“Hey, hey, hold on, Grace. Hold on,” said Bradley, jumping up from his chair and walking out the back door of the office building. As soon as the door closed behind him, he said, “Take a breath, Grace. Take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on.”
* * *
He had not before seen or heard Grace this upset, had never been witness to this kind of breakdown. Grace was, to the core, stoic and unflappable, and in this manner, in addition to all the others, unlike Bradley’s previous girlfriends. A girlfriend’s first tears were sometimes sweet and endearing, Bradley thought. Soon enough, however, their tears came too easily and too often. Some of his girlfriends had used them to get their way, whether it was to win an argument or convince Bradley, on the verge of breaking off the relationship, to give their love another chance. Grace was not this kind of operator. She was deeply hurt and upset. “Grace, what’s wrong?”
She took two deep breaths and then told him about the meeting with her mother, how she was determined to make it a positive meeting, and how she had turned it, instead, into a disaster. “I told her that the day I walked out of her life was the happiest day of her life.”
“Really?” Grace was also not a vindictive person, so this comment surprised Bradley.
“Yes, Bradley, I did.” Grace blew her nose. “I actually think it’s true, but I had no intention of saying it to her.”
“Let’s back up,” said Bradley. “Were you nice at the beginning, or did you give her both barrels as soon as she sat down?”
“Bradley, I’m not ready to joke around about this. I am the meanest person on earth.”
“I can assure you that you are not the meanest person on earth,” he said. “I know at least three people who are meaner than you.” This comment was met with silence. “Okay,” he said. “No more joking around. But hey, I’ve got to walk into a meeting in about five minutes, so here’s what I’m proposing. Do not start the car until you have calmed down completely. And drive very, very carefully. As my dad would say, you’ve got precious cargo.”
“I will,” said Grace.
“I’ve got to go,” said Bradley. “I’ll try to get out of here early. And I’ll pick up some pizza and a salad on the way home for dinner.” This would be a win-win, Bradley thought. It would show his care and concern for Grace, and it would get him out of the black bean casserole leftovers on tap for dinner that evening.
“That sounds perfect.”
Grace hung up, took another deep breath, and then started the car. As soon as she was back on the highway, her phone rang. It was Dorrie. “How’s my favorite mother and child?” she asked. “I have been thinking about you. Bradley told me you were having lunch with your mother today.”
“Well, your timing couldn’t be better.”
“Are you done with lunch?”
“Oh yes,” said Grace. “We are quite done.”
“Are you driving?”
“I am,” said Grace. “I’m talking through the dashboard of my car.”
“I love that feature,” said Dorrie, who routinely talked on the phone in the car, using it, as she was fond of telling Bruce, as her second office. “Feel free to hang up, though, if you run into traffic or other distractions. Until then, tell me more about how things went.”
Dorrie listened as Grace ran through the details of the day: the hopeful intention, the detailed setup, the fiery execution, and the bloody aftermath. Grace talked for ten straight minutes without Dorrie saying a word. And when she had finished, Dorrie said, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay in that I’ve listened to and processed your story,” said Dorrie. “And okay in the sense that everything is—has the potential to be—okay.”
“I’m all ears,” said Grace.
“What happened between you and your mother, a woman with whom you’ve had a very difficult past and whom you have not seen since your wedding day, and only briefly then, is completely understandable,” began Dorrie. “Why this happened doesn’t have nearly as much to do with the things said, by you or your mother, as it does with your expectations of the event.”
“Meaning I was overly optimistic about how our reunion would go.”
“Exactly,” said Dorrie. “And this, by the way, is also understandable. You are a new mother, not only feeling love for your child, but also feeling generally optimistic about your new status in life. There can be a transference of this emotion into areas that don’t necessarily warrant it. You did not, for example, have an interest in contacting your mother before you had Hope.”
“Except for my wedding. She came to my wedding.”
“Well, yes. And that’s a similar set of circumstances, isn’t it? You were in love and your blissful feelings prompted you to contact your mother. Now what was that experience like?”
“It wasn’t much of an experience,” said Grace. “She came to the ceremony, but she left right afterward.”
“So you really didn’t have much of a chance to interact?”
“No, nothing more than a hello and a brief hug. I thought I’d have a chance to talk with her at the reception.”
“That meeting didn’t dissolve into this meltdown that you just described to me because there was no time or opportunity for confrontation. You exchanged pleasantries, and then the event, the encounter, was over. And so this planted a seed in the back of your mind that a reunion with your mother might actually work.”
“But it can’t work, can it?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” said Dorrie. “I think your relationship with your mother, as strained as it is now, is salvageable. But only if it’s gone about in the right way.”
“What should I do?”
