Circle of Grace, page 7
“Sorry for what?”
“Sorry I had to be the one to tell you. The one to sabotage your image of your father. I know you loved him. And he loved you, too.” She shrugged. “He just didn’t love me. Not enough, anyway.”
Grace laced her fingers together until the knuckles turned white. “What makes you think I’m going to believe this? Maybe it’s not at all the way you paint it. Maybe you didn’t love him. Maybe you were just jealous because—because—”
“Because he had so many friends, and I didn’t seem to fit in?”
Grace glared at her but didn’t answer.
“Because I always seemed so unhappy and depressed?” She gave a cynical laugh. “And then if he did turn to someone else, it would be my fault, is that it? My fault, for not giving him the adoration he craved?”
This arrow hit its mark, jolting Grace to the core. Mama was right: Daddy did crave attention. He thrived on it. Always the center of every group, always making people laugh. Approval intoxicated him; he imbibed it like a drunk on a three-day bender. But that didn’t mean—
“Just because Daddy liked attention doesn’t prove he—” she paused, groping to put her thoughts into words. “And even if he did make a mistake, couldn’t you forgive him?”
Her mother leaned back in the chair and massaged her temples, as if trying to rearrange things. “A mistake? Yes, I see what you mean. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a mistake. It was a lifestyle. It was twenty years of successive mistakes.”
Grace’s eyes scanned the lemon-colored walls, the new kitchen curtains, the linoleum floor—anywhere except her mother’s face. “What are you saying?”
“Practically from the beginning, your father had other women in his life. He was usually discreet enough not to get caught, but I knew. For a while I pretended not to notice, accepted his excuses when he came home late or wasn’t where he told me he would be. I was desperate to keep my marriage intact, at any cost.
“Every time we’d have a confrontation about it, he’d seem so sorry, so brokenhearted, and he’d swear he’d never so much as look at another woman again. Things would get better for a while, and I was naive enough to believe his empty promises. And then, when you came along, I had another compelling reason not to leave him.”
“You’re telling me that all during your marriage, throughout my entire childhood, my father was having affairs with other women?”
“It’s the truth, Grace. At times I thought it would kill me, all the sham and pretense. Ironically, in the end it was your father’s unfaithfulness that killed him.”
The ice in Grace’s tea had melted, leaving a watery layer on top, and she jiggled the glass to mix the water in. Something was happening inside her stomach—a churn of acid, a fire blazing hot and white. She felt the burn lick up from her gut to her chest. It was like breathing in ash and smoke, and for a minute she thought she was going to be sick.
Her mother reached for her hand again, and Grace snatched it away. “I couldn’t tell you, no matter how much it broke my heart to see you gravitate toward your father and away from me. I understood, but it hurt nevertheless.” She bit her lip and let out a long, ragged breath. “I wasn’t a very good mother, was I? I’m sorry. I was too absorbed with just trying to keep from going to pieces.”
Grace slammed back in her chair and stood up so quickly that it clattered to the floor. “And what about me?” she yelled. “What the hell am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to feel?”
She had never sworn at her mother before. She leaned forward and pounded a fist on the kitchen table, rattling the tea glasses and the brownie plate. “You’ve purged this house of any remnant of Daddy without even asking my opinion! Did you even think about me when you were making all these changes? Did it occur to you that I might want some of his things, to remember him by?”
“There’s a box in the attic I’ve saved for you—” her mother began, but Grace cut her off.
“Fine. I’ll cherish his cuff links,” she spat out. “Meanwhile, you tell me he was a liar and an adulterer, and that everything I’ve believed about him has been a deception, and you expect me just to take your word for it, to accept it without question? Well, Mother, I don’t accept it!”
She flailed a hand, and the remainder of her iced tea went airborne. As if in slow motion, she watched the tea fling out in a fluid arc. Glittering shards scattered across the kitchen floor like water from a fountain. When the crash was over, Grace stared at the debris. One curved section of glass spun in a slow circle near the sink.
“Go to hell,” she muttered. Then she turned her back on her mother and stalked out of the room.
