She entered the kitchen to find Pammie and Penny dunking Oreos into milk. She noticed the crumbs on the table, the milk mustache on Penny’s lip, and felt so grateful she had these girls. Grateful that they could live a life with her, with their father. But she would make sure they understood that their good fortune wasn’t everyone’s. That women suffered in some marriages. She would make sure that her girls didn’t wind up in those kinds of marriages, that they spoke for themselves, that they were independent.
She gave them a quick hello and dashed toward the basement.
“Mother, do you want some Oreos?” Penny called. Lillian had to admit she was a sweet girl, if a little indulged by her circumstances.
“Thank you. Maybe later.” Lillian closed the basement door behind her and began sorting through the clothes that she hoped would suit and fit Carrie, now and after the baby, as well as some of her old forgotten maternity dresses she’d hidden away in a steamer trunk. She piled everything into a rickety laundry cart that would also accommodate the baby clothes and maternity wear Irene would drop off soon.
Lillian claimed a used coffee tin from the storage shelves. She’d always kept a few in case they came in handy for something. Peter used to tease her about it. Taking it upstairs, she dropped in a few coins, and instead of the echo evoking a feeling of emptiness, her heart raced at the promise of saving her change and extra money to help a girl in need. She’d give all the money she had—the money Peter gave her—if she thought it would help someone like her mother.
A stifled sob caught in Lillian’s throat. She couldn’t get the photo that she’d been shown at Friends Hospital—the photo of Anna’s scar—out of her mind. She ran to the rec room and pulled out more photo albums. Open. Open. This one. The next one. Pulled the photos from the pages where they had been glued so many years before. Searching.
She didn’t find any more hidden photos, but she couldn’t believe what she saw. Why had she never noticed before?
Within minutes, she had photos strewn over half the floor—picture after picture of her mother in long sleeves, stockings, and scarves at the same time everyone else wore sleeveless shirts, shorts, even bathing suits. How had she not noticed this discrepancy in all the times she’d viewed these pictures?
Would she even have believed it if she had?
Lillian didn’t fight back her sobs now. She let them rip.
“Mother?” Penny and Pammie walked into the room, Penny holding a plate of Oreos. Pammie carrying a glass of milk. They almost looked too scared to come closer. Lillian sniffled and rubbed her tears off her eyes, hoping her mascara wasn’t too smeared. Her daughters weren’t used to seeing her cry, and she didn’t want to frighten them more than they already were right now, watching their mother break down.
Lillian knew all too well how challenging it was to watch one’s mother break.
“We brought you cookies and milk,” Pammie said.
Lillian managed to smile. A child’s comforting gesture. Pammie could be sweet when she wanted to be too.
“What’s wrong?” Penny asked, and Lillian knew her concern was genuine.
“I need to tell you about your grandmother—my mother,” Lillian said.
“We know. She lives at the hospital,” Penny said.
“Well, there’s more.”
“It’s a mental hospital. We know,” Pammie said.
Lillian found herself choking up again and blew her nose in an effort to stem her tears so she could explain things to her girls. They deserved to know the truth.
“It’s okay if she’s crazy,” Penny said, her voice reassuring.
Crazy? No. Their grandmother wasn’t crazy. She was abused. At the thought of her mother and the reason she was in Friends Hospital, Lillian found herself sobbing again, soaking her tissue. Penny began to cry too, burying her head on her sister’s shoulder. Pammie had always been the strong one, and even she gasped for breath.
Lillian was pretty sure her daughters didn’t know exactly why they were crying, perhaps in sympathy with their mother, but it was clear they were sad too.
“I need to tell you something. Your grandmother wasn’t . . . wasn’t crazy. Not at first,” Lillian said. “She was hurt by my father. Do you understand?”
They nodded, though Lillian wasn’t sure they did. They’d been protected from society’s hidden dark side until now. “And when he died, his parents had her committed to a mental hospital so no one would find out what he’d done to her.”
“Did he hurt you too?” Pammie said, opening her eyes wide.
Penny ran to her and put her arms around her mother. “Was he mean to you?”
Lillian shook her head, and she sensed relief as her daughters exhaled. This was something Lillian struggled to make sense of. Her father, she remembered, had been a strict disciplinarian but not violent—never toward her. He required As in all her classes at school. She had to make her bed each morning, take her dishes to the sink as soon as dinner was finished, and help with household and yard chores. But weren’t all fathers like that?
And he’d also built sandcastles, unwrapped ice-cream bars, and jumped her over waves. She believed the photographs, the notes, and what her mother could no longer tell her, because there was something in her heart that she knew was true: her mother had been fine one day and the next was taken away from her.
It was like she and her mother had known and lived with two different men.
“I don’t understand,” Penny said. “Why did she have to go away if he was the bad one?”
Lillian closed her eyes and sighed. “I don’t know exactly what happened; I was younger than you. But it was wrong. I don’t think anyone believed her, and in those days . . .” She hesitated. What she was about to say was still true. She let out a breath. “In those days people thought that the men knew what was best for the women, so if he hurt her, she must have deserved it.”
“What did your grandparents say?” Pammie asked.
“They were the ones who sent her there. Either because they didn’t believe her, or so no one would find out the truth about their son. I don’t think we’ll ever know, now that they’re gone.”
“That’s really sad,” Penny said.
“Yes, it is sad.”
“Can we go see her? Take her flowers, or candy?” This suggestion from Pammie surprised Lillian. Maybe she hadn’t failed her older daughter as much as she’d thought.
“See who?” Peter was in the doorway, looking at the three of them—and the mess of photographs around them—with a face full of confusion.
Lillian wiped her hands over her tears and then on her skirt, getting black streaks on the fabric. She hoped she didn’t look as bad as she felt. No husband should come home to three crying females.
“Are you okay?”
“Of course. The girls and I were just talking about something sad.” She stood and looked hard at Peter. She wasn’t going to discuss this now. “So—what are you doing home so early?”
Peter still looked puzzled, but he followed her lead. “The electricity went out at the office. In the whole area. It won’t be fixed for hours. We sent everyone home.”