by Sofia Grant
She’d gone ahead with the luncheon, but by that time she was still so distraught about the events of that morning that she must have passed the fork on the windowsill a hundred times and never even noticed it. Who could blame her?
What happened was this: she’d been up early the day before the luncheon, unable to sleep, and decided to get a jump on her chores. She was polishing the salad forks one by one, setting them in a neat row on the kitchen table as she finished them, when there was a knock at the door. At seven-thirty in the morning! Margaret (having set the fork down, it seems) got up with a sense of indignation, mixed with apprehension. Had someone died? But who?
It never even crossed her mind to worry that it might be Georgina.
When she opened the door, she saw a lovely young woman dressed in soiled and wrinkled clothing with what looked like pillow creases on her face. Her hair was a brassy shade of yellow with the beginning of soft strawberry blond roots. Her fingernails had traces of shimmering pink polish, but most of it had chipped away and they were bitten to the quick.
She was also enormously pregnant. About to pop!—was what Margaret thought, and she even wondered if the poor thing had gone into labor right in front of her house when she happened to notice the girl’s bracelet, a filigreed gold bangle that resembled one that had been missing from her jewelry box forever.
And then she thought: oh.
A thousand times she’d imagined what this moment might be like, but she’d never imagined this. She’d tried on many different emotions and written a dozen speeches in her head, all of them variations on a theme of wounded aloofness, but they all vanished and she grabbed Georgina’s sun-browned wrists and pulled her into the house.
AFTER EATING THE toast and bacon that Margaret set in front of her, and drinking all the orange juice in the carton, and after she had taken so long in the bathroom that Margaret was considering forcing the lock and going in after her, Georgina emerged an entirely different version of herself.
While Margaret had been cooking, casting worried glances over her shoulder from the stove, Georgina had slumped over the table with her head on her arms, apparently asleep. She perked up when the food was set in front of her, but when Margaret asked her questions she held up her finger and—after swallowing and dabbing at the corners of her mouth—had said only, “In a minute, Mother, I haven’t eaten since Philly,” a frustratingly cryptic response. She’d asked for a bath and accepted a clean towel with barely a thank-you and disappeared again.
When she came back down the stairs, she was wearing the towel wrapped around her breasts, and a pair of tiny bikini underwear over which her stomach swelled like a zeppelin. “God, that felt good!” she exclaimed, plopping in the same chair. “Thanks for breakfast, by the way.”
Margaret had so many questions, but Georgina gave her clipped, impatient answers:
Paris, most recently, but most of the time in Geneva, with a stretch in Chamonix.
Working, of course—how did Margaret think she’d survived?
—oh, modeling for a well-known artist, working as a waitress and chef, selling paintings in a gallery.
Didn’t Margaret receive her letters? Only six? Surely there’d been more than six—she was quite certain she’d written twice a year at least, on her mother’s birthday and at Christmastime. Well, then, they must have gotten lost in the mail.
Just this morning, actually—she’d had a layover in Philadelphia and then there’d been a mix-up that would take too long to explain and she’d been on a bus for nearly (she checked her wrist, where there was a pale band of skin, but no watch)—well, for over a day, that was for sure.
“But, Mom, we can talk about all that later.”
Good, thought Margaret, because of course what she really wanted to talk about was the one thing neither of them had mentioned.
“All right. Will you be . . . staying . . . for long?” Instantly she regretted the words: she should have said something more along the lines of You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, you and the baby’s father, of course. But Georgina only glanced away, up at the wall where, when she’d last lived at home, a stern black-rimmed clock had hung. One day it had simply stopped working, and rather than take it down to the repair shop Margaret had ordered a new electric model from the Montgomery Ward catalog, with gold numbers and a showy red dial. Georgina stared at it in what seemed like consternation and Margaret remembered how she herself had resented every little detail that had changed in the time she’d been away before Hank died.
“Look, Mom.” Georgina turned her attention back to Margaret with obvious effort. “I’m sorry to have to ask, and I wouldn’t, if it wasn’t for Button. The baby, that’s what I call him. I mean, obviously I’ll choose a real name, but I want to wait until he’s born to get a look at him before I decide. But the thing is, I haven’t been able to work since my fourth month. They’re funny about it over there, you know? And I’ve gone through all my savings and . . . well, I just need some to tide me over for a few months, until I can find a place and someone to watch him. And get a job.”
Margaret felt the warm glow of impending grandparenthood, the possibility of reconnecting with her long-missing daughter, evaporate like the mist on Lake Tyler on October mornings. Georgina wasn’t here because she wanted to be—she was here because she had to be. Which was a very different thing, as Margaret knew better than nearly anyone.
But that wasn’t fair!—because while Caroline had all but banished Margaret after she’d chosen to marry the man she loved, and refused to even talk to her on the telephone until the baby (that baby being the pregnant woman in front of her, how strange was that?) came along, and been cold and distant after that . . . while that had been Caroline’s response to Margaret wanting some small life of her own, Georgina had ignored every single one of her mother’s wishes and desires and snuck out in the dead of night and even stolen that bracelet that she was wearing brazenly on her wrist.
