Close Your Eyes (21 page)

“What does that mean?” said Mae. Though she should have been immune to her daughter’s jabs, this one struck unhappily close to Mae’s midnight worries. She had
not
been a good role model for her daughter. She’d always been a doormat—Victoria had seen her mother walked all over by her husband and life in general. Mae had not protested when Victoria herself treated her mother terribly. But it was not too late! The truth be told—and maybe it was high time to tell the truth, before she was labeled an old bat and everyone could call her opinions dementia—Mae didn’t even like Victoria very much.

Victoria stared into space. She shook her head, her lovely curls reminding Mae of when she’d been a little girl. Victoria had loved those ribboned barrettes. “Maybe if I had told the truth,” said Victoria, “things would have turned out differently for me.”

“Victoria,” said Mae, touching her daughter’s arm.

“What?” said Victoria. The anger was gone from her voice, and she seemed disoriented.

“Honey,” said Mae, but then, as always, words failed her—or she failed with the words. “It was so long ago.”

“Right,” said Victoria. She nodded as if convincing herself of something. “Right, right,” she said.

And furthermore
, thought Mae. It had been her mother’s favorite expression; it meant:
end of conversation
.

Sunny, Victoria’s twelve-year-old daughter, came into the kitchen. She was tall and painfully thin. Mae had begun to wonder if Sunny had an eating disorder, like the ballet dancers Mae had seen in a PBS documentary. Sunny wore a green tracksuit, her earbuds firmly in place. She looked like a skinny gym teacher. Without speaking to anyone, she filled a glass with water from the tap.

“Good morning, Sunny,” said Mae loudly.

“She won’t answer you,” said Victoria, crossing her arms over her chest.

But Sunny took the earbuds from her ears and met her grandmother’s gaze. “Good morning, Nana,” she said.

“Would you like some eggs, dear?” asked Mae. “Some melon?”

Sunny picked up the empty beer bottle her mother had left on the kitchen counter, then set it down. “You promised,” she said to Victoria.

“It’s just one beer,” said Victoria.

“Sunny?” said Mae. “Honeydew?”

“I’m not hungry,” said Sunny, leaving the kitchen. A moment later, Mae heard the front door open and then shut.

After dressing, Mae sat in her room, looking out the window.
Unbearable
. The word came into her mind unbidden, but it was the right word. Mae simply couldn’t bear the thought of Victoria going back to rehab. Uli would have ample evidence to take the girls to Greece for good; Mae would drain her bank account to pay for another six weeks of massages and meetings; and for what? Mae didn’t believe that Victoria would ever get better, not anymore. That naïveté had been worn down to nothing.

Mae looked down at the park. It was a balmy day already, and people wore shorts and sleeveless shirts. Mae could see a couple sitting on a bench, deep in conversation. A woman pushed one of those expensive strollers, stepping lightly, a cell phone pressed to her ear. Mae squinted but did not see Sunny among the joggers.

They told you, in those depressing rooms, as you sat in a circle of metal chairs, they told you to hold fast to the person your loved one had been, before the booze. Before the booze? Mae could scarcely remember. Victoria hadn’t had a chance to be much of anyone before the booze. When she was four years old, she’d taken sips from all the glasses left on tables after a cocktail party, done a little dance in the middle of the living room, and passed out. How they’d laughed that night. “Look out, skid row,” a guest had joked.

Let go and let God, they said in that basement on Seventy-second Street, sipping tea from Styrofoam cups. She and Preston had attended the Al-Anon meetings for almost a year until one night he had stopped outside and said, “I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.” He had kissed Mae on the forehead, saying, “You keep going, sweetheart, but I’m done.”

Mae had almost gone inside by herself but, in the end, had taken his hand. They’d eaten at Sardi’s, she remembered, then had gone home and made love—tenderly, sadly. Victoria was in worse shape than ever that spring. Mae searched her bags every day after school, ransacked her room, but found nothing. It took Mae until midsummer to realize that Victoria’s shampoo bottle was filled with whiskey, right there in the bathroom.

Mae had forgotten to buy new shampoo, had borrowed Victoria’s Pert Plus one morning. With hot water running down her back, Mae had upended the bottle and watched, mystified, as amber liquid ran through her fingers. She smelled it but could scarcely believe her own nose.

