On Turpentine Lane(38)

Did my betrayed and forsaken mother just tell me to buck up?

“I don’t need you falling apart,” she continued. “Now let me add the fabric softener and we can talk upstairs.”

Having presumed too much, having miscalculated the toll my father’s sins were taking on my mother, I obeyed. I went straight to the living-room couch, flopped down, then sat back up so I would appear less annoyingly wounded.

I could tell from her opening line that she’d prepared for this moment. “This can’t be easy for you and your brother,” she began, “but, you know, just because your father and I will no longer be together, it doesn’t mean—”

I said, “You, too? Divorce 101? Dad said practically the same thing! It’s not about how we feel. It’s about how you’re taking all of this! I think you’re trying to be strong. You don’t have to be!”

She sat down next to me, hip to hip. “I’ve known for a long time,” she said. “Longer than you think . . . now let me get dressed. I’ll be right back and we’ll go for a walk.”

“In the dark?”

“We can just go around the block a few times. I haven’t been out of the house for two days.”

Just when I started worrying about pills she might have stockpiled, about life ebbing out of her upstairs, she reappeared, wearing a long black sweater over houndstooth leggings, hair combed and lipstick tomato red.

“Is that coat warm enough?” she asked me. “And no hat?” She produced one that had wool braids hanging from earflaps that I’d never have agreed to wear on any other day.

“Toasty,” she said. “It’s alpaca.”

I said sure, of course. Thank you.

Before we got from the brick path to the sidewalk, she said, “I hate him, okay? Is that good enough?”

Well, yes, certainly good enough in terms of a breakout from her otherworldly calm, but with more propulsion than I expected. “Because of the affair or for longer than that?” I asked.

“Don’t ask how long I’ve suspected he had women on the side. Of course, he denied that every time.”

I said, “This is a lot for a daughter in one day . . .”

“I’m not supposed to talk to you like you’re a child, remember? I’m sure your father let you in on the gory details.”

I said weakly, “He told us that he’d met someone, that he hadn’t been looking to fool around when he moved to Boston. Then it happened. Her kid was having a bat mitzvah and the home wrecker needed a fake Chagall.”

“Well, that’s interesting, because you know how he broke the news to me? With a lie. He sat me down on the porch glider and told me he wanted an open marriage! Your father! I knew that was an excuse, so I said, ‘Who is she?’ Just like that. Who is she, Henry?”

Open marriage? Even as a fictional bargaining chip, those were not the words a daughter wants to hear. “But it was just his way of leading up to the Tracy news, right?” I asked. “He didn’t mean literally an open marriage?”

“He said it! And you know what I said?”

I didn’t. I couldn’t even guess. A neighbor was approaching, her big white dog crowding us into single file. “Marion,” my mother said, “you remember Faith. She bought a house on Turpentine. Faith, this is Marion and Koochie.”

There I was in an embarrassing hat, never less interested in chatting with a near stranger than at that moment. “Don’t let us keep you from your appointed rounds,” I said. And for added incentive, “Brrrr.”

Marion and Koochie moved on. I put a finger to my lips, signaling Wait; don’t blurt out anything until she’s out of range.

“Why should I care if the neighbors hear! They had their suspicions about our marriage when your father went off to find himself. I might as well send a group e-mail telling them they were right!”

A huffy block-long silence followed until I prompted, “You were going to tell me what you said after you heard ‘open marriage.’?”

“I didn’t know I had it in me. Without missing a beat, I said, ‘If you must know, I’ve been conducting an open marriage myself ever since you moved to Boston.’?”

“No, you were not!”

“Of course I wasn’t. But I couldn’t resist.” The near triumph in her voice quickly dissipated to a mutter. Son of a bitch, I heard. Son. Of. A. Bitch.

Was I supposed to agree, disagree, or mount a daughterly defense on behalf of my deliriously fulfilled father? I did neither. Because it had started to snow, I noted, “Joel must be happy to see this.”

“Happy,” she snapped. “To see his father make a fool of himself?”

“No! Not that. God, no. I meant the first snow of the season!”

“How come Joel didn’t come with you to see me straight from the Boston confession?”

I said, “He must’ve wanted to get home to his plow. But trust me, he was furious, yelling at Dad—and this was in the café at the MFA where it’s so beautiful and calm, all air and light. I had to shush him. There was no boys-will-be-boys thing going on.”

“How did you leave it?” she asked.

I said, “Well . . . I’d have to say in fairly civilized fashion. By the time the check came, we realized—Joel and I—that Dad didn’t need our approval, maybe just less hostility. Plus, we only have one father and . . . you know . . . life is short.”