by Kelly Rimmer
a sad look and extends the note toward me. “Those notes blew
up our whole lives, and this was the only one I ever got to read.”
Grace
April 14, 1959
Last week I decided I had two options: I could give up without a fight, and let the darkness take me away from my family. Or I could take charge the way my sister would.
It was Maryanne I went to for help, because she‘s the kind of woman
who can make things happen. When she arrived from California this
week, she charged in to save the day and in no time at all, had organized an abortion for me, and even found most of the money so that I could
pay for it.
I’m skeptical that Maryanne’s is right about the future—I can’t ever
see men giving up the reins to this world, but when I see the way that she’s broken past every obstacle to help me, I have some hope. With women like Maryanne to lead the charge, maybe things really can change.
I’m up early because I couldn’t sleep. I just kissed Patrick on the cheek and sent him off for the day, Tim and Jeremy are watching cartoons,
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and Ruth and Bethany are still in bed. And in this predawn moment, I
stop and reflect on what I am about to do.
I didn’t make this decision lightly; I don’t suppose women ever do , but sometimes, you just have to do things you never thought you would to survive. The cost of this sin is not nearly as great as I know the cost of my inaction would be. In the weeks since I realized I was pregnant, some part of my mind was already back at that bridge, staring down into the swirling ocean waters below, longing only for the pain to stop.
I know what is best for me and for my family. I am proud of myself
for finding the strength to do this—to do what’s right for me, and for the children I already have.
I will be brave—I must be brave. And when I come home, all of my mind will come home, not just the parts that aren’t consumed with de-spair and grief and fear.
I hate having to do this but there simply is no alternative. It’s the pregnancy or me, and so I’ll do what needs to be done to be a good mother
to my children.
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20
Maryanne
1959
I couldn’t even say when my relationship with Patrick began to
change. We worked side by side as colleagues over the year that
followed, engaging only around family life, each of us playing
the role we needed to play. I’d gradually developed a healthy ad-
miration for Patrick—a man who bounced back from the depths
of grief, a man who was clearly willing to do whatever it took
to keep his family together and to raise his children well. He
worked harder than anyone I’d ever known—and he’d clawed
his way back out of a financial pit that, once upon a time, had
seemed insurmountable.
We had our squabbles. Patrick could be hotheaded and proud,
and so could I. Every now and again, we’d clash over some issue
big or small—how to discipline the children, which school to
send them to, how the repairs to the house should be done,
whether it was time to move out of public housing and into
our own place. I knew in theory that all these things were Pat-
rick’s domain and that I should let him make his own decisions,
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but I couldn’t help express my thoughts whenever he came to
a crossroads. We’d shout at one another, I’d storm off into my
bedroom and then we’d both sulk around the house for a few
days, refusing to be the first to speak.
But eventually, he always took my opinions on board. And
over weeks and months, we started wearing one another down,
because the ferocity of our arguments faded. Instead, we started
coming to each other for advice…and a sense of true partner-
ship began to form.
Once upon a time, I would hand off responsibility to Pat-
rick the minute he walked in the door—even if I was halfway
through a story with the children. But gradually, I started to
linger in the family life each night, and this naturally leant itself
to me and Patrick sharing dinner once the children were in bed.
He told me about his day, about supplies that came late and la-
borers that frustrated him. He told me how embarrassed by his
own work ethic over the first few years of his professional life.
“I hate to say it now, but I always felt like I’d been dealt a bad
hand, being an orphan from such a young age,” Patrick said one
night as he reflected on the behavior of one young apprentice.
“Aunt Nina is an odd sort. She was so much older than any of
my friend’s mothers, and she had some funny ideas about how
men and women should be. I’m not blaming her, of course, but
when I look back at my life with Grace, I really took your sis-
ter for granted. I grew up in a house where I was the only man,
even long before I was a man. And being the ‘man of the house’
didn’t mean that I had more responsibility. It meant that I had
less. Aunt Nina built her whole world around me and I expected
that Grace would do the same. Even at work, when my boss
would get on me for doing something wrong, I’d feel this—”
he gestured toward his chest in frustration, fingers stretched out
“—…this burning indignation. This entitlement. Of course, now
life has beaten some sense into me, and I realize no one owes
me anything. I see that same behavior from the young guys at
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Kelly Rimmer
work, expecting that things are just going to be made to hap-
pen for them. It’s frustrating as hell to manage, and I don’t know how Grace or Ewan ever put up with me for so long.”
