“I feel like a bad mother,” I said.
“If you were,” Brian said, “you wouldn’t be alone.”
50
Mrs. Markham’s face began to get gray as I talked with her. “Of course, George was Sarah’s father,” she said.
“No,” I said. “DNA says he wasn’t.”
“They could be wrong.”
“Not a good bet,” I said.
Her face got grayer.
“How do I know you’re not lying to me,” she said.
“Why would I lie?”
“You’ve been trying to destroy me since I met you.”
I sighed and took a copy of the lab report from my purse and gave it to her.
“I can’t read this,” she said.
“Take it to your doctor or your local hospital or to another DNA lab. The Andover cops can refer you.” I said. “Or call the Boston cops. Brian Kelly is the investigating officer.”
“I can’t do all of that,” she said.
“Any of that would be enough,” I said.
“I’m alone,” she said.
“You could choose to trust me,” I said. “I’m not, in fact, trying to destroy you. I’m trying to help your daughter.”
“He’s not her father,” Mrs. Markham said.
She looked as if she was cold, or as if she was trying to be smaller.
“No, ma’am,” I said. “He’s not.”
“My God,” she said.
“So, would you know who her father is?” I said.
She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring past me, staring at nothing. She shook her head.
“You don’t know her father?”
She shook her head again.
“I don’t mean to be indelicate, Mrs. Markham, but if the father is not your husband, shouldn’t you have some idea who else it might be?”
“She wasn’t mine,” Mrs. Markham said. “She was George’s.”
“Tell me about that,” I said.
“She was George’s daughter from a previous marriage.”
“You told me she was born in 1982.”
Mrs. Markham nodded.
“When were you and George married?” I said.
She looked at me without any sign that she understood the question.
“What did you say?”
“I asked when you and George were married,” I said.
“I don’t remember exactly.”
“You were already married,” I said, “when George was working in Moline in 1979.”
She did not speak.
“Which means Sarah was conceived while you and George were married.”
“She must have been born earlier,” Mrs. Markham said.
“1978?”
“Yes. That must have been when.”
“Which would make her what? Twenty-six?”
“I guess so.”
“Mrs. Markham,” I said. “Sarah is not twenty-six.”
“I don’t know what else to say. She is George’s daughter from a previous marriage.”
“Except that she’s not George’s daughter.”
Mrs. Markham put her gray face in her hands and began to cry.
“Who’s the father, Mrs. Markham?”
She shook her head.
“Were you so promiscuous,” I said, “that you don’t even know?”
“I was never promiscuous,” she said without taking her face from her hands.
“Then who was the father?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you’re not her mother?” I said.
“No.”
“Who is?”
She shook her head.
“Somebody is,” I said.
Mrs. Markham shook her head again.
“How did she end up with you and your husband.”
Still bent forward, with her hands covering her face, she shook her head again. She began to rock.
“Mrs. Markham,” I said. “She had a father and mother.”
“Stop it,” she said. “Stop it.”
She raised her face, the pallor parchment now, with two feverish red spots high on her cheeks. She began to pound on her thighs with her fists.
“Get out,” she said.
“Mrs. Markham,” I said.
She pitched forward out of the chair onto the floor and lay on her side with her knees drawn up and continued to pound her thighs. Her eyes were clenched shut.
“Get out,” she screamed. “Get out get out get out get out.”
I took the hint.
51
“He knows,” I said.
“Your father?” Dr. Silverman said.
“Yes. He knows what my mother is, and he loves her anyway.”
Dr. Silverman nodded.
“I always thought he didn’t really love her,” I said. “That he stayed with her because of the children.”
“He loved you more than he did your mother,” Dr. Silverman said.
“Yes.”
The office was quiet. Dr. Silverman was wearing a white cashmere sweater. Her hands were folded on the desk. Her nails were perfectly manicured. Her black hair was thick and shiny. Her makeup was amazing. Before I was through with therapy, I was going to have to ask her for suggestions. She seemed in no hurry. We could sit in silence for as long as we wanted to.
“Since I was a kid,” I said, “I have had a recurrent fantasy. I am high in the mountains, in a pristine white wilderness, with a strong, quiet man. We are in a sort of shelter under an overhang. The snow is deep and new, with no tracks in it. It is perfectly still. Nothing moves. We are dressed in thick furs. The man has a Winchester rifle. A huge fire is blazing in front of the overhang. We are warm and very comfortable. There is somehow an infinite supply of food and firewood.”
Dr. Silverman rocked slightly in her chair, nodding her head almost imperceptibly.
“How does that feel?” she said.
“In the fantasy, it seems perfect. Just me and the man together.”
“And the landscape?” Dr. Silverman said.
“What?” I said.
“Talk about the landscape a little more,” Dr. Silverman said.
“Very still,” I said. “Deep snow, nothing moves.”
“And the rifle?”
“I don’t know. When you’re far out in the wilderness, a rifle is good, isn’t it?”
“Does he use it to hunt?” Dr. Silverman asked. “Provide food?”
“I suppose, I don’t know. It’s not part of the fantasy.”
“What do you do, sitting there?” she said.
“Nothing. That’s all the fantasy is, that image of us.”
“Do you know who the man is?”
“In the fantasy, I do,” I said. “But you mean, really? Who he is in my real life. No, I don’t know. Richie, I suppose.”
“Does Richie carry a gun?”
“Not usually. I’ve told you about his family.”
She nodded.
“You know many people who carry guns.”
“Yes.”
“Who was the first?”
“The first person I knew who carried a gun?”
“Yes.”
“My father, I... oh, Jesus Christ.”
Dr. Silverman’s eyes moved in the way she had that somehow prompted me.
“The gun,” I said.
Go ahead, the eyes said.
“The big gun.”
Dr. Silverman nodded.
“Sometimes a gun is only a gun?” I said.
“Sometimes.”
“And sometimes it’s phallic?”
She nodded.
“Sometimes it’s both,” Dr. Silverman said.
“So I’m in a cave in a mountain with a man with a big gun,” I said. “All around is empty, frozen landscape with no life in it. And there’s a big fire.”
Dr. Silverman didn’t say anything.
I smiled.
“Keep those home fires burning,” I said.
She kept looking at me without comment. Her eyes did their little move.