Turn of Mind - Alice LaPlante [23]
But such confidence has its risks. If you make the mistake of following them when they take that inevitable misstep, then you’re at hazard, too. Then you’re both sunk. A little healthy skepticism is good, even essential, for a marriage. A certain amount of pushing back. You never did enough of that.
Listen to me, my marriage evaporated after four decades without leaving a trace. Should the death of a marriage be odorless, tasteless? No. There should be some residue, there was something wrong with Peter and me that ours didn’t have any. That it was so easy, that it ended so quietly.
At least when James died you felt something. It manifested itself in some strange ways, but you felt it very deeply. I know you don’t remember that time, but you threw yourself into gardening, oddly enough. You of the black thumbs. Or rather, you started digging holes in your backyard.
And after you’d dug a couple dozen holes, you inserted rose saplings into them that you got from that nursery on Halsted. The first time you’d ever set foot in such a place. Then you abandoned them. They died, of course. Your yard was filled with little mounds of fresh earth with dead plant sprigs lying limply on top of them. The work of a demented gopher.
Do you remember anything at all about those days? You were starting to exhibit some of the signs. You had told me about your fears, of course. You hadn’t told James. Did you ever tell the kids? Somehow I doubt it. You just hired a caregiver and let them figure it out for themselves.
Magdalena tells me the episodes of aggression are getting worse. I haven’t seen one yet. Magdalena says I seem to have a calming influence on you. I know better than to think I’ve got some secret power. I’ve read enough about this disease to know that you can’t predict the future by the past. It’s like they say about parenting: Just when you think you’ve mastered it, everything changes.
That’s why teachers hate switching from one grade to another, why I taught seventh grade for forty-three years. Try to apply all your best ideas and curricula even one year later in a child’s life and it simply won’t work.
You talked cogently about Fiona today. No fog there. And about her we are in complete agreement. She is doing well. We’re both so proud of her. I was as worried during her adolescence as any parent would be. Her late teens and early twenties were so difficult, so painful to watch.
As you know, I took my godmother duties seriously! I wasn’t worried about drugs or sex, although I’m sure she dabbled in both. Perfectly normal. No, I was more worried about her rescue fantasies. Always bailing Mark out. Then that unspeakable boy. Thank God she got rid of him before she reached her twenties. Otherwise she might well have married him.
It wouldn’t have lasted, of course. But it would have left a stain, knowing Fiona. Damaged her. She would have felt it deeply. More deeply than I did after forty years.
Enough of this! I’ve gone on. Be well, my dear friend. I’ll stop by again soon.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the children. They used to be so close. Mark being so much older than Fiona, you’d think he would have gotten bored, would have pushed her away. He never did, not then. But they’ve fallen out. Mark does that with people. Sours on them, picks fights, renounces them. Then, after six months or a year, comes humbly back, begging pardon.
Early on, she was too young to be of interest to his friends, and I’d see her mooning after one or the other of them without worrying too much. Too thin, gawky, too damn smart to interest the football stars and basketball heroes that were Mark’s cronies back then. But there was one—Fiona would have been, what, fourteen? Not cute anymore, and her features hadn’t rearranged themselves into the pleasing openness of her adult