by Kelly Rimmer
“She was beautiful in the place...”
“For God’s sake, Dad, just tell me: did she kill herself?”
“I didn’t...” Dad rasps. He takes my hands in his, and his desperate gaze bores into mine. “Maryanne. I didn’t mean what I said. Forgive me.”
“Daddy, it’s me. I’m Beth!” I’m raising my voice despite my best efforts to stay calm. I’m so damned frustrated now, but so is Dad, and this is cruel and I know I need to stop, but I can’t. Another tear rolls down his cheek, and his face is reddening, and the wheeze is coming harder and harder and spittle is flying everywhere as he speaks little more than winded gibberish.
“I took her away. I couldn’t stand it. I was angry at myself. What she’d done to your mother. And I took her away from you. What’s the word, Ruth? And I have to say please but I can’t.”
The door opens abruptly and Tim and Hunter are there. I rise, guiltily scooping the clipboard from Dad’s lap, trying to wipe my cheeks as I do.
“What’s going on, Beth?” Tim asks flatly.
“I just needed to talk to Dad,” I say. I try to keep my tone light, but my voice is hoarse and I know I’m not fooling anyone this time. Tim looks pissed, but Hunter looks wary.
“Lunch is ready,” my husband says cautiously. “Maybe we should all go back out there...”
“Hey, Hunter, could you take Dad out to the table?” Tim asks. I open my mouth to protest, but Tim’s gaze narrows. Hunter waits for me to confirm, but when I nod, he takes my father from the room, and Tim closes the door behind them and pins me with a glare.
“What was that about?”
“I just needed to talk to him.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“You upset him,” Tim says furiously. “Do you still not get it? He’s dying. I’ve told you it’s pointless to argue with him—why on earth would you raise your voice at him today?”
“I didn’t raise my—”
“I could hear you through the door!”
“What...what did you hear?” I ask after a pause. I sound guilty. I feel guilty.
“I heard you correcting your name,” he exclaims. He shoots me a disappointed look, but then his tone softens as he says, “I know it’s distressing and I know it’s frustrating. But just let him be, Beth. Just soak up these hours, because we don’t have many left.”
I swallow hard, and then look at my brother and nod curtly. He sighs and throws the door open, then disappears into the hallway.
I tuck the clipboard beneath a pile of clothes on Dad’s bed, wipe my eyes and follow him out.
THIRTEEN
Maryanne
1958
“Mail for you, Mary,” one of my students called as she sorted the letters into their pigeonholes beside my office. I was tired that day—having been out until curfew the night before, and even after that, I raced back to the residential hall to talk until the small hours with the undergrad students I supervised.
My supervisor, Professor Callahan, had been to New York on a trip earlier that year, and he’d gifted me a copy of The Second Sex on his return. He told me I simply had to read it and report back with my thoughts. Well, several months later I was now making my own students read it, and the women in the residential hall were still discussing that now hopelessly dog-eared book long past midnight almost every night.
We were the generation of women born waiting for a gender revolution, and Simone de Beauvoir was the heroine we’d been praying for. We had granted ourselves permission to say the unsayable—we wanted more for our lives than “domestic bliss.” It was an intoxicating freedom, and I felt the start of a momentum that I didn’t fully understand, as if our discourse in the small hours were building something that might really change the world.
I was in a fog as I walked to my mail slot that day, exhausted but still intellectually buzzing from the night before, expecting only to find some piece of administrative mail. When I saw my sister’s handwriting on the envelope, my mood improved immediately.
I made myself a cup of coffee and took the letter back into my office, closing the door behind me so I could have some privacy. Supervising the undergrad students in the dorm was fine, but every now and again I liked to close that door and pretend I didn’t live in a dormitory that housed fifty-eight young women. As I held Grace’s letter that day, I hoped for genuine good news. I’d seen her in person on just a few occasions over the years since I moved to California—her wedding day, one Christmas when Father unexpectedly sent me a ticket to come home, and just after the birth of her twins when I’d been in Seattle to attend a conference. The light had dimmed in my sister’s eyes over that time, and in my youthful arrogance, I was certain that Patrick was entirely to blame.
