Noah's Wife by Lindsay Starck

Author:Lindsay Starck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-12-07T16:00:00+00:00

twenty-one

Mrs. McGinn’s daughter has dreamed of getting married and leaving this town, of buying her own house with a breakfast nook and a laundry chute and a huge backyard—but she has never dreamed of having children.

She has seen firsthand what having a mother will do to people.

Of course she loves her mother, as everyone must, but sometimes she finds herself wishing that someone else had given birth to her—someone who was quieter and more discreet. Mrs. McGinn has the tendency to overpower the people she loves, pulling them into her orbit like small moons that have no choice but to reflect the radiance of her, their most significant star. Mrs. McGinn’s daughter has certainly tried to carve out her own path, to distinguish herself from her mother. Why else would she have gone to the trouble of piercing her own ears or painting her fingernails black? She desperately craves the disapproval of her mother, feels secretly thrilled at the fights they have after these slight physical adjustments. She loves it when Mrs. McGinn informs her that she looks like a gypsy.

“Angela Rose,” her mother had declared after the piercing. “Take that metal out of your head.”

“No,” retorted Mrs. McGinn’s daughter. “Never. Not a chance.”

She wonders why this is the first conversation that comes to her mind when she realizes that she has missed her period. She is seated on the edge of the tub, her thighs cold beneath her skirt, and her stomach still queasy. The floral-printed towels are frayed at the edges, the bathmat plush but faded pink. She has lived longer in this house than in any other; this has been her bedroom since her late adolescence. When she was younger the father figures rotated through her life like carousel horses, and her mother tried to make a game of moving in and out of houses. One set of framed wedding photographs came down, and eventually another went up. The furniture shifted, the wallpaper changed. The husband would leave his mark on the house and then he would be gone. Soon after, she and her mother would pack up for a new place, exchange their keys and move on. But try as she might, her mother never managed to leave her memories behind.

Mrs. McGinn’s daughter is determined that her own marriage will be different. Hers will be the kind that lasts.

If she ever gets to that point, that is.

When she is well enough to stand without feeling nauseated again, she stumbles over to the mirror and drags a brush of navy blue eye shadow over her lids before heading downstairs to the kitchen. As she enters the room with her heavy step, her ankle-high boots unlaced, Mrs. McGinn turns away from the stove to look at her.

“You’re pregnant,” says Mrs. McGinn.

Her daughter heaves a sigh of the long-suffering. There isn’t any point in asking how her mother could tell. That woman has the nose of an albatross—a bird that can smell a person’s lunch from a mile down the road and then come flying into windowpanes to get at it.

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