by Kelly Rimmer
“Grace…” Dad whispers, reaching down to touch the notes
with a shaking fingertip. “Grace was beautiful. In the place…
what’s it called? With the roof.”
“Daddy, I need to know how she died. It’s very important,”
I choke.
“In the…” He picks up the clipboard, then he looks right into
my eyes. “She went. I’m sorry.”
“She didn’t die in a car accident, did she? I found her death
certificate. I saw about… I saw about the cause of death and it
says…” God, this is even harder than I thought it would be. I
can’t say the word decomposition, so instead I say weakly, “The
certificate says it was too late to tell how she died.”
Dad closes his eyes, and a single tear runs down over the swol-
len skin of his cheek. He pulls the clipboard against his chest
and shakes his head.
“She was beautiful in the place… .”
“For God’s sake, Dad, just tell me: did she kill herself?”
“I didn’t…” Dad rasps. He takes my hands in his, and his des-
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perate gaze bores into mine. “Maryanne. I didn’t mean what I
said. Forgive me.”
“Daddy, it’s me. I’m Beth!” I’m raising my voice despite my best efforts to stay calm. I’m so damned frustrated now, but so
is Dad, and this is cruel and I know I need to stop, but I can’t.
Another tear rolls down his cheek, and his face is reddening,
and the wheeze is coming harder and harder and spittle is fly-
ing everywhere as he speaks little more than winded gibberish.
“I took her away. I couldn’t stand it. I was angry at myself.
What she’d done to your mother. And I took her away from you.
What’s the word, Ruth? And I have to say please but I can’t.”
The door opens abruptly and Tim and Hunter are there. I
rise, guiltily scooping the clipboard from Dad’s lap, trying to
wipe my cheeks as I do.
“What’s going on, Beth?” Tim asks flatly.
“I just needed to talk to Dad,” I say. I try to keep my tone
light, but my voice is hoarse and I know I’m not fooling anyone
this time. Tim looks pissed, but Hunter looks wary.
“Lunch is ready,” my husband says cautiously. “Maybe we
should all go back out there…”
“Hey, Hunter, could you take Dad out to the table?” Tim asks.
I open my mouth to protest, but Tim’s gaze narrows. Hunter
waits for me to confirm, but when I nod, he takes my father
from the room, and Tim closes the door behind them and pins
me with a glare.
“What was that about?”
“I just needed to talk to him.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“You upset him,” Tim says furiously. “Do you still not get it?
He’s dying. I’ve told you it’s pointless to argue with him—why on earth would you raise your voice at him today?”
“I didn’t raise my—”
“I could hear you through the door!”
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Kelly Rimmer
“What…what did you hear?” I ask after a pause. I sound
guilty. I feel guilty.
“I heard you correcting your name,” he exclaims. He shoots
me a disappointed look, but then his tone softens as he says,
“I know it’s distressing and I know it’s frustrating. But just let
him be, Beth. Just soak up these hours, because we don’t have
many left.”
I swallow hard, and then look at my brother and nod curtly.
He sighs and throws the door open, then disappears into the
hallway.
I tuck the clipboard beneath a pile of clothes on Dad’s bed,
wipe my eyes and follow him out.
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13
Maryanne
1958
“Mail for you, Mary,” one of my students called as she sorted
the letters into their pigeonholes beside my office. I was tired
that day—having been out until curfew the night before, and
even after that, I raced back to the residential hall to talk until
the small hours with the undergrad students I supervised.
My supervisor, Professor Callahan, had been to New York on
a trip earlier that year, and he’d gifted me a copy of The Second
Sex on his return. He told me I simply had to read it and report
back with my thoughts. Well, several months later I was now
making my own students read it, and the women in the resi-
dential hall were still discussing that now hopelessly dog-eared
book long past midnight almost every night.
We were the generation of women born waiting for a gen-
der revolution, and Simone de Beauvoir was the heroine we’d
been praying for. We had granted ourselves permission to say
the unsayable—we wanted more for our lives than “domestic
bliss.” It was an intoxicating freedom, and I felt the start of a
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Kelly Rimmer
momentum that I didn’t fully understand, as if our discourse
in the small hours were building something that might really
change the world.
I was in a fog as I walked to my mail slot that day, exhausted
but still intellectually buzzing from the night before, expect-
ing only to find some piece of administrative mail. When I saw
my sister’s handwriting on the envelope, my mood improved
immediately.
