Contrition

"I still think it's terrible." Carly told her mother as they made dinner that night. Elaine was cutting up the onion needed for the sauce while her daughter stirred the browning ground beef behind her. It sizzled and hissed as it fried and Carly stirred it lazily. Elaine stood across the kitchen with her back to her daughter. She'd just gotten home and hadn't even changed out of the clothes she wore to work. She'd stayed late to finish a financial report for Richey and had to stay an extra two hours to make sure it would be done for tomorrow. Frank was already home and working in his office. Both he and Carly came to greet her when she walked in and asked her how her day was. The three of them had stood in the foyer talking until Elaine had moved into the kitchen to start dinner, and Frank had wandered back to his office, the sound of his TV carrying down the hall.
Carly had stayed behind. She did most of the talking now, describing her day as she moved from one spot to another in the kitchen. She reported on what grades she'd gotten back that day, or at least the ones she felt like talking about. She related a couple of things she'd learned in class, like what she did and didn't like about the books they were reading in her English class, and some theory she liked that she'd learned in her science class, that Elaine didn't really understand..
Carly was in the jeans she'd worn that morning to school, but she'd changed out of her sweater and into a t-shirt. She moved about the kitchen listlessly, occasionally helping by stirring something or fetching something from the refrigerator, but mostly she just talked, a continuous monologue that guaranteed that there was little going on in her life that Elaine didn't know about.
Carly had moved to updating Elaine on all of her friends. She told her mother about the boy in her government class she'd talked to that day, and insisted that she didn't like him that way, even if she was blushing. She talked about the plans her and her friends had for that weekend, and eventually, inevitably, moved on to the ongoing situation with her friend Mary.
"You know I really like Mary and everything," Carly continued. "But I think Nikki and them are being too - forgiving of all of this."
Elaine's knife slipped off the side of the onion and thunked against the cutting board. She cursed silently and gripped the onion tighter. "What are they doing?" she asked quietly.
"Well, they're acting like it's no big deal!" Carly exclaimed. "Mary's pregnant! They act like she's done nothing wrong." Carly paused for only a second. "Can I stop stirring now? My arm's getting tired."
Elaine paused in her chopping and glanced over her shoulder. The meat was thoroughly brown and merely simmering in its own juices. "Turn down the heat first, but yes."
There was a clicking noise as Carly adjusted the gas flame. She then moved over to the counter and leaned against it next to Elaine. Carly immediately picked up the bottle of pain-killers sitting on the counter and started to play with it, spinning the cap idly, making a continuous click- click-click noise with the safety lock. "I just don't think they understand how significant this is, how it changes everything."
Elaine wanted to ask her how Mary's condition changed anything for Carly. She wanted to challenge her daughter on that point. Of course this changed Mary's life drastically, but how did it threaten Carly? Elaine didn't say anything, however. She wasn't up to going into that conflict with her daughter that night.
It was times like this one that Elaine started to regret certain decisions she and Frank had made about Carly's education. St. Mary's was certainly a good academic environment, but some of the dogma was even more extreme than their parish priest's. Carly knew more about the seven deadly sins, the beatitudes and the Catechism than Frank probably did. Elaine saw it in her daughter, like the way she no longer enjoyed Easter since one of the nuns had told her class in far too much detail just how crucifixion kills a person. They day Carly had come home with that story, Elaine should have gone in to have a word with the school. Frank had been the one to insist she not. At the time, Carly hadn't seemed upset about it and Frank was looking at it as a somewhat gruesome history lesson, but not something that was going to change the way his daughter felt about life and religion. Frank saw it as just a historical fact. He assured her that it wouldn't mean anything more to Carly than a violent historic movie did.
Elaine should have gone in. Just like she should say something to Carly about Mary's situation. As Carly's mother, she should have purposefully talked to Carly about it, and explained certain realities that Catholic school hadn't. But it was going to be an argument. Carly was at that age, and like that. She would argue over anything, even if she didn't believe it, just for the sake of arguing. And this was something that Carly so clearly believe in without a doubt.
