Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [93]
I know that Mark seemed like a shock to you. I understood that you felt betrayed. That I could have formed a relationship with someone who was close enough for me to get pregnant, to agree to marry him, and for that someone to be a stranger to you—I saw that that hurt you. But you left me first.
Maybe life has a rhythm that we no longer have control over (this bit does, this I know for sure). Mark and Hannah came to me when you left.
I always thought that motherhood offered the best, most exquisite moments of my life. But I saw that every single one of them had to be paid for. Your capacity to fill me with joy was matched by your capacity to hurt me.
And you hurt me, when you couldn’t accept me and Mark. I’m not telling you this now to make you feel bad, to torture you from the grave. It’s just that it has been a part of our story, and I can’t write this stuff without referring to it. I felt like I was torn, that first year. On the one hand, I was deliriously happy. I was in love, and Hannah was born. But you didn’t come home. You didn’t feel able to be a part of it. I missed you.
When you were little, we used to talk about how much I loved you. I once told you both that there was nothing you could do that I couldn’t forgive. You must have been about five or six, or something. I don’t remember exactly why we were having this conversation—you must have been naughty, or something. Oh…I remember; it was the time you glued the living room rug to the carpet. God, I was mad at you then. So we must have had this big scene, and we’d made it up, and you were trying to get back into my good books, and I told you this thing about there being nothing you could do that I couldn’t forgive you for. And I remember laughing, because Lisa started testing the theory. She said, what about if we stole sweets, and I explained that, although this was wrong, and I’d be very cross, I could forgive you; so she asked if I could forgive you for murdering someone (what an imagination), and by now I was a bit anxious, but I said, that I’d be heartbroken and sad, and probably very angry, but that you would still be my child, and I would still love you and forgive you. So Lisa sat up, with great excitement, and said, what about if she murdered Jennifer—could I forgive THAT and would I still love her after THAT? So I changed the subject—I guess we started trying to figure out how to get the rug unstuck.
But the point of the story was…and it still is…there was nothing that you could say or do that I couldn’t forgive or that would stop me from loving you.
February
Jennifer
Jennifer poured herself another large glass of red wine. It almost drained the bottle, which she held out questioningly at Mark.
“More for you?”
“I’m fine.” He still had half a glass. It was the second bottle of the night.
Mark had been pleased, earlier that morning, when Jennifer had rung and said she would like to come down and stay the night. Hannah was going to someone’s sweet sixteen, with an afternoon of the requisite primping and squealing planned at a girlfriend’s house, and he hadn’t been relishing the thought of a long Saturday night alone.
Jennifer said Stephen was away, in Scotland, golfing with some friends, and that she thought she’d spend the day out his way, doing some shopping, and that she’d enjoy the company, too. He’d said he would cook for them and asked what she’d like to eat; she’d laughed and asked him if she was that transparent. They’d agreed that she’d bring the