Dorrie leaned back in her chair and put her shoeless feet up on her desk. She often hesitated before presenting what she called solution options to her patients for them to take home and chew on until the following week’s session. She wanted her patients to come up with their own solutions. But she was not in the middle of a weekly conversation series with Grace; no, Grace was in crisis, and she had asked for Dorrie’s help. “No matter what you choose to do, I would advise you to wait a few days, until your elevated emotions—and, no doubt, your mother’s as well—have returned to routine levels. And then you can reach out again. You can call her. You can e-mail her. You can write her a letter. Your mother grew up without computers and cellphones. A letter might be best.”
“And what would I say?” asked Grace. “Where would I begin?”
“That’s ultimately up to you,” said Dorrie. “But I would begin with an apology.”
“It’s all my fault, isn’t it?”
“Right now, that doesn’t matter. You are simply sorry it happened the way it did.”
CHAPTER 45
Grace sat down at their dining table with a mug of coffee. Hope had been fed and changed and was now lying in her bucket seat at Grace’s feet. Grace looked out the window at the water for a minute or so and then put the pen in her hand to the blank interior of the nature-scene note card in front of her.
Dear Mom.
Was she dear? Not really, Grace thought, but it seemed both harsh and stark to not include it. Using Dear in a written salutation was customary, after all; her mother would expect it; she would wonder, even fret perhaps, if it were absent.
Thank you for making the long trip from New Hampshire for our lunch the other day.
Grace crossed out this sentence, realizing as she did it that she would first need to draft the letter before copying it onto a clean note card. She walked to her bedroom to get two pieces of paper from the printer that sat under a table holding her parenting books and magazines. She sat back down at the table and, again, looked out the window. This was going to be harder than she thought.
* * *
I’m sorry about our lunch meeting the other day. You were so kind to agree to meet me and were rewarded for your efforts with my wrath and indignation.
Grace crossed it out. She got up from the table and refilled her
coffee cup and then walked outside onto the deck. Spring had arrived at the beach, along with the foragers in search of sea glass or tiny shells or smooth stones. Her neighbor, Fred, was working his metal detector, swinging it back and forth, a money-seeking metronome. He had told Grace several months ago that he had found more than twenty dollars the previous year in change that had fallen out of people’s pockets and beach bags. Grace suspected that coins were not his primary motivation for sweeping the beach. His wife of sixty years had died a couple years back; his metal detector was his new companion, getting him outside and into the world. When he looked in her direction, she waved to him, and then returned to the table, to the task, inside.
I’m sorry.
And she was sorry: for harboring this anger for such a long time, for her inability to forgive her mother, and for losing her temper at lunch. She thought it was true, that the day she had walked out of the house was the happiest day of her mother’s life, but she never should have said it. Her mother lived with enough guilt about the embarrassment she caused her family without Grace stoking still-glowing embers. Grace thought she had pushed past the anger, but based on her behavior with her mother, she was wrong. The tiny seed of discontent that had lain dormant in her stomach had grown into a giant, churning ball of fiery emotion. From the minute she saw her mother get out of the car; from the minute she had seen that denim skirt and modest cotton top, the rumblings in her stomach and the heart fluttering started.
Her grandparents were all about modesty and tradition. Grace, like her mother, was not allowed to wear pants. Pants were for men; skirts and dresses were for women. They, the skirts and dresses, could be pretty in a calico fabric kind of way but never showy. The top half of Grace’s childhood dresses typically featured some kind of pleating, a tucking of material designed to mitigate the prominence of the chest. The belt of the garment was tied at the waist, but never tightly, as to reveal the curve of the hip. And the hem fell below the knee, even when all of Grace’s classmates were wearing dresses and skirts with mid-thigh hemlines.
Grace’s hair, as long then as it was now, had been tied back at the base of the neck with a black grosgrain ribbon. This was how Laurie and Robin wore their hair, and how Grace was instructed to wear hers. She was not permitted to wear her hair down except for when she was showering or sleeping. Her schoolmates had long hair, too. But it was allowed the freedom of cascading over their shoulders, of swishing back and forth in the hallways, of being adorned with colorful hairbands. And the earlobes of the other girls were pierced, first with antiseptic studs, which were as soon as was medically sanctioned replaced with hoops and beads made from silver and gold. Grace’s fleshy lobes had been, until she left the house, plain, naked, ugly. Her requests to her mother for even the slightest modification of her clothing or the permission to wear clip-on earrings or tinted ChapStick were met with silence. Silence, in the Taylor household, was indeed golden.
That silence, the lack of explanation, is what Grace had found increasingly difficult to understand, to endure. As a young child, she did as she was told, no questions asked. But as she made her way into the fifth and sixth and seventh grades, she discovered how much she didn’t know, the direct result of her questions being met with a clamped-shut mouth and a stony face. She was able to ask some of her questions to the few classmates who would occasionally talk to her. But she was selective about what she asked, not wanting to confirm their suspicions that she was backward and uncool. Plus, she often doubted the veracity of what they reported.
