by Kelly Rimmer
Another hour passes, and now I’ve given up on keeping the place pristine and I’ve made a huge mess. I’ve tipped out drawers and dumped the contents of shelves onto the floor and benches. I’m frustrated, and when I finally concede defeat, I belatedly realize that I’m sweaty, dusty and exhausted. I pour a glass of water and walk to the phone to dial the first number I ever learned by heart.
“Walsh Homes,” a chirpy voice on the other end says.
“Hello there, Janet, it’s Beth. Is Ruth available?”
Predictably, I wait almost ten minutes for my sister to pick up. I’m important to Ruth...but everything is important to Ruth. She’s become the kind of woman who habitually juggles an improbable number of balls, makes it look easy, and then unwittingly shames everyone who can’t quite manage the same feats of endurance. School wasn’t Ruth’s forte, but everything else in life seems to be. Ruth is the perfect mother to three unruly sons, but to hear her speak about them, you’d think she was purposefully crafting them that way. Ruth has the world’s most perfect husband in Ellis—a man who genuinely seems to live and breathe to make her dreams come true. Ruth has a magnificent family home, one that she designed herself, and then of course, she managed the building herself, too.
Even now, at almost forty, I sometimes feel like a miserable failure compared to Ruth. She has shiny, chestnut hair, beautiful amber eyes and a figure most women would die for. I’ve been breastfeeding for five months but I’m still somehow flat-chested, and my frizzy, dark brown hair has been even harder to tame since pregnancy. I have the most ordinary set of blue eyes that you’ve ever seen and my skin tone is either porcelain white or sunburned—there is no in-between. There isn’t enough mascara in the world to give me decent eyelashes, while Ruth’s have always seemed unnaturally thick, unnaturally long. Despite years of working on building sites with teams of less-than-sophisticated tradesmen, Ruth is still so elegant and capable. Worst of all, she has the audacity to be funny and kind, too. Except when she’s reminding me how utterly busy she always is—and when she finally answers the call, that’s exactly where the conversation begins.
“Beth, I’m so sorry it took me so long to get off that other call. It was a supplier who’s been messing us around on roofing gear and honest to God, I just tore him a new one, so hopefully that’s the end of that for now. Things are crazy here. Crazy! But seriously, I’m so glad you called. I’ve been trying to—”
“Ruth, take a breath, for goodness’ sake...” I sigh, already exhausted by the call. I hear the sound of her sharp inhalation as if I’d deeply offended her, and I groan inwardly. Ruth and I have always been close and I love her more than just about anyone. At the moment, though, there’s something about her too-perfect life that grates on me. It’s possible that I’ve been avoiding her a little lately...but I really need help today, and Ruth has access to the resources I need.
“Of course, I’m sorry. What did you want?” She’s speaking too slowly now. I appreciate the effort.
“Did you know Dad installed a lock on the attic door?” I ask quietly.
There is a pause, and then Ruth murmurs, “No, that’s awfully strange.”
“He must have done it ages ago, but we haven’t had cause to go up there since he got sick.”
“Are you sure it’s a lock? The door’s probably just jammed.”
I stifle my impatience but can’t quite manage to swallow my sarcasm.
“I’m not a carpenter, Ruth, but I do know what a lock looks like. Someone has installed a new doorknob and I can’t find the key anywhere. Can someone come help me get in there?”
“I’ll send some of the boys around tomorrow morning. That’s really odd. How’s the rest of the house? Have you got much packing done? Is everything else normal?”
“As normal as it could be, given the heart of the house is dying.”
We sigh at the same time, and I know that at least when it comes to Dad, we feel exactly the same way.
* * *
At three o’clock the next morning, I find myself awake, sitting in the rocking chair in Noah’s room. He’s been up and down all night tonight. I know that my best shot at getting him back to sleep is a tummy full of milk, so as he fusses at my breast, I keep placing my nipple back in his mouth, hoping to convince him to drink. When he finally makes a halfhearted effort at latching on, I let my mind wander. The television is on but the sound is muted. Scenes from a romantic comedy play out before my eyes, but for the first time in a long time, my thoughts travel back in time.
I’ve long wished I could have known Grace Walsh. I’ve sometimes felt uncomfortable thinking of her as Mom, maybe because I never got to call her that. And for most of my life Dad fulfilled the role of Mom for me. I don’t ever remember him being a stereotypically clueless single father. Perhaps the one exception was when Ruth got her first period, and the school called him to ask him to bring supplies. He panicked and instead he picked her up and took her to our family doctor, so that she could explain what was happening. He did much the same thing when I got my first serious boyfriend—leaving it to Dr. Lisa to talk to me about birth control.
Even so, my father did an excellent job of parenting us. As a result, until this year, I’ve been an exceedingly confident woman, never doubting my ability to navigate my world.
In fact, the only real struggle I’ve ever faced has been motherhood. It was a struggle to achieve, and now it’s a struggle to master and in these small, dangerous hours when I’m alone with my thoughts, I can’t help but wonder if any of this would have been easier if Grace Walsh were here to guide me. I hold a handful of precious memories of her—and particularly over the past few months since Noah was born, I replay them. Even the thought of those moments with her brings me comfort, and that’s something I sorely need. I’m utterly exhausted, physically and mentally, yet I’m here, wide awake at 3:15 a.m. My failure to master this role feels so obvious and shameful that I’m sometimes confused why Hunter trusts me to care for Noah at all.
