The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [85]
“I only got it a week ago. It’s still sore.”
“You did it to shock Bill.”
“Sort of.” If only it were that simple.
Paisley had the grace to let it go.
Mechanically, Julianne followed Paisley’s lead as they moved from dresses to shorts and tops, strutting and modeling in front of spangled mirrors that gave themselves to themselves from every angle: front, back, profile.
Julianne had no opinion either about their appearances or about the clothes. She was dimly aware of rejecting a pair of bright orange capris, a classic, form-fitting skirt, a pair of lightweight, slim-legged cotton slacks that would be in style for years. Once, she had enjoyed choosing clothes, had enjoyed letting her sensitive fingers trace the cool slide of cotton across her skin, judge the warmth of high-quality wool, the sturdiness of suede. She had a knack for finding garments that flattered her figure, which was always too plump before this past year. It was a pleasure she once thought she deserved.
Today, for all she cared, the clothes might have been made, uniformly, of shapeless, scratchy burlap in lackluster khaki, or equally of the smoothest, brightest silk. She could hardly tell the difference. She was a woman who had thought of hurting her most beloved child. She couldn’t believe she had thought such a thing. And yet she had.
A long slice of time passed, or so it seemed. Slowly, in spite of everything, as if the scene were changing slowly from black and white to color, from two dimensions to three, a certain shade of pink would cut through her dullness for a second, or the nubby texture of seersucker, the filmy feel of chiffon. And still, there were more garments to try. Then came a moment when she looked at herself in a translucent blouse of the palest aqua, in a fabric so soft it felt like a caress, and said to her own surprise, “Oh, look at this. This is pretty.”
“It is,” Paisley agreed. “It’s your color. You should get it.”
“I’d never wear it.”
“Sure you would. Dress it up with slinky slacks. Dress it down with cotton.”
“No.” The veil of guilt and despondency closed in, choking off her voice. She couldn’t breathe. When she lowered herself onto the bench as she’d done before, she somehow ended up missing the seat, sitting on the floor instead. Another time, it would have been comical. She stifled a strangled cry.
“Julianne! Don’t tell me nothing’s wrong! Are you sick?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but all that came was the cry again, frightening and raw.
Paisley sat down on the floor beside her. She put her arm around Julianne’s shoulders and let her weep. Another span of time passed. Julianne could not have said how long they stayed like that.
Then Paisley said, in a voice like a song, “Tell me.”
So Julianne did. The knife. The self-but-not-self woman ascending the stairs. The slim, sane thread of her mind saying, Walk away. Walk away.
“I could have hurt him,” she said.
Paisley crooned, “Oh no, of course not. Not at all.”
“It was . . . very nearly a break from sanity.”
“No. No.” Her voice sad as heartbreak. “You didn’t hurt him at all. Beyond a certain point, you couldn’t even imagine it.”
“But in a way I must have. I’m his mother. I’m supposed to protect him. To think such a thing, even once . . .”
“Shh. Shh,” Paisley whispered. “You’re not really afraid you’ll hurt him. You’re afraid because you believe it was wrong even to think it. But having a thought, even an awful one, is different from acting on it. All the difference in the world. Can’t you see that?”
Julianne was not sure she could.
Paisley pulled back a little. She fingered the shoulder of the beautiful blouse Julianne was wearing.
“You should take it,” Paisley said.
“I’m not buying anything,” Julianne said.
“I don’t mean buy it. I mean take it.”
“Pardon?”
“Take it off, roll it up, and put it in your purse. Your purse is big enough.”
“You mean steal it?” The words began in the distance where Julianne’s misery lurked,