It was in the parlor that her mother had talked to her, grimly, explicitly, and at length, after she caught Frannie and Norman Burstein examining each other in the barn, their clothes piled in one amicable heap on a haybale to one side. How would she like it, Carla asked as the grandfather clock solemnly ticked off segments of time in a dry age, if she took Frannie out for a walk up and down US Route 1 without any clothes on? How would that be? Frannie, then six, had cried, but had somehow managed to avoid the hysterics which impended at this prospect.
When she was ten she had ridden her bike into the mailbox post while looking back over her shoulder to yell something to Georgette McGuire. She cut her head, bloodied her nose, lacerated both knees, and had actually grayed out for a few moments with shock. When she came around she had stumbled up the driveway to the house, weeping and horrified at the sight of so much blood coming out of herself. She would have gone to her father, but since her father was at work, she had stumbled into the parlor where her mother was serving tea to Mrs. Venner and Mrs. Prynne. Get out! her mother had screamed, and the next moment she was running to Frannie, embracing her, crying Oh Frannie, oh dear, what happened, oh your poor nose! But she was leading Frannie back into the kitchen, where the floor could safely be bled upon, even as she was comforting her, and Frannie never forgot that her first two words that day hadn't been Oh, Frannie! but Get out! Her first concern had been for the parlor, where that dry age went on and on and blood was not allowed. Perhaps Mrs. Prynne never forgot, either, because even through her tears Frannie had seen a shocked, slapped expression cross the woman's face. After that day, Mrs. Prynne had become something of a seldom caller.
In her first year of junior high she had gotten a bad conduct mark on her report card, and of course she was invited into the parlor to discuss this mark with her mother. In her final year of senior high school, she had received three detention periods for passing notes, and that had likewise been discussed with her mother in the parlor. It was there that they discussed Frannie's ambitions, which always ended up seeming a trifle shallow; it was there that they discussed Frannie's hopes, which always ended up seeming a trifle unworthy; it was there that they discussed Frannie's complaints, which always ended up seeming very much unwarranted, not to mention puling, whining, and ungrateful.
It was in the parlor that her brother's coffin had stood on a trestle bedecked with roses, chrysanthemums, and lilies of the valley, their dry perfume filling the room while in the corner the poker-faced clock kept its place, ticking and tocking off segments of time in a dry age.
"You're pregnant," Carla Goldsmith repeated for the second time.
"Yes, Mother." Her voice was very, dry but she would not allow herself to wet her lips. She pressed them together instead. She thought: In my father's workshop there is a little girl in a red dress and she will always be there, laughing and hiding under the table with the vise clamped to one edge or all bundled up with her scabby knees clasped against her chest behind the big toolbox with its thousand drawers. That girl is a very happy girl. But in my mother's parlor there is a much smaller girl who can't help piddling on the rug like a bad dog. Like a bad little bitch puppy. And she will always be there, too, no matter how much I wish she would be gone.
"Oh-Frannie," her mother said, her words coming very quick. She laid a hand against the side of her cheek like an offended maiden aunt. "How-did-it-happen?"
It was Jesse's question. That was what really pissed her off; it was the same question he had asked.
"Since you had two kids yourself, Mother, I think you know how it happened."
"Don't be smart!" Carla cried. Her eyes opened wide and flashed the hot fire that had always terrified Frannie as a child. She was on her feet in the quick way she had (and that had also terrified her as a child), a tall woman with graying hair which was nicely upswept and tipped and generally beauty-shopped, a tall woman in a smart green dress and faultless beige hose. She went to the mantelpiece, where she always went in moments of distress. Resting there, below the flintlock, was a large scrapbook. Carla was something of an amateur genealogist, and her entire family was in that book... at least, as far back as 1638, when its earliest traceable progenitor had risen out of the nameless crowd of Londoners long enough to be recorded in some very old church records as Merton Downs, Freemason. Her family tree had been published four years ago in The New England Genealogist, with Carla herself the compiler of record.
Now she fingered that book of painstakingly amassed names, a safe ground where none could trespass. Were there no thieves in there anyplace? Frannie wondered. No alcoholics? No unwed mothers?
"How could you do something like this to your father and me?" she asked finally. "Was it that boy Jesse?"
"It was Jesse. Jesse's the father."
Carla flinched at the word.
"How could you do it?" Carla repeated. "We did our best to bring you up in the right way. This is just - just - "
She put her hands to her face and began to weep.