Leaving Lucy Pear(20)

Bea looked around for a gentler place to rest her eyes. She chose the humidor, about the size of a rugby ball, painted brown for skin, black for the slave woman’s chunky hair, white for her bulging eyes, red for her massive lips. Bea and her cousins used to play with her, taking the top of her head off and putting it back on, off and on, making the porcelain rub and grind, until Vera would say, Leave the poor woman alone.

“Don’t judge,” she told her mother.

“I’m not judging.”

“You are.” Bea was judging, too. Her shift was ugly, and made of a potato-sack fabric that was starting to itch. It was an absurd costume, she thought. She wished she were wearing the black silk kimono Lillian had brought on her last visit.

Lillian sniffed. “How is it she never bought a single comfortable chair?” She shifted on her haunches. “So I’m judging, so what? So I judge. So do all the mothers. What I’m saying is you don’t have to punish yourself.”

“I’m taking care of Ira.” Bea considered this the truth and it was. Also, she was escaping (mostly successfully) from her work for the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, though she barely admitted this to herself and would never say so to her mother.

“You’re taking care of Ira,” Lillian repeated. “Did it ever strike you, Beatrice, that you would be happier if you weren’t so set on being good? Come back to the city. Make a new kindle with Albert, see what comes of it. Ira doesn’t need you anymore, now that you have this nurse, this . . .”

“Emma. She’s not actually a nurse.”

“What is she, then?”

“A mother, of nine.”

Lillian’s jaw fell, then recovered. “Nevertheless. She takes good care of him, yes?”

“She’s not family. You can’t have forgotten, Mother, how well Uncle Ira has always cared for me.”

Lillian appeared to consider Bea’s forehead. She closed her eyes, acknowledging the insult, then sprang them open, as if willing a new scene. “But all those children, Bea. They must fulfill her, don’t you think? Don’t you think it would, going home to that, after a long day’s work?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Bea said. “Based on my experience, which as you know amounts to nothing, I have no idea if she’s fulfilled.” She nearly said, I think she’s having an affair, to make a point about children not ensuring salvation in a life, but that was none of Lillian’s business. Twice more Josiah Story had delivered Emma to Bea himself instead of sending her with the usual driver, and though he busied himself wooing Bea toward an endorsement in his clunky, surprisingly charming way while Emma stood silently, hands clasped, Bea sensed an almost visible charge between them. Her suspicion made Bea feel tender toward Emma. Not that she was in favor of adultery, only that she knew it happened. Women came to her all the time, thinking they would keep their talk to drink, invariably stumbling on into matters that used to shock Bea until they didn’t anymore. She had come to think of marriage as an island all its own, tidy and firm when viewed from a distance, unknowable except to the ones who lived there.

“Beatrice. Bea-Bea. It’s been so long since your last . . . episode. Years, if I’m not misled.”

“Mistaken.” Bea apologized with her eyes. “And no, you’re not. It’s been three years.”

“You appear almost entirely well, Bea-Bea.”

“Is that meant to be a compliment?”

“I only mean, apart from certain, keskasay, differences. The cause, which I’ll never understand. You know I never meant for that to happen, I brought you to the clubs so you might have a little fun. These clothes you insist on wearing. But apart from all that. It’s not too late. You think you’re old but believe me you’ll realize when you get old you weren’t old. You still have your skin. You might be happy. You know there are doctors now, psychiatrists, I’ve heard about it from women, various women you’d never expect—suspect?—a variety of women, and you just go there for an hour or so and they ask you questions and you talk. Dynamic something or other but my point is it’s quite easy, and normal, that’s what I’m trying to say, all kinds of women you’d never suspect and you just lie there and answer their questions and apparently your childhood is much more interesting than you ever knew. . . .” Lillian trailed off.

“Have you been?” Bea asked.

Lillian reddened. “Your father would laugh.”

This was not the answer Bea had expected. Her mother’s eyes looked black and small; they sparkled with desperation. Bea pictured her splayed on some bearded man’s couch. Was that what she wanted? Bea did not know how to talk to Lillian about Lillian. Sunlight crept up her mother’s skirt. Bea knew this moment well, knew that behind her the room’s western windows were filling with light. She had lain on the sofa where her mother now sat more times than she could count, watching the sun conduct this same fall from noon. The familiarity softened Bea. She knew the light would strike Lillian’s face soon, blinding her.

“You never know,” Bea said.

“I know.”

Lillian’s hands flushed now with sunlight; her death grip on the Cartier became apparent. Bea smiled hopefully, but Lillian was looking elsewhere. She said, “I used to think my mother didn’t like me. She would slap my hands when I sewed. I was terrible at sewing. Or I was terrible at it because she slapped my hands. I don’t know. The only stories she told me were about wretched people living awful lives. She said these were her parents but I didn’t believe her—I thought she was making the stories up, to scare me. Or ashame me. She would say I should have been born to a queen. I took this as an insult. But later—I am talking about much later, when she was dead—I realized she wasn’t just talking about me. She wanted to be the queen! She would never have said so. However. I think it’s true. My mother wanted to be a queen. When she slapped me, I would say, ‘Then why make me do it?’ and she would just point at whatever I was working on. She didn’t know the answer. I—” Lillian closed her eyes—the sun had reached them, fire in her lashes. “Do you remember how your bubbe pointed, Bea?” Lillian laughed. “At everything. It gave her away to the very end.” Lillian shaded her eyes and peered shyly across at Bea. “Do you remember?”