The Unremarkable Heart

she stuck with these thoughts? She wanted to remember the good times with Grace: vacations, school trips, book reports they had worked on together, talks they had had late at night. June had told Grace all the things mothers tell their daughters: sit with your legs together. Always be aware of your surroundings. Sex should be saved for someone special. Don’t ever let a man make you think you are anything but good and true. There were so many mistakes that June’s own mother had made. June had parented against her mother, vowing not to make the same mistakes. And she hadn’t. By God, she hadn’t.
    She had made new ones of her own.
    ‘We didn’t raise him to be this way,’ mothers would tell her during parent–teacher conferences, and June would think, ‘Of course you did. What did you think would happen to a boy who was given everything and made to work for nothing?’
    She had secretly blamed them – or perhaps not too secretly. More often than not, there was a yearly complaint filed to the school board by a parent who found her too smug. Too judgmental. June had not realized just how smug until she saw her own smirk reflected back to her at the beginning of a conference about Grace. The teacher’s eyes were hard and disapproving. June had choked back the words – we didn’t raise her this way – and bile had come into her throat.
    What had they raised Grace to be? A princess, if Richard was asked. A perfect princess who loved her father.
    But how much had he really loved her?
    That was the question she needed answered. That was literally – and here she used the word correctly – the last thing that would be on her mind.
    Richard sensed the change in her posture. He stared at her over the paper. ‘What is it?’
    June sent the message from her brain to move her mouth. She felt the sensation itself – the parting of the lips, the skin stuck together at the corners – but no words would form.
    ‘Do you want some water?’
    She nodded because that was all she could do. Richard left the room. She tilted her head back, looking at the closed closet door. There were love letters on the top shelf. The shoebox was old, dusty. After June died, he would go through her things. He would find the letters. Would he think her an idiot for keeping them? Would he think that she had pined for him while he was gone?
    She had pined. She had ached. She had cried and moaned not at the loss of him, but of the idea of him. Of the idea of the two of them together.
    June turned her head away. The pillowcase felt rough against her face. Her hair clung to wet skin. She closed her eyes and thought of Grace’s silky mane of hair. So black it was almost blue. Her alarmingly deep green eyes that could penetrate right into your soul.
    ‘We’re almost out of bendy straws,’ Richard said, holding the glass low so that she could sip from the straw. ‘I’ll have to go to the store later.’
    She swallowed, feeling as if a rock was moving down her throat.
    ‘Do you care if I go before or after lunch?’
    June managed a shake of her head. Breathing, normally an effort, was becoming more difficult. She could hear a different tenor in the whistle of air wheezing through her lips. Her body was growing numb, but not from the morphine. Her feet felt as if they were sliding out of a pair of thick, woolen socks.
    Richard placed the glass on her bedside table. Water trickled from the straw, and he wiped it up before sitting back down with the paper.
    She should’ve written a self-help book for wives who wanted their husbands to help more around the house. ‘Here’s my secret, ladies: twenty-one years in a maximum facility prison!’ Richard cooked and cleaned. He did the laundry. Some days, he would bring in the warm piles of sheets fresh from the dryer and watch television with June while he folded the fitted sheets into perfect hospital corners.
    June closed her eyes again. She had loved folding Grace’s clothes. The tiny shirts. The little skirts with flowers and rows of lace. And then Grace had gotten older, and the frilly pink blouses had been relegated to the back of the closet. What had it been like that first day Grace had come down to breakfast wearing all black? June wanted to ask Richard, because he had been there, too, his nose tucked into the newspaper. As she remembered, he had merely glanced at June and rolled his eyes.
    Meanwhile, her heart was in her throat. The administrator in June was cataloguing Grace the same