-8-
SHADOW OF DOUBT
All the windows were open, and through the curtains a warm late-June breeze blew in, laden with pollen and grass and dust and the sound of a tractor rumbling across distant fields.
The house was silent as—
Grace shuddered as the image dropped into her mind. Silent as a tomb.
Mama had gone to the grocery store, and Grace had declined the invitation to ride along. She welcomed the solitude, the opportunity to seclude herself and not have to be pressured into conversation by this strange, cheerful alien who had taken the place of her real mother.
She couldn’t deny it: Mama was happy. For the first time in years, her mother smiled and laughed and looked her daughter in the eye. Liberation hung about her like a shining golden cloak, reflecting in her eyes and lending a glow to her pallid skin.
Grace had dreaded coming home for the summer to face two months of her mother’s melancholy gloom. How could she have known that delight could be every bit as painful as depression? Clearly Mama had tried, for Grace’s sake, not to flaunt her newfound freedom, but the truth was undeniable: Ramona Benedict had been resurrected the day her husband died.
Grace lay sideways across the bed, second-guessing her refusal to go to the store with her mother. She had thought she wanted to be alone, but now the silence pounded in her ears, closing in upon her, suffocating her.
She lifted her eyes to the open window, where the gauzy curtain stirred and drifted on the breeze. Beyond the screen the rolling foothills stretched to a cloudless, bright blue sky. A sky so close she could almost touch it.
She reached out one hand. Her fingers brushed the filmy fabric. And in her mind she saw herself lying on the hillside looking back at the house, stretching her arm toward the open window with its windblown white curtain.
The image came from a painting she had once seen—Andrew Wyeth, she thought. Or maybe N. C. Wyeth. One of them, it didn’t matter. What did matter was how profoundly the artist’s work had affected her. That posture, reaching toward the house—her father’s house—with that imploring gesture. It raised in her a bittersweet longing, a yearning she did not understand. And a nameless sense of futility.
Tears pricked her eyes and caused the scene before her to shimmer like a mirage. She had not yet cried for her father. And these tears were not for him, either. They were for herself, mired and flailing in a quicksand of uncertainty and doubt. Sinking fast, and with no idea how to get out.
The truth will set you free. She had quoted that to her friends, accepted it, believed it—at least theoretically. But so far the truth—Mama’s version of it, anyway—had done nothing but bog her more deeply in the swamp of her despair. Reality had shifted, and everything she had founded her life on, the firm bedrock of Daddy’s character and his love, had slipped from beneath her feet. Mama’s accusations, the specifics of her father’s death, the still-unanswered questions, all snaked around her like the tentacles of some malicious plant, binding her, strangling her, releasing its poison into her pores.
She could still see the open window, still reach a hand toward her father’s house, still call out for help and comfort. But no one was home.
Grace struggled to wakefulness. The doorbell was ringing.
She lifted her head, ran a hand over her face, and felt the impressions of the bedspread imprinted on her skin. The sun had shifted, and now the rolling fields outside her window were dappled with late-afternoon shadows.
How long had she slept?
The ringing continued. Ding-dong. Pause. Ding-dong.
She rolled off the bed and fumbled with the laces of her tennis shoes.
Ding-dong ding-dong. Somebody was growing impatient. Probably Mama, her arms full of grocery bags. Ding-dong.
“Sheesh! All right, hang on.” She kicked the shoes aside, ran down the stairs in her bare feet, and pulled the door open. “Sorry, Mama, I was—”
She stopped with one hand on the screen door. It wasn’t Mama. It was a woman—in her thirties, probably—slim and petite in designer jeans and a pale lilac cotton sweater. One of those perfect women, with never a hair out of place, even on a warm summer Saturday afternoon. Flawless makeup and discreet gold hoop earrings. Just being in her presence made Grace feel frumpy, dressed as she was in sweat pants and an oversize T-shirt.
Grace had never seen this woman before. Or had she? Something about the woman’s eyes seemed familiar—a hooded, detached quality, yet with fierce emotion simmering below the surface.
