I don’t know why we are suddenly allowed to see Mom’s memories, but we are. I guess because we need to.
Maybe I don’t hate the New Hampshire house so much anymore. Maybe the New Hampshire house wants to help.
“Oh!” Astrid says. The princesses are entering the room, right on time. Girl after girl. I brace myself for Mom’s grand entrance, and I gasp at the right moment, along with Astrid and Eleanor, loving the swish of her gown and the easiness of her smile and the way she is both familiar and a total stranger.
“That’s. Oh my God. That’s . . . ,” Astrid says. She doesn’t even try to finish the sentence.
“Did you make this, Silly?” Eleanor says. She is filled with wonder. She is asking me for information. She isn’t mad or disappearing or telling me I’m ridiculous.
I try to sound as in control as she seems to think I am. I lower my voice and try to keep it calm. “I told you, it’s the memory closet. It shows you the memories you need to see.” I take my eyes off Mom for one-half second and point Laurel out to my sisters.
Laurel’s looking at Mom’s arms. Looking at her wrists.
Not at the bracelets, which sparkle and slide around her wrist for being too loose. Laurel is looking at what’s underneath the bracelets. The way I’ve been looking at Marla’s wrists, looking for shadows and shades of strange colors—reds and purples and yellows.
Everything about Mom’s wrists looks like Marla’s—how small they are. The way she touches them every so often with the fingers of her other hand.
And there they are, just like Marla’s, as I knew they would be, even if I didn’t actually know anything at all. Bruises. A row of them, purple and yellow and red, circling her wrists like the bracelets, but ugly. So, so ugly and painful and tender, and trying hard to be hidden but not.
Eleanor said that maybe Marla reminded Mom of herself as a kid. I didn’t know what that meant, but maybe I do now.
I swallow a small sound of pain, understanding too much, too fast.
I let Astrid and Eleanor watch the rest of the ball. I smile when they gasp at Dad’s handsomeness, and I shift and fidget right along with them when Mom and Dad dance so closely and look at each other with so much love that it sort of feels like we shouldn’t be there at all.
“She’s beautiful,” Astrid says as Dad drops her into a dip. Mom throws her head back. Her hair nearly touches the floor.
“She’s always been beautiful,” Eleanor says. Her arms are crossed over her chest, like that might stop her from really seeing all of this. I get it.
“She was the other kind of beautiful before,” Astrid says. “Now she’s beautiful in a way that makes me sad. But here she’s a different kind of beautiful. Lasting. Happy-making. Like how a painting is beautiful because you know it will be the same every day. Like, the great works of art or whatever. Those ballerina paintings. And Monet, with the lily pads. Isn’t she lily-pad beautiful now?”
Astrid may be spacey, but she’s so much smarter than the rest of us, it’s crazy. I guess I forget that sometimes. I nod like I understand, but I don’t really, and not only because I can’t quite picture Monet or lily pads, but also because I can’t think of Mom as anything but the sad kind of beautiful.
Just scary. Or scared. Maybe I’m not totally sure which.
“But look at her wrists,” I say. I am getting tired of the sound of the violins and the pattering of feet and the sweetness in the air that says dessert and wine are coming. I’m ready to go home and save our sister.
“She’s hurt,” Eleanor says.
“She’s hurt like Marla,” I say. We’ve never talked about Marla’s bruises. We never talked about that day that I hid in my closet and I heard yelps and Mom apologizing and saw Marla hiding her wrists.
“Like Marla?” Astrid looks at me full-on, for the first time since we entered this closet.
“You know,” I say, because I have to believe she does. This cannot be another secret that I kept. This cannot be another way that I let down my sisters.
Astrid shakes her head. Eleanor raises her eyebrows.
“Marla. Has bruises on her wrists. I mean, they’re probably gone by now. But they were there. From before Mom left. From when she was mad. I mean, it was an accident, like when Mom found out about Henry, and she sort of, you know, pushed you a little.”
“What are you saying, Silly?” Eleanor says. “That Mom hurt Marla?”
I spin.
At first I think it’s just my brain spinning. But then I realize it is all of me: my heart, my muscles twisting themselves up, my stomach, my senses. Everything dizzying itself up.
They didn’t know.
“You saw Mom get mad at me about Henry?” Astrid says. Her eyes are shiny, and I don’t know if they are sad or a little happy. I don’t know anything.
It was all on me, it was my responsibility and I messed it up.
And if Mom is any indication, those bruises never go away. They always matter.