Marion managed to keep all her emotion tucked inside until she had reached the safety of her attic room. When she finally let go, the sobs came out in big shuddering waves that shook the bed and sent many of her friends bouncing onto the floor. She imagined the mother of those perfect children was probably some manicured beauty, the type that never had a hair out of place. She could see them all at home now standing around some very clean and modern kitchen, hugging one another and laughing while a healthy meal of whole wheat pasta and organic vegetables simmered on the cooking range.
After she was done crying, Marion went to Mother’s room and sat in front of the big dressing table. The girl had called her an old woman. She knew she didn’t look good for her age—she hadn’t looked good at any age—but it cut deeply to hear it said out loud. Putting on her reading glasses (her distance glasses were practically useless; she badly needed a new prescription), she examined her reflection. What the girl said was true. In Marion’s youth, her face had been a pillow of featureless pink flesh, not pretty, perhaps, but firm and robust; now the skin had become coarse and gray, and her flesh sagged. Could anything be done? Perhaps she should wear makeup like Judith suggested or go on a diet, but food was the only pleasure she had, and would it really make much difference? If she bought some new clothes, she might look better, but she hated going clothes shopping; the assistants were always so rude to her.
She had always been plain, but now she was old and plain; it seemed doubly unfair to have aged prematurely when so little had happened to her. How had she got worn out so quickly? She felt like a little girl inside, and yet she was an old woman on the surface, an old woman with the experience of a child. Most old people at least had memories, they had been married, had children, gone on holiday with their families, danced at parties with their lovers, had successful careers, while she had done nothing. But was it really her fault? Try as she might, she did not see what she could have done differently.
Marion went back to her own room, scooped up the teddies that had fallen, and lay on her bed. She tried holding the bears in her arms, but that only made her feel worse, an old woman comforting herself with children’s toys. It was too pitiful for words. She imagined Neil and his beautiful children seeing her like this. If anyone knew what her life was, they would turn away in horror. Another person would kill themselves rather than endure her life. If only she had been able to break out, but it seemed she was surrounded by an invisible barrier that separated her from the rest of the world, and no matter how hard she struggled, she could never fight through.
She could find out where Neil lived, go to the house, then wait until they were all asleep and burn it to the ground. This thought, like a shot of strong spirits, gave Marion a measure of comfort, but the feeling was soon replaced by self-revulsion. No, I mustn’t think things like that, she told herself, Neil is a good man. He deserves to be happy. If she didn’t have a loving family, it was her own fault for being stupid and lazy and ugly, for being the sort of person other people didn’t want to be around.
When she tried to bring into her mind the old Neil, the one that had lived in her head for so many years, it suddenly occurred to her how silly that was. If she hadn’t locked herself away in a world of fantasy, might she have had the courage to go out and find someone and have children of her own? A real man, even if he was someone plain and dull like her?
When it was time to get up to make dinner, Marion could no more move than if she were trapped in the sinking sand on Northport Beach that Mother used to warn her about. Just after nine o’clock there was a knock on the bedroom door. John came in holding a glass of cordial.
“Marion, love, what’s up?” For once his voice was full of concern.
“I don’t feel well,” she said.
“Do you need the doctor?”
“No, not like that.” She turned over so he could see her swollen eyes.
“Oh.”
He set the cordial on the bedside table and sat down on the edge of her mattress.
“You get that from Mother, you know. Remember how she used to lie in her bed for days on end? Perhaps you do need to see the doctor. They make special pills that can help.”
Mother had taken the pills to create a pillow around her, but in the end that pillow had smothered her.
“No, I don’t want pills.”
“But they might make you feel better, Marion.”
“But things wouldn’t actually be better, would they? So wouldn’t feeling better be a sort of a cheat?”
“Does that really matter so much?”
The pills had made Mother limp and drowsy all the time. All it took was one too many of those little white disks and she dozed off in the bath, her head slipping beneath the warm lavender-scented water. Before she could manage to wake herself, she drowned.
John put his hand on Marion’s arm. Perhaps he meant to comfort her, but it felt as though he was holding her down. She froze, then pushed her brother to one side and jumped out of bed.
“No, I don’t want to be like her, lying there all day doped up, like something floating in a tank. I don’t want that! I’d rather have anything than that!”
? ? ?
IT WAS ALMOST twenty years since Mother had been gone. Marion found it hard to believe how quickly time had passed—especially since so little had happened in that period. Twenty years. Some women had raised a child to adulthood in that time.
Marion could never have organized Mother’s funeral by herself; all those stressful phone calls to make and confusing forms to fill in. How she feared forms. It was so hard to get the letters in the tiny little spaces, and then nervousness at getting something wrong would cause her to make mistakes over the simplest things, such as spelling her own name. She would have to keep starting over with a fresh one until a pile of crumpled error-filled paperwork lay in front of her.
What would she have done if John hadn’t been there to deal with everything? Of course everyone assumed Marion to be incapable of handling all the arrangements because she was so distraught, but in her heart she knew this wasn’t exactly true. Marion couldn’t say that she had loved her mother or even that they had ever gotten along particularly well. Yet her death created an unsettling emptiness.
Marion’s adult life had always revolved around Mother’s demands and wishes:
“You need to go to the shops to buy me some new nylons, the sixty denier so my veins don’t show through, not the thin ones. Call Dr. Dunkerly about my prescription. Remind Mrs. Morrison to clean the brass door handles. Today we should go to Stowe’s for a cream tea.”