She only drank it to go to sleep, Victoria confessed tearfully. She had nightmares, Victoria said. Southern Comfort! In a bottle of Pert Plus!

Unbearable. It was unbearable to give up on your baby.

Maybe this was all Mae’s fault. Surely. Surely it was all Mae’s fault. She had never given Victoria a moral center. She had loved her too much, or too little. She should have had another baby, a sibling for Victoria. Maybe she should have sat by Victoria’s bed all night to calm her nightmares. Maybe Victoria drank to fill a void. Maybe it was the money. Maybe she drank to forget.

Mae stood and took her Bible from the shelf. It had been a gift from her mother on Mae’s first communion. The Bible was bound in white leather. As always, Mae opened it to the passage that made her feel sick, Proverbs 19:5. It was like poking a sore tooth—she couldn’t help herself. Sometimes she felt cleansed after forcing herself to stare at the words. There they were—small black letters. They were unyielding, simple, true:

A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who pours out lies will not go free.

Mae hadn’t been to confession in months, maybe a year. She wasn’t sure she even believed the Catholic doctrine anymore. But her father had once told her that was what faith
was
—going to church even if you weren’t sure. Following orders. Maybe she should tell the priest about Victoria, just lay it all out from the beginning: what had happened and what Victoria had confessed and what Mae had forced the girls to do. Mae could let it go and let God decide on her punishment once and for all.

Let go and let God.

She wished she had decided to confess when Father Gregory was in charge, before he retired to Palm Beach. Mae had known Father Gregory since she was a young bride, and he was a comforting presence, a kind old man. The new priest, Father Richard, was a bit too attractive for his own good, too eager to please. In all honesty, Mae wasn’t sure he was up to the job of absolving this big a mistake. It had been a mistake, after all! Just a terrible, brutal mistake.

Mae closed the Bible firmly and put it back on the shelf.

2

St. Gabriel’s was a beautiful building, and inside, it was dim and cool, smelling of wood wax and incense. Mae was immediately calmed. The church had answers. It had rules and regulations. Her father had believed with his whole heart in Catholicism, which had to count for something.

“Mae! What a nice surprise.” Father Richard walked toward her, his arms outstretched.

“I’m here for confession,” said Mae.

Father Richard’s face remained exactly the same—a genial, welcoming arrangement of his features. Mae had to admit he was a professional. “Of course,” he said. “Follow me.”

One of the things Mae could not stand about Father Richard was that he wanted parishioners to sit across from him in his bright office while they confessed their sins. Mae, whose husband had never seen her in the altogether, squirmed under Father Richard’s aggressively benevolent gaze. She missed the old days, the shadowy figure behind the screen. She didn’t know where to look: there was the picture of Father Richard on the golf course, and there was his dirty coffee mug.

Mae decided to focus on her toes, then the wall to her right. Mustard-colored stucco. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” she began.

Father Richard sat back in his ergonomic chair, which squeaked. He crossed his stubby fingers over his stomach. After a minute, he tilted his head to the right, toward the window. Outside, Mae could see, it had started to rain. “It has been over a year since my last confession,” she said.

“Mm-hm?” said Father Richard.

Mae knew that this young (she didn’t want to use the word
whippersnapper
—who was she, her grandmother?—but that was the right word, it simply was), this young priest was allegedly able to absolve her, but what could he possibly know of sin?

“Well,” said Mae, “here’s the thing.”

“Go on, my child,” said Father Richard.

“When Victoria was a teenager,” said Mae, changing tack, “once, when she was a teenager, Victoria came home in a state.” She took a deep breath, remembering the morning when Victoria and Sylvia had come home smelling of beer, looking uneasy and frightened. She and Preston had giggled in the kitchen, thinking the girls had sneaked a drink or two at their sleepover. How naive they had been. She remembered herself, winking at Preston. So stupid. She was so stupid.

“Mae?” said Father Richard, piercing her reverie.

“One morning, when she was seventeen, Victoria asked me for advice.”

“Go on,” said Father Richardson.

“It was August,” Mae whispered.