“Can I help you?”
“This is the residence of Harlan Benedict?”
The name caused Grace’s stomach to lurch. “Ah, yes. But he’s—”
“He’s dead, I know. You’re his daughter?”
Grace nodded.
“Is your mother at home?”
“No, she’s—she’ll be back soon. What time is it?”
The woman frowned at this non sequitur and glanced at her watch. “Four-thirty.”
“Would you like to come in and wait?” Grace pushed the screen door open and stood back a little.
The woman hesitated, looking around as if she were searching for something. And at that very moment, Mama’s green Cadillac pulled into the gravel driveway, skidding to a stop as a small child came running around the side of the house and darted in front of the car.
“Emmy!” the woman screamed. But Mama had stopped in time, and the little girl dashed onto the porch, her chubby fist clutching a handful of wildflowers. “Emily Ryerson, you could have been killed! You never run out in front of a car. Never!”
“I’m sorry,” the girl mumbled, and took refuge behind the woman’s knees.
Mama, meanwhile, had jumped from the driver’s seat and bolted toward the porch, leaving the car door hanging open. “Is she all right? I didn’t see her—”
“She’s fine. I was more scared than she was, I think.”
Mama clutched at her chest and exhaled heavily. “My stars, I thought I’d hit her.” Then she looked up, and Grace saw her expression change. “You. You’re—”
The woman nodded. “I’m Bette Ryerson. You know who I am?”
They exchanged a glance, and Grace remembered. The funeral. This woman had been at her father’s funeral.
“Honey,” her mother said, “please get the groceries from the car and go inside the house.”
Grace was still holding the door open. She came out onto the porch and let the screen bang shut behind her, but the woman put a hand on her arm to stop her. “Wait,” she said, not to Grace but to Mama. “She needs to know, too.”
A sick feeling churned in the pit of Grace’s stomach. She looked from the Ryerson woman to her mother and back again. “What’s going on?”
Mama didn’t answer. She narrowed her eyes at the woman. “This has nothing to do with my daughter.”
“Oh, but it does.” Bette Ryerson went over to the porch rocker, where the little girl now sat swinging her legs and sticking the wildflowers into her hair. She took the child’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “I’d like you to meet Emily,” she said, nudging the girl in Grace’s direction. “She’s four.”
Grace looked down at the little blonde urchin. She had clear blue eyes and freckles scattered across her nose, and a swipe of dirt on her chin. “Hello, Emily.”
“Remember your manners, Emmy,” the woman said. “Say hello to your sister.”
Grace felt as if her entire brain and body had been injected with novocaine. She moved sluggishly, putting oatmeal in the freezer and ice cream in the pantry, then realized what she had done and had to go back and start over again.
Mama and Bette Ryerson eyed each other from opposite ends of the kitchen table, talking in low tones and glancing periodically at little Emmy, who sat on the kitchen floor weaving a clumsy necklace from her wildflowers.
At one point the child got up and tugged on the tail of Grace’s T-shirt. “Are you really my sister?”
Grace looked down. “No. Absolutely not.” But even as the denial left her lips, she knew.
“Aunt Bette says you are. But you don’t live with us. Families are s’posed to live together, you know?” Her blue eyes turned somber. “I used to live with Mommy. Now I live with Aunt Bette.”
Grace kept silent. Her hands were shaking and she felt cold and clammy, even though the afternoon was warm. Emmy went on talking. “Mommy lives in heaven now. She went there when her car wrecked. Did you know my mommy?”
“No.” Grace tried to focus on putting the groceries away. The girl’s very presence was rubbing her nerves raw, and it took a monumental effort to keep from screaming at her.
The little girl sighed. “Daddy went there, too. Did you know my daddy?”
Grace balked. She wanted to say a firm, unequivocal no, but in the face of this child who looked so much like him, a negative answer felt like a denial of Daddy himself. “I—uh, maybe. I don’t know. Yes.”
The admission pierced Grace’s soul like a sword. This little girl wore her father’s smile, his round face, his eyes, even the dimple in his chin. Harlan Benedict in girlish miniature.
