34
Harper
I drop down onto the couch beside Remy. It’s after nine, my bedtime; I’m hoping to convince him to come upstairs with me. If not for sex, then maybe some cuddling. I could use a hug after today, after surviving allowing Georgina to go to the parade. I used to tell Remy when I needed a hug, but I’m trying not to be needy.
The living room is dark except for the glow of the TV. He’s watching a documentary. A black-and-white still photo of Ethel Rosenberg is on the screen.
I tuck my legs under me, leaning against him. I rest my chin on his shoulder. “Jojo texted me to say good night. They’re all playing Monopoly. No Wi-Fi, so no streaming. So no movies or twenty-five episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” It’s a joke. Remy told Jojo he was going to limit her screen time because she was watching too much Buffy.
I wait. He doesn’t respond. There are photos of Ethel and Julius on the screen now. Photos I’m familiar with. I wonder why he’s watching this. I know he’s seen it before because I’ve seen it before. At least twice. “You listening?” I keep my tone cheerful.
He’s staring at the TV, but the volume’s low. He can’t possibly hear what they’re saying. Of course, maybe he could if I’d stop talking.
“Lilla in bed?” he asks me. No eye contact.
“Georgina is,” I answer, feeling guilty, as if I’m somehow picking a fight. Which is silly because I think we’ve agreed to disagree on this subject. I’ve agreed to disagree with everyone on the matter of her name: Remy, Jojo, Ann, even Georgina. At Ursuline, her teachers call her Georgina, but I noticed her new friend Em calls her Lilla.
I watch the TV for a moment. One of the Rosenbergs’ sons is being interviewed. He looks to be in his sixties, but I don’t know when this was filmed. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for those two boys growing up, even with new last names. Knowing what their parents had been convicted of. I look at Remy. “So what happened today? At the parade? Why didn’t you stay?”
I actually had a decent day alone here in the house. I decided that if I could keep busy, I wouldn’t think about the parade. Or that horrible day almost fourteen years ago when Georgina went to a Mardi Gras parade. Or worry about Georgina. Or worry about Jojo. I knew Georgina was safe with Remy. And I knew it was irrational to worry about Jojo hanging out in a cabin in a state park with one adult per teen.
I ended up cleaning out my closet and my dresser drawers. I tried on clothes and culled like crazy. It was satisfying to carry two big black garbage bags of clothes to donate downstairs and throw them in the back of my car. I was making a vegetarian baked pasta dish to put into the oven later for dinner when Remy and Georgina walked into the house. They were both subdued. They offered no explanation other than that they’d seen enough and I let it go. For the time being.
Remy’s still staring at the screen, but a commercial has come on. The TV blinks to another channel and I realize he’s been sitting there with the remote in his hand. So maybe he wasn’t watching a documentary about the Rosenbergs; maybe he was just channel surfing. He changes the channel again. Another commercial.
“Remy?” I sit up, reaching out to lay my hand over the remote. “What happened today?”
He finally looks at me. “Nothing happened. It was cold and loud and . . .” He glances back at the TV. A denture commercial. “I think she got a little overwhelmed is all.”
“Overwhelmed?” I draw back my hand.
“She wasn’t enjoying it. Too many people. Too loud.” He shrugs. “So we came home.”
All of this upset, weeks of talking about our plans for Mardi Gras. Canceling our vacation. Both girls insisting they wanted to go to the parades and this is how it ends? I’m almost laughing at the thought of it. Next time I get myself worked up over something involving the two of them, I need to remember how fickle teenagers can be. “You going out tomorrow?”
The TV changes channels again. And again. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe. I’ll ask her in the morning. She said she didn’t want to go down to the Quarter, though. I told her we could take the bikes downtown. She said Uptown parades were enough for her.”
I tuck my legs up tighter beneath me, thinking. Trying to guess what would have made Georgina overwhelmed after she’d pushed so hard to get to go. “You think she remembered anything?”
He glances at me, hesitating. I can tell he’s mulling it over. Then he shakes his head. “I don’t think so,” he says.
“Did you ask her?”
He exhales. Not because he needs to expel carbon dioxide. Because he doesn’t want to have this conversation. This is what he was talking about on the porch. Remy asked me to start trying to work out some things on my own. Meaning stop thinking out loud. Stop involving him when I’m still in the working-through-it stages. Stop dissecting every word that passes Georgina’s lips, every step she takes. I get what he was saying, and I’m trying. But this is important. And I’m not going to stop talking to him about important things.
“I’m asking,” I tell him, “because she’s starting to remember some things. Did she tell you that?”
He looks back at me, his forehead wrinkling. “What kinds of things?”
“Just . . . slivers of memories. Me reading Madeline books to her on the couch in the parlor. My silver cake baby.” I smile at the thought. “But if she remembers being taken, we need to—”
“I don’t think she remembers being abducted.” He sounds annoyed with me. He’s staring at the TV screen again.
“Remy, what I’m saying is—” I press my lips together, forcibly making myself stop. Just stop. Georgina told me about Madeline and about the cake baby. If she remembers anything about the abduction, she’ll come to me, I tell myself. Our relationship is improving. She’ll tell me when she’s ready.
