The Unremarkable Heart Read Free Page B

buttons on the console, sending cold air swirling into the car, her heart stopping mid-beat as she realized with shame that it was not the act of killing her child that brought her such horror, but the fall-out. What the tragedy would leave behind. Grieving mother. Such a sad story. A cautionary tale. And then, whispered but just as clear, ‘ How could she … ’
    Every mother must have felt this way at one time or another. June was not alone in that moment of hatred, that sensation of longing for an unattached life that had swept over her as Grace kicked the back of her seat all the way home.
    ‘I could just walk away,’ June had thought. Or had she said the actual words? Had she actually told Grace that she could happily live without her?
    She might have said the words, but, as with Richard, those moments of sheer hatred only came from longer, more intense moments of love. The first time June had held little Grace in her arms. The first time she’d shown her how to thread a needle or make cookies or decorate a cupcake. Grace’s first day of kindergarten. Her first gold star. Her first bad report card.
    Grace.
    June came back to herself in her dank bedroom, the sensation one of almost falling back into her body. She felt a flutter in her chest, a tapping at her heart; the grim reaper’s bony knuckles knocking at the door. She looked past the dingy curtains. The window panes were dirty. The outside world was tainted with grime. Maybe she should let Richard take her outside. She could sit in the garden. She could listen to the birds sing, the squirrels chatter. The last day. The last ray of sunlight on her face. The last feel of the sheets brushing against her legs. The last comb through her hair. The last breath through her lungs. Her last glimpse of Richard, the house they had bought together, the place where they had raised and lost their child. The prison cell he had left her in as he went off to live in one of his own.
    ‘A house on Taylor Drive was broken into late Thursday evening. The residents were not at home. Stolen were a gold necklace, a television set and cash that was kept in the kitchen drawer …’
    She had loved sewing, and, before her life had turned upside down the second time, before the detectives and lawyers intruded, before the jury handed down their judgment, June had thought of sewing as a metaphor for her existence. June was a wife, a mother. She stitched together the seam between her husband and child. She was the force that brought them together. The force that held them in place.
    Or, was she?
    All these years, June had thought she was the needle, piercing two separate pieces, making disparate halves whole, but suddenly, on this last day of her life, she realized she was just the thread. Not even the good part of the thread, but the knot atthe end – not leading the way, but anchoring, holding on, watching helplessly as someone else – some thing else – sewed together the patterns of their lives.
    Why was she stuck with these thoughts? She wanted to remember the good times with Grace: vacations, school trips, book reports they had worked on together, talks they had had late at night. June had told Grace all the things mothers tell their daughters: sit with your legs together. Always be aware of your surroundings. Sex should be saved for someone special. Don’t ever let a man make you think you are anything but good and true. There were so many mistakes that June’s own mother had made. June had parented against her mother, vowing not to make the same mistakes. And she hadn’t. By God, she hadn’t.
    She had made new ones of her own.
    ‘We didn’t raise him to be this way,’ mothers would tell her during parent–teacher conferences, and June would think, ‘Of course you did. What did you think would happen to a boy who was given everything and made to work for nothing?’
    She had secretly blamed them – or perhaps not too secretly. More often than not, there was a yearly