In preparation for her mother’s visit, Bea closed her bedroom drapes, threw half the dresses from her closet onto the floor, and pulled a flannel dressing robe over a shapeless, blue-and-white-striped, mannish shift. Bea brought tea up to her uncle Ira, who sat in his wheelchair by the window. He’d left the window open so he wouldn’t fall asleep but his eyes were closed, his nose whistling gently. At Bea’s “Tea!” his eyes fluttered, closed again, then opened fully before traveling, at a milky, meticulous, tender pace, Bea’s length.
Bea knew how she appeared, the loose costume bagging around her, her hair uncut since Lillian’s hairdresser had given her a disastrously conceived row of bangs a few months ago. Bea’s hair bushed around her head as she never allowed it in public or even, most days, out of self-respect, in private.
“Why do you always want to look a wreck for your mother?” Ira asked.
Bea set down the tea and shut the window. “Because it drives her mad?”
“Maybe. Open the window, please. Or maybe because it makes you look mad.”
Bea opened the window. Ira was probably right. Ira often said aloud what Bea preferred not to say, or even to think when she could help it. Nine years ago, when she had stopped eating, gone mute, been pulled out of Radcliffe and sent to Fainwright Hospital, where she was diagnosed as “undiagnosticated,” Lillian had become inexplicably kind to her. She’d sat with Bea for hours whether Bea spoke or not, sometimes in silence, a state that normally made Lillian squirm, sometimes reading to her from the papers about the local news and the war, assiduously skipping the gossip—though Lillian loved gossip—or any mention of music or Radcliffe. Bea had watched Lillian’s eyes ferociously skimming on her behalf, perceived a new weight at her mother’s jawline, a layer of softness and worry. It was as if Lillian had only thought she wanted Bea to “go places”—by which she’d meant play piano at Isabella Stewart Gardner’s salons, marry someone even richer than Henry, and bear children Lillian could dress and spoil—but discovered that she liked Bea better as a doll, droopy on Luminal. And Bea discovered how good it felt to please her mother, which she had often almost succeeded at before Fainwright, but never quite. There had been Bea’s face, for instance, which Lillian said would be stunning if only Bea would agree to get her nose reset; Bea’s piano playing, which Lillian paid for and boasted about but never directly praised; Bea’s expression when she played—lips mashed, brow squeezing the bridge of her nose—which Lillian swatted at, warning of wrinkles. Then there had been Lieutenant Seagrave, aide to the navy admiral her father was working to woo into a boot contract with Haven Shoes. It was the lieutenant, according to Lillian, who made the admiral’s decisions. She worried the family’s Jewishness would offend him—she pushed Bea on him as a kind of balm. He’s not so much older than you! she’d said to Bea. (Though he was, by at least ten years.) And see how handsome! (He had the sort of straight, tall, very white teeth that reminded one of the skull underneath.) And that name! Seagrave! A direct descendant of the Mayflower, I’ve been told. Bea had pictured the lieutenant descending from the famous ship, literally floating down from its gunwales onto a rocky shore, his jacket’s stiff hem whiffling in the breeze. Bea had flirted with him, as her mother clearly wanted, but then he’d forced himself on her, as her mother presumably did not want, and then she’d gotten pregnant, as her mother certainly did not want. It had been a disaster, a humiliation, a gross joke on them all. It had been worse than anything Bea had ever feared, worse—she’d had the thought—than if he’d murdered her. But thirteen months later, in the hospital bed at Fainwright, too washed out to ask questions or assign blame, her head hollow and gleaming, Bea was finally perfect. “You’ll come home,” her mother said. “You’ll join me at the clubs, make use of yourself. We’ll find a patient man to marry you.”