by Sue Miller
I had seen my grandmother only twice since that day in Maine when she made my grandfather give me the money, once at his funeral, and once when my mother came east to take charge of what remained of her life. I drove to Connecticut then, and spent a week helping to rearrange the house so Gram could get around more easily. My relations with my mother were strained—it was clear that she blamed me for having lost custody of Molly. My grandmother recognized Mother only occasionally, and mistook me for Babe or one of my cousins most of the time. It seemed astonishing and sad to me that all the affectionate and difficult hierarchy, the complexity of my mother’s family, should have been reduced, finally, to these diminished and fragile connections. Except, of course, for the claim of personality it would exert in different ways on each of us forever.
Now I often think of those long summers in Maine, the safe circle of family that closed the world out, just as surely as the lake kept strangers away. No matter what the price, I think there was value in all that.
But that isn’t what I have, nor what I can offer Molly. I’ve made do with a different set of circumstances—with our distance, our brief times together, with all that’s truncated, too little, too small in what we have. And I take a certain pride in how well I’ve done this, in thinking that perhaps I’m suited to it in some way, as other, more passionate people might not be.
I think often of the first time I saw Molly after the court decision. I was in Washington and I’d just found the apartment in Everett and Renata’s house. After I’d paid the deposit and they’d given me the key, I went to a poster shop and bought three prints for Molly’s room. One of them was the Degas dancer that I’d had in my room in Schenectady as a young girl. I carefully hung them, pressing the thumbtacks into the outermost edge of each poster. I planned to bring her here, to show her where we’d be together. I tried not to think of how empty it all looked as I shut the door and headed to Brian and Brenda’s.
I had instructions to their apartment house, mailed to me by Brenda. Even so I got lost several times. By the time I parked in the lot reserved for visitors, I was twenty minutes late. I rang their buzzer and the British voice I’d heard once before asked who was there.
“Anna Dunlap,” I said. After several seconds the inner door buzzed loudly. I went in, crossed the lobby. There were four or five children playing in it—otherwise it was deserted. They were well-dressed boys, perhaps nine or ten years old. They stood behind the square pillars and shot each other with silver pistols, black plastic machine guns. Their voices made the right noises: “Ack-ack-ack-ack-ack-ack,” or “Pkiu! pkiu!” and the glamorous marble lobby echoed them in what I imagined must be a gratifying way. As I pushed the elevator button, I heard one boy call out angrily, “You’re dead, Joshua! You’re dead!” A quieter voice answered, “No, I’m not. I’m not even in this game.”
There were four wings, with arrows pointing to them, as I got off the elevator. I turned right, towards wing C, and began walking, nearly running really. The halls were long and dark. There was dull red carpeting on the floor, and beige wallpaper. Every six feet or so, I passed under the burning glare of a recessed spotlight in the ceiling. At the end of the hall there was a T-intersection, another little sign. I turned left as my instructions from Brenda told me to do. Behind every fourth or fifth door I could hear music or a muffled voice, but mostly there was just the rustle of my clothing as I moved, my own breathing in my ears. At the next T, I turned right. The numbers were closer. Suddenly, down near the end of the corridor, the wall opened, light fell in onto the carpet.
A small figure stepped into the hall. Her hand reached behind her, still holding the doorframe. She watched me cautiously until I’d passed under several of the lights. Then, the noise of her footsteps muted in the padded corridor, she ran to me. I kneeled, braced myself for her. She ran into my embrace as she had those weeks ago in Cambridge, and I picked her up, held her tight. Her hands rose to my face, stroked it, patted it, as though this were part of her way of seeing me, as though she were blind. I swallowed hard not to cry, and said her name over and over. Then her hands, smelling of sweat, of soap, covered my eyes. “Hey, I can’t see you. Let me out!” I said. “Let me out, let me out, let me out.” She laughed and brought her face up to mine. In the secret dark circle of her hands, her breath was warm and sweet on me. She kissed me, carefully, daintily, lips pursed—four, five, six times—exactly on my mouth.
I held her tight for a long moment in our unseeing embrace. It seemed the same, her smell, her touch, the wiry density of her limbs. Then I set her down, let her go. And she turned away ahead of me to lead me to her new life, to show me everything. Her dress was rucked up in back, her hair wispy and wild from our embrace. Everything was familiar, and also unknown.