“She’d be so proud of you,” I remarked. “I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks, Mary.” He smiled. “I think we’re doing okay.”
It had become an incontrovertible truth that the more time
I shared with Patrick, the fonder I felt toward him, and instead
of resisting those quiet dinners once the children were asleep, I
began to eagerly anticipate them.
Patrick and I didn’t do anything by the book. We started out
with a forced partnership, then married and then became friends.
I think that’s why, at first, I didn’t recognize the urge to spend
time with him as affection. I thought it was the natural combi-
nation of proximity and a sense of me being out of place and a
little lost there in Yesler Terrace, away from the life I thought
I’d live. The fiercely arrogant young version of me had died a
painful death after the loss of my sister. I was not the same girl
I once was, but I had yet to figure out who I now was. And as
I wandered around learning the landscape of my new life, I did
so with a now treasured partner and friend in Patrick.
The first anniversary of Grace’s death came and went, and
we celebrated a birthday for each of the chil
dren without her. I
mastered the art of keeping the house clean, and I set up a sys-
tem for the laundry that I adhered to religiously. I even learned
to cook—a little. The children still ate an awful lot of dishes
that involved toast and eggs, but rarely complained. We really
were doing just fine.
When I walked Tim through the gate for his first day of kin-
dergarten, he was adorable in his little outfit, startlingly young,
ready to face the world. I crouched right at his eye level and said,
“You’re a kid now, got it? School is about learning, and learning
is fun. You don’t have to look after anyone while you’re here.”
He kissed my cheek and ran off to play, and as I walked the
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other children back to the car, I bawled like a bewildered baby,
and when he settled in without so much as a hiccup, I was proud
as if he were my own.
By the winter of 1960, Patrick and I had a well-established
habit of sitting by the fire each evening for a drink and what
was often a hearty conversation. Patrick was becoming well
versed in early feminist ideology, and as much as I knew he still
struggled with the idea that traditional gender roles might ac-
tually be limiting for women, he was open to discussion. He
had revealed a surprising potential for intellectual depth. I loved
debating him, and he seemed to love it, too. He’d offer me his
thoughts, always prefacing his ideas with, “Well, Maryanne,
you know I’m hardly an expert, but…”
I came to look forward to those nights. I came to long for
them. Even so, I refused to let myself dwell on how good it felt
to spend time with Patrick. I tried to convince myself that all I
felt for him was admiration.
“Do you wish that you could have gone to college, Patrick?”
I asked him one night, and he gave me a startled look.
“A fool like me? What would I have done at a college?”
“You are no fool, Patrick Walsh,” I laughed softly. “I have a
feeling you could have done anything you set your mind to.”
“I barely scraped by in school,” he said. “College wasn’t in the
cards for me. Aunt Nina wasn’t big on education. My mother
worked in a factory during the war, and my father was a me-
chanic. I suppose, if I’d had the option, I might’ve liked to study
science. But I’m happy working with my hands. These hands
earn me an honest living, and there’s no shame in that.”
He held his hands up as he spoke, palms toward the sky, fin-
gers outstretched. That’s when I saw the splinter in the pad of
his right forefinger.
“That looks awful,” I remarked, motioning toward his finger
with my drink. Patrick rubbed at it ruefully.
“Occupational hazard. I thought my hands would get banged
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up less now that I’m in management, but I still seem to be wield-
ing the tools a lot. It’ll come out on its own.”
But I could see that the splinter was starting to fester, and so
insisted that he allow me to help him pull it out. We shifted back
inside and Patrick sat at the dining room table while I fetched
the tweezers from my sewing kit. I cupped his big hand in mine
to hold it steady, extracted the piece of wood without too much
trouble and then dropped the tweezers onto the table.
We were supposed to part then, to go back to a conversing
side by side. But neither one of us made any attempt to move.
We were sitting at the table where we’d shared so many meals
together, in the room where so many hours together had caused
our partnership turn to friendship and now…something deeper.
Something more.