And Elaine was just too tired for that that night, just as she had been the night before, and the nights before that. It was the end of the fiscal year. Elaine had to organize and submit everything for her office, and that meant hounding Richey and Eva all day, and twisting the arms of everyone else in the office to get their reports. Elaine hadn't been home on time all week. She just wasn't ready yet to go into something so complicated with Carly.
"I hope that you're polite at least." Elaine told her, glancing at daughter with a frown.
"Oh, yeah, of course." Carly replied lightly, setting down the pill jar and snatching up the salt shaker. "I wouldn't ever do anything rude or anything like that. I just don't think Nikki should be so at ease about it. I mean," her voice trailed off. "It's a sin, right? A big one." Carly tried to laugh then, the air rushing out of her lungs in a dry heaving way. "Definitely a big one."
Elaine flinched and carefully set down her knife. She didn't look at Carly, however, just waited to hear what she knew was coming. Carly didn't know how similar this Mary girl was to Elaine at that age.
"It's the kind of sin that damns you forever, right?" Carly continued. "And no one seems to be thinking about that much. They all think it's sad she's pregnant, like it's some unlucky thing that just happened to her. None of them seem to be thinking about the fact that it's a mortal sin. None of them seem to care about that." Carly hesitated again, her hands finally stilling as she snuck a glance at Elaine. "I mean, I'm scared for her. Is she- is she going to hell now? I don't really like that thought, but then again it doesn't really matter if I like it or not, does it? That's just the way things are."
Elaine wanted to explain to her that things weren't always that simple, but how could she to her daughter that still thought cursing was a sin? "Dinner's almost ready." Elaine told her quietly. "If you're going to finish up your homework before then, you'd better go do it now."
Carly groaned, her mind already off somewhere else. "Is Christmas break here yet?" She said as she shoved herself off from the counter and towards the hallway. "Hey, Dad!" She said brightly.
Elaine glanced over her shoulder and saw Frank standing in the hall, just outside the door, papers in one hand and a smile for his daughter as he asked her how much homework she had left. They talked quietly, Carly's higher voice increasing in volume when she got excited over something. Elaine focused on dinner, moving over to the stove and mixing the tomatoes and onions and sauce with the meat. Eventually she heard her daughter's footsteps on the stairs as she pounded up to her room. A quick glance at the door showed that Frank was still there.
"You should tell her, you know." Frank said softly. He stayed in the doorway, leaning against the frame, his papers forgotten in one hand. The hall light wasn't on, and he just barely stood within the illumination of the kitchen light. It reflected off of his thick glasses and their golden frames. Elaine could just see it out of the corner of her eye.
"I don't think that's something a child needs to know." Elaine replied.
"She's sixteen."
"And she's still my little girl." It came out harsher than Elaine had wanted, and Frank didn't reply. He just continued to stand there in the doorway, looking in on her and watching her move about the kitchen. She fussed over the pan, then wiped down the counters, then went ahead and started the dishes just to have something to do. And he stood there in the doorway and watched her and waited.
When the dishes were finally done, there was nothing else to do. Elaine was left standing in the middle of her clean white kitchen wishing Carly would come back down and start a new conversation, but also grateful that she was gone, upstairs, and out of sight, and not asking about it.
Elaine glanced up at Frank. "She'll hate me."
Frank sighed and stepped into the kitchen. He set his papers down on the counter and moved passed her to pull two glasses out of the cabinet. "She will not." He said firmly.
"Of course she will." Elaine said. "This is our daughter we're talking about. She has expectations of piousness from people that I doubt few could meet."
Frank gave her a reproving look as he pulled a bottle of soda out of the refrigerator. "She is our daughter, and I'd like to think that she's a more forgiving and compassionate person than that."
Elaine shook her head. "Did you just hear her? Of course she's compassionate. She'd never be rude. But forgiving? I don't know about that."
Frank handed her her glass. "Isn't this the same girl that forgives her friends of just about everything to a fault?"
Elaine rolled her eyes. "Sure, if they're rude to her, she'll forgive them. But as far as she knows, none of them have committed moral sins. I think it's safe to say she draws the line there."
"And you're her mother," Frank continued. "She's going to want to be more generous with you."
