to my nose; but it didn’t smell like her perfume anymore. It smelled of must. And when I unfolded it there were moth holes on the front and a stain around the neck, which Maman would never have tolerated. A pang of frustration: It was just a shabby bit of cashmere after all. I tossed the first sweater to the floor and grabbed another—this one a faded blue, and in no better shape—and then another, and then when I reached for the next one something hard and square came flying out with it.
I leaned down and picked it up: It was a journal, bound in red leather, edged in gold.
A diary. How did I never know that my mother kept a diary? I opened it to the first page, my heart kicking to life at the sight of my mother’s finishing-school cursive, so neat and symmetrical. (“You can tell an educated woman by the beauty of her hand,” she used to tell me. But of course, that was before computers made handwriting irrelevant.) The first diary entry was dated August 12, just after they’d moved into Stonehaven for Benny’s junior year.
This estate is my albatross. William wants me to see it as an opportunity but dear God, all I see is work. But we’re here for Benny and honestly I couldn’t bear how everyone in San Francisco was starting to look at us anyway—everyone speculating about his problems behind our back, practically gleeful to see us suffering. So I will smile and behave like a good little wife even though inside I’m screaming that this place is going to be the death of me.
I flipped quickly through the pages. Some entries were short and dutiful, and others were rambling and long, and yet more seemed to end mid-thought, as if she was still unsure about committing them to paper. Benny’s grades are improving at the Academy but he is still so uninterested in anything but those ghoulish comic books and I keep wondering if—. Or: I left three messages with William’s new secretary and he hasn’t called me back so either he’s screwing the secretary and she’s trying to pull a power move on me or else he’s avoiding me for other reasons which means—.
I sank, wobbly, to the floor, coming to rest in a nest of abandoned sweaters, my dead mother’s presence all around me. I knew I shouldn’t be reading her diary. Wasn’t this a violation of her trust, her privacy? But of course, I couldn’t stop myself. I flipped through the pages, my eyes occasionally seizing on my own name. Vanessa seems to be doing well at Princeton, but of course we knew she would (I liked this!) and Vanessa is home for the holidays, which is wonderful, but I can’t help noticing that she’s so insecure and desperate for validation—from me and her father and also the world at large (this I liked less) and I wish Vanessa would visit us more often but I guess that’s what happens when they go off to college; they eventually forget you. (Oh, the spasm of guilt at this!)
Mostly, though, the diary was about Benny and my father and herself.
Benny has started sneaking around with this girl, her name is Nina Ross and she’s polite enough but strange and not quality. Single mother (a cocktail waitress in the casinos, for God’s sake) and no father in sight. (I think he might be Mexican?) She dresses like one of those kids who shot up that school in Colorado and honestly I am worried. We didn’t uproot our lives and move up here so that Benny could fall in with a bad influence. I do not understand why he is drawn to her of all people, but I can’t help feeling like it’s a rebuke of me, like he wants to thumb his nose at my concern for him. So he sits out in that cottage with her for hours every afternoon and I’m honestly afraid to go knock on the door and see what they’re doing because I don’t think I could bear to have to tell William if it’s something bad, because he’ll blame me for everything. Benny’s failures are my failures, never his. It’s terribly unfair but of course I’m used to it because my whole marriage is that way.