True Places(79)

While they ate takeout burgers in their room, Suzanne explained to Iris how they might locate the cabin. Iris listened intently until exhaustion consumed her, falling asleep before eight o’clock. Suzanne lay awake on the other bed, worrying about what she had done in abandoning her family at its lowest point. Guilt, so familiar as to be comforting, washed over her. She imagined waking Iris, shepherding her to the car, returning to Charlottesville, walking up the front steps to her house. What then? What would make a difference in the direction in which their lives were heading? Suzanne remained firm in her belief—no, her conviction—that her life had become unbearable. As the hub of the family, if she did not change, no one else would. She had left because she could not stay. But she had also left because no one else could change without her action. Whit would have no choice but to deal with the fallout from Brynn’s (and Reid’s) deceit and dangerous behavior. He would not be able to wave his hands and make excuses for Brynn, and he would be forced to find a way to bridge the yawning chasm between himself and Reid. That was her hope. That was her prayer.

But, if she was honest with herself, the main reason she’d left was that she was too angry to stay. She was angry with the actions and inactions of Whit and her children and with the perfidy of her parents, and, more than anything else, angry with herself for going along with everything: the materialism, the shunting of responsibility, the shallowness, the lack of compassion. She was angry with herself for not being her best self, for hiding behind the injuries of her past, pointing to her scars, licking them as if they were wounds, saying again and again, I can’t.

She turned toward the outline of Iris’s sleeping form. A sixteen-year-old girl who didn’t weigh ninety pounds had more tenacity and resolve than Suzanne had ever possessed, and Iris was losing it, piece by piece, on Suzanne’s watch. Suzanne didn’t know how to make Iris whole again, but she would try. And with Iris’s help, Suzanne would find a place where she might regain her own strength, her self-determination, and her integrity.

Somewhere in those blue-green mountains, dissolved now in the ink of the night sky, was a cabin, a house, a home. She could not picture it. Instead, in her mind’s eye, she saw a stand of acacia along a dry riverbed, yawning blue sky above, pulled taut to the edges of the earth, and underneath the delicate weave of branches, the fleshy pink lobes of a plant, thrust into sunlight, emerging from its hidden underground lair. Suzanne saw Tennyson, in his faded, oversize Carl’s Jr. T-shirt, grinning, pleased for her. She felt anew the euphoria of discovery, potential spreading out all around her, ripples across the savanna, the probability that this, like most scientific beginnings, would come to nothing, but nevertheless harboring the slender hope of something. Suzanne felt that surge, and more, because she had been, at that moment, a woman with a passion and a woman in love. She cherished the world and a man cherished her. Together, that had been everything.

On her hotel bed, Suzanne closed her eyes and allowed the residue of remembered happiness fool her into sleep.



The next morning, Suzanne and Iris went out in search of breakfast and decided on the Blue Phoenix Cafe. Iris waited at a corner table beside a window while Suzanne ordered multigrain pancakes and fruit for both of them and a large coffee for herself. She sipped her coffee until her name was called, picked up the plates, and joined Iris. Halfway through her meal, Suzanne turned on her phone for the first time since they had left Charlottesville. She had asked Whit not to inundate her with texts. He had agreed and said he would pass the request on to the kids. There were two messages: one from Brynn, an emoji of a heart breaking, and one from Tinsley saying, “Call me. It’s an emergency.” Suzanne knew that if it were a true emergency she’d have heard from Whit, but since she hadn’t spoken to her mother about what had happened during prom night, much less why she had left, she decided it might be better to talk to Tinsley directly, lest her mother implode. Tinsley was guaranteed to pass on everything to Whit, saving Suzanne a reawakening of her anger with him and, she acknowledged, allowing her to sidestep her guilt.

“Iris, I’m going outside to make a call. Just for a minute.” She pointed through the window. Iris nodded and kept eating. “If you’re still hungry, have mine, too.”

Suzanne paced the sidewalk and dialed her mother, who picked up immediately.

“What sort of a stunt is this, Suzanne? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“Hello, Mother. Yes, I’m fine, thanks. Iris, too.”

“This is no time for wisecracks.”

“This is no time to shout at me. If you can’t be civil, I’m going to go.” Suzanne said this without rancor. Maybe this was why she had decided to return her mother’s call. For the first time since before she had left for college, Suzanne felt impervious to her mother’s judgment and interference.

Tinsley sucked in a sharp breath. “When will you be back?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have to tell you that Whit is simply devastated.” She paused, and when Suzanne said nothing, continued. “You shouldn’t do this to him, Suzanne. He worships you.”

And there it was, her mother’s ideal. To be the center of a man’s life. Not to be his entire life (or he wouldn’t be a real man), but to preside over his heart, to be in sole command of his yearnings, guardian and mistress of the tender underbelly of a strong, successful man. This ideal had eluded Tinsley, and it infuriated her that her daughter held the holy grail and was blithely threatening to crush it. Suzanne made a habit of ignoring Tinsley’s efforts to twist Suzanne’s desires to match her own, but the time for tacit resistance had, she realized, passed. “I don’t want him to worship me, Mother. I want to be understood.”