“It’ll be like it never happened,” I say.
“Just an ugly thing in my past that nobody knows about,” Pfeff says, looking up and smiling devilishly. “Except you. You know, now, what a terrible person I am.” Suddenly he seems delighted with himself, instead of ashamed. “Okay, Carrie? You’re the keeper of my secret.”
35.
“WHO’S THE MAN in the picture?” I finally ask Tipper, late that day. Penny’s theory about it being our father, outrageous as it is, makes the asking seem more urgent.
I have come to my mother’s room when it is nearly the six-o’clock cocktail hour. She likes to change her clothes after cooking, to put on something fresh for the evening.
I have been meaning to ask her about the picture, but I have hardly seen her alone. She is always with Luda in the kitchen or with Harris on the beach, or else with Gerrard discussing plantings and repairs to the houses. She is also off-island more than anyone, shopping for food.
“What picture?” she asks now. She is inside her walk-in closet.
“The one of you and the man with no face,” I say, sitting down on the bed beside Wharton.
Tipper comes to the door of her closet. She is wearing a black cotton shirtdress and looks severe. “When did you see that?” she asks sharply.
“When I put your pearls away. It was sticking out,” I add, though that is untrue. “I thought it might be of Rosemary.”
A spasm crosses her face. “Well, it’s not.”
“I know that, now.”
I have given it some thought, and I doubt the man is Uncle Chris. Or Harris. I’m guessing instead that he is Albert Holland, Tipper’s first-year college sweetheart. I’ve been told how he took her to dances and football games, and how he once got his a cappella group to sing “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart” outside her dormitory window.
I want to know why the face is scratched out, and why she hides it in her jewelry drawer.
My mother goes back into her closet. I hear her rustling clothes and moving hangers. “Did you ask your father about it?”
“No.”
“Is that the truth?”
“I didn’t ask him.”
“Well, don’t.”
“Why do you hide it?” I ask. My hands begin to shake.
Tipper doesn’t answer but she returns to the room, this time in a blue skirt and white blouse. “Carrie.”
“What? We never talk about anything,” I say. “We never talk about Rosemary, or my face, or Uncle Dean’s hookers, or his divorce, or the people with their houses flooded, or the people who have AIDS, or Uncle Chris. We never talk about any of it. We just pretend it’s not there.”
“I don’t know half of what you’re on about.”
“Rosemary is gone,” I blurt. “She’s gone, but her spirit is here with us and there’s not even anything in her bedroom anymore. Don’t you think she’d want her storybooks here? And her stuffed lions? And her games? She wouldn’t want her whole life shut up in the attic like it never happened, like she didn’t matter.”
Tipper softens a bit.
“You don’t even want her,” I say, beginning to cry. “She came to you and you didn’t want her. How can you not want your own daughter? How can you walk away from her like that when you’re the mother? How am I supposed to know you’re here for me, like if something went wrong, if I needed help, when Rosemary went to you and you sent her away?”
“Carrie, you’re not making any sense.”
“Yes I am. You know I am.”
“Rosemary’s not here,” Tipper whispers. “We all wish she were, but I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say I sent her away.”
I look at her. Her brow is knitted with concern for me. “You don’t?”
“You’re— I think you’re imagining things. Something’s muddled.”
“You don’t remember Rosemary coming to you? To your bedroom, at night, this summer?”
“No, sweetheart.”
She’s forgotten. Or she thinks it was a dream. Or she’s lying. “You never want to talk about her,” I sob. “About anything. Everything’s off-limits. I don’t even have my real face anymore, I don’t even know who I see in the mirror, and people are dying, and suffering, it’s all in the news all the time. But we never mention it. I don’t know how to even process it, their lives, my life, Rosemary.” I flop facedown on the bed, weeping.
Tipper pats my arm, then strokes my hair like she used to when I was young. “It’s true, I don’t like to talk about hard things,” she says. “But I have reasons for that.”
“What are they?” I sniff.
“It’s better, I think, to move on. To look forward.”
“But—”
“We can’t change what’s in the newspaper, so why obsess about it? And we can’t change the past, so why dwell on it?”
“But then we never—” I don’t have the words for what I want. “We’re all in the dark,” I say finally.
“Dredging up old hurts doesn’t make things better,” says Tipper. “There’s no point in wallowing.”
“But then life is just lemon hunts and party games and colleges and what’s for supper. Books we’ve read and plans for taking the sailboat out.”
“It’s joy,” says Tipper. “I aim to live a joyful life, Carrie. And I think you should, too. I think maybe you’ve lost track of that, a little.”
My parents always have some phrase that makes the way they choose to live seem the best of all possible choices.
A joyful life.
Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.
Never complain, never explain.
Don’t take no for an answer.
Take care of things when they need taking care of.
I sniff and wipe my cheeks. I want Tipper to be happy with me. I cannot help it. I love her. She is my mother.
She wants me to stop asking about the photo. She wants me not to be sad.
But now is my chance to get an answer. To one question, at least. If I back down and stop complaining, if I back down and try to live the joyful life, the chance will be gone. “Who is the man in the picture?” I ask again. “I wish you would just tell me.”
Tipper sighs. She goes to the jewelry drawer and pulls out the photograph.
36.
“DO NOT TELL your sisters about this conversation,” she warns.
I nod.
“Do not tell your friends, or mention it to anyone,” she adds. “Your father already knows.” She runs her fingertip over the picture.
“He is the person who scratched the face out,” I say, realizing.
“Yes.” She hands it to me.
Suddenly, I feel special.
I am the only one of her children my mother is going to tell. I am the one she trusts with this secret. Because I am the eldest, perhaps. Or because we spent time together, alone, when I was sick after my surgery. Or because I am trustworthy. And I was bold enough to ask.
She looks at me kindly for a beat and says: “Daddy is not your biological father.”
I can only stare at her. My mouth drops open.
She takes a deep breath and goes on. “The man in the photograph was named Buddy Kopelnick. And—I’m sorry, Carrie. I should have told you a long time ago. Or maybe I shouldn’t be telling you now. I honestly don’t know what to do. Your father loves you very much. Harris, I mean. He loves you. And he’s never wanted you to know.”
“Buddy Kopelnick was my father?”
She shakes her head quickly. “No, no. Harris is your father. He is your legal father. His name is on your birth certificate.”
“But…I wasn’t his baby. Is that what you’re saying?”
“We were married when I got pregnant. Harris wanted you to be his and I wanted you to be his, so we agreed that you would be his. Once you were born, we agreed we would never talk about it.” My mother wipes her eyes like an actress in a movie. “Some part of me has always wanted you to know,” she says. “Buddy was a good man.”
“Who was he?”
“He was a boy I went with in college,” she says. “But in those days—well, Buddy was Jewish. My family didn’t want an interfaith marriage. A mixed marriage. Nowadays, no one would think much of something like that, would they? Or not many people. Attitudes have changed so fast. Erin is Jewish, isn’t she?”
I nod.
“Well. You know Daddy loves to tell the story of how he proposed to me four times before I said yes.”