“So you just let him knock you up? That’s insane.”
“It was a very different time. I got married when I was twenty-three. Ten years younger than you are now. You can’t imagine what it was like.”
“But it wasn’t the Middle Ages, Mom. You could have said you didn’t want children.”
Her mother sighed.
“I didn’t know how hard it would be. Becoming a mother is a shocking thing, Avery. Like landing on the moon. Everything changes.” She looked at her from under her wiry eyebrows. “It was the worst with you.”
“Right,” said Avery. “Sorry.”
What could she say to that? She didn’t ask to be born.
“It got a little better with the others, but I knew I didn’t bond with any of you the way I was meant to. After each birth I just went…flat.” She shook her head. “There’s language today for what I had, but back then the doctors just told you to get on with it. It was seen as pretty shameful. What kind of mother—” She stopped herself. “Anyway, there’s no use dredging all that up now.”
Avery searched her mother’s face.
“Did you talk to Dad about it?”
Her mother dismissed this instantly with a wave.
“Oh, men don’t understand these things. He was competitive with you lot anyway. You all wanted more of me than I could give.” She exhaled a dry laugh. “Not like now!”
Avery tried to keep her voice neutral as she spoke.
“Did you ever think about divorcing him?”
Her mother looked up at the ceiling.
“Sometimes,” she said eventually.
Avery tried not to look shocked. She had not actually expected her mother to answer honestly.
“You did?”
Her mother leaned back with a tired sigh, as though being forced to repeat something for the hundredth time, rather than revealing a totally novel side of her inner life.
“I could never come up with a good enough plan,” she said. “What could I do? Take you all out of school and back to England? And live where? My parents were both dead by then. Split custody and leave you alone with him? I knew what it was to have to deal with…You think your dad’s drinking was bad? My dad’s was worse.” She looked into the distance. “Father was vicious,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t know you’d ever considered it.”
Her mother slapped her palms down on the table.
“And I love him! I felt for him! He tried his best to control it and I could protect you girls better that way. I kept us separate from you. You see, I knew you would have one another. And the younger ones would have you. I thought that way you could at least grow into your own women. And you did. Look at you.”
Avery’s voice, when she did speak, was barely a whisper.
“But I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t even look after myself.”
Her mother made a gesture to dismiss this.
“But you did it.”
“Not Nicky. I lost…I lost her.”
Her mother reached across the table and clasped Avery’s hand with the fierceness of a falcon clutching a field mouse in its talon. The intensity of her gaze frightened Avery.
“Is that what you think?” she asked. “That it was your fault?”
“You said it yourself, they were meant to have me.”
“To walk them home from school, not to babysit them for the rest of their lives!”
Avery shook her head.
“But I left them. Twice. First for California and then for London. I was so happy with Chiti and my big job. It was selfish. I should have known what was going on with her. I should have come back.”
“You think you moving back to New York could have saved her?”
“I don’t know,” Avery said, and it was a child’s keen. “Wouldn’t it?”
Then her mother did something highly unusual; she scooted around the table and took Avery in her arms. She rocked with Avery’s head against her chest, making little gentle shushing noises and smoothing down Avery’s dark hair.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I want you to really listen.” She put her mouth next to Avery’s ear to speak in a fierce whisper. “You are not that important.”
—
Her mother insisted Avery could not visit the country without collecting some fresh eggs, which was how she found herself kneeling in the dirt by the chicken coop, her hand grasping blindly into the still, dusty darkness within. Finally, her hand settled on the familiar shape.
