This Secret Thing, стр. 18
“I’ve called your grandmother,” her father said. “She’s going to come and stay with you. It’ll make things easier. You’ll be close to your school again and . . .” His eyes trailed off in the direction his wife had gone. He looked back at Violet. “It’ll be better,” he added.
She could see the pain and exhaustion in his eyes. It was her fault he looked this way, her fault his happy family life was ruined. Violet resolved to do whatever she could to make him not look that way anymore. Tish couldn’t erase Violet’s existence, but Violet could—at least as far as this house was concerned.
She had just one question for her father, one thing she needed to clear up first. “Who’s my grandmother?”
Bess
After her self-defense class, she got trapped in a bathroom stall, listening to the chatter of the other ladies—mostly from her neighborhood or Nicole’s school—milling around, gossiping instead of going home or wherever. Sharon, Bess knew, was going to Weight Watchers; Laura was to meet with her therapist; Brenda had a dentist appointment. Everyone had a schedule to keep, but Norah’s arrest had thrown off all sense of normalcy.
Bess crouched in the stall, willing them to just leave already, her knees pulled to her chin, the last beads of sweat from the class snaking their way down her chest and back. She understood the irony of hiding after a self-defense class, shrinking back when she should be empowered. But the class taught her to defend herself from physical attackers. There was no defense against a group of women hungry for gossip.
Even as her muscles began to cramp and protest her unnatural position, the ladies lingered, wanting to talk, to dish, to discuss their theories about Norah and what had happened. They blamed, they judged, they condemned. They spoke about Norah like she was a piece of refuse, when once they’d all admired her. Norah had been, there was no doubt, the coolest woman in the neighborhood, aloof and successful and gorgeous, mysteriously content with her daughter and her home, never seeming to need a man. Of course, they snickered outside the stall where Bess hid, now they all knew why.
If the women discovered Bess, they’d corner her, ask questions, probe for what she knew. Though she knew more than most, Bess didn’t want to divulge anything. It wasn’t her place. She was uncomfortable talking about Norah, a woman who was once her best friend, a coveted position Bess sensed they all still envied even though the friendship had ended years ago.
This was the thing people did not tell you about when you got married and had kids: how important your female friends would become. You thought your friendships in grade school or college were important, but they paled in comparison to the friendships you would form with other mothers. No one told you how you would need them to talk to, to process with, to understand what your husband and kids could not. No one understood the release that would come from laughing till you cried with another person who knew you, understood you, accepted you. No one would tell you how hard that person would be to find.
For a long time, Norah had been that person. And then she wasn’t.
When the women’s voices faded, Bess uncurled herself and exited the stall, looking left to right first to make sure the coast was really clear. She walked across the tile and stopped in front of the mirror, studying her reflection as the scent of sweat and deodorant and perfume swirled around her head, vapor trails of the departed women. She took in the image that met her in the mirror and thought about what Norah had been accused of, the way that success they’d all envied had come to her. Bess inhaled deeply, exhaled deeply, and looked straight into her own eyes. She looked, and did not blink.
At dinner, her husband, Steve, was downright chatty. Bess could feel the tension in the air, but he seemed oblivious, or just in denial about what had happened, what was happening still. Bess studied Casey’s profile as she robotically speared and chewed her food. She seemed to be eating normally, so it probably wasn’t an eating disorder. Bess tried to take comfort in that as Steve held court. He asked the girls about their days, told a mildly interesting story about a coworker, and was, for a moment, a glimpse of his charming self. He even listened to Bess explain what she did in self-defense class and did a good job feigning interest. She did not mention hiding in the stall after class to avoid talking about Norah. But Norah came up anyway. Steve did, at least, wait until after the girls had disappeared back into their rooms.
Once upon a time, it had been punishment to send them to their rooms, now it was punishment to ask them to come out of them. Bess would go crazy being trapped in such a small space for hours at a time. She needed to be outdoors, her hands in the dirt, her nose filled with the smell of growing green things. She needed to look up and see the clouds, feel the breeze kiss her cheeks. She glanced out the back window at her garden shed, the one Steve had let her purchase and design for Mother’s Day last year. She’d long since stopped hoping he’d know what to do for her. She’d just started doing it for herself, then thanking the girls for getting her just what she had wanted as they accepted her gratitude while trying to pretend they knew what she was talking about.
She kept her eyes on the shed as Steve inquired about “her friend.” That was how he referred to Norah, as though she had become