“Father’s joy. Or source of joy.”
“She was King David’s wife, wasn’t she? Beautiful, like Esther. The Talmud called them two of the four women of surpassing beauty in the world.”
Okay. Was this another weird insult? Or a compliment? Or a statement of fact? Was my Talmudic knowledge being tested? Should I be able to offer up the other two women? (I couldn’t.) “Helen was beautiful, too. Launched a thousand ships.”
She looked up, startled, like I’d said something off script. “So she was.”
I clasped my hands behind my back, nervous, and tried to think of something utterly inoffensive to say.
“Your grandmother,” she said, then sighed and started again. “Wemet for the first time here, when I was eighteen and she was sixteen. I won’t deny she’d had a hard life, but she acted very put-upon, playing up the poor orphan, the unwanted relation. Still, everyone liked her.Iliked her.”
I resisted pointing out how O’mahadbeen orphaned, and hadn’t even been a relation but a charity case, so it might not have been an act.
Helen held up a piece of baby’s breath against the flowers, studied it, then sliced away a quarter inch of the stem. “There are some people who everyone wants to be around. People with a special energy. Your grandmother was so, despite her mood swings and silences. She drew everyone to her.”
I knew the energy she spoke about, the spear of light striking through a person, magnetic as an iron rod. I saw it in Stella, where it manifested as exuberant extraversion, and in my best friend, Niko, whose sharp wit gathered people close. These were the moving centers of a party, the people who exuded energy instead of drinking it.
“Then there are the rest of us, the moths. The moths get too close to those people, and are burned to a crisp.”
I opened my mouth, but she cut me off. “My husband didn’t choose me.Ruthchose tonotbe with him. I’ve made my peace with this. But we don’t need history repeating itself. Be careful with my grandson.”
“We’re not—it’s nothing like—”
“You’re not a couple?”
Oof.Great question. “I meant—it’s a different situation.”
“I see.”
All right. If everything I said was going to be difficult and strained, I might as well ask what I really wanted to know. “You knew my grandmother fairly well?”
She nodded slowly. “When we were young. Or at least, we saw each other fairly often.”
I wanted to know about their relationship. Had she been aware of anything between Ruth and Edward? Had she viewed Ruth as competition? But those questions paled compared to the one I’d been carrying all over this island. “Did you know anything about her family?”
“Thiswasher family,” she said without hesitation. “The Barbanels raised her. They raised her from when she arrived on their doorstep.”
I hadn’t thought about it like so before. “They didn’t keep in touch with her, though.”
She pinned me with her gaze. “My mother-in-law called Ruth every week for her entire life.”
“What?” I stared at Helen. My throat closed up. “Really?”
She smiled, the corners of her mouth held up by a myriad of emotions. “Every Sunday.”
“I had no idea.” Impossible. Surely I would have known? Or Mom would have known. Daughters knew these sort of things about their mothers’ lives.
Didn’t we?
It felt almost inappropriate to ask more questions, but when would I get another chance? “What was their relationship like? My grandmother and—Edward’s mother?”
“Better than my own.” Her expression turned stark. “The Barbanels were Ruth’s family more than they were ever mine.”
I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like, having a mother-in-law more invested in your husband’s previous partner than you. Only it hadn’t been like that, had it? It was more having a mother-in-law invested in her own daughter.
How could O’ma have never have mentioned a surrogate mother? I talked about Mom all the time. She was so much a part of who I was.Andwhywould O’ma have kept her a secret, if they talked every week?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It doesn’t sound easy.”
