Jess had never before considered herself a failure, no matter the setbacks she’d endured. “One step at a time,” Nora used to say if Jesssuffered a disappointment at school. “Anything can be overcome, any distance traveled, just put one foot in front of the other and keep on going until you get there.” But what if one didn’t know where “there” was? What was a person to do when she was stuck in a place she didn’t recognize, with no signposts, and no idea where to put the next step?
“What am I going to do, Nora?”
The room met her question with a resounding silence.
Downstairs, a piece of cutlery fell to the tiled floor. The noise was a sacrilege. Jess sat very quietly, as still as she could, tamping down the resentment she felt that Polly was clattering away in the kitchen, being careless with Nora’s things, when Nora herself was not.
Her mother had said she’d make dinner, and although Jess felt like neither eating nor engaging in polite conversation, she hadn’t had the heart to say no. As a rule, Polly’s efforts were to be supported: it was a fact, sometimes tiresome, of her “vulnerability.” Allowances were to be made, and not merely because Nora said so. The part of Jess that remembered when it was just the two of them in the flat farther up the peninsula, the part that recollected laughing together with joy, feeling safety and comfort, the sunlight and warmth before hurt had hardened her heart—that part could never allow her to express frustration toward her mother, no matter how strongly she felt it.
At length, Jess found the impetus to move. She went to the en suite to wash her hands and ready herself for the next hurdle. Her hair was coming loose; she brushed it. Her face was pale; she pinched each cheek. The dress smelled like Nora; she left it on. And then, putting one foot in front of the other, she started making her way downstairs.
26
It was unsettling being back at Darling House. Polly was beset with memories; the past appeared at every turn. Just over there, for instance, on the sofa below the wall of family photographs, she saw herself at twenty, her face in her hands. It was her birthday, and Nora had served lunch outside on the terrace. She’d invited a number of Polly’s friends from school, girls Polly hadn’t seen in months, all of them dressed beautifully, fresh with stories of university and travel and plans for the future.
Polly hadn’t wanted a party; she’d been feeling a bit overwhelmed. Just when she’d started to get the hang of having a baby, had gained some release from the constant fear that she was going to damage this perfect child they’d sent home with her from the hospital, Jess had morphed and grown and gained with her new mobility an instinct for danger.
Polly cried some evenings from sheer exhaustion and loneliness, and Nora listened as she outlined all that had gone wrong in the day. Her mother’s face would be as a mirror to Polly’s own sorrow, and then Polly would feel worse. “A mother is only ever as happy as her unhappiest child,” Nora was fond of saying. “And I only have one child, so you have to be jolly.” Nora was joking when she said it, but jests are often used to mask the truth and Polly knew that this was such a time: her mother had sacrificed an enormous amount to have her, and had dedicated herself to Polly’s upbringing.
That’s why, when Nora suggested a birthday dinner—“to cheer you up!”—Polly had agreed; it had seemed the least she could do. But the occasion had been as awful as she’d feared. She wasn’t good at being with people anymore—not that she’d ever been a charming hostess. She’d messed up Jess’s feeding time, forgotten to rebutton her own dress when she returned to the table, and then everyone hadwanted to hold the baby and Jess had become overtired and refused to settle and Polly had stood and jiggled her and cooed and felt all eyes on her as she failed this most basic of tests.
Thank God Nora had been there with her magic hold. “Guaranteed to tame even the crankiest baby,” she’d said with a smile for the party guests.
Sure enough, Jess had calmed almost at once. Her red baby face, stuck in an attitude of deep surprise and indignation, wide eyes, juddering mouth, and tearful hiccoughs, had felt like an indictment. Relief and embarrassment had swirled together with self-loathing to form a sick knot in Polly’s stomach, and there’d been something else with it—a feeling she was tempted to call rage, only it couldn’t be that, because Jess was an innocent little baby who just wanted to be comforted and cared for, and only a monster, an absolute monster, could be angry with a helpless child.
It was later the same night that Nora found her crying into her hands on the sofa.
“Oh, Polly,” she’d said. “My dear Polly. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s so hard.”
“It feels that way because it’s new. Being a mother doesn’t always come naturally. It’s like anything—one must learn the ropes.”
“Was it like that for you, too?”
“To a degree. Though some women are born mothers.” The implication being that some women were not.
“She hates me.”
Nora laughed. “She doesn’t hate you! She’s a baby; she doesn’t know what hate is.”
“Then why won’t she settle when I hold her?”
“You’re nervous. Babies can sense these things.” Nora had paused then, before saying delicately: “Listen, have you thought about seeing Dr. Westerby again?”
Memories of the weekly after-school sessions in the cloying officeof Dr. Westerby flooded back. The stale air-conditioning, never quite cool enough; the sense she always had that the air was thick with other people’s problems. The frailty of her wrists, the softness of her voice, the insubstantiality of her whole being. The truth was, whenever she considered opening up and telling Dr. Westerby how scared and uncertain she felt, she would remember him laughing and raising a glass at one of Nora’s parties and know that there was no way she could trust him.
“I don’t need to see Dr. Westerby,” she said.
“Well,” Nora replied, “you can always change your mind. And in the meantime, I’m here, aren’t I? You’re not to worry—our little Jess is in the safest of hands.”
Polly shook the memory away. It had been an awful time, but it was in the past. Things had got better, just as Nora said they would. Polly had grown in confidence and proficiency, so much so that by the time Jess was three and starting kindergarten, she had a job she loved at a local bookstore, some savings in the bank, and was starting to think about moving out.
It was in this room, she remembered now, that she’d told Nora her plans. Though no, that wasn’t quite right; she hadn’t told Nora—Nora had asked her to explain. Polly hadn’t meant to be sneaky or underhanded, it was rather that she’d known, even as the idea first started to take shape, that Nora wouldn’t like it.
The decision was hard enough to explain to herself. Nora was the perfect mother, everybody said so, and Darling House was the most beautiful home a person could hope to live in. And yet, for all its rooms, Polly felt herself running short of space. Everywhere she turned, she was confronted with Nora’s possessions, and they were so definite, so permanent, so established. Polly wanted to stretch out, sometimes in different directions, to form shapes other than the onesthat Nora left for her; she wanted to have time with Jess that belonged to the two of them alone.
Perhaps it was because such desires felt selfish and ungrateful, or else because she didn’t have much experience going against Nora’s wishes and it was difficult to break a lifetime’s habit—maybe even because there was a part of her that knew even then that Nora was used to things going her way and her bonhomie was not entirely without expectation—but when she began to consult the rental section of the newspaper, Polly did so secretly. She was only looking, she told herself. There would be plenty of time to talk to Nora if, and when, her search for a new place became a reality.