“Okaaaay,” said Father Richardson in a syrupy tone. He wanted her to share more, to expose her heart. But Mae felt as she had always felt during Victoria’s stints in rehab, when she and Preston had to fly out to Hazelden or Betty Ford: all this disclosure was a bunch of hooey. What on earth was the point of blathering about your private affairs, your secrets? Saying them out loud didn’t change the truth—didn’t undo anything.

“I just wanted to say,” said Mae, realizing the futility of trying to make peace with God using Father Richard as a conduit, “I did not attend mass on many Sunday mornings when Victoria was growing up. I was extremely busy, and some Sundays I just didn’t get to church.”

“I see,” said Father Richard, lifting his index fingers, touching them to each other in the universal pose of someone who is trying to look as if they are smart. “I see, Mae. But I think God understands the trials of a mother.”

“How comforting,” said Mae.

Father Richard nodded. Why didn’t he wash that disgusting mug? And there on his desk was a broken pencil, the lead tip smashed to the side. What kind of an adult man broke a pencil and didn’t throw it away or sharpen it? Mae was seized with a desire to stand up and leave. “May I have my penance?” she asked impatiently.

“Say three Hail Marys, and try your best to attend mass regularly,” said Father Richard. “You’re not a young mother anymore,” he said with an obnoxious chuckle.

“Thank you for pointing that out,” said Mae.

Father Richard gave her the benediction, and Mae remembered the dark sacristy, the soothing voice of Father Gregory. Why hadn’t she tried to atone when she’d had a real priest to unburden herself to?

“By the way,” said Father Richard when he was done, leaving Mae frustrated and irritable, “please take a flyer on your way out. I’m starting a new rock-and-roll mass on Wednesday evenings to try to bring the youth back into the flock.”

“The youth?” said Mae.

“I thought you might give a flyer to your granddaughters,” said Father Richard. Mae pictured Georgia and Sunny, so worldly and disdainful that they scared Mae. There was something missing in them, and Mae lay awake some nights trying to figure out what it was and how it could be replaced. Father Richard’s orange flyer filled Mae with pity.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll be sure to pass one along.”

“The church is as relevant now as it always was,” said Father Richard to himself.

“I’ll let myself out,” said Mae. She walked slowly downstairs, enjoying the dusky smell. The scent had brought her so much comfort once. Mae could remember coming to St. Gabriel’s as a child, watching light pour through the stained-glass windows and filling with awe, clutching her mother’s gloved hand.

Next to her favorite window (it was Mary, her arms outstretched), Mae stopped. Had Mae’s mother, Dottie Pendelton, ever made a mistake? As far as Mae knew, her mother had died free of sin or complication. She was a strict Catholic and raised Mae to be the same. What would Dottie have done in Mae’s place?

I never would have let her go out in the middle of the night!
Mae could almost hear her mother’s indignant voice.
And furthermore
, said Dottie.

Mae looked up at Mary Magdalene, who gazed back beatifically, though surely, thought Mae, Mary Magdalene had some secrets of her own.

Back out on the street, Mae saw a homeless person leaning against the wall. “Lady,” the person said, “can you spare a dime?”

Mae squinted. “Are you a man or a woman?” she asked.

“I’m a woman,” said the homeless person. “I have a mental problem.”

“I see,” said Mae, and she opened her wallet, took out eighty-some dollars in cash, and rummaged around in her purse. She unearthed a new tube of Clinique lipstick (Mulberry Morning) and handed the money and the lipstick to the homeless person.

“God bless you,” said the woman.

“Let’s hope so,” said Mae.

3

Back on Madison Avenue, Mae tried to hail a cab. Across the street, she saw a subway station, and without much thought, she brought her arm down. Though Mae hadn’t taken the subway in years, she felt drawn to the cavernous passageways, the stench of humanity.

She passed a few disadvantaged men and women as she descended the stairs, all with their hands out, begging. She lifted her chin and strode past. You couldn’t help everyone, thought Mae, and this was the essential problem. If you gave your lipstick to one homeless person, you’d just be denying it to another (not to mention yourself). Lipstick, of course, being a metaphor for your money, your belongings, your heart. Though, also, your lipstick.

The subway car pulled up; Mae was surrounded by sweaty people. When the passageway was clear, she stepped into the car and found a seat next to an obese woman and her little boy. The boy looked up at Mae and smiled. He was missing one tooth. “Hello,” said Mae.