Right now I’m nursing a son that I can’t even convince myself to look down at. I’m pretty sure no one has noticed that when I feed Noah, I shove my nipple into his little mouth and look away as quickly as I can.
It’s so much easier to look away than to gaze down at him and come face-to-face with all of the ways my feelings for him just don’t add up.
Grace
December 1, 1957
Patrick is late again. He said he’d be home right after work, but here I am, sitting at the dining room table waiting and wondering. I could go to bed, but why bother? I won’t sleep—I never do on days like this. Mother and Father gave us the television set for a wedding gift, and when Patrick comes home late, I always leave it on. Even after the broadcast finishes for the day, the static comforts me. For all of their flaws, I do miss my parents since they stopped talking to us last year, and the television always reminds me of them. Maybe that’s why mindless static is better than silence. Maybe that’s why, when I try to cope with the quiet, I hear unbearable echoes of my loneliness.
It wasn’t always like this. Patrick is a good man, deep down somewhere inside. Sometimes I glimpse that young boy I fell in love with...the boy he was five years ago, instead of the man he’s never quite figured out how to be. Tonight, when my disappointment feels so immense, back then is where I want to take my thoughts.
When we first met, Patrick was an apprentice, helping his boss, Ewan, build the extension to Mother and Father’s house at Medina. The house is beautiful and lush, but nevertheless, it was a sensible size when my grandparents built it—they had eight children so they needed a lot of room. Father eventually inherited the house and he and Mother moved in after their wedding, planning to fill the enormous residence with their own brood. Maryanne was born first, and then me two years later, but something went wrong during my birth and Mother had to have a hysterectomy. That meant the four of us were destined to rattle abo
ut in all of those rooms, and for my entire childhood, that’s what we did.
After Maryanne left, the giant house seemed especially absurd, so I was utterly horrified by Father’s decision to extend the living areas and add on a rec room for a billiards table I knew we’d never use. He said we needed the additional space so he could entertain executives from the bank. I was convinced he was enlarging the house only because Mr. Nagy across the road had just added a bedroom and now our place was the second largest on the street.
But not for long. Father’s renovation would fix that right up.
At sixteen, I finished my last year of high school. It was summer vacation, so I was waiting around for secretarial college to begin—and that meant endless hours to spend with friends, or sit at home to read. God, I long for the blissful, eternal emptiness of those days. Did I really live that life? I did, and the worst thing is, I didn’t even appreciate it at the time. I was too busy feeling paranoid, convinced the builders were quietly laughing at how ludicrous our extension was. I found myself sitting on the window seat in my bedroom, looking down on the contractors as they worked, assuming their bursts of sporadic laughter were directed at us.
I still remember the first time I saw Patrick. He was carrying a long beam of wood, and the sun was in his eyes so he was squinting. It was so hot that day, a patch of sweat had soaked right through the back of his shirt. He sat the beam down on the grass and then turned around to the rest of his team. But then he paused, raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, and to my shock, looked up. Our eyes locked, and he smiled. When Patrick Walsh smiles, the harsh angles of his face are transformed into something gentle and joyous and magnetic. Watching that transformation for the very first time, my stomach flipped, and my heart began to race.
That’s all it took. Maybe it was just the intensity of my first taste of romance, but I truly believed I loved that boy right from that moment. Suddenly, even the patch of sweat on his shirt seemed alluring, as if his strength and his masculinity were seeping through his clothing.
Over the next few days, Patrick and I played a kind of game. I’d sit in the window and stare at him, and convince myself that I knew him, just on sight. I saw strength of character in the muscular set of his body, toned and taut from the physical labor commanded by his job. I saw attention to detail in the way he shaved his head so close around the back, but slicked the longer strands on top to the side with pomade. It’s certainly true, even now, that Patrick is handsome, but it’s also true that he can be ever so playful. He’d catch me staring and he’d give me that flirty smile and motion that I should come down and join him. But I couldn’t possibly socialize with one of the contractors. My father would have thrown a fit. So instead, I’d smile back and shake my head. But I didn’t stop sitting in that window seat. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop staring down at him. It was as if I were drawn to him by some magnetic force too bold to be contained.
On the fourth day, my parents were both out of the house and I was home alone. I was starting to think about creeping down the stairs...slipping into the kitchen for some ice-cold water and taking it out to him. But just as I decided to do this, I realized I hadn’t seen him in a while. Had he finished his portion of the renovations? Was he going to disappear before we’d even exchanged a word?
Then I heard the creak of someone on the stairs. I dropped my book onto the floor, stumbling in my haste to see who was inside the house. And when I reached the door, there he was, right in my hallway. I was never going to invite him into my bedroom but I was frozen—too nervous to suggest we move downstairs and so we stood there, him in the hall, me in my doorway. We started to chat—well, he started to chat, and I croaked out monosyllabic responses whenever my voice actually worked. His was exactly as I’d imagined it—manly and deep and smooth. He smiled that crooked smile, and his scent had filled the hallway...cologne and sweat and sunshine. Shivers raced all up and down my spine, and his proximity was almost too much. My entire education had been spent at the Catholic all-girls’ school down the road. Most of my encounters with young men were at the bank Father manages, and those boys were refined and polished and probably more important, utterly terrified of me.
