John Barth - Where Three Roads Meet

"Pity Junie didn't get to read 'em. And the world."

A painful subject, so let's get done with it. I never kept those diaries hidden, Listener: neither the ones that Manny found so useful, from back in our tuition-earning days, nor the later ones from our reconnection. They were lined up on a bookshelf in my study, where anybody from the kids to the housecleaner could pick them up. But they were under lock and key, sort of, because like a lot of schoolgirls I'd started with the kind that have a little locking tab to keep them private, and I kept on using that kind, half out of habit, half as a joke. Ned and the kids used to tease me about "Mommy's deep dark secrets." I even made the little brass keys into a charm bracelet, usually tucked away in my jewelry box, and never imagined that et cetera.

And to this hour I don't know quite what prompted Ned to fish out that bracelet one day in December of1973 and unlock those locks. He'd been in bed for a few days with the flu and got bored lying there alone in the house while the kids and I were in school; said he noticed that key-bracelet on my dresser (possible, but not likely) and thought what the hell, no harm in just taking a peek — and that was that. Just as the Arab oil embargo and economic recession of '73 ended the American sixties, of which The Fates had become an emblem, Ned's reading those diaries was the end of the world as Grace Mason Forester had known and enjoyed it. Twenty years of contented marriage and eighteen of happy motherhood down the toilet, not to mention my job and poor Aggie's at Severn Day.

What happened, Listener — contrary to the "C. Ella Mason" version — was that Outraged Hubby threatened to put those diaries in evidence if Grace contested their immediate separation and divorce — although of course he'd prefer not to, to spare all hands the embarrassment of everybody's learning that nice Missus Forester is an ex-hooker who later shacked up for seven adulterous years with a famous dirty-book writer.

Which I didn't, but who'd believe me?

" I still think you should've called his bluff and said, So go public, asshole. He had as much to lose as you did."

I couldn't do that, Thelm, for the kids' sake. And for Ned's, too. I'd loved him, damn it, and what he'd found out about me cut him to the quick. I didn't want him publicly humiliated too.

So the bastard insists on divorce for irreconcilable differences, full custody of the kids, and Gracie's and my resignation from Severn Day, where he was sure we'd been corrupting our students' morals: otherwise he'd blow the cover on my porn-queen past along with Grace's diaries. But if we agreed to his terms, he promised to destroy the diaries, keep mum about our naughty résumés, and make a generous alimony settlement.

"And Listener should understand that the matter of Grace's visitation rights with their kids was academic anyhow, so to speak, since Ned Junior was about to take off for Princeton and Cindy was a fifth-former already at Severn Day. Even so, I think you should've dared him to go ahead and cover the whole family with shit."

Nope. And as things turned out, I'm glad I didn't — rough as it was for Ag and me to quit teaching, pretending that we were burned out.

Plausible enough for Grace, who'd been at it heart and soul for twenty-plus years. But I was only two years into the best job I ever had! As for how things turned out…

Poor Ned.

"Would you stop it already with the Poor Ned?"

No. What poor Ned had learned about me literally broke his heart. Cindy has him jump out of his high-rise office window — her way of getting even with him, I suppose. But in fact her dad died of a coronary, Listener, the very next year, at age fifty.

"On the fifteenth hole of his club's golf course, and in the opinion of some of us, his coup de grâce, excuse my French, was Tricky Dick Nixon's disgrace and resignation after Watergate, on top of all the rest."

So there went those cushy alimony payments, with which my sweet sorrowful sis had been helping me out while we both scratched around for new jobs. But she regained full custody of two well-off kiddies indeed, with their dad's estate added to their trust funds, and their mom in charge of the show till they reached twenty-one.

By when I'd long since explained to them what Mom and Dad's split had really been about.

"And they were totally cool with it, bless 'em! Sort of proud of their mom and dear aunties for having worked our way through college the way we did. They even thought it was cool that Aunt Aggie had been a porn star: 'No wonder she's the best gym coach ever!' Cindy told me: 'All those acrobatics!'"

And young Neddie — who'd switched his major at Princeton from Business to Art History as soon as his dad wasn't around to say no — was as wowed as his kid sister by the news that their mom had not only known the late, great Manfred F. Dickson, but had actually worked with him on The Fates for all those years! That news was what turned Cindy-Ella into a writer.

Into a commercially unsuccessful writer, she likes to say, who refuses to write "chick lit" and who defines the novella, her favorite form, as a story too long to sell to a magazine and too short to sell to a book publisher, bless her. Anyhow, the coast being clear, Ag and I were of course eager to get back to our teaching, both to pay the rent after my alimony stopped and because we were teachers to the bone. But our slots at Severn Day had been filled by young replacements whom we didn't want to bump, and we didn't have the Education credits that public school systems are fussy about. So in '761 went to work as assistant librarian at Severn Day and then as head librarian when my boss retired: a post 1 held happily indeed for the next eighteen years, till I retired at age sixty-five and my health gave out, as if on cue. As for Aggie... she'll speak for herself, and then Thelma likewise, before we're out of tape. Ag?

Not much to tell. Less blessed in the résumé way than my twin, when Ned forced us out of teaching I supported myself with pickup jobs — like selling cosmetics and jewelry at Kmart and J. C. Penney — until Grace was reestablished at Severn and eased me back in to help coach drama, dance, and gym. When arthritis and emphysema sidelined me for keeps, we shared a nice apartment in Annapolis, not far from where we'd grown up, and I played housekeeper as best I could to earn my room and board till Gracie retired. It was like being kids again, only with separate bedrooms for us and a sleep sofa for overnight guests like Gracie's grownup youngsters.

A luxury we never had as Navy brats, not to mention as womb-mates. And that's our story, folks, except for how we wound up as a threesome here in Bernbridge. Your ship, Thelma.

"Aye aye, Cap'n. I was the only Gracious Mason not damaged by our undergrad tuition-paying per se or by prick-head Ned Forester's reading all about it in Gracie's fucking diaries, as we call 'em. Between Doctor Sam and me, all that stuff had been a family joke: As I said, he was proud of me for it. And by the time Ned blew his whistle on the three of us, my world had ended twice already, at ages thirty-nine and forty-three: first with Sammy's death in the summer of '69 (wouldn't he have loved the idea of croaking in mid- soixante-neuf!) and then with poor Benjy's wipeout in the spring of '73. I doubt I'd have weathered those losses without my two sisters' support; helping them later through their bad time was downright therapeutic for me."

By then all three of us were back in the old hometown …

"Right. Benjy had needed so much looking after that I'd long since quit my job in Sam's office and had tried in vain to turn our son into a responsible kid. After Sammy died, it had been a relief as well as an economic necessity to sell our house in Baltimore, move into a condo, and go back to work for one of his ob/gyn colleagues. Early in '73 the guy shifted his practice down to Bowie, halfway between Annapolis and Washington, and for a few months I made the long commute so that Benjy could finish his senior year at Park School. But when he dropped out of school that February and piled up on the Beltway in March, at Grace and Aggie's urging I swapped the Baltimore condo for one in Annapolis, a quick shot from the new office, et voilà: Unhappy Fate had brought the three Fates happily together again."