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There was a moment’s silence. The only sound was the harsh, hissing sound of rain against the flagstones.

Quickly, yet with dignity, Father took a step forward, and before Mother could clutch at his arm, he struck Stephen a blow with his opened hand on the side of Stephen’s glowing, sweaty young face.

6. Poor Mother

Poor Mother—“Veronica Matheson.” That melodic name once so frequently uttered, and now so rarely. For to us, of course, our mother was “Mother” and to the Dulnes she was “Mrs. Matheson” or, more often, “ma’am;” of all of the family, only Father had the prerogative of calling her by her lovely given name; yet when he addressed her, at dinner for instance, it was usually in a tone of mild, martyred reproach.

Veronica, what on earth is this food? It tastes of—earth.

Veronica, why do the children persist in coming to the dinner table looking like vagabonds? And smelling as if they haven’t bathed in days?

Veronica, why is the air so—heavy in this room? So humid? Or is it our heavy, humid hearts?

Mother sat at Mother’s place facing Father at the head of the table smiling her beautiful dazzling smile. Perhaps she heard, perhaps not.

A familiar tale by now, told and retold to us, and to Mrs. Dulne, who only shook her head and made sympathetic tsking sounds, how back in the city, as soon as rumors of Judge Roderick Matheson’s imminent fall from grace circulated, Mother’s telephone ceased to ring. One morning, suddenly—the house was silent. Where once the stylish Veronica Matheson had been dazed by her own popularity, on everyone’s guest list, in a fierce round of luncheons, charity functions, museum openings and receptions and formal black-tie dinners, now she, like Judge Matheson, was abruptly dropped, erased. “As if I were in quarantine with some loathsome disease,” Mother said bitterly. “All of us Mathesons, even you children—‘guilty until proven innocent.’ “ Her delicate, carefully made-up face began to resemble a smeared watercolor; her eyes, hazel-brown, once so brightly vivacious, were now veined with red from countless bouts of weeping; her breath, breathed accidentally into her children’s faces, was sour-smelling as the interior of the old refrigerator in the kitchen. Is Mother drinking? we whispered. Is Mother drunk? We loved Mother but we hated Mother. We were afraid of Mother. Rosalind said, “I never knew her before, did you?” and Graeme shuddered, and shook his head; and Stephen, who tried to make the best of things even as (we suspected) he was plotting his escape, said, “Mother’s just going through a phase. Like a butterfly.” Graeme said, smirking, “A butterfly in reverse.”

Where in the city Mother had had little time for us, now at Cross Hill, these interminable summer days, where the pale-glowering sun seemed to drag through the sky, and the minute hands of those clocks that functioned seemed sometimes to inch backward, she had too much time. Though Father rose at dawn to resume work on his case, Mother rose late; as late as possible, for she dreaded another day in exile; she bathed in a few grudging inches of rust-flecked lukewarm water in a stained antique tub; she made up her elaborate mask of a face, and tried to do something with her hair; drifted about the house like a ghost in her now rumpled, soiled city clothes, as if waiting for a friend to pick her up to drive her to lunch at the country club or the newest fashionable restaurant. Is Mother drinking today? Poor Mother. She grew suspicious, even jealous, of Rosalind, who was growing by swift degrees into a beautiful, physically capable and alert girl, with long wavy-curly red-blond hair bleached by the sun; she was forever interrogating Stephen and Graeme, convinced that they were sneaking away at every opportunity to Contracoeur, or beyond. She assigned chores to her elder children but rarely oversaw them. Where once she’d focused attention on the twins, dressing them with obsessive care as “the last of our babies,” now