True Places(41)



Ms. Granger went to the window and peered into the yard. “Mrs. Blakemore, is Iris sleeping outside?”

“Sometimes, yes. When the weather is nice. It relaxes her.”

“Is that right? I’m surprised you didn’t construct a kennel for her.” She frowned as she scribbled on her pad.

Brynn stifled a laugh and Suzanne shot her a look.

Tinsley sighed and adjusted her handbag on her arm. “I’m sure my daughter and her husband are doing everything they can to help this unfortunate girl.” She blinked in Iris’s direction.

“Thanks, Mother,” Suzanne said.

Tinsley wasn’t finished. “But clearly a child that tumbles out of the woods is simply too wild to be inserted into a civilized situation such as this.” She swept her hand to include everything around them. But what bespoke their civilization? The stainless-steel appliances? The Brazilian granite? Certainly not her mother’s manners, referring to Iris as if she weren’t there.

Ms. Granger appeared annoyed. “I’m not here to discuss theory. I’m here to see that Iris is safe and cared for.”

Tinsley ignored her and continued in the same vein, talking in a loud voice about what was proper and right. Suzanne wanted to silence her mother, whose opinions on this matter were irrelevant, but didn’t know how without appearing rude or overly defensive.

Iris had been standing in the doorway to the dining room, following the volley of conversation. “I am.” Her voice was a whisper.

Suzanne put her hand on her mother’s arm to quiet her. “Iris, what did you say?”

She lifted her gaze from the floor and spoke directly to Suzanne. “I am safe and cared for.”

The room was quiet for one beat. Two.

Brynn tossed her spoon in the sink, letting it rattle. “Before we get too deep into this Lifetime movie, did anyone mention the squirrel Iris skinned and stashed in the fridge?”

Suzanne bore the astonished glares she received from both her mother and Ms. Granger and decided it wasn’t worth mentioning that the squirrel had been roadkill.

A half hour later, the kitchen was empty. Brynn was doing homework in her room, and Iris was napping, or perhaps coloring. Suzanne was simultaneously cleaning the kitchen and making dinner. While the sausage defrosted in the microwave, she opened the dishwasher to load it and found the dishes inside were clean. Reid had been charged with emptying it before school that morning. Suzanne sighed and began putting the dishes away. Before Iris, the house had been tidy, obsessively so. It didn’t bother Suzanne to know four loads of laundry were waiting, the stack of mail on the entry table threatened to slide to the floor, and the dining table was covered with art supplies and paper from Spanish fiesta posters she’d helped Brynn with last night. It didn’t bother her in the least, but it would irritate the hell out of Whit. The cleaning people were due in the morning—today was Tuesday, wasn’t it?—which meant Suzanne had tonight to organize it all. She’d just have to move a little faster.

As she executed the mindless subroutines (rinse, wipe, chop, stir, rinse, wipe), she replayed the visit from the caseworker, wincing at her mother’s comments, though they were hardly unexpected. And Brynn. Brynn was angry, angrier than usual, and Suzanne felt responsible. She would find a way to spend time with her daughter, perhaps take her out to dinner this weekend, just the two of them. Yet the idea made her uneasy; they were likely to sit in strained silence or stumble over conversations that meant nothing, or everything. But she had to try. She had sought to make Brynn understand why helping Iris was the right thing to do, why she felt an obligation because she had found the girl, but realized now this was the wrong tack. Long before Iris had come into their lives, Brynn had pushed Suzanne away. Her daughter still needed her—to do things, to play the role of mom for others, and, occasionally, to hold her as only a mother could. Mostly, though, Brynn was contemptuous and dismissive. Suzanne had to get past the pain of that and find a way to reach her daughter. She wasn’t certain she had the will to give more, to risk more; she’d already spent fifteen years giving to Brynn. Hadn’t she earned a spoonful of compassion, a hint of friendship? Instead the scales tipped toward Brynn’s side more than ever. Brynn seemed impervious to Suzanne’s best efforts, and Whit was no help. Suzanne had asked him to step in, to address Brynn’s anger and manipulation, but since he saw a different Brynn, Suzanne’s data were suspect.

Mothers and daughters. Could Suzanne reasonably expect a better relationship than the one she had with Tinsley?

Suzanne set the water to boil for the pasta and began chopping onions for the sauce, keeping faith with the idea that a home-cooked meal was a building block for a stronger family. It almost made her laugh. She did, however, hold on to the thin hope that having brought Iris home would help their family, not through a common bond—they were not aligned over Iris—but through a revival of her own enthusiasm for parenting. It did, in the end, fall on her. She’d done everything she could for Brynn and Reid—at least she thought she had—and it clearly had not been enough. They did not, the four of them, share a life. They shared a home, money, the TV remote, but Suzanne couldn’t identify what held them together, other than the fact of being family. She worried that this, too, was a failure in parenting, for she was certain other families had more cohesion. If they didn’t, why didn’t it bother anyone except her? Maybe it did. Maybe mothers everywhere, and fathers, too, in smaller numbers, questioned what they had done, what they had accomplished in having children, raising them, in giving up and giving in, in giving, giving, giving.

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