The Push

Henry drove Cecilia to the train station the morning after. He didn’t say a word, not even good-bye. But she knew this was only because he couldn’t. She kissed him for the first time in her life, once on each of his hairy cheeks. He didn’t shave much after Etta died. She whispered to him the only possible thing there was to say: thank you.

Outside of his car, Cecilia straightened her nicest outfit, a plum corduroy skirt and blouse that she’d bought secondhand. The rest of her things were packed in Etta’s teal-colored monogrammed luggage, a gift from Henry that she’d never used. There was nowhere Etta had wanted to go.

Cecilia had turned eighteen and knew she had a classic sort of beauty, a kind her mother never had. She suspected it would work to her advantage more in the big city than it ever had back at home. No sooner had Cecilia stepped out of the taxi than she saw Seb West, the doorman at a fancy hotel she couldn’t afford to stay at. The hotel was the only place she’d ever heard of in the city—she hadn’t known what other address to give the taxi driver. Seb held out his white-gloved hand to take hers, and they barely let go after that.

Seb showed Cecilia the city and introduced her to his friends. One of them helped her get a poorly paid job at his uncle’s high-end livery service. She helped with bookings and kept the office tidy and went for lunch with the other women who worked there. One of them told her about a small studio for rent above an art gallery that had gone out of business, but she still couldn’t afford the cost of city living on her own. Seb moved in with her to split the rent, and he paid for almost everything else in Cecilia’s life. They were officially a couple.

She reveled in the freedom of the city. Having somewhere important to be in the morning. Getting coffee from the vendor on the street, reading poetry in the park during her breaks. Meeting people who had no idea where she came from. Or from whom.

Cecilia was right about her beauty and the kind of attention it attracted. Men’s eyes followed her down the street and around the office, and she was always being touched—a hand here, a hand there. She felt both powerful and vulnerable at the same time. Seb and Cecilia would go out for drinks often, or to poetry readings at underground bars. She felt like prey the minute he turned his back. Even Seb’s friends who knew they were an item would place their hands a little too low when they squeezed past.

One night, his friend Lenny, who Seb thought hung the moon, shoved her against the wall of the bar and stuck his tongue down her throat while Seb was in the bathroom. Cecilia pushed him away and wished she hadn’t liked it.

But being wanted in that way was thrilling for her. It made her feel wild for the first time in her life. So she let this kind of thing happen often with Lenny.

Soon they began meeting during her coffee breaks at work. Cecilia loved what he had to say. He told her he could help her get into modeling, and that her looks shouldn’t be wasted working at a dead-end office job and sleeping with a doorman. He liked to say there was something about her, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. She told him she loved poetry and hoped she might one day find a job at a publishing house, maybe even get something of her own published. She had never told Seb any of this. Lenny said he had a friend with big connections whom he could introduce her to. He talked to her about leaving Seb and moving in with him.

One week later, Cecilia learned she was pregnant.

As quickly as she found the city, she lost it.

Seb had no savings and he insisted they move into his parents’ house in the suburbs until he had more money put away. He was thrilled to start a family. He’d had a happy childhood with memories of big Thanksgiving dinners and camping vacations.

Cecilia was devastated.

When she finally found the courage to tell Seb she wanted an abortion, he told her never to mention it again. He said she could move back home for good and ask her stepfather for the money, if the idea of having a baby with him was that terrible.

Cecilia couldn’t stop thinking about her mother hanging from the tree.

She felt trapped and she felt foolish. And so she gave in.



74



There was nothing to distinguish the slow stretch of time between when I lost Gemma and what happened next that tugged her back into my life. The year was unremarkable. Violet was going on thirteen, but I wasn’t with her much—you had somehow maneuvered things so that she came only once a week. At one point I emailed a lawyer, someone an acquaintance had used in her divorce. We set up a call and I watched my phone ring on the table when the date and time came. I had no fight in me, and besides, it seemed Violet was happier living without me.

So I was surprised when the teacher called me to ask if I would chaperone a field trip to a farm. It was the night before the trip—another mother who did this sort of thing regularly was sick and had to cancel. The thought of Violet treating me with her usual chill in front of her classmates filled me with dread. But I agreed to do it. I knocked on Violet’s door to tell her I’d be going. She had no reaction at all. She didn’t look up from the beaded bracelet she was stringing with patient fingers. Her hands looked so different from mine.

I sat somewhere in the middle of the bus, beside a father who mostly read emails on his phone while we bumped our way out of the city, listening to the cloud cover of teenage excitement. Violet was several rows behind me on the other side of the bus in the window seat. The girl she sat next to was tall with a burgeoning chest. Her back was turned to Violet as she leaned across the aisle to whisper with a pair of brunettes in matching French braids. Violet’s eyes tracked the rolling countryside.