The Children(85)

Edith sat on her bed, looking down. Guinevere’s notebook lay open over her knees.





Forty-Five

2004




Guinevere stared at her mother’s glossy black crown. She liked to keep it short on the sides and soft on top, like a romance poet’s, and had taken to wearing narrow-cut suits in beautiful materials—slate-blue gabardine, ledger-green velvet.

Her hair had grown out, though, since her last trip to the city, and she wore her writing clothes. Black leggings and an Emerson sweatshirt—Jonathan’s—with the sleeves cut off. One hand was fisted against her sternum as she stared at the open notebook.

Guinevere’s temples hammered. The sight was so incorrect she couldn’t tell yet how she felt. She used to dream of this day, when Edith would read her stories and see her. But that was a long time ago.

“Mom,” she said. The word empty of emotion, because she hadn’t found the proper one.

Edith looked up. Her eyes were very soft, very dark, as if she’d been pulled from a pillowy sleep. She said,

“You’re a writer.”

Ennis said those words to her once, the first time she read him one of her stories. They’d had such heft she could feel them in her palm, like an opal or a dragon’s egg. When her mother said them, they tapped straight into a reservoir of pain she’d kept hidden even from herself.

She said, “Wow, Mom. Thanks for noticing.”

Edith’s gaze hardened, focused. “Since when?”

“Since when have I been a writer? Since forever.”

“This is good, Guin. It’s really quite beautiful. And clever. I mean, I really like it.” She looked unhappy, though. Kept pressing fingertips against her stupid necklace charm, an ever-present bump beneath her shirt.

Guinevere stared at her mother. Her sweatshirt and greasy black hair, her mouth waxy with ChapStick. Hating Edith like Ennis did would’ve eaten her up from the inside out. Loving Edith would’ve killed her. The only way to survive living with a mother you couldn’t touch was to crumple her to nothing in your mind.

Now she was uncrumpling. Becoming a body on a bed, watching her daughter with wary admiration. Her nose was narrow and interesting. So were her eyes. She had a pretty patch of sun damage on her right cheek, freckled and swirling like fancy marble. Guinevere had the horrible feeling she was going to cry. She swallowed twice and said, “Thank you.”

Edith looked at her. Bit her lip and haltingly said, “I always had this idea that we’d talk when you were older. I had a list of all the things I wanted to tell you. Explain to you.” She pressed her hand to the notebook. Four fingers and that witchy gap. “Sitting here reading this, I thought, My god. It’s here. She’s older. And I’ve forgotten all the things I wanted to say.”

Guinevere stared at her. She didn’t have the first idea how to reply.

Her mother sighed. “Guin, you know I was a . . . god, I was a kid when I started this. This life with Llew and you two. I didn’t even know what a kid I was. But I do know I haven’t been a perfect—”

“Stop.” Guinevere threw up a hand, her whole brain snowy with panic. All these years and she’d never said it. Edith thought it was okay to just say it? As if speaking it aloud would change anything, would matter in the least. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay,” Edith said softly. “I respect that. But, Guinevere, I do have to talk to you about something.”

She closed the notebook gently and set it aside. When she straightened, chin tipped upward, she was once more that cool, untouchable person Guinevere kept in a triple-locked corner of her head.

“You deserve a better education.” Her mother sounded oddly formal. “Reading what you wrote has made that clear. I’m going to find a great school for you. One with a really strong writing program.”

She might as well have tossed glitter right into Guinevere’s face. Blinking, she said, “I get to go to school? And take the bus?”

“Well . . .” Edith looked a little nervous. “We’ll drive you. And pick you up. At the beginning and end of each semester.”

That last bit she said in a rush. Guinevere wrinkled her nose. “Semester?”

Then she got it. High gates, bad food, loneliness. Creaking dormitory beds in a doubled row, overseen by a wicked headmistress in high-collared black. Sara Crewe starving in the attic! Jane Eyre watching her best friend die of consumption!

“Mom, no. Not boarding school.”

Recklessly she reached for her mother’s hands. Edith was already standing, whisking them over her hips like she was brushing dust away. Always she’d done this when one of her children got upset: performed brisk, decisive gestures implying action, while moving steadily out of reach.

“You’ll love it.” She was looking anywhere that wasn’t her daughter’s face. “You just have to trust me on that. Also, you’re eleven. You’re not the one making the decisions around here.”

“Neither are you!” Guinevere could feel her face reddening. “Neither is Dad! You can’t send me to boarding school, I live here.” The Farmhouse seemed half prison an hour ago, a stifling wooden ship adrift on a dozy green sea. Threatened with losing it, she loved its every claustrophobic inch.

“I can, actually,” Edith said tonelessly. “We’ll continue this conversation when you’ve calmed down.”