The Mothers(24)

Despite the lurid speculation, no one had been prepared for the reality of Elise Turner’s death, especially not Aubrey. She had never known Mrs. Turner but she’d felt as if she did, at least a little, the way you could know someone you’d only seen from a distance. On Sundays, she’d seen the Turners enter Upper Room—the husband stiff-backed in his suit, the wife smiling at the greeters in the lobby, the daughter a spitting image of the mother. They’d reminded her of a family out of television. The strong, manly father, the beautiful mother, and the daughter, who had somehow been blessed with beauty and smarts. In AP Government, Aubrey sat near the back, watching Nadia breeze into class with her friends, and whenever she slipped through the door after the bell rang, she appeased Mr. Thomas with a smile before he could write her up for detention. How could he punish her? Week after week, when he listed the top ten test-scorers, her name was on the whiteboard, as if it had been written in permanent marker. She was going to a big university someday, everyone knew it, while Aubrey would shuffle off to the community college with the rest of their class. On Sunday mornings, she watched this girl—this Nadia Turner—slide into the church pew beside her mother and her father, and she wondered what it would be like, to go to church with your family. Mo didn’t believe in God. Kasey did, only abstractly, the way she believed in the universe’s ability to right itself. Neither was happy that Aubrey had started going to church, although they hadn’t said so directly.

“Are you sure you want to spend so much time there?” Mo would say. “I mean . . . don’t you think it’s maybe a little too soon?”

Too soon for what, she’d never said, but she didn’t have to. She worried that Aubrey had turned into some religious nut. That she would start seeing images of Jesus in burnt toast, or speaking in tongues mid-conversation, or picketing outside gay weddings. When Aubrey had seen the Turners on Sundays, she wondered what it would be like to be their child, to be smart and beautiful, to have a father and a mother who held your hands during prayer. She thought about the mother especially, who seemed nothing like her own. Elise Turner, young and energetic and beautiful, who laughed in the lobby before service, always greeted as soon as she stepped inside, who had spoken to Aubrey once before, when they’d passed each other before the Christmas play.

“You dropped something, honey,” Elise Turner had said, pointing at Aubrey’s program, which had fluttered to the carpet. Her voice was cool and silky, like milk.

How could a woman like that kill herself? Aubrey knew it was a stupid question—anyone could kill herself, if she wanted to badly enough. Mo said that it was physiological. Misfired synapses, unbalanced chemicals in the brain, the whole body a machine with a few tripped wires that had caused it to self-destruct. But people weren’t just their bodies, right? The decision to kill yourself had to be more complicated than that. Across the couch, the first lady raised an eyebrow as she leaned forward to refill Aubrey’s teacup.

“What do you mean?” Mrs. Sheppard said. “You know what happened to her.”

“I just know she shot herself.”

“Well, that’s all there is to it, honey.”

“But why?” Aubrey said.

“The devil attacks all of us,” Mrs. Sheppard said. “Some folks just aren’t strong enough to fend him off.”

She sounded matter-of-fact as she slowly stirred her tea, the spoon clanging against the cup. She was also nothing like Aubrey’s mother—too assertive and steady and sure of herself. Her mother was one of the weak women Mrs. Sheppard would pity or scorn, depending on how much she knew. Right now, she didn’t know much. Only that Aubrey had moved in with her sister because she and her mom hadn’t gotten along. She hadn’t told Mrs. Sheppard about Paul, who drank bottles of whiskey on weekends and sometimes hit them but always cried about it after because he didn’t mean to, his job was so stressful, they just didn’t know what it was like, being out on the streets all the time, not knowing if you’d make it home. He’d moved in a year before she’d left, and for a year, he had made nightly trips to her room, pushing her door open, then her legs, and for a year, she had told almost no one. Almost, because she’d told her mother after the first time it happened and her mother had shook her head tightly and said “No,” as if she could will it to be untrue.

Across the couch, Mrs. Sheppard reached for a cookie.

“Now, why do you want to know about all this?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Aubrey said. “Nadia never talks about it.”

She couldn’t exactly ask Nadia herself, although she thought about it often when they were together. Did Nadia know why her mother had killed herself? Was it even better to know?

“I see you two out there eating lunch all the time.” Mrs. Sheppard smiled, brushing sugar dust from her fingers onto a napkin. “I didn’t know you got on like that.”

“She’s nice.” Aubrey paused, taking a sip. “She’s . . . I don’t know. Funny. She makes me laugh. And she doesn’t let people run over her. She’s not afraid of anything.”

“I just wouldn’t get too attached if I was you,” Mrs. Sheppard said.

Aubrey frowned. “Why?”

“Now, don’t look at me like that. You know she’s runnin’ off to school in the fall. Making new friends in the dorms. Folks change, that’s all. I just don’t want you to get hurt, honey.”