And even after all of that, Margaret had tried. She wrote to Georgina every other month, long letters at first, apologies and entreaties, news from home and carefully worded questions (don’t pry too much, Margaret had reminded herself as she squeezed the pen until her fingers ached)—then later simply cards, since she’d run out of new things to say, but always closing with your loving mother always.
And yet here was Georgina, who had practically disappeared without a trace, with the audacity to demand money while in the same breath lying to her face. Georgina had sent four letters, and two were postcards, so they hardly counted, and the last—which had come over a year ago—had hinted strongly that “anything you might care to send” would be welcome. That was the only letter that had a detailed return address both on the envelope and on the airmail paper itself.
“What happened to the money that your grandfather left you?” Margaret asked in a cold, prim voice.
“What? You’re not serious, Mother—that was gone almost by the time I got to Europe. New York is expensive,” she added, “and my modeling agency held on to my checks. I should have sued, but I just needed to be out of there at that point, you know?”
This was too much. Georgina had a tell—when she was lying, the right corner of her mouth somehow managed to twist down while the other side twisted up. It had done so since she was a little girl, but back then her prodigious lies had been easy to identify by their sheer fabulousness. At first, Margaret had flattered herself that Georgina took after her—that somehow her youthful talent for spying had carried in the blood to a new generation, one who might actually turn it into something useful or lucrative or glamorous, rather than squandering it on something as ordinary and unremarkable as love, as she had done.
But as the years went by, instead of branching out in some exciting direction, Georgina merely grew craftier and more careful. She lied to get out of trouble and she lied to get what she couldn’t convince her mother to give her (Caroline had been her willing dupe practically since her birth) and she lied, Margaret
was convinced, for no reason at all other than habit.
“Where on earth is the father of this baby, Georgina?” Margaret asked, knowing she’d never get the truth, and feeling like the walls of the kitchen were closing in around her. Her daughter had come home, the answer to the single prayer she whispered in secret every night, begging God to forgive her failure to hold on tight enough, to be a good enough mother. And instead of feeling joy, the joy she saw on her friends’ faces as they chattered on about their children’s weddings and babies and new houses and fancy jobs, she felt . . . furious.
Georgina shrugged. “If I knew who he was, I might be able to answer that.”
Margaret burned. That was her daughter’s other trick: a shock offensive, rendering people speechless. But Margaret hadn’t exactly been living in a convent for the nine years that her daughter had been gone. She’d read Dworkin, she’d read Steinem, she’d even read Marilyn French and Erica Jong. She could play her daughter’s game.
“Tell me the possibilities,” she said calmly. “That is, if you remember them all. Did you keep a list, by any chance? I rely on lists quite a bit, myself.”
Georgina goggled at her, and Margaret felt a spark of satisfaction that her barb had hit the mark. But then her daughter’s features rearranged themselves. She was as crafty as ever, reading her mother so easily.
“Well, I suppose if it’s the black one, we’ll know right away. Probably not my landlord, since he always used a rubber—though I guess I’m proof that accidents do happen,” Georgina said in a bored tone. “And the painter was probably too old to produce viable sperm. I certainly hope it wasn’t the guy from the Metro—he wasn’t attractive at all. More like jolie-laide—are you familiar with that term?”
As a matter of fact, Margaret was. She’d learned it in a history class at the University of Texas that seemed like it had taken place in another century, on another planet. But she had grown weary of this little sparring match, especially because Georgina’s mouth had given her away, again.
It hurt: her daughter probably knew very well who the baby’s father was, but she wasn’t going to tell. The fact that Georgina had come home alone and broke was a good indicator of heartbreak—but her daughter hadn’t come to her for comfort.
Margaret’s hands itched to hold her. What would happen if she . . . but no, no, no, Georgina didn’t want that, didn’t want her. Even now the girl was yawning, maneuvering her enormous belly out of the chair. Standing, favoring the small of her back the way pregnant women will.
“You’re carrying just like I did.” The words tumbled out of Margaret’s mouth like pennies from a jar. “It’s going to be a girl.”
Georgina snorted a haughty little laugh. “So now you’re a shaman, Mother? Well, maybe you’re right.”
“Move back in,” Margaret pleaded, despite herself. “I can’t give you money, but I’ll give you a place to stay—your old room in the house, if you want, and we can make a little nursery for the baby. You won’t want the apartment—trust me, it felt very small when the two of us lived there.” She was talking faster and faster, as though she could outrun her daughter’s wariness with words. “We can go see Dr. Morris; he’s got a very nice partner now, a young Italian from New York of all places, he’s delivered a dozen babies since he got here. And when you’re up for it, when she’s a little older, and you’re recovered, well, then you can find a job.”
But Georgina was already shaking her head. “It’ll never work, Mother. We’d kill each other. We never got along before, remember? What makes you think a squalling little brat’s going to help? It’s not like it made you and Grandma closer; all you ever did was argue.”
