Page 24 of The Paradox Club

“Think about this, Tess. Take a minute and go through in your mind what it might do to you—not just to see Marie for the first time in years, but to see her happy with another man.”

“It might be good for me to see her happy,” said Tess. “I haven’t seen that since the fire.”

“I’m just afraid she’ll disappoint you like she always does.”

“Maybe I need to prove to myself that she has no power over me anymore,” said Tess. “Can I borrow the minivan?”

Tess drove out to the Costco on the edge of town to pick up a peace offering of paper products. Marie Maxwell refused to become a member of anything. “Membership is a dangerous thing,” she once said, without explanation. But Tess knew of her mother’s propensity for keeping an endless supply of certain essentials squirreled away, so she filled the back of the van with bulk packages of toilet paper and paper towels and tissues.

She pulled up in front of her mother’s house just before noon to find Marie standing on the front steps in a housedress, her hair in curlers. She looked like some 1950s version of a suburban housewife.

“Tesla Maxwell, this is a surprise. I almost didn’t recognize you all grown-up.”

“Hello, Marie.”

“I won’t explode if you call me Mom.”

“When did I ever call you Mom?”

“Never.”

“I made a Costco run. I thought you might want some supplies.”

“A peace offering.”

Tess felt an instant pang of annoyance that Marie had used the same words she had thought as she piled items into her cart. “I didn’t know we were at war.”

“What did you think?”

“Never mind,” said Tess, and then after a pause and because she couldn’t resist, “Aunt Vivian says hello.”

“I thought you were in college.”

“I’m taking a break.”

“And of course you run straight to Vivian.”

“She takes care of me, Marie.”

“That woman! If it hadn’t been for her your father wouldn’t…”

“Wouldn’t what? I’ve heard you say that sentence a thousand times, but you never finish it. Wouldn’t have shut you out from his work? Wouldn’t have spent so much time at the office? Wouldn’t have been happy?”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

Her mother’s solution to everything.

“I’ll put these away,” said Tess, nodding at the minivan.

“Thank you,” said Marie tersely.

Tess lay awake many nights wondering about that unfinished sentence that Marie had repeated nearly every time Tess had come to stay with her after Harry’s death. “If it hadn’t been for Vivian, Harry wouldn’t…” She had made a game out of speculating endings. Her favorites included, wouldn’t have understood half of what he did about physics, wouldn’t have made the secret scientific breakthrough that no one will ever know about, and wouldn’t have been nominated for a Nobel Prize. So far as Tess knew, Harry Maxwell hadn’t been nominated for a Nobel, but she liked that ending nonetheless. Once she even finished the sentence with wouldn’t have had a daughter. It would explain a lot, but it seemed unlikely. In another universe, maybe.

Despite her creative clauses, Tess suspected the more mundane. If it hadn’t been for that woman, your father would have been faithful to me. Even as a child, watching her father and Vivian sitting in front of the fire at the lake house, leaning in toward each other as they spoke, Tess wondered if there was a more than collegial friendship between the two. She knew that their relationship was based on a level of scientific understanding that, by its very nature, excluded her mother. What she didn’t know was how far beyond science those discussions by the fire extended. What happened after her father had told Tess her story and tucked her in, after Tess had fallen asleep and Marie had gone to bed alone and Harry Maxwell returned to Vivian?

When Tess finished arranging the tissues and paper towels and toilet paper on two dedicated shelves in the curiously barren pantry, she found her mother outside on the front step, smoking a cigarette.

“I thought you quit,” said Tess, without trying to hide the scorn in her voice.