Esther pursed her lips. “Go on. Get it all out.”
She was acting like Emily just needed a punching bag when Emily was deadly serious. “I’m not suffering the consequences of my actions, Mother. I am suffering the consequences of your cowardice.”
Esther raised an eyebrow, the same way she did when she was humoring someone.
“You’re a hypocrite.” Emily was repeating herself, but now, the words felt like a revelation. She had never before spoken to anyone so plainly. Why had she been so silent for so many years? Why had she worried so much about saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, making the wrong people upset?
What were they going to do?
Emily stood up, fists on the table. “You have this amazing gift of willful blindness. You think you’re so smart, so clever, but you never see the things that you don’t want to see.”
“What don’t I want to see?”
“That you’re terrified,” Emily said. “You walk around holding fear in your mouth all the time.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Emily said. “You’ve got lines around your mouth from holding it in, pursing your lips the same way you’re doing right now.”
Esther’s lips unpursed. She tried to laugh it off, but there was nothing to laugh at.
Emily said, “I see you choking on your fear all of the time. With Father. With your friends. Even with me and Gram. You try so hard to swallow it down, but it won’t go. All it does is turn your words into a weapon every time you speak. And what you say is bullshit, Mother. It’s all bullshit because you are terrified that people will see the truth about you.”
“And what is this truth?”
“That you’re a coward.”
Esther sat back in the chair. Her legs were crossed. “I’m a coward, am I?”
“Why else is this happening?” Emily demanded. “Why aren’t you standing up for me? Why aren’t you telling Principal Lampert to fuck off? Why aren’t you down at Georgetown demanding they honor their acceptance letter? Telling the senator that I’ll be reporting for my internship? Telling Dad that he has to—”
“You have no idea what I’ve done for you.”
“Then tell me!” Emily yelled. “You talk all the time about being a model for other women. What are you modeling for me, Mom?”
Emily had pounded the table so hard that the pumpkin seeds had spilled from the bowl. She watched her mother gather them together, scraping them to the edge so that they would drop into her hand. She didn’t speak until everything was back in its place.
“My dear, to be perfectly honest, you are not the type of woman I am modeling for,” Esther said. “No matter how your pregnancy happened, it happened. You let it happen by putting yourself in a precarious situation. Now, if you were some poor girl living in a trailer in Alabama, your choices would be different.”
Her words were so close to what Ricky had screamed at Emily a few weeks ago that Emily felt a physical weight on her shoulders.
“I acknowledge that the next few years will be a difficult period of your life,” Esther said. “But one day you will realize the gift that your father and I are giving you. If you make these sacrifices now, if you use your time wisely, you will eventually be welcomed back into the fold.”
Emily wiped her mouth. She had been so mad that spit had flown out of her mouth. “And if I don’t?”
Esther shrugged as if to say it was obvious. “They will cast you out.”
Emily’s throat worked. She could not imagine how it was possible for her to be more cast out than she was right now.
“What if—” Emily flailed around, trying to form a cogent alternative. “What if we just played by their rules until you’re confirmed? Dad is always saying it’s for your lifetime. Once you’re on the bench, what does it matter?”
Esther looked at her as if she could not believe Emily had come from her own body. “Do you really think that my most ardent ambition is to spend my lifetime merely as a federal judge?”
Emily knew that it was not.
“You watched Sandy O’Connor’s confirmation on television. Jesse Helms nearly took her down over her views on abortion.” Esther jabbed her finger into the table. “You think that your life is hard? Sandy couldn’t find a job when she graduated Columbia Law. She had to forgo a salary and sit with the secretaries just to get her foot in the door. And now she’s a sitting Supreme Court justice.”
“But—” Emily tried to parry. “You can change that, Mother. Can’t you see that—”
“I can’t do anything from the outside.”
“There won’t be another opening for years, and even then, it could be a decade or more before another woman is nominated, let alone confirmed. This is about what you have an opportunity to do right now, Mother.” Emily tried to take the begging tone out of her voice. “We could pretend that we’re doing what you said. I’ll go ahead and drop out of school. Once the senate hearings are over and you’re sworn in, I can take summer school classes and then I could—”
“The federal judgeship is already locked down,” Esther said. “I had prepared to make the announcement in a toast before dinner. Reagan himself called me this morning. Not even your father knows.”
Emily was knocked back by the news, which neatly explained her mother’s ebullient mood. She hadn’t been pleased to have her family around her for the holiday. She had been elated because she had gotten what she wanted.
For now.
“Reagan says the process will take longer than I’d like, but that can’t be helped. The announcement will come in March, before the Easter break. There will be a period of vetting, I’ll take meetings at the Capitol, then the confirmation hearing will begin in late April.” Esther sounded positively effusive. “Ronnie wants to set a standard, to show the country he’s not merely elevating women for the sake of elevating women. He’s elevating the right women.”
“Jesus,” Emily muttered. She felt utterly defeated.
“Language,” Esther cautioned. “Emily, when he called this morning, Ronnie referred to the Pericope Adulterae. John 8:1–20. Do you know what that means?”
Emily had nothing to say. Her mother was almost giddy as she relayed the conversation. Nothing Emily had said in the last ten minutes had cracked Esther’s hard shell. Emily had challenged her, she had called her mother out for her hypocrisy, and now Esther was quoting John the Apostle as if none of it had happened.
“You know the passage,” Esther said. “The Pharisees brought to Jesus an adulterous woman. They told Him, ‘The Law of Moses commanded us to stone such a woman. What do you say?’”
Emily felt her mind going back through the conversation as she tried to find the moment Esther had climbed back onto her high horse. She was clearly expecting Emily to play the game, to do the same thing they did with Franklin. Ignore the bruises. Forget about the yelling. Pretend like the sobbing and begging Emily heard through their bedroom wall had come from the television and not her mother.
Esther said, “The Pharisees were trying to test Jesus. To see how strongly His morals would hold. Do you know what Jesus said? Do you?”