Remy has returned to the channel that’s featuring the story about the Rosenbergs. I have one more thing I need to ask him. I consider letting it go, at least for tonight. But he’s already aggravated with me. I’m already going to bed alone. He’ll sit here half the night, staring at the TV, then fall asleep on the couch. So I hold my nose and jump. “I know we agreed you didn’t have to share with me every conversation you have with Georgina. I know I’m not supposed to ask, but when you guys were out today . . . did she bring up going to see Sharon?”
He looks at me and it’s obvious from his face that this is the first he’s heard of it. The tiny lines that crease his forehead get even deeper. “She wants to see her in prison?”
I’m the one who breaks eye contact this time and stares at the TV screen. Newspaper headlines: A Spy Couple Doomed to Die, Supreme Court and Eisenhower Reject Couple’s Last Plea, Spies Die in Chair. “Yes. She says she was never allowed to speak to Sharon, after the police came to their house.” I try to keep my emotion out of my tone, out of my head. I try to just relay what Georgina said to me. “She feels she needs some sort of . . . explanation.”
“What explanation? How can there be one? The woman is clearly mentally unbalanced.” He sets down the remote to actually look at me and engage.
“Not according to a psychiatrist,” I point out. “According to Detective Marin, Sharon Kohen’s psych evaluation stated she was healthy enough to be charged and enter a plea.”
He makes a sound of derision. “She has to be crazy, Harper.” He gestures with his hand now free of the remote. “What other explanation can there be for stealing someone’s toddler and pretending she’s her own? Giving her a dead baby’s name, using the dead baby’s Social Security number?”
I understand what he’s saying, but I also understand what it is to be a mother, to have carried a child in my womb and given birth. The love for that child is love no one who has not given birth can begin to comprehend. In a way, being a mother is a form of insanity. I would do anything for my girls; I really think I would. To protect them. I’d risk my soul to keep them safe. I’d lie, I’d steal. I’d prostitute myself. In the right circumstances, I truly believe I would kill for them.
I brush my crucifix with my fingertips.
So what happens when a love of that intensity gets twisted? I suspect something like that is what happened to us. Sharon loved her little girl so much that she couldn’t accept her death. She loved her Lilla so much that she replaced her. I suspect that, most days, she couldn’t even remember that the child she was raising wasn’t the child of her body.
“You think we should let Lilla see Sharon?” Remy asks me.
I don’t even have to think on that one. “Of course not.” But then, against my will, I put myself in Sharon’s position. And Georgina’s. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. I don’t think I can.”
He is quiet for a moment. “I suppose we need to talk about this with the therapist, but I have to agree with you. I don’t want Lilla near her. I don’t want Lilla in a prison visitation room. Maybe when she gets older,” he adds, “but not yet.”
If I had my choice, Georgina would never, ever see Sharon again. I don’t want that woman to ever lay eyes on my daughter again. I just can’t get past that. Not right now, at least. The wound is too raw. Of course I know very well that in less than two years Georgina will be eighteen and then I can’t prevent her from going to see her.
Another worry for another day.
Remy and I sit there in silence for a moment and then I rub his shoulder and get up. He doesn’t seem angry with me now. “You coming soon?”
He looks up at me. “I’ve been thinking today, and . . . we need to tell Lilla.”
I don’t think he means to tell her she’s never going to see Sharon under our watch. Because even in the semidarkness of the room, with the distortions created by the TV screen, I can see his face. His difficult subject face. His mouth gets tight at the corners.
“Tell her what?”
“That you and I aren’t married.”
Suddenly he’s taken an attitude with me. He hasn’t raised his voice, but I hear it in his tone. How would I have known what he was talking about? A minute ago the subject was about a prison visit.
“Why now?” I ask, not sure I’m up for this tonight. I take a defensive stance: my feet spread apart, my hands on my hips. “Are you leaving us?” I’m suddenly scared and hurt, but I sound angry.
“I didn’t say that.”
I press my lips together. “So tell me what you are saying.”
He gets up off the couch. We’re facing each other. “What I said. Which is that we should tell Lilla that you and I are divorced. That I moved in here because you thought it would be better for her if the family dynamic looked like it looked when she left.”
I take issue with his word left because she didn’t leave of her own volition, but I also take issue with him suggesting this was all my idea. “You agreed it was the right thing to do. And . . .” I look away and then back at him. “And we’d talked about giving our marriage another try. Before we knew Georgina was coming home, we talked about it. Remy, you and I were doing well.”
He points at me. “You said you were going out with that guy.”
“Remy, I never said I had a date,” I huff. “I told you I had thought about going out with the drug rep. Mostly because everyone had been telling me it was time to move on. And . . . I don’t know. He’s nice. And it was coffee.” I take a step toward him. “But I didn’t go for coffee with him; I hadn’t because . . . I still felt as if you were my husband. Even after the divorce . . .” I manage to say it without tearing up. “You’re still my husband. We exchanged vows that said we were husband and wife as long as we both shall live. I still love you, and, Remy, I think you love me. . . .”
“I do love you,” he says. “You know I do. But this isn’t healthy, her thinking we’re legally married. We need to tell her. I think—”
“Wait!” Georgina’s angry voice startles me.
I turn to see her in the living room doorway.
“You guys are divorced?” she shouts at us.