Family Matters by Kitty Burns Florey Page B

read, full of humiliations and rejections. Life was hard for Betsy as it had never been for Violet. Violet drifted through; Betsy struggled.
    The emptiness came and went. She tried to keep it straight, all that she had to tell Betsy, but it drifted away from her. She had read a book about remembering once and used to joke, “I can’t recall a word of it!” Her memory was getting worse, but she lay in bed placidly enough, chasing it. There was no hurry.
    That paradox pleased Violet. Without much time left, she had all the time in the world. She loved the way time had slowed, loved lying in the bed she’d had for so many years, with all her comforts at hand, thinking. She could lie there in her old maple bed and think forever. Remembering details about Emily was like being in a detective story. There was so little, and so much, to be made out of it. Like Peter Wimsey or Adam Dalgliesh she pondered and worried her clues until they connected and a pattern formed.
    The house on Spring Street, number 666. They had moved from there when she was little. She could recall the Rebhahns at 664. She used to play with David and Clara. David used to urinate on the rosebushes in the backyard, Clara used to hang by her knees from a branch of the cherry tree with her dress over her head. The Rebhahns had shocked Helen; she’d never liked them. Violet suspected it was David and Clara, as much as Frank’s prosperity, that had driven the Robinsons away from Spring Street. But who lived next door, on the other side? The Loftigs—it didn’t sound at all familiar. Had they moved when Emily disgraced herself? What would a family do? Surely not continue to live next door to their illegitimate granddaughter and her adopted family. They would move away, and take Emily so she could start a new life. Maybe just across town; “across town” was further away in those days. But it would be kinder to Emily to move right away from there. Imagine running into Helen somewhere, wheeling her baby.… No. They would have left the city, if they were kind, and if it was possible. The whole family would be under a cloud—or could you get away with such a thing, in 1922? Send Emily away …? She’d have to leave school—on what pretext? And once the baby was born and safely adopted, would she come back?
    Sometimes the pattern refused to form, and all that was clear to Violet was Emily’s intense misery. Her heart overflowed with sorrow, and her head swam. She would leave it to Betsy. Betsy’s head never swam when it came to the crunch. That book she had gone to England and Chicago and God knew where else to do the research for. She had brought Violet a Staffordshire dog in her suitcase, picked up cheap in London. Violet thought it was ugly, but she loved it because she liked to think of Betsy out on her own, adventuring in foreign lands: poring over old manuscripts in a library, roaming London, actually going into a musty shop and dickering with the owner. “I got him to come down five pounds solely on the strength of my briefcase,” Betsy had laughed. “Women simply don’t carry briefcases in London. And it only had my lunch and a murder mystery in it.” Betsy could amaze her. Violet had long ago taken as her motto, “You never know!” And it applied better to her daughter than to anyone else, except possibly to her father.
    With Helen she had always known. Helen did nothing to make life interesting—Violet’s criterion for loved ones—and in fact did her best to make it dull and hemmed in. No, Violet didn’t love her, though she didn’t comprehend that fully until adolescence, when Helen’s gloom and sternness became almost malevolent at times. She had been punished for every minor transgression. For forgetting to set the table, the penance was dinner alone in the kitchen. For coming in late: isolation in her room. For lies: slaps. Once, for saying