The topic of sex was never discussed by the Taylors, at least not in Grace’s presence. Grace had asked a few what she considered fairly innocent questions, which had been met, nonetheless, with silence, or its inverse, lengthy lectures about morals and family values. So, with the help of books secreted from the town library shelves into the women’s bathroom, Grace had been able to piece together how and why she came to be. And once she had done that, she could see more clearly the trouble and burden her presence had caused for Robin, Laurie, and Rick. Of course they all wished that Grace had never been born. Of course the day she left was the happiest of her mother’s life. It marked the long-awaited end of the daily reminders of Robin’s shameful, sinful behavior.
Like her mother, Grace lived under the heavy weight of her grandparents’ judgment. But she had been able to capitalize on it. Because she had done her best to keep out of their way, she had spent a lot of time in her room. And because she had spent a lot of time in her room, she had become an avid reader and an excellent student. This, in the end, was her ticket out of hell. She got a full scholarship to a college they never could have or would have paid for, and she was free to go. Leaving her childhood home, Grace had to admit, was one of Grace’s happiest days, too. Yes, she had been alone in the world. But being alone was a much better option than continued oppression.
Grace brought her thoughts back to the paper in front of her. She carefully and slowly wrote the words onto the blank note card.
Dear Mom,
I’m sorry.
Love, Grace
p.s. Thank you for the lovely heart pattern pajamas for Hope.
It was not sufficient, but it was a start. It was what Grace could manage. She addressed the envelope and then walked, with Hope in the baby carrier strapped to her chest, to the post office downtown and dropped it in the mail slot.
Dorrie called that afternoon to see how Grace was coming along with the e-mail or letter to her mother.
“It’s done and in the mail,” said Grace.
“Really? Well, that’s impressive Grace. I’m pleased,” said Dorrie. “I wasn’t sure if I should call you or not. It would have been an awkward call if you had not yet taken action.”
“What’s awkward for you, Dorrie? You believe in full-body contact with life.”
Nothing, then: “Shall I take that as a compliment or something else?”
“As a compliment,” said Grace, “from one direct woman to another.”
“I’m all about directness.”
Grace smiled into the phone. “You are indeed.”
Dorrie took a sip of what Grace guessed was her third Diet Coke of the day. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“There’s not much to say.”
“Okay.”
“I told her I was sorry.”
“That’s good, Grace. That’s what we discussed—the need to express remorse for what happened. Go on.”
“That’s it.”
“That’s it, what?”
“That’s it, period. That’s the whole note,” said Grace. “Oh, and I thanked her for the gift for Hope.” Grace could hear Dorrie taking another sip of her soda, and knew this was not because Dorrie was thirsty. Or, even if she were thirsty, this intake of liquid was much more about time than it was about hydration. Grace practiced this herself; lots of people were familiar with this technique. One didn’t have to be a psychiatrist to know how to stall, how to think for several seconds before responding without necessarily appearing to do so, even though the party on the other end of the phone or the couch might be cognizant of the reason behind the pause. Grace decided to call her on it. “Tell me what you’re trying not to say.”
Dorrie laughed. “You’re funny.”
“And you’re still stalling.”
“I’m not stalling,” said Dorrie. “I’m digesting what you told me. It’s different from what I expected.”
“I surprised you?”
“You did.”
“It sounds like a bad surprise.”
“No,” said Dorrie. “I think it’s a good surprise. I like what you did. I like that you simply said you were sorry, that you didn’t attempt to rehash or justify or propose anything. You said what needed to be said.”
“What now?”
“We wait,” said Dorrie. “We wait for her reply.”
* * *
Three days later, Grace received a postcard from her mother. On the front were the words Spring in New Hampshire,
written in white script hovering over a montage of photos: a field of wildflowers, water running under a covered bridge, a potato, and Franklin Pierce—hardly an assemblage that would entice tourists to beat feet to the Granite State. Grace flipped it over and found in her mother’s handwriting the words:
Dear Grace,
I’m sorry about our disagreement the other day.
George and I are heading out of town for a couple weeks for our annual vacation. Can we try again when we get back?
Love, Robin
Grace looked at the postmark. Her mother had written the card and mailed it on the same day that Grace had written to her. And while Grace was not one to make far-fetched connections, she was pleased that she and her mother had been thinking about each other, had been apologizing to each other, at the same time.
CHAPTER 46
Bradley pulled open the new screen door he had installed the week before and walked into the house. He set his briefcase down next to the couch and walked through the kitchen and out onto the back deck. Grace was sitting at the table, under the umbrella, holding and talking to Hope. Bradley approached her and leaned in to kiss her check. “Hi,” he said. “What are you two up to?”
“Everything!” said Grace. “We had such a good day today. Hope was on her tummy holding her head up for almost twenty minutes—well, on and off.”
“That’s because she’s the strongest baby on the planet,” he said, kissing his daughter on the crown of her head.
“Do you want to see her do it? You won’t believe it. She defies gravity.”
“I’d love to,” said Bradley. “First, I’d like to take the run I didn’t take this morning and then a very quick swim. Be back in an hour?”
“That’s fine,” said Grace. “I can feed Hope and do some prep work for dinner.”
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