I don’t know what to say.
Nor does Margo, to judge from her silence. Finally, she says, “You hated Mom.”
“I neverknewMom. You got her the most. You had her all to yourself for two years. Then you came along, Mal, and yeah, you had to share her with Margo, but two is better than three. I was third. I got the dregs. If Dad hadn’t paid attention to me, no one would have.”
I can understand her wanting Mom’s undivided attention. We all did. But her vehemence? Her resentment? Her loving Dad more because she felt Mom loved her less? I always thought her loyalty to him came from the fact that he coddled her.
Feeling horrible now, I ask, “Did you really think that?”
“Yes.”
Margo looks as disturbed as I am. “But everyone babied you. You got three times the attention either of us got. You had older sisters. I never did. We looked out for you in school. I never had that.”
“I wanted Mom,” she repeats, glaring now.
“Maybe I’m glad I don’t have siblings,” Joy states and, when all eyes snap to her, adds a meek, “Moving right along… secrethidingplace?” To reinforce the diversion, she says, “Mine is the leg of the snowsuit I wore when I was a baby.”
There is silence. I’m not sure any of us can recalibrate so quickly. Then again, I’m not sure any of us can fully process Anne’s declaration, least of all Anne, who is suddenly looking more woundedthan angry. There are years of lost love in her expression. How to process that?
We need time. Seeming to realize it too, Margo and Anne take visible breaths.
I focus on Joy and say a quiet, “I know.”
Her jaw drops.“You know?”
“You’ve always been so insistent about saving that snowsuit for a child of your own, that when I saw the legs getting fatter, I checked it out.”
“You looked?” Guarded now.
“Squeezed. When what I felt was not a rat, I backed off.”
She is barely relieved. “But now it’s no good as a hiding place.”
“I said I didn’t look. I won’t.”
She pouts before turning to Anne and muttering, “Secret hiding place?”
“Daisy’s box,” Anne states. She’s still annoyed. But at least she’s playing.
“Daisy,” I breathe, letting that particular memory surface into an image of something tiny and gray.
“Our cat?” asks Margo. “Our one and only pet? Who was sick from the get-go?”
“I loved her,” Anne declares, daring anyone to refute that.
“Whathappened?” Joy asks Anne, before turning on me. “I never knew you had a cat.”
“She didn’t live long,” I explain.
“Three months,” Anne says. “She was born with a neurological thing, and I held her and hand-fed her and kept saying she needed medical treatment, only no one listened to me.”
Margo clearly remembers that part, too. “There was nothing we could do,” she says.
Anne looks about to argue, then relents. “Maybe not. We had her cremated. The ashes came back to us in a little wood box. It was mine.” To Joy, she says, “Every year on the anniversary of the day she died, I used to sprinkle a few of those ashes around outside.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say and glance at Margo, who seems as ignorant as me.
“When there were none left,” Anne goes on, “I used the box for whatever I wanted to hide. Since everyone still thought Daisy was inside, they wouldn’t touch it.”
