteen years earlier.
Inez pulled a small cassette player out of her pocket and clicked it on. “Nellie, I’m going to record this.”
Nellie glanced at her with disdain. “I don’t give a damn what you do.”
The three intruders sat there spellbound, afraid to say anything else lest their informant clam up. They let her ramble in hopes of getting to the information they wanted.
She picked up a pack of cigarettes off the counter and lit up, blowing smoke toward the ghost in the window. “I loved him from the moment I first set eyes on him at my interview to be his nurse assistant. I knew right then I would do anything for him.” Her back to them, she swished her hand around as she spoke, the cigarette smoke making curly-cue patterns in the air. She took a long draw and threw her head back, blowing the smoke over her. “He was so handsome! Those bedroom-brown eyes and that neatly trimmed hair and that body. Oh my god that body!” She chortled at the memory that brought her pleasure. “He was twenty years older than me – I was twenty-one and fresh out of nursing school – but the age difference didn’t matter to us. Our love began on that day.”
Inez dared to ask. “You had sex with him at the interview?”
Nellie flicked ashes into the sink and turned to them. “You’re so crass. But sure. Why not? It was obvious we were destined to be together.” Her face contorted as if she suddenly remembered something. She dropped the cigarette onto the floor and stomped it out angrily. “But his damned wife wouldn’t let go. Twelve years Clive and I delivered babies together, side by side day after day, so in love we could hardly stand it. He wanted a divorce, but she refused. That shrew was delusional, thinking she could make him love her.”
Stillness enveloped them. Dalia, Kenyon, and Inez all knew that Nellie Franklin was transferring her own behaviors and beliefs onto the doctor’s wife. Nellie was the delusional one. If Dr. Clive Upton had wanted to divorce his wife, he would have.
They flinched when Nellie sat back down at the table. Fitfully circling her hands on its Formica surface, she continued, intent on making them understand. “What we did was a gift to allthose pregnant women who didn’t want their babies. Or didn’t deserve them. Unwed. Ungodly. Loose women with no morals whatsoever. A few were wives who got pregnant while their husbands were away at war. Most were whores, college students from universities all over the state and into Ohio.”
The three didn’t miss the irony of that declaration, seeing that Nellie had just told them she started an affair with the married doctor the first day they met. Dalia gasped when Nellie leaned in toward her and shook a nasty finger at her.
“If you were one of our babies, your mother was no good. Why don’t you just leave it at that?”
Dalia had no answer to that.
Inez intervened. “Nellie, did he tell mothers their babies had died and then sell the babies?”
“Sure. There were lots of people who wanted babies.”
“Did you keep records?”
Nellie got up and lit another cigarette, once again talking to the window. “Yes.”
“Are they in your garage?”
“Yes. But you can’t have them. Leave well enough alone I say.”
They all jumped when they heard the front door open and heavy footsteps approach. Sheriff Wisniewski came into the room.
He took off his hat and held it at his chest like a gentleman. “Hello, ladies. I understand there may be a problem here.”