We were friends and companions and as far as the law was
concerned, spouses. But for everything that we shared over the
year and a half that had passed, we’d rarely had physical contact.
A hug here, a consoling pat there, but never like this. We were
still sitting at the table with my hand cupping his. And then,
in a rush, he exhaled unsteadily, and turned his hand over and
linked his fingers with mine.
My heart started to race, an incessant pounding against the
wall of my chest—warning me of dangers untold. Someone had
sucked all the air from the room, and when I raised my gaze to
Patrick’s, he was staring at me as if he couldn’t bring himself
to look away.
“Patrick,” I started to say, but he snatched his hand back as
panic flared in his eyes.
“We shouldn’t,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
He left me sitting at the table alone, heart pounding against
my chest, feeling strangely stung that he’d walked away.
I barely slept that night. I turned the odd moment with Pat-
rick over in my mind a thousand times—thinking about what
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it might mean, thinking about what it might cost. When Beth
climbed into my bed at 3 a.m., I was still wide awake. She cud-
dled into me, sucking her thumb and mumbling something about
monsters in the hallway, and her presence became another re-
minder of all I had to lose.
I tried to convince myself that Patrick and I simply would
continue on as we had been. I told myself that it was nothing
more than a moment of madness, one that he would want to
avoid talking about, and so would I. To name something is to
give it power, and I only wanted to starve whatever had happened
between us of oxygen.
When my alarm jarred me awake the next morning, I did as
I always did—clamored over Beth’s sleeping form and stumbled
to the kitchen. I was startled to find Patrick was waiting for me.
He’d already prepared a cup of coffee for me, something he did
most Sunday mornings. But this was a Wednesday, and it was
already past six.
“What are you doing? You should be at work,” I mumbled,
and Patrick motioned towards my chair, indicating that I should
sit.
“Take a seat, Maryanne,” he said quietly.
Butterflies in my stomach sprang to life as I took the seat op-
posite him. I wanted to run back to my room, to pull the covers
over my head and to pretend that none of this was happening.
But cowardice was not my style, so I braced myself, picked the
coffee cup up and gulped half of it down without pausing for
breath.
“I think I’ve fallen in love with you,” he said. I nearly choked
on the coffee, and he rose hastily, thumping me on the back.
“Sorry. Shit. I should have… I just thought it was better to come
right out and say it.”
“That’s okay,” I managed, still spluttering coffee as I tried
to wrap my head around his declaration. Love. It made sense,
in some b
izarre way. Our family had been born in Patrick and
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Kelly Rimmer
Grace’s love, but for well over a year, we’d been operating as
a unit without her—Grace was gone, and the family survived
because of the love that Patrick and I shared. Our love persisted when we were apart, it intensified when we were alone and it
linked the six of us in a way I’d never thought possible.
If I were just in that house for the children, I wouldn’t have
been finding excuses to spend every spare minute with their fa-
ther. The sight of him coming down the path wouldn’t fill my
heart with an incredible lightness. His gentle gestures, like mak-
ing me coffee on Sunday mornings and including me on his out-
ings with the children, wouldn’t have meant so much. The way
he complimented me as I cared for his children wouldn’t have
buoyed my very soul. The way he smiled at me for no reason at
all wouldn’t be enough to make my stomach flip.
“She’s only been gone for eighteen months,” he whispered
now, dropping his hands from my cheeks. The words dripped
with misery and guilt. “Whatever would she say if she knew?
I’m letting her down again, even in her death.”
I closed my eyes for just a moment and pictured my sis-
ter’s beautiful face. I could only see her smiling, perhaps even
smirking knowingly to discover that she’d been right all along.
I thought I knew love, and I thought it was a creature I could
tame and control. But it had snuck up behind me and pulled the
rug from under me, just as she’d told me it would.
Even more miraculous, I felt in my bones that my sister had,
inadvertently, given her blessing to this astounding twist in our
fates.
I real y wish you’d find someone to love. I know that Patrick has his
flaws, but if you could only see each other the way that I see you both, you’d love one another with your whole hearts.
I slid off the chair and onto my knees beside Patrick, and then
I leaned in slowly toward him, until our foreheads were touch-
ing. I paused, waiting for guilt, but none came. I was somehow
certain that if my sister could see everything Patrick and I had
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