Slowly, Jim began to realize why his mother could never accept anybody’s absolution. It was only partially to do with taking her daughter’s baby and giving it away. That was something she had done according to the imperatives inside her. Rather, it had more to do with what Virginia herself understood about those imperatives. Virginia had known she was wrong. Even while she was making the arrangements in New York, she had known she was wrong. She had sacrificed her daughter’s happiness — in the end, perhaps, her life — to principles she knew were less important than the needs of love and the living. To accept forgiveness — even her own — would be an admission she could never make, at least not with words. Instead, largely by her own design, she would acknowledge her guilt every day for the rest of her life in the eternally wounded form of Joseph Weir — a declaration without sound, the ultimate Weir confession.
Jim stood. “I love you, Mom.”
“I can honestly say that I love you, too. More than you will ever know. And I’ll try with all my might to learn to love him, too — Joseph. For Annie. But I won’t accept your forgiveness. Don’t ask me to do that. Give it to someone who deserves it.”
Weir turned off the light in his room and went downstairs. He stole quietly through the front door, locking it behind him.
The night was clear and the stars looked as if they were just a few inches above the rooftops. The bay was a black dance floor upon which the ferries waltzed and the houselights jitterbugged without sound. There was still, in all of this, the power to move him.
His stride lengthened on the sidewalk. At Becky’s he stopped outside the hedge and peered toward the house. No lights were on. He went through the gate and shut it gently behind him, but the little brass bell chimed anyway, betraying Jim’s presence in spite of himself. For a moment, he stood there, adopted by the oleander, a shadow part of larger shadows. My silence has been a lie. Jim yanked the bell string twice, hard, sending a pure and truthful sound into the night. Then his heart was beating fast and he was taking the stepping-stones across Becky’s yard two at a time. The porch light came on and the screen door was opening.