This Secret Thing, стр. 61
“So, is that boy—what’s his name again—your boyfriend?” she ventured, sounding dumb on purpose.
Violet spit out her water in response, laughing. “Micah?” she asked as water dripped down her chin. “Hardly.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s that out of the question,” said Polly, then watched as Violet rolled her eyes and finished her water.
Polly looked at Violet, feeling simultaneously envious and sympathetic. So much lay ahead of her, things she couldn’t envision yet. Polly had been in Violet’s shoes once. Would she want to be in them again? So many times she wished she were young again, but to be young meant to not know what she knows now. It meant having to make those same mistakes again and live with the consequences. It meant looking in the mirror and seeing a beautiful young woman, yet not being smart enough to know it at the time. She wanted the young body, but she didn’t want the young mind that came with it.
“Did your mother ever tell you about the Beaucatchers?” she asked, blurting it out before she lost her gumption. She didn’t expect that Norah had ever told Violet about the family legacy. But she wanted her granddaughter to hear it because it was part of Violet, whether Norah liked it—or believed in it—or not. Polly believed. It had been the case for her grandmother, her mother, her aunt, herself. In truth, Norah’s current situation could be attributed to it. Not that she would ever admit that.
“What’s a Beaucatcher?” Violet asked. Polly could tell by her face that she was intrigued, though trying to pretend not to be. Teenagers are practiced at the art of nonchalance.
Polly smiled, because she was happy to be sharing this with her granddaughter, and because she wanted Violet to see the legacy as a good thing. Norah never had. In its own way, it had come between them. Norah had run from it as much as she had run from Polly. She did not want to admit that it was part of who she was. She’d rejected the legacy, and in doing so, the line of women who had carried it before her. She had called it silly and stupid and, ultimately, false. She had forbidden Polly to ever bring it up in her presence again. “I don’t believe in your backwoods fairy tales,” she’d pronounced. And as far as Norah was concerned, that had been that.
“It’s the legacy of all the women in our family,” Polly said to Violet. “We are Beaucatchers.”
Violet knit her eyebrows together in response. “And what does that mean?”
“Do you know what a beau is?”
Violet shook her head.
“It’s an old-fashioned word for a boyfriend.” She paused to make sure Violet absorbed what she said. “So, in our family at least, a Beaucatcher is a woman who literally catches beaus, or boyfriends. She doesn’t try—she doesn’t really even know she’s doing it. Men are just drawn to her, like magnets. They can’t help themselves. It’s been true of generation after generation of the women in our family. It was true of my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, my aunts—her sisters—and me and your mother. And it’s true of you.”
Violet smirked at her. “Doubtful,” she said. In her voice was the slightest warble. She couldn’t believe it could possibly be true of her. And wasn’t that what it was to be a woman, to feel that you were the exception to everyone else’s rule?
Polly understood this. She’d said as much to her own mother when her mother had shared the legacy with her. Polly had stood before her lovely mother, awkward and uncertain, slow to develop, late to understand what other girls seemed to inherently know. But like the tortoise and the hare, she’d eventually left those other girls behind and won the race. Though, of course, winning that particular race meant losing, too. Men were drawn to her—that was true. But that didn’t mean they were nice men, or honest men, or considerate men. With each man, she learned a little more, but there were hard, painful lessons along the way. That was the sour that went with the sweet, the yin that followed the yang, one step up and two steps back, as it were.
“You’ll come into your own,” her mother had said to her back then, a promise that kept coming true, even all these years later. Coming into your own, Polly had learned, was an ever-changing thing.
“You’ll see, Violet,” she said, making a promise like her mother had made her. Because one thing Polly knew: sometimes just the promise itself was enough. Sometimes the promise alone could keep you going. “There’s still so much good ahead of you, honey.”
There was bad, too. But she didn’t say that. There was no need. That part of the family legacy each woman had to discover for herself. Was the legacy a blessing or a curse? Polly didn’t know. Her beauty had been both. It would be the same for Violet, someday. Polly hoped she would still be in Violet’s life when that became true. She hoped this time together would, by some miracle, extend.
She wanted to reach out and hug her granddaughter, but she didn’t dare. It would scare the child. So she just said, “You have to believe me, because I’m old and wise.”
Violet cocked her head and studied her for a moment. “You’re not that old,” she said.
Polly winked at her. “I’m not that wise, either.” They both laughed, and, for a moment, she felt OK about things. She felt capable, like maybe she was coming into her own yet again. And maybe her estranged daughter’s house was the place to do it.
“I need to