Mama knew it too, but she did not seem the least bit surprised. “I’ve been expecting you to show up before now,” she was telling Bette Ryerson. “But if it’s money, we don’t—”
The woman shook her head in protest. “No. I don’t want money, and I’m not looking to make trouble.” Her icy composure was gone now, and she ran a hand through her perfect hair. “I’m not sure why I came. Vindication, maybe. Connection with somebody who was willing to admit the truth.”
“I admitted the truth about my husband a long time ago.” Mama shrugged. “But I hadn’t really considered this—” She waved a hand in Emmy’s direction. “Even when you believe you’ve faced all the painful realities life has to throw at you, there are some things you’re just not willing to believe.”
“My sister was far too trusting,” Bette said. “I tried to warn her, but she wouldn’t listen. Until the day she died, she was convinced he was going to divorce you and marry her. He was so charming, so persuasive.”
Grace watched over Emmy’s head as her mother lifted her eyebrows and nodded. “Indeed he was.”
“I’m sorry,” the girl’s aunt said. “I—I was just so angry when Marian died. Angry at your husband. Angry at the world, I guess. It didn’t occur to me how much pain you’ve been through all these years.”
Mama scooted closer and patted the woman’s hand. “It’s all right. I understand the anger, believe me.”
Bette Ryerson’s eyes drifted from Mama over to her niece. “Do you suppose—” She hesitated. “Is it possible there were more?”
“More women, certainly,” Mama said matter-of-factly. “More children? Not that I know of.”
Emmy butted up against Grace’s leg, pulling her attention away from the conversation. “Can I have some of that ice cream?”
Grace blinked and gazed down at the child. She glanced over to the table. “Is it all right for Emmy to have a bowl of ice cream, Mrs. Ryerson?”
Bette Ryerson looked up. “Miss. It’s Miss Ryerson. I’m not married. But call me Bette. And yes, just a small bowl.”
Grace dished up two bowls of ice cream and handed spoons to the child to carry. “Let’s take this out on the porch, OK?”
“OK.” Emmy followed along, perched herself on the steps, and ate her ice cream while she watched butterflies flitting around the flowering bush at the edge of the porch.
Grace sat in the swing, observing the child as she stealthily moved a hand in the direction of a bright blue butterfly, then laughed with delight when it settled on her finger. It wasn’t Emmy’s fault that her father was a philanderer, that her very presence in this house spoke of his infidelity and deception. The little girl was just an innocent victim. Like her mother. Like Grace’s mother. Like Grace herself.
And like Bette Ryerson. A single woman committed to raising a child who was not her own, a child who was the illegitimate offspring of her sister’s affair with a married man. She could only imagine how difficult that road might turn out to be.
All because Grace’s father, whom she had adored and trusted, hadn’t been nearly the man he pretended.
She had wanted the truth.
Next time she’d be more careful what she wished for.
-9-
THE FACE OF TRUTH
Even now, thirty years after the fact, Grace vividly remembered what it felt like to look into Emily Ryerson’s innocent face and see Daddy gazing back at her. The memory made her stomach churn with anger and her shoulders slump with the burden of shame.
He had betrayed them—all of them. Mama, Marian Ryerson, little Emily, even Grace herself. The shame was his, not Grace’s. She knew this intellectually, but had never been able to persuade her emotions to come over to her brain’s way of thinking.
And she carried not only her father’s shame but her own as well, deeply buried but never quite dead.
She had believed him. She had allowed him to dig a chasm between herself and her mother, who had only been trying to protect her. She had given him power—power not only to rewrite her entire childhood into a bizarre and painful fiction, but to plot out the course of her future as well.
How many people, Grace wondered, held to the prevalent belief that yesterday was fixed, done and over with, immutable? But she knew from experience that what had already happened could be changed. When she looked over her shoulder, she saw two pasts, vastly different. The rosy hue of her childhood as she once thought it to be, imbued with the laughter and warmth of a loving, faithful father, and the darker, more sinister reality that had dominated her life since the summer of her freshman year.