Patrick was none of those things. He was confident, suave and bold, and when he said that his break was over and he had to return to work, I didn’t want him to go. That’s when he asked me to have a milkshake with him on the weekend.
I wonder what I’d do if I could go back and make that decision all over again. Would I rebel, and lie to my parents for the first time ever, telling them I was going to the pictures with my girlfriends but instead, meeting a boy? Or would I refuse, and retreat into the family life I’d always known? For all of his flaws, I know Patrick would have honored a refusal. I guess what might have been doesn’t even matter now, because I did sneak out of the house. We shared a malted milkshake, and from that night on, he was mine and I was his.
FOUR
Beth
1996
Noah remains unsettled for the rest of the night, and so do I. Not just because I am suffering through the hell of a screaming baby waking me up every hour, but also because I can’t sleep even when it’s quiet.
I think about Grace for a while, replaying my memories of her, seeking the blissful comfort that sometimes steals over me when I bring her to mind. But tonight I’m too wound up for that, and I start thinking about the door and the attic, and what might be waiting for us upstairs. I consider innocuous possibilities: opening the door and finding Dad’s art supplies neatly organized, or discovering he’s packed up the studio and converted the attic into storage for his immense tool collection. I consider humorous possibilities: maybe there’s a stash of adult material up there, or maybe he’s converted the entire space into shelving “just in case” he needs it one day.
I briefly consider desperately dire possibilities, and for a while, panic actually claws at my throat and I have to get up to make a tea to distract myself. What if there’s some evil side to Dad we never even suspected existed? What if I open that door tomorrow and there’s something utterly sinister behind it?
I eventually convince myself that this is nonsense. The man who has been my guiding light for forty years has no skeletons in his closet...or attic, as the case may be. I refuse to even consider the possibility that he’s ever been anything other than the incredible human being I know him to be.
So I cycle back again to wondering what else might be in there, and my mind is the needle on a record player, stuck in a groove, circling round and round, rehashing the same thoughts. I eventually fall into an uneasy sleep an hour or so before dawn, and wake when I hear Hunter turn the shower on.
I stumble through the morning with Noah, then when I drop him off at Chiara’s house, she greets me with an announcement that she can’t babysit all day, because Hunter’s brother, Rowan, has asked her to attend his daughter’s dance recital and it starts at four o’clock. This irritates me, and I hate my entitled, spoiled reaction, but I can’t seem to shake it.
I’m frazzled and running late by the time I arrive at Dad’s house, and then I’m quickly confused, because there’s a Walsh Homes van at the curb, as expected, but my sister’s BMW is also parked in the drive.
“Sorry!” I call as I step through into the hall. At the other end of the house I see Ruth in the dining room, sitting at the table, reading the newspaper. She looks amazing, her hair smoothed back into a flawless bun that would put a ballerina to shame, her black trousers and emerald-green Walsh Homes collared shirt are crisply ironed, her face carefully made up. It’s entirely possible that my sister could have been a model if she’d chosen a life of fashion and makeup instead of sawdust and tradesmen.
“Sorry for what?” Ruth calls back. The click of her heels against the floorboards echoes down the hallway as she walks across to the countertop. “Want a coffee?” I’m in the living room now, and she’s already got a mug
in hand by the time she asks the question, so it appears she thinks she already knows the answer.
“Tea, please.” I’m still nervous to drink coffee, even when I’m exhausted. I’m desperately craving a jolt of “wakeup juice,” but I’m equally sure the caffeine in my milk wouldn’t be good for Noah. “I’m sorry I’m late. Did you have to let your workers in?”
“Well, yes. That, and I’m here to talk to you.”
“Oh?”
Ruth gives me a wry look.
“Do you want the careful, diplomatic approach, or can I just be blunt?”
“Be blunt,” I say stiffly, instantly on guard.
“Beth, you’ve been acting so weird lately. Everyone has noticed it, and frankly, we’re all worried.”
“I’m not really sure what you’re talking about. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. What you are is withdrawn, cranky and defensive.”
“I know you’re no therapist,” I say, after a pause. “But if you want someone to open up to you, generally the accepted practice would be to avoid starting the conversation by accusing them of being cranky and defensive.”
Ruth laughs and turns back to the kettle as she says, “The thing is, catch up with Beth has been on my daily to-do list every single day since Noah was born, but I’ve been so busy with Dad and work and the boys...and to be honest, I kind of assumed you’d come to me if you needed to talk.” It’s obvious from the way her voice drops as she says this that she’s hurt I haven’t. I don’t know how to explain to her that she’s the last person on earth I could have talked to about my current situation—Ruth Turner, the very concept of The Perfect Mother, in human form. “So anyway, I just thought we’d have coffee and a chat while Gus and Harry bust past that monster lock Dad installed.”