Page 38 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane
“As a matter of fact, I did.” Georgina chuckles. “I was going to run it over to your mailbox as soon as I finished here.” She reachesdeep into the pocket of her apron, pulls out a bundle of envelopes, and hands them to Hannah.
“Thank you, I appreciate it!” Hannah shifts her weight on her feet. “I’ve actually been hoping to run into you…”
“You texted.” Georgina presses a gloved palm to her forehead. “I completely forgot to answer. My apologies, Hannah. I was feeling a bit under the weather this week, and it must have slipped my mind.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Hannah flounders to find the words to respond to the obvious lie. “I hope you’re feeling better now.”
“I am,” Georgina replies, nodding. She stands up, takes off her gardening gloves, and brushes the granules of soil from her knees. “Thank you.”
As she lowers her head and tucks her gloves into the pocket of her apron, her face catches the light for the first time, and Hannah sees it. The slight discoloration beneath Georgina’s right eye, just above her cheekbone. It’s been expertly covered with makeup, as though Georgina knew exactly what combination of hues to use to conceal a bruise, but Hannah recognizes it right away.
In a flash, she’s back in the house where she grew up, the first place she remembers calling home. The only one where they’d lived with her father. Hannah remembers that place only in fragments, like a film she’d once watched and mostly forgotten. She remembers the way the kitchen always smelled of cooking oil and the bright pink of the roses her mother had painted on her bedroom wall, the way her fingers would trace the curling vines in the moonlight as she lay in bed, and she remembers the booming sound of her father’s voice when he thought she was asleep: “Shut the hell up, Julie!” She remembers the crack of his fist against plaster, the sound of shattering glass, and the bruises on her mother’s body. Red welts that would bloom into deep purple blemishes that Hannah couldn’t stand to look at. “I bumped my head on a cabinet door,” her mother would say, laughing at her own clumsiness, or “I tripped on the stairs. Mommy can be so silly sometimes.” But Hannah, even at seven years old, could tell she was lying.
Her father became this frightening thing in her mind, ashape-shifter that turned into a lurching monster at night, all bellowing roars and sharp teeth on the other side of her closed bedroom door. She’d squeeze her eyes shut, wishing she was bigger, stronger. She imagined herself facing him in his monstrous form. In these visions she was always brave like the cartoon superheroes she saw on television—she was a hero. But in the harsh light of reality, Hannah was none of those things. She was just a little girl cowering in her bed, desperately wishing to be more than she was.
Until the night everything changed. Hannah’s mother crept into her room before dawn. She was holding her side, which would later be covered in bruises that stretched across her skin and looked to Hannah like watercolor paint on canvas.
“Get up, baby,” she’d whispered. “We have to go.”
Hannah sat up in her thin cotton nightgown, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Her mother was already stuffing Hannah’s clothes and her favorite soft toys into a big black garbage bag. “Where are we going?” she’d asked.
Hannah’s mother paused, knelt by Hannah’s bedside. “We have to get out of here, baby. Your daddy, he…” Her voice faltered, as if even then she felt the pull to make excuses for him.
“Turns into a monster,” Hannah filled in for her. It was the first time either of them had spoken about the things her father did, the kind of man he was. But Hannah hadn’t needed her mother to say the words. She already knew.
Her mother swallowed hard, and when she spoke again, her voice was strained. “Yes, baby. He does. And I don’t want that for you. Do you understand? I don’t want my little girl to grow up around a man like that. It’s no good for you, and so we have to go. Right now. Before he wakes up.”
Hannah nodded and silently helped her mother finish packing. They worked in tandem, as if they’d already planned for this day, already decided what would stay and what would go. And then they’d left. They drove off in the dead of night with everything they cared about packed into one small car.
“We can never look back,” her mother said, her eyes meetingHannah’s in the rearview mirror. “I need to hear you say it, baby: We can never look back.”
Hannah rested her head against the cool glass of the window by her side and repeated the vow she’d later break. “We can never look back.”
“Georgina,” Hannah says now. “You can talk to me.”You don’t have to face this alone.
“I appreciate that, but there’s nothing to talk about.” Georgina busies herself gathering her gardening supplies.
Hannah reaches out, touches her lightly on the arm. She feels the other woman bristle at the contact. “I understand. More than you know.”
Georgina pauses, considers Hannah, her green eyes searching Hannah’s blue ones. And Hannah waits, her breath held. For a moment it feels so real, as if Georgina is reading all the words Hannah hasn’t yet brought herself to say, as if the broken thing in Georgina sees its own reflection in Hannah’s eyes:I recognize you.And then it’s gone. The false brightness is back, and Georgina smiles that perfect smile of hers.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Georgina, please,” Hannah tries again. “What happened the other night—”
“Nothing happened the other night,” Georgina insists.
“But your face…” Hannah’s hand rises to her own cheek, traces the crest of her cheekbone.
“I walked into a door,” Georgina says with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I can be so clumsy sometimes.”
The hollow excuse sounds so familiar to Hannah’s ears that it’s like hearing her mother again, feeling the same searing indignation she had as a child. It wasn’t fair what her father had done to her, what he’d done to them, relegating them to a life of fear, living out of her mother’s car, always looking over their shoulders. Hannah hated him for it so fully that it felt like it could consume her. If only there were something more she could have done…
We can never look back.
Except Hannah did. At first, only in her mind. She imaginedherself going back there, creeping into the house she’d once called home, and finding her father passed out on the couch, his terry-cloth robe gaping open to reveal the pale, flabby skin of his chest, a scene she’d witnessed so many times that she could almost smell the rank scent of sour beer on his breath, hear the sputtering snore that rattled in his chest. She pictured herself picking up one of the lumpy couch pillows and holding it over his face with her small hands until the noise stopped—
“Ahem.” The sound of throat-clearing snaps Hannah back into the present. She looks up to find what must be Georgina’s son, the spitting image of his father, standing on a balcony one story above their heads. He’s leaning casually over the railing, watching the exchange between the two women with a curious expression on his face.