I made myself a cup of coffee and took the letter back into
my office, closing the door behind me so I could have some pri-
vacy. Supervising the undergrad students in the dorm was fine,
but every now and again I liked to close that door and pretend I
didn’t live in a dormitory that housed fifty-eight young women.
As I held Grace’s letter that day, I hoped for genuine good news.
I’d seen her in person on just a few occasions over the years since
I moved to California—her wedding day, one Christmas when
Father unexpectedly sent me a ticket to come home, and just
after the birth of her twins when I’d been in Seattle to attend a
conference. The light had dimmed in my sister’s eyes over that
time, and in my youthful arrogance, I was certain that Patrick
was entirely to blame.
I saw my sister as the victim of a dreadful epidemic: she had
followed the script expected of her and married the first man
who made her heart flutter. Now she was living out her life
as a housewife, and whenever I thought about her situation,
I couldn’t understand how she could be anything other than
completely unfulfilled and miserable with her lot. My life was
exciting—jazz clubs and satisfying philosophical debates, earn-
ing my own money and controlling my own destiny. I worked
hard, but my life was fun. I flirted with boys when I wanted to,
kissed them or even more if the urge overtook me, and gener-
ally managed to f
eel like life was an endlessly thrilling game.
I loathed the distance that had grown between us, but even
so, I felt powerless to close it. When Grace wrote me, her let-
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ters painted a bright picture of domestic bliss that I didn’t for
one second believe. And when I wrote her, I never really knew
what to say in response. I was far from positive by nature, but
I still believed that one day, Grace and I would connect again,
and we’d restore our once-close sisterhood. Maybe once her
children were older, and we found common interests. Maybe
once she finally did as my parents so wished she would, and di-
vorced that lout of a husband.
Every time a letter from Grace arrived, I thought the exact
same thing: maybe this letter will herald the dawn of a new era
between us. I tore into the envelope, and was startled to find
the text was short.
Maryanne,
Please call me at 7 a.m. on Saturday morning at the number below.
This telephone number will reach the house of Mrs. Hills, our next-
door neighbor. I am in desperate need of help and don’t know who
else to turn to. Grace.
I set the letter down on my desk. For all those years, I’d
wished for something real from Grace…and here it was, but I
didn’t feel relief at all. I felt scared. I could read the subtext, and
it was evident that something was dreadfully wrong. I wanted
to call her right away—but there was obviously a reason she’d
given me such specific instructions. Instead, I sweated out the
week, living a million worst-case scenarios in my mind over the
sleepless nights that followed. What if she was ill? What if one
of the children was? Or, as seemed most likely, what if Patrick
had done something dreadful?
I called as instructed at precisely 7 a.m. on Saturday. Grace
answered on the very first ring.
“Maryanne?”
“Grace? What on earth is going on?”
“I need your help.”
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“Anything,” I said, and despite the years of strain between
us, I meant it. “What’s wrong? Why did I have to call you at
your neighbor’s house?”
“Patrick is still asleep at home with the children, and Mrs.
Hills is out tending her chickens. Her husband is mostly deaf so
I knew we’d have some privacy for a few minutes if you called
now.”
“Okay? But… why do we need privacy?”
“I’m pregnant,” she said, then we both drew in a very deep
breath. I quickly did the mental calculation. Seeing this preg-
nancy through would mean five children under five years old.
I wasn’t surprised at all when Grace then continued miserably,
“And I need to not be pregnant. Will you help me? I don’t even
know where to start.”
“Have you tried all of the at-home methods?” I asked her,
gently.
“I’ve scalded my skin in hot baths. On Tuesday I drank bleach
and vomited until I passed out. I threw myself off the back stairs.
I carried Patrick’s armchair around the house. I even tried to get
some slippery-elm bark from the chemist, but he would only
give me a tincture.” She laughed bitterly. “Apparently, too many young women had been coming in buying sheets of bark to try
to end their pregnancies.”
It would have been much easier for me to find her help if she
was in California. Abortion was illegal there, too, but I at least
knew how to access it. I’d been living on campus for five years—
I’d seen my share of girls go down that route. Pregnancy meant
expulsion from university. Rubbers and diaphragms could be
found if a girl was determined enough but they were expensive
and notoriously unreliable, and while we’d all heard of trials of
a rumored miracle pill that would prevent a pregnancy, it wasn’t
yet available to the public. My generation was at the mercy of
their fertility, so accessing some kind of abortion was our pri-
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mary form of birth control. There were few alternatives—our
options were dreadfully limited.