Oh, but it did, Margaret thought, but that wasn’t a story she was prepared to tell. If only Georgina had given her a little notice—a month, a week, even a few hours. But showing up like this, finding her at her worst—she hadn’t even had a bath and she was wearing an old poplin housedress that she didn’t mind getting silver polish on—it wasn’t fair.
“Things are different,” she said, but she had a feeling that her words hadn’t come out the way she meant.
“Look.” Suddenly Georgina seemed tired, as though she was feeling every extra pound the baby had piled on, weighing on her bladder and her spine. “Just a few hundred dollars, Mother, that’s all I’m asking for. I’d say I’d pay it back, but . . . well, I guess we both know I probably won’t. I’ll try, though. Give me this, please, and I’ll try to be better. To . . . not let it stay like this between us again.”
Margaret inhaled the air between them, let her eyes drift closed. She could have this. She could have this unexpected bounty, this treasure she had stopped daring to dream about back when Georgina was still a child who was even then running as hard as she could away from her. All she had to do was . . . give a little. Let down her guard a little. Offer a little more than she could expect to get back. Her mother’s dying words were stored away in a tight little pocket of her heart, and she’d somehow let all these years pass without acting on them. Be better than I was, Caroline had rasped, the death rattle between her teeth.
“There’s . . . there’s a cute little apartment above the travel agency,” she said carefully, her mouth dry. “Joe Stoffel converted it for his son when he got back from Vietnam, but he ended up getting married and . . . well, I imagine that Joe would let it go for a song.”
Georgina’s eyebrows rose in alarm. “Here? In New London? Thanks but no thanks. Time to break the cycle. I want this child to see more than this dusty little shit hole, no offense. I mean, I’m sorry. Look, if you want— I mean, I guess we could stay a few months or something. Give you some time to bond with him and all.”
But as Georgina went on, offering bits and slivers of herself, Margaret saw through to the smoke-and-mirrors sleight of hand that her daughter was practicing, as slick as any Vegas dealer.
“No,” she cut in. “I’m not asking for your pity. You don’t see it now, but I could be a help. You’ve already deprived your child of a father—”
“Oh, right,” Georgina said, slamming down the water glass she’d been holding. “I’m selfish, right? I don’t deserve to ask for more than I’m given? I know how it goes, remember? I had to hear it often enough.”
She grabbed her bag off the floor, slinging it over her shoulder and clomping awkwardly through the front room.
“Wait—” Margaret gasped, but then the front door slammed.
She could have run after Georgina, could have begged, could have asked for another chance. But she did none of these things, because they would have only delayed the inevitable.
Georgina had never been hers. She was a wild one, meant to carve her own path. She’d come with her bag of tricks and Margaret knew that she should be relieved that she’d resisted.
But she didn’t feel relief. All she felt was . . . empty.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
March 24, 1937
Dear Caroline,
I hardly know where to begin. I have begun this letter over and over and I don’t know what to say that could be a comfort to you. Today when I saw you and Hugh sitting up in the front pew, my heart broke in pieces. You were with that other family and how the tears flowed in that church, those two tiny caskets and all those flowers.
I wanted to tell you why we didn’t stay and why we didn’t come after to greet you, though Pastor Maddrell was kind as could be especially when I told him we are sisters. He made us feel very welcome but we had our three with us and it didn’t seem right, not with all those families who lost their little ones, especially Lassiter because he was the same age as so many who perished. And with Amy and Pammy not old enough to sit quiet and behave. So I said to Paul this is not the time or place, we will go home and pray for Ruby there.
Caroline, I know that I only got to see your Ruby a few times but she was a beautiful little girl. If there was any way in this world that I could bring her back to you I would. May the Lord comfort you in this time of grief.
Your loving Sister,
Euda
* * *
May 22, 1937
Dear Caroline,
I hope you got the cards from the Women’s Ministry. We had a quiet afternoon together writing them because in addition to your dear Ruby there were six others among us who were related to families who lost children.
Lassiter asked me on Tuesday if he could send his money to the families to help them feel better. Caroline, he has seventy cents he has saved up and he wanted me to put it in this envelope and I couldn’t find a way to explain to him. That to a mother there is nothing more valuable than her own children and nothing that can ever make up for their loss. I pray for you every day and I wish so often that we had never quarreled. I know it was a hard thing for you being older and all the responsibilities when Mam and Pappa died and you had to go to work while I stayed in school. Sometimes I think there is too much sadness in life and you have endured so much already.
Caroline, there is something that has been heavy on my heart. I wanted to tell you in person but I got your letter last week saying you were not ready yet to receive visitors. I am expecting again, this child will be born at Christmas or early in the new year. Paul and I were surprised because we thought that after the difficulties with Pammy we could not have any more. I have been sick with this one and worry something might not be right, but that is in God’s hands and not ours.
I hope this news is not hard for you to hear. I have been fretting over it all week. I hope you take comfort in prayer during these hard times. Reverend Mayhew reminded me last Sunday to read Revelation again. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
