The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [36]
“Jeannie?” Nora and Ken cried in equal astonishment. Jean Henderson, or “the viper” as she was more commonly known, so cutting and cruel that before they were eighteen, every one of her children had left home, never to return.
“How'd she happen to share that bit of information with you?” Nora asked.
“I don't know. We just got talking, and next thing I knew …”
And so it went. Always and everywhere. In spite of her mounting troubles. Or perhaps because of them; over time, her own pain, sculpting, giving depth to her beauty. Because she had no secrets, kept no part of herself private, or so she would have you believe, Bob's drinking and increasing volatility, his erratic employment, their strained finances, their run-down house, it was all there in the tapestry's intricate weave. Her suffering, a brilliant artistry, so submerging herself in another's life that the normal delineation blurs; from her own vulnerability creating an instant emotional communion. Too wounded to be envied, she is the perfect friend. Women admire her; men want to protect her.
The pretty mailbox hangs on its crooked post, clipped more than a few times by Bob's alcohol-fueled swerves into the driveway. Robin painted the climbing blue morning glories herself, hidden among the leaves her signature robin bird. Crafts. Quilting. Dinner parties, she can do it all, sublimely unhindered by her husband's failings, unshamed by his disruptions, unembarrassed by peeling paint, the missing glass in the storm door, the doorbell protruding from a frayed white wire. Less evidence of a failed life than bravely borne wounds, her domestic stigmata. Nora bangs the brass door knocker, pineapple, pitted symbol of welcome. Its dull strike brings fear. Her heart races, her thoughts colliding in bursts so that when the door finally opens, she hears herself hiss, “A malignancy. That's what you are. All you've ever been. Destructive and selfish …”
“I'm so sorry,” Robin gasps. “I'm so sorry. Please. Please,” she cries, holding out her arms as if this might be healing enough. Without makeup and with her long hair pulled back, she looks tired, but younger. “Please come in, Nora.” She opens the door all the way. “I beg you. Please. What happened, it was so—”
“No! Not what happened! What you did, that's what's so disgusting!”
“I know that. Of course I know that,” Robin weeps.
“And don't you ever again speak to my son. Do you hear me?”
“I—”
“Saying you love him like a son, how twisted are you?”
“But I do,” she sobs. “And I love you, Nora. That's the hardest part. Losing all of you.”
“No. The hardest part's not getting what you want. What you've wanted all along.”
“That's not true! Oh, God. Oh, please. Please, Nora. You have no idea,” she calls after her down the path. “I'm so miserable. I'm so unhappy I just want to die. Do you hear me? That's all I want!” she screams. “That's all I want anymore. To die. To be dead! Done with it all!”
“Mommy!” a child shrieks. Robin is slumped, sitting in the doorway, sobbing, berating herself for all the world to see. Lyra stands there, arms around her mother's head.
Nora yanks down on the seat belt, tethered now, anchored and safe. She stares back at the weeping little girl as she starts the car, her safe, sensible Volvo, then drives slowly away, and bursts into tears. Another child's pain—the last thing on earth she wants.
he meeting ends late. Two board members were upset to find their names omitted from the Sojourn House stationery. Father Grewley spent most of the time trying to placate them. Such a minor point, but the young priest kept saying they needed “to make it right.” Every time Nora attempted to move the agenda along, he'd drift back to it again. Easy enough to order new stationery, he supposed. Yes, at an additional cost of eight hundred dollars, the equivalent of a week's worth of groceries,