Anna Solomon - Leaving Lucy Pear

Then, as the women’s cheers died and they began to ask their questions— And when will the shower be? And how is she feeling? — Lillian realized they had been staring at her because it was her turn. She missed her mother suddenly, with a force that surprised her. Her mother would have been in synagogue this morning, looking down on her father from the women’s balcony, wearing a dowdy dress she had sewed herself, not a hint of embarrassment on her face.

One Saturday afternoon a month, after her card game, Bea’s mother took the train up to Gloucester, calling it her “little country holiday.” Lillian called everything related to Gloucester “little,” including the milewide harbor, the hulking, barnacled fishing boats, the wharves that stretched the length of three city blocks. The car she hired at the depot to drive her out to the house, always the largest available, was “my little car.” She was trying to say she found the place charming and quaint, Bea knew. Lillian was barely aware that in fact she found it common, inconsequential, striving, and sad. She was even less aware — at least Bea preferred to think so — that she had begun to associate these sentiments with Bea.

In preparation for her mother’s visit, Bea closed her bedroom drapes, threw half the dresses from her closet onto the floor, and pulled a flannel dressing robe over a shapeless, blue-and-white-striped, mannish shift. Bea brought tea up to her uncle Ira, who sat in his wheelchair by the window. He’d left the window open so he wouldn’t fall asleep but his eyes were closed, his nose whistling gently. At Bea’s “Tea!” his eyes fluttered, closed again, then opened fully before traveling, at a milky, meticulous, tender pace, Bea’s length.

Bea knew how she appeared, the loose costume bagging around her, her hair uncut since Lillian’s hairdresser had given her a disastrously conceived row of bangs a few months ago. Bea’s hair bushed around her head as she never allowed it in public or even, most days, out of self-respect, in private.

“Why do you always want to look a wreck for your mother?” Ira asked.

Bea set down the tea and shut the window. “Because it drives her mad?”

“Maybe. Open the window, please. Or maybe because it makes you look mad.”

Bea opened the window. Ira was probably right. Ira often said aloud what Bea preferred not to say, or even to think when she could help it. Nine years ago, when she had stopped eating, gone mute, been pulled out of Radcliffe and sent to Fainwright Hospital, where she was diagnosed as “undiagnosticated,” Lillian had become inexplicably kind to her. She’d sat with Bea for hours whether Bea spoke or not, sometimes in silence, a state that normally made Lillian squirm, sometimes reading to her from the papers about the local news and the war, assiduously skipping the gossip — though Lillian loved gossip — or any mention of music or Radcliffe. Bea had watched Lillian’s eyes ferociously skimming on her behalf, perceived a new weight at her mother’s jawline, a layer of softness and worry. It was as if Lillian had only thought she wanted Bea to “go places”—by which she’d meant play piano at Isabella Stewart Gardner’s salons, marry someone even richer than Henry, and bear children Lillian could dress and spoil — but discovered that she liked Bea better as a doll, droopy on Luminal. And Bea discovered how good it felt to please her mother, which she had often almost succeeded at before Fainwright, but never quite. There had been Bea’s face, for instance, which Lillian said would be stunning if only Bea would agree to get her nose reset; Bea’s piano playing, which Lillian paid for and boasted about but never directly praised; Bea’s expression when she played — lips mashed, brow squeezing the bridge of her nose — which Lillian swatted at, warning of wrinkles. Then there had been Lieutenant Seagrave, aide to the navy admiral her father was working to woo into a boot contract with Haven Shoes. It was the lieutenant, according to Lillian, who made the admiral’s decisions. She worried the family’s Jewishness would offend him — she pushed Bea on him as a kind of balm. He’s not so much older than you! she’d said to Bea. (Though he was, by at least ten years.) And see how handsome! (He had the sort of straight, tall, very white teeth that reminded one of the skull underneath.) And that name! Seagrave! A direct descendant of the Mayflower, I’ve been told. Bea had pictured the lieutenant descending from the famous ship, literally floating down from its gunwales onto a rocky shore, his jacket’s stiff hem whiffling in the breeze. Bea had flirted with him, as her mother clearly wanted, but then he’d forced himself on her, as her mother presumably did not want, and then she’d gotten pregnant, as her mother certainly did not want. It had been a disaster, a humiliation, a gross joke on them all. It had been worse than anything Bea had ever feared, worse — she’d had the thought — than if he’d murdered her. But thirteen months later, in the hospital bed at Fainwright, too washed out to ask questions or assign blame, her head hollow and gleaming, Bea was finally perfect. “You’ll come home,” her mother said. “You’ll join me at the clubs, make use of yourself. We’ll find a patient man to marry you.”

Bea stood by the open window, watching Ira’s face. It was too various, too much a collision of parts to be called objectively handsome, but Bea found her uncle’s long, tunneled cheeks, the broad bulb of his nose, the pink skin at his temples where hair had once grown, his full, sorrowful mouth staggeringly lovely. He had sipped his tea — ginseng, to soothe his perpetual certainty that he was dying, procured by Bea from Chinatown on her last trip into Boston — and dozed off again, the hair in his nostrils trembling with each breath like live, warm forests. Out the window, the old hydrangeas bowed leggily toward the ground, their buds narrowly containing their blossoms. It had gotten to be June somehow. The breeze was gentle. Somehow the days had gone along, stacked up, and led here. What had Bea done in those days? In the towers made of days, where had she been? Inside, of course, exerting herself at this or that, but for what? In a few weeks, her cousins would come up from Boston and New York to drink themselves silly for the week leading up to Independence Day. Uncle Ira would stay upstairs, pretending he couldn’t walk, and Bea would not out him. She hadn’t decided yet what to do with Emma Murphy during that time, whether to pay her on top of Story’s wages for the extra work or give her a week’s holiday and spare her the circus.

Bea liked the woman, so far. She was good with Uncle Ira. She didn’t speak to him in a baby voice. And she was competent — almost — at the housekeeping Bea had assigned her to occupy the hours when he slept. She made mistakes here and there — she’d used a good pillowcase as a rag and broken a vase and seemed to have little knack for organizing, or maybe it was categorizing, so that Bea had trouble locating items Emma had put away, and sometimes, it seemed, items Emma would have had no reason to put away: a single shoe of Bea’s, shoved into a box with another pair, a pen placed on a shelf in the pantry. But Bea said nothing, in part because something in Emma’s face warned her off, a willfulness that seemed to defy her broad, deferent cheekbones. Also, Bea didn’t want Emma to correct herself. Her faults were a comfort to Bea. Bea could not be replaced.

She left Ira’s gentle snores. She felt a little guilty, in the great room, as she grabbed up the pillows Emma had fluffed and arranged the day before and flung them into a heap next to the fireplace. Lillian would be here soon. Bea’s skin twitched, like an animal sensing weather.