“I still remember that one, Sylvia Emerich. You never stopped talking about her.”

Sylvia Emerich. Vivian nodded and wondered why it was that everyone was suddenly talking about Sylvia Emerich all the time. But she knew what he meant. She remembered. She’d carped and harped about Sylvia for the first couple years of her marriage. “That tramp,” and “ruined her life,” and “what kind of idiot does something so irresponsible?” and so on and so on. She was a little surprised that Edward had been listening to her. Most of her grumbling back then’d been because she was stuck all by herself in that crummy little bungalow, lonely and bored and grumpy.

She stared at the W on the Webster’s cover for a few minutes while Edward just sat there next to her, elbows on knees, holding his forehead in his hands. Nothing more was said, except the talking inside of Vivian’s head. Finally, the talking started to make sense to her. Wasn’t that just a hoot? She’d never thought that her own husband might’ve done something “so irresponsible” himself.

Vivian hadn’t really thought about it up until now, but if Edward had stayed with Mildred this whole time, instead of leaving her and coming to Wooster, they’d be going on their thirtieth anniversary this year. Oh, poor Mildred, Vivian thought as she continued to stare at the dictionary cover. Thirtieth is pearls. Vivian’s head shook slowly from side to side. Tsk-tsk. That was a shame.

She finally reached out her manicured hand for Edward’s paint-stained one. He’d never been a big talker, and what he’d just said to her was plenty. She knew him enough to know that. Edward closed his fingers around hers and they sat that way, quietly beside each other on the sofa in the living room.

“Eddie broke his parole leaving Syracuse to come here.”

“Mm-hmm,” Vivian murmured.

“They sent him back to prison.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’d like to visit him there in the summer.”

Vivian said nothing, but nodded and squeezed his hand. Then they sat staring ahead through the living room picture window for what seemed like hours.

“Did you hear?” Vivian finally broke the silence and turned to face her husband. “Sylvia Emerich might be running for mayor of Wooster next year?”

Chapter 48

Charlotte would have said she had had quite enough shocks and surprises to last her through the rest of the year, thanks a bunch. However, one Sunday afternoon, a couple of weeks after Mother’s Day, she had come home from Barb’s house to find her mother tucked in a corner of the couch, with her new dictionary open on the coffee table and her nose buried in Charlotte’s repaired copy of The Myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus, the Greek king who stole the secrets of the gods and was punished for it; condemned to roll an enormous stone up a hill for all eternity.

At this point Charlotte would have chosen that stone-rolling rather than the impossible task of trying to understand her family. Her mother, who normally would have been wearing her apron and banging cabinets in the kitchen (which she had not done in months), was in a housedress and a pair of Charlotte’s dad’s socks, curled into the far corner of the couch, reading. A book.