My Name Is Lucy Barton

34

The next week, my friend Molla came to visit. She said, sitting right next to the head of the bed, so close, it seemed, Nice to have had your mother here, and I said yes, and she told me that she hated her mother terrifically, and told me the whole story again as though she had not told it to me before, how much she hated her mother, and when she’d had her babies she had to see a psychiatrist because she was saddened by everything her mother had not given her. Molla said all this to me that day, and recording this now I think of something Sarah Payne had said at the writing class in Arizona. “You will have only one story,” she had said. “You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.”

I smiled at Molla as she talked, I was very glad to see her. I asked her finally about my own children, did they seem terribly distressed I was not around? She said she thought that Chrissie seemed more able to understand, she was the older one, so that would be natural; Chrissie had a long talk on the stoop with Molla, and Molla had listened as Chrissie told her Mommy was sick but getting better. “You did tell her I was getting better, didn’t you?” I said, trying to sit up. And Molla said she had. I loved Molla for this, for her concern about my darling Chrissie. I asked her about Jeremy, how was he?

And she said she hadn’t seen him, he must be away. I told her that was what my husband had said too.

Molla chatted then about other mothers she knew from the park, one was moving to the suburbs, another was moving uptown.

When she left, I was exhausted. But I had been glad to see her. I thanked her for coming. She said, Of course, and she bent down and kissed my head.