*
At some point I must have drifted off. When I woke, it was with a flying start. It was going to be one of those nights. Jolting in and out of consciousness. Skating along that foggy line between reality and dream. Usually, when this happened, I’d take a book into the study—just because I was restless, didn’t mean I had to disturb Lil. But tonight, I didn’t get the choice. Because the phone was ringing.
I sat up and dropped my legs off the side of the bed. In the dark, I located the red numbers of the clock—1:03 A.M. Grace.
Lil, ten years my junior and perpetually nervous of bad news coming at night, was already on her feet.
“I’ll get it, Lil,” I said. “It’ll be Grace.” I reached for my dressing gown on the bedpost, and by the time I’d reached the hall, Lil held the receiver to her ear.
“Hello?” she said. She nodded, then held the phone out to me. “Grace.”
“Thank you, dear. You go back to bed.”
I rubbed her arm as she horseshoed around me. Poor Lil. First she spent the evening huddled in our room reading a book—her choice, of course. But now her sleep was being interrupted. She was as sweet and tolerant as they came, but sometimes I wondered if Grace was wearing her thin.
By the time I lifted the phone to my ear, Grace was already talking.
“I know, I’m sorry. It’s late. It’s just … I’m stunned, flabbergasted, horrified—”
I lowered myself into the seat by the hall table. My old body felt like a sack of rocks. “Yes. It was a big shock.”
“You didn’t know, did you?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“How could I not have known?” Grace whined. “I’m her mother. I’m a midwife. Can she really be thirty weeks? She doesn’t look thirty weeks.”
“You were the same when you were pregnant,” I said. “Nothing more than a thickened waist until the eighth month.”
“And why won’t she tell us who the father is? She didn’t tell you, did she?”
“No. She didn’t.”
“It makes no sense. I’m not judgmental, am I? I might have been a little shocked at first, but I’d have gotten over it. Why didn’t she come to me … or you, for that matter? You of all people would know how she feels.”
“You know Neva,” I said. “It just takes her a little while. She’ll come around.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Grace groaned. “It’s just so frustrating. Why doesn’t she come to me? Maybe if I was more like you—”
“She didn’t come to me either, remember?”
“No. I suppose not.” This sated her a little.
“Besides,” I said, “Neva wouldn’t want you to change. She loves you.”
“Maybe, but she doesn’t like me very much. My husband doesn’t either. You are my mother, so you have to love me—biology forces it.” A short pause followed. “Would my father have liked me, do you think?”
I hesitated. Stupidly, I hadn’t expected that Grace would draw a parallel between her grandchild’s absent father and her own. Stupid, because I’d already made the connection myself. “I … yes. Of course he would.”
Another silence ensued, this one long enough to unsettle me.
“Did you ever love him, Mom?”
Grace had asked a million questions about her father over the years. The color of his hair when the sun hit it. The lilt of his accent. Whether he was so tall he would’ve hit his head on the top of the doorway if he wore a top hat. She liked details. The one, single photograph I had of Bill, a wedding photo, was tattered and bent from spending so much time in Grace’s pocket or under her pillow. But this question, she’d never asked before.
“Yes, I did. Once.”
She sighed and I wasn’t so deaf I didn’t hear her relief. I hoped we could leave it at that. Because when Grace needed answers, she didn’t leave a door unopened. And this particular door was one best left shut.
“So what should I do, then? About Neva, I mean.”
“It’s not for me to say.”
“But if you were me?”
“I’m not you. But if you’re asking what I’m planning to do … I’m going to accept her at her word—that her baby has no father—and ask her how I can best support her.”
I wondered if any of this was getting through. Hard to tell with Grace. One minute she could be all emotion, and the next—who knew? Robert had once described a date with her as an emotional bungee jump. Grace had thought it was hysterically funny at first, but once she thought more about it, had become cross with him. Case in point, I suppose.
“You’re right. As always. But…” Grace sounded unsatisfied. I could picture her by the phone, jiggling back and forth as she used to as a child when she couldn’t make sense of something.
“But what?”
“How can you stand it? A secret like this? Isn’t it eating you alive?”
I almost laughed. If only she knew.
“Secrets are hard,” I said. “But if keeping the secret allows you to have a relationship with your daughter? I, for one, think it’s worth it.”