“I just don’t know who to ask for help, and I don’t have any
money,” Grace sobbed.
“I’ll get you money. And I’ll help you find someone.”
“I hate asking you, Maryanne. Truly, I do. We would have to
be so careful…” I could almost hear the cogs of her mind turn-
ing as she thought it all through. “You must remember Besty
Umbridge?”
I did remember her. Betsy was in Grace’s year at school, and
when she got pregnant at just sixteen, her boyfriend Henry had
stepped in to help—tracking down a backyard abortionist who
ended the pregnancy. But Betsy developed an infection after
her procedure, and at the hospital, doctors had immediately sus-
pected that her story of spontaneous miscarriage was untrue and
called the police. Arranging an abortion was a felony offense
in Washington State, and both Henry and Betsy spent several
years in prison. Even once they were released, they became so-
cial pariahs. It was a tremendous scandal for our whole commu-
nity, and I remember being outraged that something that many
of my peers were forced to do from time to time could actually
destroy their futures.
“I’ll come home,” I finally said. It was a test. I was in my
second year of a master’s program, as well as working two part-
time jobs. Grace knew I had commitments, and despite how
frayed our relationship had become, I still trusted that she would
never allow me to interrupt my life in California if she had any
other option. If she had protested at the inconvenience to me,
I’d figure out how to raise the money in California and wire or
post it to her—but if she didn’t…
“I’m scared,” Grace blurted. “I don’t want to do this but I
have to, and I can’t tell Patrick so I have to do it by myself.”
“Why can’t you tell him?”
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“He doesn’t get it, Mary. He just doesn’t understand that I
have nothing left to give.”
When I hung up the phone, I went to pack a suitcase.
I knew Grace’s address by heart, but I’d never seen the house
she lived in. When the taxi pulled up at the front gate, I thought
there had been some mistake.
“Are you sure?” I asked the driver. He grunted and held out
his hand for the fare. I looked back to the house and saw the
children running wild through the unruly yard. I squinted at
the eldest of them, and when I recognized the shape of Patrick’s
eyes, felt my heart sink. Tim had grown up a lot in t
he years
since I’d seen him, but there was no denying that this was my
nephew. I paid the driver and let myself into the yard, only to
be swarmed by filthy children. Little Beth was just a toddler,
and she was wearing a ratty diaper that was so full, it hung al-
most to her knees. Her walk was little more than a waddle, and
she stepped right up to me, right into my space, to stare up at
me with curious eyes.
“Who are you?” Tim demanded, crossing his arms as if he
could or would defend his siblings from me. “You look like my
mother.”
“I’m your aunt Maryanne, child. Where is your mother?”
“Laundry,” Jeremy offered helpfully.
“Why are you here?” Tim demanded.
“Can you just get your mother for me?”
Tim surveyed me up and down, pursing his lips. The boy was
no taller than my hips. His defiance might have been comical
if the situation weren’t so awful.
“Momma doesn’t like it when we interrupt her in the laun-
dry.”
I sighed impatiently and walked around the house into the
backyard. It seemed a safe assumption that I’d find the laundry
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easily enough—the house was tiny. I walked to the back door
and went to twist the doorknob, only to find it was locked.
“Grace?” I called hesitantly. “Are you in there?”
I heard her fumble with the lock, and then she was there—
all pale and wide-eyed, her face streaked with tears. It was 11
o’clock in the morning, but she was still wearing a tattered night-
gown. Grace was thin and drawn and visibly drained.
“I’m having a bad day,” she said unevenly.
I gaped at her.
“I can see that.”
“It’s the thought of it starting all over again, you see,” she
whispered, eyes wild as she glanced down at her own body. “It
plays such tricks on my mind.”
Over the next few hours I got a glimpse into the reality of
my sister’s life, and it seemed to confirm everything I’d ever
feared about the pitfalls of married life for women. I knew that
to Grace, her courtship and engagement to Patrick had been a
fairy tale, but the reality of life after their wedding seemed to be
a nightmare. Patrick had all of the power, Grace had all of the re-
sponsibility, and the pressure of that existence was crushing her.
The children were surprisingly self-reliant, helping themselves