The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [41]
Phoebe felt panic closing in. She looked around the room, but the familiar objects of their lives appeared tainted now, unrecognizable. Even her mother seemed altered, a stranger, like the naked woman in her father’s paintings.
“If he’d lived, I’m sure everything would have been fine,” her mother was saying. “Faith would have rebelled eventually, and she and your father would’ve found each other again on different terms. But Faith never had that chance—she was completely dependent on him when he died, completely, utterly unable to cope without him.”
Phoebe’s head throbbed. A wild, animal urge to defend herself rose in her. “It made you jealous,” she said instinctively, “how much he loved Faith.”
There was a pause. “That’s true,” her mother said, in a different voice. “It did.” And this seemed to sadden her, tire her somehow.
“You were jealous.”
“Of course I was. Neurotic love is so powerful, at times it eclipses everything else. Yes, I was jealous, Barry certainly was. You were, too, I think, although you don’t seem to remember it.”
“Not me,” Phoebe said.
“Fine,” her mother said. Clearly she was sick of talking. She sat heavily on the bed in her terrycloth robe, as if waiting for Phoebe to go. But Phoebe wasn’t leaving, not until she’d found a way of fighting back. There was something she needed to remember, some moment of weakness in her mother, recently—then it came to her: yesterday in the car when they’d talked about Faith’s going to Europe. Her mother explaining herself to Phoebe, then asking if she understood. The unnatural weight of her answer.
“You let her go,” Phoebe said.
Her mother looked up, startled.
Goosebumps rose on Phoebe’s scalp and traveled down her spine. “You let her go.”
Her mother lifted her hands to her face. And Phoebe knew she’d found it, her worst fear. Found it and said it aloud.
“You did,” she said, amazed. “You let her.”
Her mother opened her mouth to speak. Then something broke in her face and she began to cry, leaning into her hands. Phoebe watched her coldly at first. Fine, she thought, let her cry, but her mother’s despair soon awoke in her a queasy guilt. “Mom,” she said, hovering uselessly a few paces away, afraid to go near. Her mother wept and wept. Phoebe remembered how she’d looked at the beginning of the evening, that overflow of high spirits—gone, forever, it seemed—Phoebe had stamped them out. She thought of Claude, years ago, big, laughing Claude, how her mother had laughed when he was there, laughed and laughed, and then Faith had died and the laughter, too, had died. When she thought of Claude, Phoebe had to remind herself that he was still alive somewhere.
“Mom,” she said again, and moved closer. She felt a terrible pressure in her chest. Everything was broken. And now the person who had broken it was broken, too.
Her mother raised her head, tears and makeup staining her face. “Go away, Phoebe.”
Phoebe didn’t move. There had to be a way of undoing this, of going back.
“Please go,” her mother sobbed, waving Phoebe away with her face half hidden, as if she were ashamed to be seen. When Phoebe didn’t move, her mother rose suddenly from the bed and pushed her, trembling hands on Phoebe’s shoulders. “Please go,” she said. “Leave me alone, please.”
“Wait,” Phoebe said. “Mom wait—”
She held up her hands, but her mother kept pushing, a confusion of shaking arms. “Why won’t you leave?” she sobbed. “Is there more you want to say? Did I do something else? Please, just say it and go.” Talking made her choke. She began to cough, covering her mouth with one hand, finally turning her back to Phoebe out of some automatic politeness. A wave of nausea rolled through Phoebe at the sound of her mother