I saw my sister as the victim of a dreadful epidemic: she had followed the script expected of her and married the first man who made her heart flutter. Now she was living out her life as a housewife, and whenever I thought about her situation, I couldn’t understand how she could be anything other than completely unfulfilled and miserable with her lot. My life was exciting—jazz clubs and satisfying philosophical debates, earning my own money and controlling my own destiny. I worked hard, but my life was fun. I flirted with boys when I wanted to, kissed them or even more if the urge overtook me, and generally managed to feel like life was an endlessly thrilling game.
I loathed the distance that had grown between us, but even so, I felt powerless to close it. When Grace wrote me, her letters painted a bright picture of domestic bliss that I didn’t for one second believe. And when I wrote her, I never really knew what to say in response. I was far from positive by nature, but I still believed that one day, Grace and I would connect again, and we’d restore our once-close sisterhood. Maybe once her children were older, and we found common interests. Maybe once she finally did as my parents so wished she would, and divorced that lout of a husband.
Every time a letter from Grace arrived, I thought the exact same thing: maybe this letter will herald the dawn of a new era between us. I tore into the envelope, and was startled to find the text was short.
Maryanne,
Please call me at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning at the number below. This telephone number will reach the house of Mrs. Hills, our next-door neighbor. I am in desperate need of help and don’t know who else to turn to. Grace.
I set the letter down on my desk. For all those years, I’d wished for something real from Grace...and here it was, but I didn’t feel relief at all. I felt scared. I could read the subtext, and it was evident that something was dreadfully wrong. I wanted to call her right away—but there was obviously a reason she’d given me such specific instructions. Instead, I sweated out the week, living a million worst-case scenarios in my mind over the sleepless nights that followed. What if she was ill? What if one of the children was? Or, as seemed most likely, what if Patrick had done something dreadful?
I called as instructed at precisely 7 a.m. on Saturday. Grace answered on the very first ring.
“Maryanne?”
“Grace? What on earth is going on?”
“I need your help.”
“Anything,” I said, and despite the years of strain between us, I meant it. “What’s wrong? Why did I have to call you at your neighbor’s house?”
“Patrick is still asleep at home with the children, and Mrs. Hills is out tending her chickens. Her husband is mostly deaf so I knew we’d have some privacy for a few minutes if you called now.”
“Okay? But...why do we need privacy?”
“I’m pregnant,” she said, then we both drew in a very deep breath. I quickly did the mental calculation. Seeing this pregnancy through would mean five children under five years old. I wasn’t surprised at all when Grace then continued miserably, “And I need to not be pregnant. Will you help me? I don’t even know where to start.”
“Have you trie
d all of the at-home methods?” I asked her, gently.
“I’ve scalded my skin in hot baths. On Tuesday I drank bleach and vomited until I passed out. I threw myself off the back stairs. I carried Patrick’s armchair around the house. I even tried to get some slippery-elm bark from the chemist, but he would only give me a tincture.” She laughed bitterly. “Apparently, too many young women had been coming in buying sheets of bark to try to end their pregnancies.”
It would have been much easier for me to find her help if she was in California. Abortion was illegal there, too, but I at least knew how to access it. I’d been living on campus for five years—I’d seen my share of girls go down that route. Pregnancy meant expulsion from university. Rubbers and diaphragms could be found if a girl was determined enough but they were expensive and notoriously unreliable, and while we’d all heard of trials of a rumored miracle pill that would prevent a pregnancy, it wasn’t yet available to the public. My generation was at the mercy of their fertility, so accessing some kind of abortion was our primary form of birth control. There were few alternatives—our options were dreadfully limited.
“I just don’t know who to ask for help, and I don’t have any money,” Grace sobbed.
“I’ll get you money. And I’ll help you find someone.”
