by Kelly Rimmer
to water and quietly eating the sandwiches Grace served up for
their lunch. They watched me with quiet curiosity but didn’t
speak much. But whenever they were out of the room, Grace
spoke, and she rambled with the kind of energy that comes only
from a long period of isolation. I was there at last to listen, and
the verbal dam had broken. She told me that to her deep and
private shame, each birth had brought a period of intense grief
and emptiness that she couldn’t explain.
I didn’t want children of my own, but even so, I had always
assumed that the birth of a child would be a happy experience
for the mother, and yet I couldn’t deny that when Grace spoke
about these periods of her life, she was in an intense psychologi-
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cal agony. I didn’t understand that at all, and I had no wisdom
or advice to offer her. The one thing I could do was to listen.
Grace told me about long days at home alone, and how some-
times, entire weeks would pass without her having an adult
conversation. She told me about financial woes and Patrick’s
drinking and the endless months with little to no sleep, until she
was hallucinating and terrified, or she’d accidentally nap during
the day and the children would be unsupervised for hours on
end until she woke up with a start. She shook with shame as she
described times when she found herself shouting at the children
over the smallest things. Grace told me that they could barely af-
ford to feed the children they had, let alone a fifth. She told me
that the worse things got at home, the less time Patrick seemed
willing to spend at the house, and she was genuinely scared he
might leave altogether if they went through with this pregnancy.
“Would that be so bad?” I asked her hesitantly. “If he left, I
mean.”
Grace looked at me with alarm.
“I can’t do it alone. How would I survive?”
“You know Mother and Father would help you if you di-
vorced him.”
“The thing is, I know this all sounds awful, but I do love
him, Maryanne. And he does love these children. He just doesn’t
seem to know how to father them. No wonder, really. He grew
up with his aunt Nina and he had no father of his own and he’s
still trying to figure it all out. I can’t give up on him. I just
can’t.” She cleared her throat, wiped her nose and then added
in a very small voice. “But I also can’t have this baby. It’ll be
the end of me.”
She didn’t need to convince me why she couldn’t continue
with the pregnancy, but maybe she was convincing herself. Over
the next few hours, every time I told Grace I’d help her, she’d
just keep on talking as if she hadn’t heard me, justifying the de-
cision over and over again.
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Eventually, though, Grace seemed to run out of words. Her
speech slowed, then stopped altogether. Tears still rolled down
her cheeks and onto the nightgown. When her sobs had finally
faded away, I squeezed her hands within mine. She looked at
me with bleary eyes, and I smiled at her, confident that we both
knew exactly what was best for her, even if I wasn’t entirely sure
how we’d achieve it.
“We’ll find someone who can take care of it, and we’ll fix
this. I promise you.”
At dinner that night, Father asked me why I had arrived unan-
nounced midsemester. I was waiting for the question and knew
exactly how to answer him.
“I’m in trouble,” I said. “I’m starting to think you were right
about some things, Father.”
“Right about what, exactly?” He seemed wary, and fair
enough, given how often we’d butted heads over the years.
“Well, when you said women shouldn’t trouble themselves
with matters of finances and careers,” I sighed. “I seem to have
made a mess of things and I’m in a bit of financial strife. I’m re-
ally reevaluating my future now.”
It was just as I’d hoped—Father seemed smug at my failure,
but he was still willing to help me fix it. Father and I had little
in common, but I didn’t doubt that he generally did have my
best interests at heart.
“How much do you need?”
“Three hundred dollars should be enough,” I said. It was a
guess—based purely on the stories the girls back at the residen-
tial hall had told me. Father’s eyes bulged, but he went into his
study after supper and came back with a thick wad of notes.
After that, I waited until my parents were settled in front of
the evening programming on the television, and I went into
Father’s study to use the phone. Women knew these things in
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those days. We talked about abortion and clumsy contraceptive
methods in whispers, but everyone knew the codes.
After several careful phone calls with girls I’d been to school
with, I had the name of a man in the city who would help us.
He was reported to be an unregistered doctor who would per-
form the procedure at a secret location.
“It’s all very cloak and dagger,” my school friend warned me,
dropping her voice. “You call him to arrange it, and he gives
you a meeting place, then someone picks you up to take you to
his clinic. They don’t let you see where you’re going because
it’s all top secret.”
