Brunonia Barry - The Map of True Places

One big thing that evolved out of Maureen’s untreated illness was a strange and inappropriate mother-daughter relationship that only got more disturbing as Zee grew older. Sometimes unable to attach to her child, at other times Maureen treated Zee as a best friend, confiding much more than a mother should ever relate to a young daughter, outrageous facts and stories that were more embarrassing than helpful: the far-too-early uncensored facts of life from periods to promiscuity, and even sex tricks and methods of seduction to use on boys, details that no normal mother would ever share with a daughter and that Zee had no business knowing. Such confidences assured two things: that Zee would seldom bring a friend into the house and that, at some point much too early in her childhood, Zee and Maureen would switch roles, with Zee becoming the mother figure and Maureen reverting to adolescence.

Maureen had three more breakdowns that required hospitalization during Zee’s childhood. The first two were short stays, less than a month in duration. And the last one was the long one, when Melville came into their lives.

TODAY ZEE WAS THINKING about Finch’s affair with Melville, the relationship that had ultimately put an end to the substance of their marriage if not the form.

She was still angry about the Yeats book she’d seen this morning at Melville’s house. The long months of darkness leading up to Maureen’s death had been something she had tried for years to forget. Seeing the book brought it all back to her, that and Lilly’s suicide.

She wasn’t angry at Melville-she was angry at Finch. How dare he give Melville the same book he’d once given to her mother! Sometimes she thought she hardly knew Finch. She knew he had ultimately won Maureen with Yeats. That much her mother had told her. Perhaps that was the way he won all of his conquests, she thought.

She wondered about the boy at Amherst, the one who played the young Hawthorne. Had he been given a volume of Yeats as well? Perhaps Finch had purchased many copies and made it part of his romantic ritual. The thought made her angrier. But it didn’t make much sense. Zee knew in her heart that there weren’t several copies of Yeats that Finch had doled out to potential partners; there was only the one copy. The book she had seen protruding from Melville’s suitcase was the same book Finch had given to Maureen. It had sat for years on top of the bed at Baker’s Island in a room that was no longer used as a bedroom but as Maureen’s writing room.

Desperate to lift her mother’s spirits, she had gone to Baker’s Island that last day to get the book of Yeats for Maureen. Zee’s original idea had been to take Maureen out there for the day, and she had even borrowed Uncle Mickey’s dory to get them there, but Maureen refused to go, saying she was sick and opting to stay upstairs in her bed. Frustrated, Zee went by herself. If she could only get the book to her mother, something Maureen had wished for aloud on many occasions, maybe it would do the trick.

It was something she had always blamed herself for. Had she not gone to the island that day, or had she gotten back earlier, she might have saved her mother’s life. As it was, Zee got back sooner than her mother had expected, soon enough to watch her agony but not soon enough to save her.

Zee often talked about her guilt in her sessions with Mattei. But while her mentor would always listen to her rehashing the story, she would not let her take the blame for her mother’s suicide.

“Clinging to this idea makes you responsible,” Mattei said. “You make yourself guilty and then ruin your own life because you’re too afraid to be happy when your mother was not so lucky. It’s the easy way out, and it keeps you from having a good life. Frankly, it’s beneath you.”

Zee had been angry and guilty for years. Though she blamed herself, she also blamed her father and Melville, and in good part she blamed her mother, too. It was that anger and blame that she was working on these days with Mattei. When asked to be more specific about her anger as well as her other feelings about her family, Zee was not able. In a family that had erased the boundaries between parent and child, she had never known exactly where she fit in. She knew that it was this undirected anger and the resultant guilt that had propelled her headlong into a career that she was beginning to doubt she was suited for, especially in light of what had just happened with Lilly Braedon.

Since Lilly died, Zee found that her anger had quickly begun to focus on more specific recipients. She was angry at Michael, though she had no real reason for this except that he so clearly knew what he wanted in all areas of his life, while she couldn’t seem to make as simple a choice as whether or not to serve sushi at the wedding. And when she saw the book in Melville’s suitcase, all the unresolved anger she felt for her father came flooding back.

“Girls marry their fathers” was another favorite psychological cliché that Mattei was fond of quoting. Michael and Finch were in many ways very similar. Zee wondered how much of her reluctance to make her wedding plans was somehow related to her unexpressed and poorly directed anger toward her father. But just as it was difficult to be angry with Maureen, who had unquestionably been ill, it was almost impossible to be angry at Finch when she looked at him now. She wanted to scream at him. How dare he give Melville the book her mother had treasured? How could he be that cold? But when she looked at Finch now, she didn’t feel anger, she felt sad. In a very real sense, the man she was angry at no longer existed. Any anger she felt for Finch, she now directed at the disease that was consuming him.

She needed to talk to Mattei, and to Michael. But she couldn’t go back to Boston. Not yet. Not until Melville returned or they figured out some other means of caring for her father.

ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON ZEE LEFT another message for Michael. Then, tired of waiting for him to call back, and getting antsy sitting around the house, she asked Finch if he wanted to take a ride.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Up Route 127,” she said.

He looked doubtful.

“We can turn back anytime you like, if you get tired,” she said.

He still wasn’t sure.

“I’ll buy you ice cream,” she offered.

“Done deal,” he said.

They drove up through Prides Crossing, and then on through Manchester-by-the-Sea. When they passed Singing Beach, Finch wanted to stop. They tried walking in the sand, but it was too difficult for him, so they returned to their car and sat with the windows rolled down. She remembered the night she got stuck here, remembered Finch in those pirate days. It was hard to reconcile that man with the one who sat next to her now. She felt many emotions when she looked at him today, the largest of which was empathy. She realized to her surprise that this Finch was easier for her to understand; his vulnerability sparked something in her, perhaps some misplaced maternal instinct she’d been unaware she had.

ZEE HAD NEVER WANTED CHILDREN, a fact that Michael knew and didn’t seem worried about, but one that Mattei had found troublesome for a number of reasons.

“Why aren’t you worried?” Zee asked Michael just after he proposed.

“Because you’ll get over it,” he said, confident.

“You don’t think it’s possible that I might never want them?” She had been frustrated by his lack of concern. “I know you want to be a father.”

“When the time is right,” he said.

Zee doubted seriously if the time would ever be right. Though Michael refused to talk about it, she and Mattei spent the next four sessions discussing children. At the end of the month, Zee was confused but unchanged.