Chapter Eighteen #5
I didn’t want to see it, but I do, because it’s there. I wasn’t saying what I said to be cruel last night. Cal is Tom’s father, Felix. I’m very sorry about that.
What I want you to know most, though, is that you’re Tom’s father, because you are. You’re the father he’s grown up with, the only one he’s ever known. Please don’t love him any less, or let anything I’ve done come between the two of you.
I’ve tried to feel what I’m supposed to feel, but I always seem to fall short, or get it wrong. I’ve had so much resentment for you, at times. I’ve even resented Tom. I’ve lived a lot of years out of sorts about a problem, but I think the problem is me.
I’ve spoken to Cal about this, and told him it’s my feeling that Becky should know. If you know, she should know. But if and when you tell Tom—that is up to you.
I’m sorry we were never the people we wanted to be, with each other.
I’m sorry there had to be so much deception to make it work for as long as it did.
Thank you for proposing to marry me. That was the greatest moment of my life, and even if it doesn’t seem that way right now, I want you to know it.
Love,
Margaret
She pressed a tissue against her eyes over and over as she wrote.
She sealed the envelope, carried it upstairs, and left it on Felix’s nightstand, on top of the copy of The Caine Mutiny she’d given him at Christmas.
Then, having gone back and forth on whether or not she should, and whether or not she had time, she returned to the desk and wrote to Becky Jenkins.
A briefer letter, sticking to the facts, offering no details or evidence—let Cal provide those—and asking Becky to please, if she could manage, continue to show Tom the kindness Margaret assumed she always had.
Regretfully, she wrote before signing her name, and the word looked out of place, somehow, meant for an RSVP.
She had to keep moving, though. She folded the letter, addressed and stamped the envelope.
In the garage, she threw her purse into the car, brought the door up, flooding the space with light, then noticed the Dolice had already slid off the coats and into the footwell.
Some of the coats had slid down there too.
They’d all be on the floor the first time she braked if she didn’t move them.
Quickly, she opened the back passenger door, grabbed the coats, moved them to the trunk, then secured the painting.
Her eyes watered steadily and her heart raced as she tried to think if there was anything she was forgetting. Keep moving, her mind said. Go.
But she’d taken too long. She was closing the passenger door when Tom rolled up the driveway on his bicycle.
His dark red hair scattered over his forehead.
His yellow-and-white-striped T-shirt half-tucked into his jeans.
His schoolbooks strapped to the bookrack over his back tire.
She saw his eyes move from her to the open trunk.
The suitcases and coats, the open bag of shoes. She saw confusion bend his brow.
She wanted to pull a curtain down between him and this sight—and leave it down forever. But she couldn’t, now. She couldn’t do anything but bring the trunk lid down.
He flinched when it closed, his hands still gripping his handlebars.
She had the urge to walk over to him, hug him, tell him something that would help make sense out of what she was doing.
But what sense was there to be made? What sense had she been able to conjure out of what her own mother had done to her?
She would explain it to him when she could bear to.
She would explain it to him when she understood it herself.
She had to go. She walked around to the driver’s side and got into the car.
Dragged her hand across her eyes as she turned over the engine.
She was careful, backing past him. But she couldn’t look at him again. Not into his eyes. She kept him in her periphery, and in no time, he was gone from even there.
—
Out on Route 23, the sky was a vast dome of periwinkle.
The sun beat down through the windshield and warmed her hands on the steering wheel, and the air coming in from the open windows cooled her eyes.
I’m sorry, she thought as she neared the edge of town.
Bonhomie began to fall away, until it was just the outlying industrial plants and warehouses, and then one last gas station, and a gun store.
To houses sitting way off by themselves, and barns, and an old rusted-out hearse up on cinderblocks with a For Sale sign on its windshield.
I’m sorry, Tom, she thought, passing barns and far-off combines.
I have to go, Felix. As if she were still there, talking to one of them.
I have to go, Tom. I’m sorry. Had her mother talked to her after leaving?
Had she almost changed her mind and gone back?
Margaret had thought, if this ever happened to her, she would finally understand what her mother had experienced, actually doing it, beyond the emotional pain, and the guilt, and the sadness—because surely there was more to it than that.
Surely there was at least a glimmer of a notion of having done the right thing.
She kept her eyes out for that as she drove.
She kept her hands at ten and two, the way Felix had taught her—except to roll down the window. The air out here smelled like husk.