Enter, Night

Christina felt as though shards of glass were exploding inside her, but she forced herself to smile. She sat down on the edge of the bed and reached for her daughter’s hand. Morgan looked desperately young to Christina just then, and her heart broke.

“Morgan, first of all-yes, your father and I were married when we had you. We weren’t married when you were conceived. We told you all about that. But you weren’t a ‘mistake’ by any stretch of the imagination, either. Your father and I loved each other very much. He wanted to marry me very much, and I wanted to marry him very much. We were married as soon as we arrived in Toronto, before I was even showing with you. You have nothing-nothing, do you hear me-to be ashamed of. I don’t believe your grandmother told people that you were illegitimate,” she lied, “but I do think that small-town people have a hard time, sometimes, understanding things that go differently than they think things ought to. They may be confused about things. I know this town very well, and there’s a really good reason why I haven’t been back in fifteen years, aside from the fact that your dad never wanted to. Would you like me to speak to your teachers about it, sweetheart? Are you worried about getting flack from the kids?”

That’ll be next, Christina thought, with a familiar sickening lurch in her stomach. That’ll be next. Just like it was for Jack and me-the townie whore getting above herself with the Crown Prince of Parr’s Landing. What does that make Morgan? A princess? A bastard? Or both?

“No,” Morgan replied quickly. “I’m not worried. And you don’t need to talk to the teachers. It’ll be OK. I just wanted to… well, I just wanted to tell you about school. That’s all. It’s all fine. I’m sorry I even brought it up. You and Dad did tell me all this stuff before, I know. I just needed to hear it again.” She looked down. When she looked up again, Morgan’s eyes were slick with tears. “Mom?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Mom, I miss Daddy something fierce.” Morgan’s shoulders began to shake. “I miss him so much…”

Christina’s own eyes flooded. She stood up and took Morgan in her arms and rocked her as she had when she was a baby and they wept together, holding each other.

“I miss him, too, sweetheart. I miss him more than I ever thought could be possible to miss someone. Your daddy was everything to me, and he loved both of us more than anything else in the world. And I love you more than anything else in the world. Nothing is more important to me than you, Morgan. Nothing. You know that, right?”

Morgan sniffled. “Yes,” she said in a thick voice. “Yes, I believe you. I love you, too, Mommy.” Her face was buried in the hollow of her mother’s shoulder. When Christina reached up to caress Morgan’s hair, the wool of Morgan’s sweater was soaked with her tears, which seemed grafted to the soft skin of her clavicle.

There was a knock on the door of the bedroom. Oh God, please, not her. Not Adeline. Not right now. Just a few more minutes, please. The knock came again, more gently this time, and Jeremy’s voice carried through the thick mahogany door.

“Chris? Morgan? May I come in?”

Christina and Morgan parted reluctantly. Christina squeezed Morgan’s hand once more, then smoothed her hair and said, “Come in, Jeremy.”

“Come on in, Uncle Jeremy,” Morgan called out, as though determined to show her mother that she was in control again and that her mother wasn’t to worry about her any more than she already did.

“Oh… I’m sorry,” Jeremy said when he saw their faces. “I’m so sorry, you guys. I didn’t mean to interrupt. It’s just that dinner is about to be served and Adeline is already down there. Just… well, do you want me to tell her you’re not coming, or that you’re sick or something?” He looked beseechingly from Christina to Morgan, then back to Christina again.

Morgan said in a clear voice, “No, Uncle Jeremy. We’re all right. We’re coming right down. I’m just going to put some water on my face. I’ll only be a second.”

She stood up and walked into the bathroom. Through the closed door, Christina and Jeremy heard the tap being turned on, then the sound of water hitting the porcelain sink.

“Is she all right?” Jeremy whispered. “Did she have a bad day at school? Goddamn it, I knew we should have taken her ourselves. This is all too much for her and too fast. I should never have let Adeline steamroll over us like that this morning.”

