“It seemed to me at the time that they were both ready to call it quits.”
“Maybe he wanted to take Polly with him?”
“No.” Mrs. Robinson was shaking her head. “I really don’t think so.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Things had been difficult between them for several years, starting before your grandmother fell pregnant. Most men don’t understand how hard it can be on a woman, particularly someone like your grandmother, when those things don’t happen easily. She suffered a few losses before your mum, and he thought they should give up, that they could lead a happy life without children. But that wasn’t the life she’d envisaged. She used to say that she wanted her very own cricket team. She saw every doctor, guru, and faith healer this side of the Blue Mountains, and eventually her persistence paid off. I was here when she got the good news; you’ve never seen a woman glow like your grandmother did that day, and all the days thereafter. She had terrible morning sickness, the poor thing, but she was so damned grateful that she never, ever complained.”
Jess smiled. The description sounded exactly like Nora. Tough, determined, and relentlessly positive. She was never one to take no for an answer, seeing it as a form of failure. It made Jess wonder sometimes how she’dreallyfelt about the breakdown of her marriage. Whenever the subject came up, Nora had just shrugged breezily and characterized it as a pragmatic decision to correct a minor mistake of youth: “C’est la vie.”
But Jess only had to think of her own breakup with Matt to know that parting from someone with whom one had shared a portion of life couldn’t help but throw up feelings of loss. And Nora’s husband had been the father of her baby. Surely that carried extra weight. “I can understand tensions when they were trying to conceive, but if he was amenable to having a baby, why separate right when they’d finally succeeded?”
“I suspect he wanted their life to return to the way it had been before your mother was born,” Mrs. Robinson said. “He considered that he’d been patient and now he wanted his wife back. But motherhood changes some people. The world was different for your grandmother once Polly was on the scene. Understandable when you know what she went through to have her. She doted on her, would hardly let her out of her arms, and he became jealous.”
“Of the baby?”
Mrs. Robinson nodded. “Sad, isn’t it, to think of a grown man being jealous of a baby? It became untenable. It broke Nora’s heart in a way. Of course, being Nora, she committed herself to making the best of things. If she couldn’t have a big family of her own, she would surround herself with people who needed her help and devote herself to being the very best mother she could be to Polly. And she was. You’ve never seen a parent as involved as Nora. Well, I don’t need to tell you how caring she is.”
Jess met the other woman’s fond smile. She was certainly familiar with Nora’s dedication. After she came to live with her grandmother, Nora had never missed a single school debate, drama performance, or netball game. Eventually, Jess had been forced to insist that she start taking time for herself. “You’re making the other parents look bad,” she’d joked, but Nora had been hurt and the conversation had become awkward. They’d got there in the end, though.
Now, at the kitchen bench, Jess yawned broadly. “Oh,” she said, unable to stifle it. “Excuse me.”
Mrs. Robinson laughed. “Not at all. You must be exhausted. What time is it for you?”
“God only knows.”
“I should let you get some sleep. Shall I heat up a slice of lasagna before I go?”
Jess said that she’d do it herself and thanked Mrs. Robinson again for bringing it. She walked her to the front door. It was seven o’clock but still light, a drowsy early evening on a warm summer’s day, the sky starting to soften into the pink, purple, and gold folds of dusk, and the lower reaches of the garden just beginning to darken and cool. The colors and smells, the quality of the light, were visceral. Jesscould feel them in the rhythm of her heartbeat, deep in her lungs, in the cells of her skin. She knew them as one can’t help but know the cadence of their mother tongue.
An ibis cut across the sky, followed by another three in formation, and Jess’s daze was broken. She yawned again and turned to go inside for dinner. If she could just make it to eight, she had a chance of sleeping the whole night through and maybe getting on top of her jet lag.
Her mobile rang as she was closing the front door.
“Patrick!” She had forgotten to call him. “I’m so sorry.”
“How was she?”
“She’s getting rest and I’m going to make sure she’s back to her old self as soon as possible.”
“Were you able to speak with her?”
“A little. Not properly.”
“Are you going back tomorrow?”
“Every day, until they let me bring her home.”
“Good. That’s good.” He paused, and something about the quality of his silence made Jess feel he had more to say.
“Was there something else?”
“Maybe. You asked me earlier whether I knew why Nora was so distracted lately.”
Jess’s pulse began to quicken. “Yes?”
“I was collecting my mail this afternoon and I remembered that Nora received a letter a week or so ago that seemed to upset her.”
