“Honestly, this generation.” She throws up her hands and looks around the room as if she is on a talk show trying to connect to a studio audience. “They think they’re the first to discover their husbands have gotten a little too friendly with one of the other wives. This has been going on since time immemorial—”
“Have those same husbands also been blackmailing their best friends? Has that also been going on since time immemorial?”
“What in God’s creation are you going on about?”
“Forget it, Mom.”
“Listen, honey. Time for some tough love. Life is hard. What made you think you’d be exempt? Do you live in a refugee camp? No. Have you had to bury your children? No.” Barb answers her own questions without pausing for a beat. “We all have to grow up and do what’s expected of us. Even in times of grief. Especially in times of grief. There’s a right way and a wrong way to handle yourself. Because it’s more than just you, it’s those two boys. How you handle this will have a huge effect on how they process it. Just because you are angry at Anton, and rightfully so, doesn’t give you the right to poison their memories of their father. These boys need to remember the dad who loved them, who was there for them, not the failed husband or weak man that you think he was—”
“That hedefinitelywas. Not that Ithinkhe is!” Gwen sniffs. “By the way, worst pep talk ever.”
“Listen, I’m going to head over to Gawler’s and talk to someone. I want to do it before the boys get home. How about you take a shower, and then take a little time today to sort through everything.” She gestures toward the piles. “Just make piles and I will deal with it. What needs to be donated, what’s trash, and which things you want to save in bins. We have plenty of room at our house.”
“What things of Anton’s would I want to save?”
“Oh, things the boys might want when they’re older, but maybe you don’t want to have around in the meantime.”
Barb pats Gwen on the knee and stands up. “You can do this, Gwen. We’re not going to have a repeat of college. Not on my watch.”
Gwen goes upstairs to take a shower, praying that when she is done her mother will be gone. Barb had to bring up college and the half year Gwen spent in an outpatient program for disordered eating. Her mother might offer to help, but there would always be strings attached, and she’d never let you forget your weaknesses.
After her shower, Gwen puts on a pair of petal-pink leggings and a beige sweatshirt, twists her hair into a knot, and clips it to the top of her head. She does feel better when she’s clean and in cute clothes. Maybe even ready to tackle the piles of Anton’s things.
One of Anton’s favorite T-shirts sits on top of a tall stack of clothing. She picks it up and shakes it out. It’s from the Pixies reunion tour in 2004, an old favorite, worn thin from use. Gwen brings it to her face and inhales. Even though it is clean, she can smell Anton mixed in with the scent of the detergent. Some musky odor that is all his own has found its way into the fibers of the shirt. The tears come as memories break through the walls she has built around them. She squeezes her eyes shut and sees the two of them on their honeymoon in Paris, stopping halfway across the Pont des Arts to add a padlock with their initials to the wall of lovers’ locks. “I love Gwendolyn!” Anton shouted,hurling the key into the Seine. She throws the T-shirt back onto the table, not ready to part with it. It lands atop one of the heavy pewter candlesticks she’s never liked. She picks up the candlestick. It weighs at least a few pounds. Their tenth anniversary was supposed to mark a rebirth of their marriage. What a joke. She tosses the two sticks into the box markeddonate, where they make a satisfying thud.
Next to the clothing is an open box filled with notebooks. She flips through the top one and stops on a page filled with sentences and sentence fragments, all in quotes.
“mornings are the worst”
“wakes up and for a fraction of a second, I don’t remember my baby is gone. And then it all comes back. He went up the mountain and he didn’t come back.”
“I’ll never stop looking for answers”
“somebody knows something”
“I feel it in my bones, my son is dead. He’s gone”
Gwen sucks in her breath. She flips to the front of the notebook. On the first page, written in Anton’s neat block lettering is:INTERVIEWS WITH CATHY STOCKER.
Gwen sinks to the floor, the notebook open in her lap. She turns to the first page and begins to read.
39
THIS PAST SUMMER
After Anton signed the credit card bill, Lisa took the pen, enjoying the heft of it in her hand. The name of the restaurant was written in gold on the side. Le Cannu. She slipped it into her bag, a souvenir of this night. The night Anton took the bait.
It had taken two weeks to get here. One day, in bed, she had been talking about how nice it would be if the two of them could take a trip. She enjoyed bringing up money because she knew it was a sore spot with him.
“With what money? I have one credit card and Gwen watches my purchases like a hawk.”
“Are you serious?” Lisa had feigned outrage. “That’s horrible. No one can live like that.”
“Last summer she saw a charge she didn’t recognize and made me produce a receipt. For headphones! When I told her I was planning to go to a writers’ conference, she checked online to see if it really existed. She actually checked! To see if I was on a panel, like I said I was.”
“Are you allowed to go?”
He had laughed bitterly. “Allowed. Allowed.Like I’m a fucking child.”