Joanna looked at her helplessly.
Catherine’s lips were tautly pressed together. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I know, I went and ruined it. Look at all I was given, everything we ever wanted, and I’ve messed it all up.”
It was hard to contain the bitterness she felt. But Catherine was squinting at her, lost. Joanna sighed. “You said that at my wedding.”
“What? I didn’t.”
“Yeah. You did.”
“Well, surely I meant—” Catherine trailed off abruptly, pressing her lips together and shifting her eyes to the right. Realization seemed to slowly trickle into her, reminding Joanna of red food-coloring dye dropped into a water glass, the molecules gradually dispersing and turning the water pink. Catherine’s throat bobbed as she swallowed. “Well,” she said, touching her neck. She looked out the window, then at her hands. “I just meant … I didn’t want you to ruin the day by dwelling on the negative. I could tell you were. I could see you looking around, scowling at something that was wrong. The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree, I guess.”
Joanna flinched, amazed at her mother’s self-introspection. But she didn’t believe Catherine for a second. Surely this explanation was fabricated, once Catherine realized the harshness of what she’d said. “You never thought I deserved Charles. You were horrified when I told you we were dating, as if it was unnatural or something.”
Catherine sighed and shut her eyes. A nurse at the desk just outside her room let out a cawing laugh. A doctor ran past the door at a full gallop. “Look,” Catherine said. “I spent a long time around those people. I don’t know what they deserved or who deserved them. I tried so hard, but they didn’t want me. I couldn’t help but be bitter and hate them a little. Of course, once I moved here, I realized it wasn’t even about them, specifically. It was just about belonging somewhere. I’ve found that here.”
Joanna sniffed. “The sail club?”
“That’s right.”
Joanna breathed out. It felt like she’d been holding something in for years. She looked around the room, from the monitors to the gray-green walls to the flecks in the linoleum to her mother’s feet, stumps beneath the blanket. “What was so wrong with your life, Mom?”
Catherine thought for a while, as if no one had ever asked that question. Finally she cleared her throat. “One day, when you were about ten, your dad just wasn’t there anymore.” Catherine kept her eyes on her blankets. “For years he adored me. He defined me. Because he watched everything I did like it mattered. And then … he just … checked out. I thought you understood that. You were there. You watched it happen.”
“I was ten.”
“I thought … I don’t know. I thought you understood.”
“Why would I understand that?”
Catherine sighed, shaking her head. “When you were a baby, you were very clumsy,” she said in a faraway voice. “You used to fall all the time. And then I would pick you up all worried, and you’d be crying and I’d sit you on the couch and give you a little piece of a banana and after a while you were okay. But then, this one day, you were playing outside by yourself, and you tripped over something and landed face-first. It wasn’t a bad fall but the kind of thing you’d normally get upset about. Only this time you just looked around and then picked yourself up. You didn’t cry. The next time you fell around me, I got it. There was always this pause after you fell, where you’d look at me, waiting to see what my face would do. It didn’t mean anything if you were alone; it was how I responded to it that made you respond to it, too. It was the damnedest thing.”
More doctors hurried down the hall. Joanna crossed her arms over her chest, not knowing where this was going.
“We all just rely on everyone else’s reaction, don’t we?” Catherine said. “When I fall over, I look around to see if people are going to get all crazy. And once your dad left, maybe I looked around for you. Because if no one sees what I do, it doesn’t mean anything. It wouldn’t have been real if you hadn’t been there with me to see it.”
“So it’s like that tree falls in the forest question?”
Catherine smiled questioningly.
“You know, that philosophical question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?”
Catherine cocked her head. “Why, I don’t know! Does it?”
Her voice had a wondrous quality to it, as if this was a catchy song she was hearing for the first time. It seemed implausible—irreverent, almost—that her mother had hit upon the idea completely on her own. “Come on,” Joanna said. “You’ve heard that. Everyone has.”