“How much did it cost?” I whispered back, only hoping I’d
scammed my father out of enough money.
“Five hundred dollars,” she said, and I gasped. “It’s a lot, I
know. I heard of a woman who does them in her kitchen and
it costs less, but it’s so much more dangerous—my friend ended
up with sepsis. The doctor I saw really seemed to know what
he was doing.”
I knew I couldn’t ask Dad for more money. I had some sav-
ings, about eighty dollars in the bank, but we were still going
to be one hundred and twenty dollars short. I just had to hope
that Grace could come up with the rest herself.
When I finished with my calls, I emerged to find Mother at
the small table in the kitchen, sitting before a pot of tea in her
nightgown. It was a similar gown to Grace’s, only Mother’s was,
of course, in pristine condition. Her hair had been recently set
and even at eight o’clock, she had a full face of perfect and ex-
pensive makeup.
“I visited Grace today,” I blurted. Mother looked up at me in
surprise, then her line-thin eyebrows knit.
“But you said you were at the university doing research.”
“I finished early.” Lies upon lies. “Mother, have you seen
her house?”
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“Not in the last year or two,” Mother said stiffly. “Father is
desperately displeased with Patrick.”
“Why? What happened?”
“We never liked him. Right from the beginning.”
“I’m aware, Mother, but you seemed to tolerate him for a
while.”
“Well, we tried to give him a chance to prove himself, but he
blew it. He always wanted money. The phone bill. New work
boots. Formula for the baby. The refrigerator shorted out. It
was endless, and it was obvious from the outset that he’d only
married her because he’d seen this house and he knew we were
well-to-do.”
I was hardly Patrick’s biggest fan myself, but even so, I could
see she was being unfair. I’d seen them on their wedding day,
and the love between them had been so palpable, I might even
have felt the tiniest bit jealous. “They were obviously in love
in the beginning.”
“Well, the final straw was when Patrick borrowed money
from us for the phone bill that last time. The very next day,
Father saw him out at the bar drunk with his friends. And
Grace called us several days later to ask for money for the bill,
she didn’t realize Patrick had already borrowed it from us and
drank it away.”
“That’s hardly Grace’s fault. She seems to be dreadfully iso-
lated.”
“When she’s ready to leave, we’ll help her. I’d love to see the
children more—I mean, heavens, I’ve only met the littlest one
twice. But we can’t condone her decision in standing by him.”
“She needs us,” I said. My heart ached for my sister—to see
the innocence and optimism I’d so loved about her swamped by
so much pressure and responsibility. “You’re blackmailing her
into making a decision she’s not ready to make.”
“I learned that tactic from you, Maryanne,” Mother said with
a shrug. When I gaped at her, she stirred her tea and gave me a
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mild look. “You were determined to go to college. Father was
determined to stop you. You found a way to go, and then you
refused to speak to him until he was ready to support you. And
now look at you. He wouldn’t even pay your way to California
four years ago, and after just a few months of you ignoring him,
he’d changed his tune. And how much money has he given you
since? Another three hundred dollars tonight. Sometimes the
only leverage you have over people is their presence in your life.”
“That’s cold, Mother.”
“Perhaps, but you can’t deny it’s true.”
“Grace’s situation is entirely different. That house needs so
much work, and she’s just not strong enough to change her lot
in life right now. She just needs a little help until she’s back on
her feet.”
“I’ll give her all of the help she needs,” Mother snapped.
“But only once she decides to leave that reprobate.” She stood
abruptly, and I noticed the way her hand shook as she reached
up into the cabinet over the refrigerator to withdraw a small
box of pills. She popped two out onto her hand, and swallowed
them dry.
“Are you sick?” I frowned. She pursed her lips and shook
her head.
“I’ve been under a great deal of stress lately. The doctor has
given me some pills to help me cope.”
“Stress over what?”
Mother stared out the window into the darkness for a long
moment.
“Well, one of my daughters is disgracing the family name by
choosing a life beneath her,” Mother said very quietly. “And the
other is married to a man who is beneath her. You have no idea
the unkind things people say to me.”
“Who cares what people think of us?”
Mother huffed impatiently and drained the last of her tea,
then shot me a withering look.
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“You never did understand, darling. All a woman has in this
life is her reputation.”
I probably understood that better than she realized. It was ex-
actly why I was so determined to build a world where a woman
could have something more.
