“Yes, but who knows where,” she says. “And frankly, who cares?”
I slowly walk across the marble floors of the hall to the parquet floors of the sitting room. Normally this room gets a lot of sun through the big glass doors, but a drizzle is starting to fall outside, making everything look dark. I can tell my mother must have been in here a lot today, because there are a few empty glasses out that are smeared with her lipstick.
When my mother comes back from the kitchen, she has a glass of water for me and another empty glass. She sets both down beside me and then sits on the adjacent love seat, leaning back and picking up a bottle of rare Scotch from behind the couch, one of my father’s prized possessions. She quickly pours herself a glass to the brim, her bracelets clanking against the glass, and then does the same for me.
I down half the water and then pick up the glass of Scotch, raising it toward her. “Are we celebrating something?”
She shakes her head quickly, and then, before I know what’s happening, she’s bursting into tears.
I can’t remember the last time I saw my mother cry.
Wait. Actually, I can.
Mallorca.
And some instinct deep in my gut is telling me that the past is here in this room.
“Mother,” I say gently, sitting up straighter. I’ve never had to comfort her before, so I don’t know what to do. When I was really young, I’d often find her drunk and crying in the corner of a room late at night, but if I ever approached, she’d scream at me to go away, like she was a wild animal nursing her wounds.
“I didn’t realize you and Eloise were so close,” I say, and this somehow makes her cry harder.
She shakes her head and then puts her face into her hands. “We weren’t. We weren’t close,” she mumbles and sobs. “Oh, Blaise, I need to get something off my chest. I need to tell you what I’ve done. It will eat me alive if I don’t.”
She’s not joking. That’s the look that she has. Not just haggard but like something dark, guilt or shame, has been eating her from the inside out, starting with her heart.
“You can tell me,” I say. Against my better judgment, I slam back my glass of Scotch, feeling the burn, then slowly get up and sit next to her on the love seat, putting my hand on her shoulder and giving it a squeeze.
She flinches at the contact and looks up at me with tears running down her face. “You are the good son, Blaise. You know that. If I tell you, you’ll have leverage against me forever. I have to know that you won’t use it against me. I have to know that I can trust you. You can’t tell your brother or your father. This is just between us.” She swallows. “Please promise me that.”
Jesus. Now she’s freaking me out.
I nod. “Okay. I promise. I won’t tell a soul.”
She presses her lips together and nods softly, trying to suppress another sob. “Good. Thank you,” she says in a quiet voice. With shaking hands, she finishes her drink and then pours herself another. I wait patiently for her confession.
“Blaise,” she says after a moment, staring down at the amber liquid. “Years ago, I made a mistake. A big mistake. And at the time I was never ashamed of it, because your father deserved it. He deserved it and so much more, and he still does.” A resolute look comes across her brow. “No, he still does deserve it. But Eloise . . . she never did. And I never got to tell her that I was sorry.”
My stomach starts to churn. I have a feeling I don’t want her to continue. I don’t want to be in charge of keeping my mother’s secrets, something that she’s done. It’s a burden more than anything.
“I had an affair with Ludovic.” She says it so softly and with such finality that it takes me a moment to really hear her.
“You . . . what?”
Ludovic? My mother slept with Uncle Ludovic?
She nods, her chin trembling. “It’s true. Long ago.”
“When?”
“When you were a teenager,” she says. “That long ago.”
“For how long?”
“Years.”
“Years!” I yell, getting to my feet. “Years . . . Mother, you . . . how could you do that? How could you do that to Eloise, to Father . . . my God.”
I can’t even begin to deal with this. I sit back down, feeling faint, my head in my hands. “Uncle Luddie. He would never do that to her. How could he? He was the good one.”
She lets out a caustic snort. “There is no good side, Blaise. Don’t you see? Your father and your brother are just worse than most.” I notice she’s left herself out of the running.
“I can’t believe it.”
She looks at me sharply. “I assume that’s meant for your uncle and not for me?”
“I can’t believe either of you.” I sigh and reach across for the Scotch, pouring myself another glass. I need this. “So does Father know?”
“Oh, come on, we would know if he knew.”
“I don’t know. He does like to store things away for future blackmailing.” I pause. “In Mallorca. You got drunk and fell down and ran off with Luddie. I heard you. You said to him that he knows.”
“You heard that?” She looks startled.
I shrug, swirling the Scotch around in the glass. “I didn’t know what I heard. I assumed you did something wrong, but not this.”
“Well, I thought he knew. He had said something to me that night that made me think he knew. Basically called me a whore. I could have sworn he knew right there and then. But nothing ever came of it. I thought that he would have divorced me or done something awful to his brother, but nothing happened.”
“That still doesn’t mean that he doesn’t know,” I tell her. “But for your sake, let’s forget about that. Let’s just forget about everything. It’s done.”
“Don’t you see? I can’t forget. And Eloise knew.”
“How did she know?”
“Because your uncle is an idiot and he confessed. Said he couldn’t keep it to himself. He thought he was being the bigger man, but he shouldn’t have burdened her with that.”
“When did he tell her?”
“A year ago.”
“And had you seen Eloise after that?”
She shakes her head, and a tear spills out. “I did everything I could to avoid her. And now . . . I wish I had reached out. I wish I had told her how sorry I was. Now she’s dead, Blaise. She’s dead and she died knowing what I did, and I never got the chance to make amends.”
Now I completely understand why my mother seems to have aged before my eyes. This secret would have weighed a lot on her heart.
And now, I suppose, it has to weigh on mine.
“You think less of me,” she says.
“To be honest, Mother, I never thought very much of you.”
She flinches, her eyes turning from soft to hard. A look—a mother—I know too well. “I suppose I deserve that.”
“I hate to say it, but you probably deserve all the guilt and shame too,” I point out.
“Blaise, you have a wicked tongue,” she scolds me, looking aghast. “Though what should I expect? I raised you. You have my wicked blood, as well as your father’s, running through your veins. And yet I can tell that you think you’re better than us. Better than me.”