Emma squinted into the yard. She gazed up at the trees. She turned at the sound of a chipmunk. She looked everywhere but at Lucy.
“I do. I want to go,” Lucy said. “I haven’t had any grandparents,” she added, meaning it as a kind of excuse or apology but hearing, as it came out, how it might hurt Emma further. Emma got letters from her own mother once a month, but none of her children had ever met her. Lucy wiped the mess she’d made of her pear on the underside of Mrs. Greely’s stair and Emma didn’t scold her. She didn’t seem to notice, or even to have heard what Lucy had said. But she had. Emma was thinking about how for so long she had let herself believe that she had saved Lucy from her beginnings—she had taken the girl’s maturity personally, felt deserving of her peculiar contentment. But Lucy was no happier than anyone else. She must have known, even before she saw Beatrice Cohn, that she had been abandoned, unwanted. If she had seemed happy, it was out of desperation. If she had been protective of Emma it was so that she would be protected. Her extraordinary love was her need.
Emma threw what was left of her own pear into the trees, then said, “I shouldn’t have done that. That was very rude.”
“To Mrs. Cohn?” Lucy asked.
“Oh. No, to Mrs. Greely.”
Which gave Lucy an excuse to slip off and look for the pear, which she pretended took a long time, which was plausible because the ground was buried in leaves.
Thirty-three
Lillian brought three gifts. First, a trio of rings her own mother had given her, not the finest pieces but they would mean something, she hoped, and they sparkled like a young girl should want, one ruby, one emerald, one sapphire, each with a tiny diamond at its center. The bands were gold and skinny, good for young fingers that didn’t puff or swell. When Lillian’s father had given them to her mother after she closed her shop, Lillian had thought, Why bother now? Why not give her something when she could still appreciate it, wear it out to parties? She was partially right—her mother had lived only two more years—but mostly wrong, she understood now, not only because her father hadn’t had the money before that time but because he hadn’t yet felt the need to give them. Last week, in the office of her analyst, Dr. M., Lillian had come to the realization that gifts were mostly for the people who gave them.
During her first session, lying on his couch, Lillian had waited for Dr. M. to tell her something. She had grown impatient. It seemed he should have answers. But by now, her fourth visit, she was used to the fact that he mostly asked questions, which she then tried her best to answer. It turned out she knew a lot about her own life, which shouldn’t have surprised her, she supposed, but did, which was another thing, perhaps, to discuss with Dr. M. But for now she was agonizing over what to give the girl. It was nearly her first thought when Henry told her. A granddaughter! The details about pear trees and robbers slipped right past her. A gift! Might a dress be more appropriate than jewelry? Or maybe a beautiful box, to hold trinkets? Dr. M. interrupted her to ask, “Is it possible with these gifts that there is something else you mean to say?”
She could not think how to answer his question. She went on to describe her mother’s rings, and in describing them to decide they were right. But later, it struck her that Dr. M. was wrong. She didn’t mean to say anything. She meant to change the girl in some way, leave a trace of herself, a mark.
This was the sort of thing she wasn’t sure she even wanted to know about herself. It led to all the dresses she’d given Bea, the hairpieces and stockings and assorted undergarments she likely never wore.