“She’s all right.” Christina sighed, massaging her eyes with her fingertips. “She just had a moment.”

Jeremy looked worried. “You, too, huh? Oh, Chris, I’m so sorry. Again. I keep saying that, but I really am. I feel like crap for you, really I do.”

“How do I look?” she said briskly, pushing his sympathy away, knowing that she couldn’t bear to feel anything at this exact moment if she was going to survive their dinner with Adeline. “I put mascara on this morning, but I think it’s all rubbed off by now.” She crossed to the mirror over Morgan’s vanity. She squinted, touching her eyelashes gingerly. “Not very bright in here, is it? I’m sure your mother looks immaculate, like she just fell out of Miss Chatelaine. Well, an old issue of Miss Chatelaine. A very old issue.”

Jeremy laughed. “You look fine. Maybe some cold water when Morgan’s finished? Are you sure you want to go downstairs, you two? I’m serious, I can just tell her that you’re not feeling well after the long drive. I’m sure she’d send Beatrice up with a tray.”

“Listen to us.” Christina laughed mirthlessly. “‘I’m sure she’d send Beatrice up with a tray.’ The fact that it would even be a question answers it. She might or she might not. No, better that we go downstairs and deal with her face to face. I’m sure Morgan will be all right. She doesn’t have the same problems with that old bitch that we do. And somehow I have to normalize life for her, and it has to start right now. God knows what Adeline has told people about us. Morgan said that everyone was treating her with kid gloves today. She doesn’t think it was for any good reason. She asked me if I thought her grandmother had told people she was illegitimate. I have no trouble seeing the hand of Adeline in that, and if she did, I’ll never forgive her.”

Jeremy looked at this watch. “It’s six thirty-five,” he said. “We’d better get down there.”

The bathroom door opened and Morgan stepped out. Her face was clean and her hair was combed. Christina noticed that Morgan had darkened her lips with a trace of the black raspberry Bonne Bell Lip Smacker she’d gotten for her last birthday from Christina after much pleading to be allowed to wear makeup. Morgan hadn’t worn lip gloss at all since Jack died, or indeed cared much about her appearance at all besides basic grooming and cleanliness, as though with her father gone, there was no one for whom to look particularly pretty. Jack had always told Morgan she was beautiful, so her disinterest in how she presented herself was an additional constant reminder to Christina of their bereavement. But now, Morgan looked at her mother with a lovingly critical eye and said, “Mom, you’d better clean up, too. You know how she is. Your mascara’s running. You look like a raccoon.”

“You’re late,” Adeline said, raising her eyebrows. “All of you. It’s six forty-five. I told you I expected you downstairs, on time, at six-thirty for dinner.” She sat at one end of the dining table framed in candlelight from the silver candelabra that were placed on the sideboard and on the table itself. She wore a well- tailored black dress and a necklace of simple but consequential pearls. Not for the first time, Christina marvelled at how her mother-in-law managed, at whatever hour of the day or night, to look exactly like a lacquered mannequin that had just been placed in a dress shop window.

“I’m sorry, Grandmother,” Morgan said, before either Christina or Jeremy could say anything. “It was my fault. I lost track of the time. It won’t happen again.” Christina looked gratefully at her daughter, knowing that Morgan had deliberately spoken first, intuiting correctly that if anyone would escape the wrath of Adeline Parr over the grave offence of being late for dinner, it was her granddaughter.

For her part, Adeline’s smile was frosty, but there was an unmistakable sense of a storm having passed without actually touching down. “Punctuality is a very important virtue, Morgan,” she said. “It bespeaks a great deal about a person’s character. It’s very likely that you didn’t have much of a need for it in your old life, but when you are under my roof, you’ll learn to comport yourself responsibly as befitting a proper young lady. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

“Please sit down, dear.” She glanced at Christina and Jeremy and nodded curtly. “You two may sit, as well.”

“Thank you, Mother,” Jeremy said dryly. “It’s wonderful that we can all sit down as a family and enjoy each other’s company like this.”