The Names

by Florence Knapp

they come to think their children, and their children’s children, should all be made in their name. Because sometimes their need to please previous generations is greater than their need to love future ones.

Isn’t she just teaching her daughter that keeping the peace is more important than doing what’s right? Cora wonders what Maia thinks of her for agreeing to give her brother this name that will tie him to generations of domineering men. And it dawns on her that while Maia’s name was originally intended as a silent bond between them, in revealing its meaning, that, too, may be a burden. Perhaps she has unwittingly sent a message that their lives are destined to follow the same path, when her real hope is for her children to tread their own.

She knows this will be a defining moment in Maia’s life, a moment when she was given a voice and wasn’t asked to fit into the shadow of her parents’ marriage.

Cora was an equal impediment—something to be protected and worried over. Just as Gordon was a presence to be minded and feared.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know; I just never saw it,” Sílbhe whispered, her soft, freckled hand on Cora’s one night as she sat up in bed feeding Bear. “Because I didn’t let you—it was too risky to ask for help. No one could have known.” “But I’m your mother. It was my job to know.”

It’s not the retirement Sílbhe had planned. She’d imagined a slow winding-down into the penultimate stage of life. Wasn’t that how it went? Childhood, early adulthood, marriage, children, midlife, retirement, until finally…But

When he asked questions, do you know what I thought?” “That he was on a reconnaissance mission to find your weak spots.” “Yes. Saving them up to use against me later. I don’t want a man who’s horrible to me, but how can I trust a man who’s nice?”

She was still reading to me—to us—right up until the end. Whatever I chose from the school library. She never judged, never said, Not this one, or, You shouldn’t be reading that. I can still remember it. That feeling of being read to, of being wrapped up in her voice, those words, whatever place the story had taken us to. It sounds stupid, but it was like a magic carpet.”

Mehri has always treated parenting like she’s cooking a big warming pan of something: a pinch of that, a pinch of this, she’s sure it will turn out fine in the end. Cora’s own approach has always felt more like baking a cake: carefully measuring out ingredients and trying not to ruin everything. She admires Mehri’s way.

There’s something about that—when the quietest person, most reserved in their opinions, most reluctant to impose their thoughts on others, finally speaks; you hear.

I can’t be living with you like this, Jules. Always plucking at you to try to make you into the person I want; I don’t like who it’s turning me into.

He’s not sure why the painting resonates so much, or why he’s so willing to draw parallels with his own life. But he feels relief in discovering the more recent part of his story—that freedom, for him, for his mum—was hidden in it all along.

And this is the truth of it. The people he was meant to love, he has only hurt. He cries out then, a guttural sound. Because it’s so clear. He had one life. And he could have spent it differently.