Empire Falls

the gazebo for a few minutes,” Mrs. Whiting suggested, causing Grace to regret her decision to raise the issue this afternoon. That morning she’d left David in bed with a severe cold, and she was hoping to return by midafternoon. She’d even mentioned this desire to Mrs. Whiting, who seemed effortlessly to have forgotten it .
    The shady gazebo was cool. A temporary ramp made the building wheelchair-accessible, and Mrs. Whiting sat with her back to the house so she could look out over the river. Grace sat at an angle, facing the Iron Bridge downstream. When she heard the patio door slide open, she saw Cindy struggle out onto the patio. It was some seventy yards down the lawn to the gazebo—a journey the girl would not risk, not so soon after her operation, though she regarded Grace and her mother with what appeared to be genuine longing .
    “What’s to be done, do you suppose?” Mrs. Whiting finally said. She might have been musing about Empire Mills itself, for she was studying the now abandoned mills, their two large smokestacks looming against the late-afternoon sky. Grace heard the sliding door again and saw Cindy Whiting struggle back inside .
    Her mother took off her straw gardening hat and placed it on the small round table between them. “You’ve grown fond of my daughter,” she said .
    “Yes,” Grace freely admitted .
    “Would you think me entirely unnatural if I told you I’m not, particularly?” She smiled then. “You don’t have to answer, dear girl.”
    Grace was glad not to have to share her thoughts about one of the sadder human relationships she’d ever encountered. It was as if mother and daughter had somehow managed to disappoint each other so thoroughly that neither one was at all vested in the other anymore. They were like ghosts, each inhabiting different dimensions of the same physical space, so different that Grace half expected to see one pass through the other when their paths crossed. Cindy, coming upon her mother unexpectedly, acted as if she’d just remembered a question she’d been meaning to ask, only to realize she’d already asked it many times over and been given the same dispiriting answer. Mrs. Whiting, when she noticed her daughter at all, seemed merely annoyed. Sometimes they stared at each other in silence for so long that Grace wanted to scream .
    “She’s such a dear soul,” Grace ventured. “Her suffering—”
    “Lord, yes, her suffering,” Mrs. Whiting agreed, as if commiserating with Grace, not her daughter. “It’s positively endless, isn’t it?”
    “She’s not to blame, surely?”
    “It’s hardly a question of blame, dear girl,” Mrs. Whiting explained. “It’s a question of need. You’ll come to understand that what my daughter needs is not what she thinks she needs. You look at her and imagine she needs sympathy, whereas she needs strength. You’d be wise not to let her cling to you, unless of course you enjoy the sensation. Some people do.”
    It took Grace a moment to understand that she was being gently chided. “There are worse things than being clung to, aren’t there?”
    “Perhaps,” the other woman acknowledged, as though none came to her off the top of her head. “Tell me. What does your family think of your being away from them so much?”
    “David misses me, I think,” Grace said. “He’s still so little. He doesn’t—”
    “And the older boy?”
    “Miles? Miles is my rock.”
    “And your husband?”
    “Max is Max.”
    “Yes,” Mrs. Whiting agreed. “Men simply are what they are.”
    Grace looked over the Iron Bridge. After a moment, she said, “Will we ever speak of him?”
    “No, I think not,” Mrs. Whiting answered, as easily as if she’d been offered some ice cream .
    Which did not surprise Grace. They’d barely mentioned him the afternoon she’d first crossed the river to perform her penance. Grace had merely asked Mrs. Whiting’s forgiveness and assured her that it was over between her and Charlie, that she was sorry for what she’d done, for what she’d tried to do .
    “Will he ever return?”
    “To Empire Mills?” Mrs. Whiting seemed to find the question odd. “I hardly think so. As a young man he always wanted to live in Mexico. Did you know that?”
    “Yes.”
    She could feel the other woman’s eyes on her now. Yes, of course it would mean something to Mrs. Whiting that her husband had shared his intimate dreams. “He seems quite happy there,” she said, as if to suggest