“Whatever,” he says, but he’s smiling.
11:00 P.M.
Mum is sitting on the porch sofa in the dark.
“You’re still up,” I say.
“All those peanuts I ate at Dixon’s are repeating on me.”
“I’m getting a glass of wine. Do you want anything?”
“I’m headed for bed in a minute. There’s an open rosé.”
I pour myself a glass of wine and sit down beside her. “I’m exhausted.”
“I don’t know how you do it. All these people you take care of.”
“My husband and children?” I laugh.
“You coddle them far too much. I barely paid attention to you and Anna, and look how well you turned out.”
In a way, her blindness—her total lack of self-examination—is a gift.
“They can’t even put their own dishes in the sink. I barely survived while you and Peter were in Memphis. Though Finn did give me a nice foot rub.”
“You asked Finn to rub your feet?”
“His hands seem a bit small for his age.”
I shake my head in despair. My mother is who she is. But a piece of her has been in the wrong place for far too long and I have to set it right.
“You know how I was trying to tell you this afternoon? About Leo?”
My mother yawns. “You told me. He went back to his first wife, God help her. I should have written to her—told her what he did to you.”
“Mum.” My heart starts beating so fast I can see its tremoring on the surface of my chest. “It wasn’t Leo.”
“What wasn’t?”
“It wasn’t Leo,” I say again, my voice barely more than a whisper. “It happened, but it wasn’t Leo.”
She looks utterly confused. I watch her puzzling out what I’ve said, putting the pieces together. I recognize the exact second it comes clear to her: a twitch, an imperceptible shift, the nervous dilating of pupils.
“Conrad?” she says at last.
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Yes.”
“Not Leo.”
“Not Leo. It was Conrad. Conrad raped me.”
For a long time, my mother says nothing. In the darkness, I feel her energy slipping, dimming. She sighs, a heaviness upon her.
“I’m sorry I let you blame Leo.”
“Leo left me. Our baby died.”
I can see from her face that she is preparing for the worst as she asks me the next question.
“And Conrad drowning?”
“The boom hit him. He fell in.”
Her look of relief is palpable, and I so wish I could leave it there.
“But we both knew he wasn’t a strong swimmer. We didn’t throw him the life preserver.”
“We . . .” There’s a flicker of confusion. “Of course, Jonas was with you. I’d forgotten.”
“He knew everything,” I say. “He’s the only one.”
She nods. “You two were inseparable. He had such a crush on you back then. I think you broke his heart when you married Peter.”
“I did.”
An image of Jonas comes to me. Not the man I have loved, eaten, wanted, ached for today, but a small, green-eyed, dark-haired boy, lying beside me in the woods on a bed of velvet moss. I do not know him yet. But we are there together, lying by the spring, two strangers with one heart.
“I loved him, too.”
My mother is not one for warmth, but she puts her arms around me, cradles my head against her neck, strokes my hair the way she did when I was a little girl. I feel a thousand years of bile and bitter and silt seeping out of my veins, my muscles and tendons, the darkest places, pouring into the pocket of her lap.
“I’m sorry, Mum. I meant to be good.”
“No,” she says. “I’m the one who let Conrad in the door.” She pushes herself up off the sofa with a heavy creak. “My bones are not what they once were. I’m going to find a Maalox and hit the hay.”
On her way past the big picnic table she clears the children’s ice cream bowls, takes them inside to the sink, spoons clinking. “These can wait until morning.”
She pauses at the screen door, an odd expression on her face, as if she’s tasting something, digesting it, trying to decide whether or not it’s good. When at last she speaks, her voice is decisive, the way it’s always been when she’s given me serious advice.
“There are some swims you do regret, Eleanor. The problem is, you never know until you take them. Don’t stay up too late. And remember to close your skylight. They say we may get two inches of rain.”