She wonders if she got married because she was failing physics, and the only self-respecting way for an intelligent woman to drop out of school in 1951 was to get married.
She wonders if she got married because her mother didn’t want her to.
She wonders if she chose Vernon because she got to know him during the brief window when he felt unconfident, his fiancée having dumped him, and the only way she would ever have seen that Vernon again was if she had also dumped him.
The only thing she knows for sure: she’s glad she had children. Susan was so difficult, but Imogen loved her, and surely Susan knew that, and her death was the worst thing that could possibly have happened. Imogen would have traded her life for Susan’s in a moment. Whereas she’s not sure Vernon would have. And isn’t that the most damning thing you could say about a parent?
And look at all those years his mother was in the nursing home in North Carolina, when he hardly ever visited. “I would go down there if it meant anything to her,” he said. “But she doesn’t recognize me.”
Me, me, me. He was the most selfish man she’d ever met. His mother thought the sun shone out of his asshole. He thought he was smarter than everyone else, but he was stupid enough to think that she and Carlos were having an affair. (Me, me, me. Betraying me.) As though he hadn’t had plenty of evidence for many years that she didn’t like sex. (Me, me, me. Not attracted to me.)
She asked him that one time if he would take Susan to the beach so she could have a break, and he got so angry she was frightened. She knew never to ask again.
He never wanted to go anywhere. He clutched at his routines. And since his routines included her, he clutched at her. When Susan was getting her life back together and teaching in Madrid, Imogen wanted to visit her. Imogen had still never been abroad. She had taken up Spanish again, and all she wanted to do was go to Spain and spend time with her daughter and practice her Spanish. Vernon didn’t tell her she couldn’t go, he knew she would never put up with that, but he didn’t want to be alone, so he came along. And was miserable. He worried about the plane schedules, the tickets, the Spanish taxis, the tipping rules, the hotels. He got obsessed one night with the way the light switches were wired in a bungalow they’d rented on the south coast. There they were for two days on the beach with nothing to do but swim and read and eat out and be with Susan, but the double-switched hallway light didn’t operate in the expected way, or some such damn thing, if you think Imogen paid any fucking attention you’ve got another think coming, and he couldn’t let it go, he started searching for a screwdriver because he wanted to take off the faceplates and look at the wires, he wanted to call the property manager, he wanted Susan or Imogen to interpret for him, which they refused to do. “I don’t know the Spanish for fucking killjoy,” Imogen told him.
So there were no trips after that. Imogen had never gotten the opportunity to meet Hildegard in Germany. She had never gotten to see Norway. When her father had his retirement party in 1958, his colleagues at the Bureau of Public Roads gave him a new camera, which he took, along with her mother, on a two-month holiday in Europe. They saw the Eiffel Tower and the tulips in Holland. And guess what? They spent a month in Norway. Imogen sat on the living-room couch Vernon had made her buy and imagined her mother sailing the fjords.
She couldn’t divorce him, no matter how many times she threatened it. For one thing, he would fall apart. For another, marrying him had been her mistake to make, and she believed you lived with your mistakes.
But she’s so thankful she had children, and at least Vernon was a better father to Mark than he ever was to Susan. (Aren’t daughters your job? Could anyone believe he really said that? And he once called Susan a whore.) Mark has always been easy to love. From the time he was a baby, he was always happy. He would lie in her arms, sweetly smiling. When he was a toddler Imogen would ask him if he wanted juice or milk, and he would cheerfully say, “Either is fine!” Did he want to go to the park or the woods? “Either is fine!” Even in adolescence he never gave her a moment’s trouble. (Susan had five car accidents before she was twenty.) His teachers loved him. Imogen has never understood what happened with that woman. Mark would have made such a good husband. Imogen has never seen her granddaughter. The woman is obviously a monster. Good riddance to her and her spawn.
Would Susan have been less footloose if Vernon had bothered to connect with her more? Would she be alive today?
Imogen remembers when Mark was fourteen and there was a little girl three houses away who was always out alone in her backyard. Imogen knew the parents slightly. The girl had been a late pregnancy, a surprise. Her only brother was twenty years older. Her parents were busy. She would gaze through the backyard fence, gripping the chain links, watching other kids play if there were any out, or just looking at emptiness if not. “Why don’t you play with her?” Imogen said to Mark.
He hesitated. She could tell he didn’t much want to. But his kindness kicked in and he said, “OK.” Several times a week that summer he’d climb over the fence and toss a ball back and forth with her, play hide and seek, and so on. He was so goodhearted, so conscientious. Years later, the girl came by the house selling