“Ah yes,” I remember thinking, as though hearing a kind of music in my head. “This is how it begins.”
Books by Sue Miller:
THE DISTINGUISHED GUEST
ISBN 0-06-093000-4 (paperback)
“As in the work of Jane Austen . . . Sue Miller’s tale of a proud, elderly woman who visits and bedevils her son . . . is genuinely adult fiction.”—Chicago Tribune
“So rich, so thoughtful, so absorbing that reading it is like experiencing the passage in our own lives.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review
FAMILY PICTURES
ISBN 0-06-092998-7 (paperback)
“Absolutely flawless. It captures perfectly the sass and grit of family life. Harrowing and funny and haunting.”—Chicago Tribune
“Miller does an extraordinary job of representing the terrible (or wonderful), thick intimacy of family life.”—San Francisco Chronicle
FOR LOVE
ISBN 0-06-092999-5 (paperback)
“Vivid realism, insight and understanding . . . Ms. Miller writes with wisdom, compassion, and an almost palpable sense of reality about the ambiguous and difficult choices that . . . at one time or another, life demands of us.”—Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Each of her characters is complete and distinctive, a compendium of lovable and exasperating traits.”—Los Angeles Times
INVENTING THE ABBOTTS
ISBN 0-06-092997-9 (paperback)
“Compelling. . . . A candid exploration of the frail and gritty truths about trying to love without harm or reprisal.”—Boston Globe
“[Sue Miller] has a genius for understanding sexual behavior, and for transforming it into art.”—Hilma Wolitzer
THE GOOD MOTHER
ISBN 0-06-050593-1 (paperback)
“This powerful novel proves as subtle as it is dramatic, as durable—in its emotional afterlife—as it is instantly readable.”—New York Times
“A strong, touching, deeply believable exploration of a woman’s emotional life.” —Mademoiselle
Available wherever books are sold, or call 1-800-331-3761 to order.
About the Author
SUE MILLER is the bestselling author of While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures, Inventing the Abbotts, and The Good Mother. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Praise for the Good Mother
“This powerful novel proves as subtle as it is dramatic, as durable—in its emotional afterlife—as it is instantly readable.”
—New York Times
“What makes this book truly remarkable is its authenticity. . . . One of the greatest pleasures of The Good Mother comes . . . from the author’s skillful rendition of . . . the commonplace of motherhood. I think virtually no one has done it better.”
—Linda Wolfe, New York Times Book Review
“One of those rare novels you live in more than you read.”
—Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey, author of Home Free
“A strong, touching, deeply believable exploration of a woman’s emotional life.”
—Mademoiselle
“Astonishing. . . . Courageous and unique.”
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��Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Each of us will read in our lifetime a handful of novels so emotionally powerful that their characters will remain real to us as long as we live. Such a book is Sue Miller’s first novel, The Good Mother.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“The Good Mother will stir strong feelings. . . . It forces us to assess again how we view sexuality and how we wish to raise our children.”
—Ms. magazine
“A tour de force. Sue Miller goes straight to the dark heart of the matter of modern sexual morality.”
—Russell Banks, author of Continental Drift
“A gripping story, one that stays with the reader like a personal memory.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Remarkable. . . . The characters are vivid, real, and absolutely believable.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Timely. . . . A page-turner.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“Deeply felt, poignant, engrossing. It creates a profound emotional impact.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Engrossing. . . . The Good Mother would be an extraordinarily skillful piece of fiction from a veteran, so as a first book it is a remarkable accomplishment.”
—Chicago Tribune
“A very important book and a beautiful one. It makes clear so many things that are happening to women today and to children and men as well.”
—Tillie Olsen, author of Tell Me a Riddle
“A stunner!”
—Library Journal
“Sue Miller is an important and compelling new writer.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
Also by Sue Miller
The World Below
While I Was Gone
The Distinguished Guest
For Love
Family Pictures
Inventing the Abbotts and Other Stories
The Good Mother
Copyright
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1986 by HarperCollins Publishers.
THE GOOD MOTHER. Copyright © 1986 by Sue Miller. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First Perennial edition published 2002.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 0-06-050593-1
EPub Edition January 2016 ISBN 9780062463500
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