Trouble With the Truth (9781476793498) (27 page)

Ben held me back. “We're going to see it,” he whispered.

My arms became bumped with tiny, tingling pimples in the warmth of the consecrating hall. I thought of Mrs. Dunhamly. This was the kind of spectacle she found rewarding enough to be almost enjoyable.

Ben nudged me and I got into line behind Felicity to stroll with the crowd up to the bier. I raised the veil on my hat.

There was an astonishing display inside the coffin. The face facing mine wasn't old, wasn't young, it wasn't any age. It wasn't happy, wasn't sad, wasn't peaceful or sleepy; it wasn't even definitely male or female. It was ageless, genderless, a grotesque creation of some artless beautician. Suddenly, it assumed my father's features—only his features, none of his life. No matter who it had been, a stranger or my father, it was what Mrs. Dunhamly meant by the Nothing of Death.

“You haven't gone anywhere
else
,” I pled into the gaping box.

“Move on,” Felicity said, pulling at my sleeve.

I moved on, and had to wait behind Felicity for a woman way ahead and another much older woman to move before everyone else. They were the family. I wondered if they recognized the occupant of the coffin as having been someone they'd known.

We went home, in silence again. In my room, I implored, “Daddy, you couldn't be like that…”

There was no answer.

Maybe Aunt Catherine had been right: maybe Mrs. Dunhamly
was
a poor soul—unable to accept the misery in living—and I wasn't sure how harmless she was. But maybe she wasn't harmful. This was too confusing. I tried once more.

“Daddy,
did
Ben tell the truth?”

Again, there was no answer. And no answer. And no answer.

An hour was a long time ago, way back when I was innocent—as innocent and self-deceiving as bad actors like Aunt Catherine or
good ones like Ben. Actors who told only some of the truth: black-or-white and here-or-there half-truths, truths like the “everywhere” I used to handle the truths of “not here” and “nothingness” without sobbing.

I walked through the house, ignoring Felicity and Ben, knowing I would never talk to my father again, and that I'd never be free from the knowledge that he was no longer here.

I walked upstairs. Then I walked downstairs. I walked and walked and walked till I roared. Then I roared till I sobbed.

Then I wept into Felicity's lap through half that night.

It may seem that Ben and I were bequeathed a harder heritage than many, without the cushions of faith and family to dull the sharp surfaces of the adult world we were moving into. Nevertheless, we moved into it faster than most. We had the Winding Hill noisy house to come home to until I finished college, and Ben completed two years each of college and drama school. Then, with no regrets, we entered other, separate worlds.

Ben's was fame and fortune, acting in the theater and movie and TV studios. But he married a girl who admired him more when he wasn't acting than when he was. He truly wanted what he had. I chose a fellow who had all my own insecurities and wonder, even though his family had lived in one house all his life. I suppose I, too, got what I wanted. We've already moved three times, once for each of our children. Ben and his wife and two boys live in a number of places, wherever he's working. We all call it traveling, not moving. Perhaps that reflects the trouble with the truth we still have on some subjects.

Felicity visits or calls on special occasions and when she gets the yen. Fred, who's ninety-three, miraculously made it through the war years fairly unscathed and still walks once each day, very slowly now, to the statue in the center of his village square. He writes to me or Ben every few months—in a sweet, scolding tone that makes us feel like children again. Every December 22nd, we each receive a
Christmas card from Aunt Catherine with a squeezed, worried note on the plain side above the imprinted price mark. And I think of her visits over the years.

I don't often see anybody who reminds me of Sled-boy or Miss Bunce or Arthur Frith, or Mrs. Loder or Lois Carrington. Unless I happen to be thinking of them.

But
everywhere
I see people who remind me of my father. “People can only tell the truth as they see it” were his last words to me. And I see my father everywhere. So, thinking of what I just wrote, maybe I have no trouble with the truth after all.

Since Edna Robinson died in 1990, I—her daughter, editor, and friend, Betsy—would like to acknowledge Edna for this beautiful book. I acknowledge her talent, her furious determination, and her courage to go on, no matter what it took—to survive, to live joyfully, and, most of all, to change.

I would like to thank Stephen Camilli for being excited by my first lunatic pitch of this book when he happened by the Editorial Freelancers Association booth at BookExpo America. Thank you for being such an open, honest, and loving person. And thank you, Sara Camilli, for being my agent and finding this book a home.

There is no way to fully express my gratitude to Infinite Words for doing what publishers never do—accepting a book by a dead author.

And thank you to all the readers. Even though Edna is no longer in body, I believe she is dancing and laughing and maybe giving you a hug.

Credit: Courtesy of Betsy Robinson

Edna Robinson
(1921–1990) lived all over the U.S. and attended twenty-seven schools before the eighth grade. Early on, she wrote for radio soaps and small-town newspapers' “Society News.” After graduating from Northwestern University in 1943, she headed for New York City, and in the pre-
Mad Men
days of advertising, she became not only one of the first female copywriters, but one of the only Jewish copywriters. When directed to the typing pool, she simply refused to accept that being a secretary was her only option and she declared her intention to write. Fortunately her first boss found such hubris charming and he became her mentor. While working at ad agencies, she developed a number of well-known advertising lines (“Navigators of the world since it was flat”; “A kid'll eat the middle of an Oreo first…”; and “Nutter Butter Peanut Butter Cookies”) and developed new products. She also wrote feature articles for horse magazines and
Sports Illustrated
, children's books for Hallmark, and short stories for adults. She had a lifelong love of music that began at the age of twelve, when she wandered into a piano teacher's house, saw a piano, and declared that she just knew she could play it. This turned out to be true, and after studying piano for fifteen months, Edna began concertizing and was lauded as a child prodigy. About a year later, she stopped playing when she moved away from her beloved teacher. She was the mother of four children.

Betsy Robinson
is a freelance editor, novelist, journalist, playwright, and former actor. Her novel
The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg
, winner of Black Lawrence Press's Big Moose Prize, was published in September 2014. In 2001, her novel
Plan Z by Leslie Kove
was published by Mid-List Press, as winner of their First Novel Series award. In her late twenties, Betsy and her mother, Edna, became best friends and eventually writing partners. In 2011, Betsy published a book of letters between herself and her dead mother,
Conversations with Mom: An Aging Baby Boomer, in Need of an Elder, Writes to Her Dead Mother.
She had teamed with Edna to write screenplays under a 1987/88 Writers Guild East Foundation Fellowship and was elated to relive the partnership through imagined letters and, even more viscerally, through her work on
The Trouble with the Truth
. Learn more at
www.BetsyRobinson-writer.com
.

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INFINITE WORDS

P.O. Box 6505

Largo, MD 20792

www.simonandschuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

© 2015 by Betsy Robinson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever.

For information, address Infinite Words, P.O. Box 6505, Largo, MD 20792.

ISBN 978-1-59309-640-3

ISBN 978-1-4767-9349-8 (ebook)

LCCN 2014942323

First Infinite Words trade paperback edition February 2015

Cover design: Kristine-Mills Noble

Cover illustration: © Masson/Shutterstock.com

Book design: Red Herring Design, Inc.

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