And he did not.
* * *
It was not too long after this, September by now, that I ran into Estelle. There is a shop—for, well, I suppose, for fashionable people—on Bleecker Street in the Village, there are many such shops there, but there was one that I knew Chrissy liked and her birthday was coming up and so I went down to the Village and I walked into the shop, and I saw a woman glance at me and turn away, and then she turned back and it was Estelle, and I understood she had been hoping I would not see her.
“Hi, Lucy,” she said, and I said, “Hi, Estelle.” She made no motion to kiss me and so I did not move toward her either. Then I said, “How are you doing, Estelle?” And she said she was doing fine. I thought she looked older. Her hair was longer, and the sort of wildness of it that I had often admired seemed now slightly crazy, with it being longer like that; I thought it did not become her, is what I mean.
Then she said to me, “How’s William?” And I said, “Oh, you know. He’s doing okay.” I gave her a small smile; I was not happy with her.
“Okay. Well—” And she seemed at a loss for words, and I did not help her out. Then she said, “Chrissy and Becka, are they okay?” And I realized of course she wouldn’t know about them anymore, except for whatever Bridget told her about them. Estelle said tentatively, “I know Chrissy had just miscarried right before I—”
So I told Estelle that Chrissy was seeing a specialist to try to get pregnant again, and Estelle said “Oh!” and put her hand on my arm. But I still did not help her out. Except I thought I should ask after Bridget, so I did, and Estelle said, “She’s all right. You know.”
I wanted to say, I heard that she’s very sad. But I just stood there until she said, “Okay, Lucy, bye-bye.”
And then, as she turned to leave, I caught a glance at her face and there was tremendous pain there, and my heart unfolded, and I said, “Wait.” And she turned back, and I said, “Estelle, you do what you need to do and don’t worry about the rest of us.” Or I said something like that, I was trying to be nice to her after not having been nice to her.
And I think she knew it because she suddenly said, so sincerely, “You know, Lucy, when a woman leaves her husband everyone feels sorry for the husband, and they should! But I’m just saying”—And her pretty eyes looked around the store, then back at me. “I’m just saying it’s not that easy for me either, and I know that’s not the point, and I don’t mean to make it about me, but I’m just saying, it’s a loss for me as well. And for Bridget.”
And then I almost loved her. I said, “I know exactly what you’re saying, Estelle.” I think she saw in my face that I did, because she put her arms around me, and we kissed each other’s cheeks, and she said, and she was starting to weep, “Thank you, Lucy.”
And she pulled back and looked at me and said, “Oh Lucy, it was wonderful to see you.”
* * *
—
Two weeks later I saw her in the neighborhood of Chelsea, which I almost never go to, but I had gone to see a friend who had taken an apartment there, and Estelle was walking with a man, not the fellow at the party, with her arm through his—he seemed older, as William was—and she was talking excitedly to him, and it was easy for me to look away: I was across the street.
* * *
—
So there is that as well.
* * *
I thought about Lois Bubar. I thought how she seemed healthy; I mean she seemed inside herself, as I have said, in a way that was comfortable. Her house had been filled with those photographs of her family, and it had been her mother’s house. This quietly astonished me, to think of her living in the house that her mother had grown up in, tending to her grandmother’s rosebush. But why should it surprise me? I guess only because it was such a sense of home that she had, and I have never had that sense of home. Her mother had loved her, she had kept telling me that. And she meant of course Marilyn Smith, the woman who married her father. But Lois Bubar was not a woman who had seemed neglected for her first year of life. Catherine must have loved her. She must have picked her up and snuggled her, she must have worried over her first fever, she must have been quietly thrilled to see when the child had first pulled herself up in her crib to a standing position. She must have, I kept thinking.
And we will never know.
But I know that my own mother was not like that. And I know the price I have paid, which has not been nearly what my brother and my sister have paid.