“I hate asking you, Maryanne. Truly, I do. We would have to be so careful...” I could almost hear the cogs of her mind turning as she thought it all through. “You must remember Betsy Umbridge?”
I did remember her. Betsy was in Grace’s year at school, and when she got pregnant at just sixteen, her boyfriend, Henry, had stepped in to help—tracking down a backyard abortionist who ended the pregnancy. But Betsy developed an infection after her procedure, and at the hospital, doctors had immediately suspected that her story of spontaneous miscarriage was untrue and called the police. Arranging an abortion was a felony offense in Washington State, and both Henry and Betsy spent several years in prison. Even once they were released, they became social pariahs. It was a tremendous scandal for our whole community, and I remember being outraged that something that many of my peers were forced to do from time to time could actually destroy their futures.
“I’ll come home,” I finally said. It was a test. I was in my second year of a master’s program, as well as working two part-time jobs. Grace knew I had commitments, and despite how frayed our relationship had become, I still trusted that she would never allow me to interrupt my life in California if she had any other option. If she had protested at the inconvenience to me, I’d figure out how to raise the money in California and wire or post it to her—but if she didn’t...
“I’m scared,” Grace blurted. “I don’t want to do this but I have to, and I can’t tell Patrick so I have to do it by myself.”
“Why can’t you tell him?”
“He doesn’t get it, Mary. He just doesn’t understand that I have nothing left to give.”
When I hung up the phone, I went to pack a suitcase.
* * *
I knew Grace’s address by heart, but I’d never seen the house she lived in. When the taxi pulled up at the front gate, I thought there had been some mistake.
“Are you sure?” I asked the driver. He grunted and held out his hand for the fare. I looked back to the house and saw the children running wild through the unruly yard. I squinted at the eldest of them, and when I recognized the shape of Patrick’s eyes, felt my heart sink. Tim had grown up a lot in the years since I’d seen him, but there was no denying that this was my nephew. I paid the driver and let myself into the yard, only to be swarmed by filthy children. Little Beth was just a toddler, and she was wearing a ratty diaper that was so full, it hung almost to her knees. Her walk was little more than a waddle, and she stepped right up to me, right into my space, to stare up at me with curious eyes.
“Who are you?” Tim demanded, crossing his arms as if he could or would defend his siblings from me. “You look like my mother.”
“I’m your aunt Maryanne, child. Where is your mother?”
“Laundry,” Jeremy offered helpfully.
“Why are you here?” Tim demanded.
“Can you just get your mother for me?”
Tim surveyed me up and down, pursing his lips. The boy was no taller than my hips. His defiance might have been comical if the situation weren’t so awful.
“Momma doesn’t like it when we interrupt her in the laundry.”
I sighed impatiently and walked around the house into the backyard. It seemed a safe assumption that I’d find the laundry easily enough—the house was tiny. I walked to the back door and went to twist the doorknob, only to find it was locked.
“Grace?” I called hesitantly. “Are you in there?”
I heard her fumble with the lock, and then she was there—all pale and wide-eyed, her face streaked with tears. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, but she was still wearing a tattered nightgown. Grace was thin and drawn and visibly drained.
“I’m having a bad day,” she said unevenly.
I gaped at her.
“I can see that.”
“It’s the thought of it starting all over again, you see,” she whispered, eyes wild as she glanced down at her own body. “It plays such tricks on my mind.”
* * *
Over the next few hours I got a glimpse into the reality of my sister’s life, and it seemed to confirm everything I’d ever feared about the pitfalls of married life for women. I knew that to Grace, her courtship and engagement to Patrick had been a fairy tale, but the reality of life after their wedding seemed to be a nightmare. Patrick had all of the power, Grace had all of the responsibility, and the pressure of that existence was crushing her.
The children were surprisingly self-reliant, helping themselves 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 psychological 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 sometimes, 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 afford 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 divorced 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 he
r 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 decision over and over again.
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 unannounced 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 really 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 residential 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.
