Naomi came over for lunch in August to discuss final arrangements for the wedding. I was thrilled to see her, but I had to stifle the impulse to dump on her all my fears. She wanted a sane mother-in-law and I had to at least try to pretend to be one. Besides, though she hadn’t talked about it with me, I was sure she must be struggling to deal with everything that had happened to her and Kenneth, and to her family.
We talked about the wedding for a few minutes. Details, lists, names. I could manage that. Then I asked her about Kenneth, having worried over the secret I’d kept from him all these weeks. “Does he know about the money you were taking?”
“The money I took from my father to get through school?” asked Naomi, her face bright with surprise.
I nodded. I’d even kept this truth from Kurt, for fear that he would somehow try to use it to sabotage the wedding.
“He knows. I told him after we started the adoption papers. I wish I’d told him before. I was supposed to pay the family back later by helping him with some of the home births he thought would come up. I just kept thinking that it wouldn’t happen, that the wives would get too old. I didn’t want to think about how much longer he could keep having more children if he married younger and younger women.” She played with her engagement ring, twisting it in that way only a woman who is still getting used to it will do.
“Did Kenneth get mad that you’d hidden that from him?” I asked.
She let out a breath, nodding. “It was pretty bad. But he did say that he remembered you telling him that all normal couples have disagreements. It’s the ones who learn how to deal with the conflict who survive and thrive, not the ones who avoid it.” She looked at me, clearly hoping I would say something comforting.
“It’s certainly true of my marriage. We’ve fought plenty and we still love each other.” As I said it, I realized that this was partly true because the more we felt free to fight, the more we trusted each other. Or I hoped that we did.
“Well, thank you for the advice,” she said, her eyes shining. “I think you may have saved my marriage in advance.”
After that, we veered into a discussion about Talitha, who was “frighteningly quiet and good,” according to Naomi. She always did her homework. She helped around the house. She never watched television, played on the Internet, or asked to go out, and she seemed to have no interest in making friends at school.
“I wonder if she is just too used to being hurt by the people who are supposed to love her to make any new connections,” Naomi said. “I want to make everything better, but it’s going to take a long time.”
Yes, it would, and the worst part was that she might have to accept that there were some things she could never fix. But I didn’t say that.
“I think she’s a very lucky girl, with you and Kenneth as her parents.” I patted Naomi’s hand.
“Thank you,” she said. “You always know the right thing to say.”
I wasn’t sure that was true.
Then with a sigh, Naomi admitted, “Sarah has disappeared. Not a word from her to anyone. I don’t even know if she’s still in Utah.”
Poor Sarah. She had been through too much. But maybe it was best for her to be on her own for a while. And that could be a good thing for Talitha, too. I didn’t know if Naomi had guessed at the truth about Sarah and Rebecca’s biological relationship, and I didn’t want to talk about it in any case, so I left it alone.
“Rebecca has come to visit Talitha once, but she’s so busy with the other children that she doesn’t have time for more than that. I wonder sometimes if she can possibly have enough time to give to that many children,” Naomi said.
It was a good question, though in some sense I thought that children would take up as much time as you could give them. There was never a point where they thought you’d given them too much attention.
We were quiet for a long moment.
“Sometimes I wonder if I should just give up school. At least for a few years, until Talitha is settled,” she said at last, her head low and her eyes not meeting mine.
I hadn’t expected this. Naomi had seemed like such a modern woman to me, throwing off the ideals of my generation. It was something I had noticed more and more in the church, and outside of it. Younger women seemed to have no understanding of why a woman would choose only to stay at home, giving up all ambitions outside of motherhood.