Beth
1996
“How are you doing, Beth?”
Ruth decides it’s intervention time again after lunch, prob-
ably because I’m acting like a crazy person. The kids and our
husbands and brothers are all watching a movie in the family
room. Alicia is in there, too, sound asleep on a sofa. Dad’s half-
asleep, sitting with his eyelids drooping in his wheelchair, just
a few feet away from me and Ruth.
The dining room table and kitchen look like a party has just
finished, and I guess it has. There’s half-eaten food on every
conceivable surface, empty wine bottles and beer bottles, and
even when the boys came in for lunch a cold breeze blew all of
Dad’s gold candy wrappers off the table, and they’re now lit-
tered all over the floor.
I shouldn’t have pushed Dad the way I did. He’s so drained
now, and it was all for nothing anyway. I feel like shit about it,
and the last thing I want is Ruth to put me on the spot again.
“I’m fine. Doing better, talking to Hunter, thinking about
seeing someone.”
“And the antidepressants?”
“I have the prescription. I’m still considering my options,” I
say, glancing at Dad. His eyelids flicker a little, but he doesn’t
seem to react. Still, I drop my voice to a whisper and I add,
“Ruth, I really don’t want to talk about this now.”
“What was all that with Dad about before?”
“Do I need some high stakes reason to talk to Dad?” I ask
flatly. She sighs and raises her hands in surrender.
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“I don’t understand why you’re so defensive about everything.
I’m trying to help you.”
I force myself to draw in a slow breath before I say, “I know.
I’m sorry. I’m…everything feels very—” Urgent. Awful. Hope-
less. “—strained.”
“What does it feel like?” Ruth asks. I turn to face her, frown-
ing. “I don’t understand, and I want to. Are you sad all the time?
Or is it more complicated than that?”
“It’s so much more complicated than that,” I say, battling to
keep the defensiveness out of my tone. “Don’t you think I’d have
realized what was happening if I was suddenly sad all the time?”
“So…? Explain it to me.”
“I just feel overwhelmed. On edge. I don’t know… I just feel
like everything is too much for me. And I’ve felt isolated.” She
opens her mouth to speak, but I lean toward her and add, voice
fast and low, “Yes, I know if I�
�m isolated, I’ve done it to myself,
but that wasn’t intentional. I just felt like no one could under-
stand, and I was embarrassed to be struggling to care for Noah
the way I have been. Like everyone was judging me for being
an awful mother. I know that wasn’t really happening, but it
felt… feels really real to me.”
I settle back into my chair, but as I do, I glance at Dad. I’m
horrified to find him staring right back at me, a concerned look
on his face.
“I thought you were asleep, Dad,” I say, my voice artificially
bright. “Did you want to take a nap? Alicia is napping in the
family room, maybe we could go in there where it’s warmer,
hey?”
Dad shakes his head and purses his lips. I glare at Ruth, and
she rises and walks to Dad’s armchair.
“Dad, I need some help with dessert. That’s your specialty.
Why don’t you come and help me whip the cream?”
I think we’ve effectively distracted him. Ruth pushes Dad
into the kitchen and he holds the electric beaters for a minute
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or two, starting off the whipped cream, but he tires quickly
and she has to take over. I clear the kitchen table and reset it
for dessert, and soon enough, we’re all seated for round two of
“food we’re already too full to eat.” Dad picks that moment of
rare quiet to look right at me and announce, “I don’t want you
to…” he points upstairs vaguely. “The mess. Behind the floor.”
“It’s okay, Dad,” I wince. “It’s okay. We’ve got it under con-
trol.”
“Time got away from me. The mess. I was going to clean it.”
“I’ll sort it out,” I promise him.
“We will sort it out,” Ruth corrects me.
“But the letters. With the scissors,” Dad says, staring right at
me. He’s gasping for breath between words and his face is beet-
red. “She wrote the letters with the scissors.”
I hear Jeremy drop his voice to ask Ruth, “What on earth
is he talking about now?” and Ruth replies with equally failed
subtlety, “I have no idea.”
“Dad, it’s fine,” I say firmly. “Everything is fine. You really
don’t need to worry about it.”
“I wanted to paint the letters. And…the pictures. He raises
his hand and indicates his forehead. “I kept the letters to re-
