A Place of Hiding

Poor, dear Adrian, to have had such a mother. That she meant well came to nothing at the end of the day, considering the ill she managed to do along the way.

Ruth watched her now, as Margaret pretended to inspect the single memento she had of her mother, that little half-locket forever broken. She was a big woman, blonde with fiercely upswept hair and sunglasses—in grey December? How extraordinary, really!—perched on the top of her head. Ruth couldn’t imagine that her brother had once been married to this woman, but she’d never been able to imagine that. She’d never quite managed to reconcile herself to the image of Margaret and Guy together as husband and wife, not the sex business which of course was part of human nature and could, as a result of that fact, accommodate itself to any sort of strange pairing, but to the emotional part, the sustaining part, the part that she imagined—having never been privileged to experience it herself—to be the fertile earth into which one planted family and future. As things turned out between her brother and Margaret, Ruth had been quite correct in her assumption that they were wildly unsuited. Had they not produced poor Adrian in a rare moment of sanguinity, they probably would have gone their separate ways at the end of their marriage, one of them grateful for the money she’d managed to excavate from the ruins of their relationship and the other delighted to part with that money as long as it meant he’d be free of one of his worst mistakes. But with Adrian as part of the equation, Margaret had not faded into obscurity. For Guy had loved his son—even if he’d been frustrated by him—and the fact of Adrian made the fact of Margaret an immutable given. Till one of them died: Guy or Margaret herself.

But that was what Ruth didn’t want to think of and couldn’t bear to speak of, even though she knew she couldn’t avoid the topic indefinitely. As if reading her thoughts, Margaret replaced the locket on the desk and said, “Ruth, dearest, I can’t get ten words from Adrian about what happened. I don’t want to be ghoulish about it, but I would like to understand. The Guy I knew never had an enemy in his life. Well, there were his women, of course, and women don’t much like being discarded. But even if he’d done his usual—”

Ruth said, “Margaret. Please.”

“Wait.” Margaret hurried on. “We simply can’t pretend, dear. This is not the time. We both know how he was. But what I’m saying is that even if a woman’s been discarded, a woman rarely...as revenge...You know what I mean. So who...? Unless it was a married woman this time, and the husband found out...? Although Guy did normally avoid those types.” Margaret played with one of the three heavy gold chains she wore round her neck, the one with the pendant. This was a pearl, misshapen and enormous, a milky excrescence that lay between her breasts like a glob of petrified mashed potato.

“He hadn’t...” Ruth wondered why it hurt so to say it. She’d known her brother. She’d known what he was: the sum of so many parts that were good and only one that was dark, that was hurtful, that was dangerous.

“There was no affair. No one had been discarded.”

“But hasn’t a woman been arrested, dear?”

“Yes.”

“And weren’t she and Guy...?”

“Of course not. She’d been here only a few days. It had nothing to do with... nothing. ”

Margaret cocked her head, and Ruth could see what she was thinking. A few hours had long been more than enough for Guy Brouard to work his way when it came to sex. Margaret was about to begin probing on this subject. The shrewd expression on her face was enough to communicate that she was seeking a way into it that would look less like morbid curiosity and a belief that her once-philandering husband had finally got what he deserved and more like compassion for Ruth’s loss of a brother more beloved to her than her own life. But Ruth was saved from having to enter into that conversation. A hesitant tap sounded against the open morning room door, and a tremulous voice said, “Ruthie? I’m...I’m not disturbing...?”

Ruth and Margaret turned to see a third woman standing in the doorway and behind her a gawky teenage girl, tall and not yet used to her height. “Ana?s,” Ruth said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“We used our key.” Ana?s held it up, a single brass statement of her place in Guy’s life lying desolately in the palm of her hand. “I hope that was...Oh Ruth, I can’t believe...sti ll...I can’t...” She began to weep.