Elaine snorted and set aside her glass before she dropped it. "I'm her mother, she's going to judge me harsher than anyone else alive." Elaine stared at her half empty cup as Frank struggled to find something else to say.
He made a small noise, as if he was going to say something, then didn't. "I knew when I married you." He finally reasoned.
"But that's my point!" Elaine replied, waving her hands in the air before moving over to the stove to stir their dinner in quick jerking motions. "You knew. You knew when it happened, you were there, you knew about the miscarriage, you knew about all of it before we even started dating. She doesn't. The only thing she knows about is the miscarriage. She thinks it was after we were married. And she was so scared to ask me about, so scared that it still might hurt me, she doesn't know how happy I was at the time. She's got this image of our family and how perfect we are and why can't more families be like ours, and I'd destroy all of that if I told her. I destroy everything she thinks about me."
"But you'd be telling her the truth." Frank said slowly from behind her. "Like it or not, Elaine, it happened, and it's part of who you are and it's part of what shaped you, and I don't think it was for the worse, and I don't think it matters if it was, it's just what happened, and by not telling her, by not letting her know this part of your life, you're keeping her from ever really knowing you. She's your daughter, Elaine, she has a right to know you."
Elaine shook her head. She stopped stirring the food, and smacked the wooden spoon sharply on the edge of the pan to knock off any extra sauce on it. She was gripping it so tightly she could feel the grain of it, and the sharp cracking noise of it hitting the side of the pan seemed to echo in her head. "I can't do that, Frank."
Frank ignored her. "And she needs to know now," he said as if he had not stopped. "This girl's a friend of hers. Carly's going to have to make some decisions on what is more important to her, her ideals or her friend, and whatever decision she makes is going to be shaped by what you do, Elaine."
"We have a good daughter." Elaine said to herself. They had a good daughter and she didn't need to know the mistakes her mother had made.
Frank sighed in frustration and clanked his glass down loudly in the sink. "Yes, and she's going to regret it for the rest of her life if you wait till after she's let this other girl down to tell her the same thing happened to you."
Elaine stared down into the frying pan at the chunks of tomatoes and onions and beef that clung together with the thick red sauce. Frank had been a friend of hers before it happened. He'd been one of the few back then in her high school that hadn't shunned her. It hadn't been nearly so common back then as it was now. Those Catholic schools were probably the only reason Carly hadn't encountered this kind of thing before. That was why they had sent her there, to keep her from this kind of thing, but it hadn't worked, had it?
"Is she going to hell now? I don't really like that thought, but then
again it doesn't really matter if I like it or not, does it?"
It didn't matter to Carly. It didn't matter if she wanted to forgive a person, what mattered was what the nuns told her, and the bible, and all of those morals she held so important, that Elaine wanted her to hold so important. What those laws dictated was what Carly would believe, and those laws held little forgiveness for sinners.
"She won't feel regret." Elaine told Frank finally, as she continued to stare at the lumpy red mess in the frying pan. "She won't regret it when I tell her, because I'm not going to tell her. Not ever."
"Elaine."
"Promise me you won't tell her either." Elaine demanded, turning around quickly and staring at Frank. "Promise me you won't tell her, ever, not even when I'm dead." There was not going to be any mother-daughter talk about this. She knew now that that just couldn't happen. She was relieved and lightheaded from it to realize that all of her procrastination and hesitation had been for the best. Carly didn't know and never would and things would be infinitely better that way. Things would continue as they had been, and they'd continue to be the near-perfect family that Carly so cherished.
"Elaine!" Frank said softly as he took as step towards her. He stopped just short of touching her, his hands falling uselessly down by his sides. "You really ought to tell her."
"I'm not, Frank." Elaine replied, straightening her back and staring at him through narrowed eyes. She knew now she couldn't and she wasn't going to change her mind.
Frank stared at her, his blue eyes behind his glasses watching her, looking for something in her. "At least think about this some more, Elaine." He said softly.
"Promise me, Frank."
He sighed and shook his head. "I promise." He finally whispered.
"Good." Elaine turned back to her cooking and turned off the stove. "Call her down for dinner, it's done."