As Joseph read, Weir stared at him in the lamplight. Joseph’s downturned eyes looked like Ann’s, too — the hint of sadness in them. If Jim let his eyes unfocus and his eyelids droop just a little, Joseph’s fine blond hair became Ann’s; Joseph’s thin neck and broad shoulders became Ann’s; Joseph’s strong nose became Ann’s. Even his voice had something of hers in it: a smoothness that comes from imposing a calm on oneself that isn’t there to begin with. It was the calm of mind over the contending spirits of the heart. Ann could summon that calm; Joseph received it from a bottle.
“ ‘Last night I had a dream. In the dream, I left David’s house for the last time and Raymond was waiting on the street for me. He was dressed nicely and he had a bouquet of purple roses in his hand — just like the ones that David sent me. He said he forgave me and wanted me to know he loved me. He took my hand in his and we drove in his police car — how strange dreams are! — down to the Back Bay where David and I had been, and there he held me tight and kissed me gently and I could feel from the trembling in his arms how much he wanted me, how strong his love was. And in the dream I had a great surge of feeling — a feeling that was still with me when I woke up and is still with me now — that everything will be forgiven, that everything will turn out for the better, that all the pain of what has gone on was only there to make the joy of our new life all the stronger. He told me he forgave me. That word, it rang so beautifully in the dream, it seemed to come not just from Raymond but from the sky above, the water lapping at the shore around our feet, the wild tobacco plant that grew beside us. If I could pass along just one thing to my Dear One, it would be the capacity to forgive. I don’t believe that life can go on without that. But I realized in my dream that that word was waiting for something to complete it, that it was still not fully born yet — just like my child is not — that it needed something. It needed me. And I said it, first in my mind, then to myself, then to Raymond. I said I offer you my forgiveness, too. Please, my man, accept it. That, Dear One, is the word that I will live by. It will be my light...’ ”
When Weir, lost to inner visions, looked up at Joseph again, he realized that the boy was no longer reading, but reciting from memory. Joseph’s eyes were closed tight, as if trying to keep certain things inside him and other things out. Jim let his focus fade, willing now to let Joseph speak for Ann, to let Ann speak through Joseph, to let Joseph be what Ann had intended him to be: her living flesh and blood, her most precious gift to the world.
“ ‘From this moment on, I told myself in the dream, I will muster everything I can — forever and until I die — of sweet forgiveness. You must do that, too, Dear One, if only for me. You will never read this, never know these things. But I wonder, will you forgive me? And as I watched in the dream, Raymond reached into the pocket of his coat and removed something that he held in his hand for a moment before raising it up to my face. I stood there with my hands at my side, so ready for his touch, his blessing. He dabbed my eyes with his handkerchief, and then his own, then put it back in his pocket. And all the while that word still hovered around us in the night, hushed as a sigh from heaven.
“ ‘Forgiveness.’ ”
Jim knocked, then let himself into Virginia’s room. She was sitting at her vanity, staring straight ahead into the mirror. She was in her robe and her yellow hair was unknotted and hung past her shoulders. She looked ancient. Jim saw her eyes move to his reflection.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes. Does that matter to you?”
“Sure it does.” He stood there for a moment, then went to the bed and sat. Her eyes followed him across the glass. He looked around the room, unchanged since the departure of Poon a decade ago. Ann’s words rang in his head, but it took him a long time to speak. “If it matters, I forgive you,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s the best thing I’ve got left.”
Virginia stared at him in the mirror. “I will not accept that forgiveness in this house. I will not permit it.”
“It needed to be said.”
“What good do the words do?”
“Maybe they help. Maybe there’s nowhere else to start. Maybe they’re just for me.”
“Then you have to live without them, Jim. I choose to.”
Weir stood, then sat back down. Virginia’s gaze followed him in the glass. “How’d you get so hard, Mom? Did something happen... I mean, was it Jake, or Dad, or... what?”
She looked down at her hands, then back into the mirror at Jim. “Twenty-four years ago, I looked at myself in this same mirror and I decided then that I would never forgive myself. This is my version of honor. It wasn’t long after I’d given up my daughter’s only child for adoption, after telling her it had been stillborn. Time doesn’t diminish a thing like that — it only compounds it.”
“There must be a better way to live a life.”
She continued to stare at him. “Do you know what Poon said to me when we found out Annie was pregnant and it was too late for an abortion? He said he thought that David and Ann should just get married like they wanted to. Or have the child and get married later. Or give them Sweetheart Deal and let all three of them sail around the world and be young and stupid together. ‘It doesn’t matter what people think,’ he told me. ‘I know a lot of people, he said, and there’s not one whose opinion I care enough about to give a shit what they think. Fuck ’em all if they can’t take a joke,’ he said — that was your dad’s creed.”
Jim smiled to himself. Poon had had a way of getting to the nub of things. At heart, he was an outlaw. Does a man ever get over missing his father? “I don’t suppose that flew with Blake Cantrell very well.”
Virginia held his stare in the mirror. When she spoke next, her voice was taut with anger. “Blake Cantrell said the same thing. So did his wife.”
Jim tried to figure it but couldn’t. “Why couldn’t you just let it happen?”
“Because a person has convictions. They’re there and you can’t move them. Deep in my heart, I believed that it was wrong, that what he had done to Annie was wrong. I believed that no Cantrell was good enough for a Weir — especially not my only daughter. They were rich, corrupt people. I believed it was my duty to protect Annie above all else. I would have done anything for her. I would have gladly laid down my life. So I prevailed. I have always prevailed.”
Jim sat for a long while, watching the minutes march by on the digital bed-stand clock. Each one was portrayed in isolation: no future, no past, only the present. That is a lie, he thought — that is not the way time moves. Just look at her.