Interstitial #4
tagged the museum too, and her followers would have liked and shared it, and overall visits would have risen by some percentage.
It might have become A Thing. But today her phone is in her bag, and she will only reach for it if Mae contacts her with a
question about Caspian or Evangeline.
Natalie can’t believe Scarlett’s endurance or her attentiveness to the past. Natalie is pretty sure that if her mother had marched her through The Mount, Edith Wharton’s home, one of the jewels in Lenox’s vast crown, when she was Scarlett’s age, she wouldn’t have taken such interest. She would have wanted to repair to the gift shop. (Natalie has always been a shopper.)
Then again, maybe she would have loved to go to The Mount at that age with her mother. Maybe, like Scarlett, she would have
been happy for any time with Theresa, away from her sisters, the rare only-child day for the middle child, and she, too, would
have soaked up every second, would have done anything to make the day go on forever.
Tears form immediately in her eyes as she thinks this. Maybe Theresa did take her to The Mount, and she’s forgotten! Maybe
she’s forgotten many important things. Early childhood memories are capricious; we don’t capture everything from those years,
even as so many parents do all they can to enrich us, expose us, form us, mold us. Most of it, we won’t even remember. This
is suddenly unbearably sad to Natalie. Nothing of Ruby on Rye will remain in Caspian’s memory—he’s too young.
In the heirloom garden, Scarlett finds a hoop and a stick to try her hand at—yesteryear’s version of the iPad, but much more
difficult to maneuver, and with no battery limitations. Natalie and Kara watch her, watch another little girl, maybe a year
or so older, approach and stand shyly, waiting her turn.
Natalie is content with the silence, but then Kara breaks it to say, “Your father is really sad.”
“We’re all really sad,” says Natalie immediately, hotly. How could Kara?
“I know.”
“You don’t know.”
Then Kara says the very worst thing of all, the very worst thing she could say. She says, “I loved your mother too.”
If Scarlett were not just a few feet away, doing what’s actually a passable job of rolling the hoop with the stick, Natalie
might have raised her voice. But instead she hisses, “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare say that.”
“I can say it, because I did. Not like you all did, of course not. But I got to know her, and I loved her. She was a lovely
woman. She was beautiful and gracious and honest and funny, all the way until she died.” Natalie wants Kara to stop talking
and at the same time she wants her to keep going. Even though she’d been there herself, she wants more; she’s like parched
earth soaking up every extra thing she can learn about Theresa. Close to the end it had gotten harder to make the trip back
and forth from Vermont to Lenox—she was nearing the third trimester of her pregnancy with Caspian, and he weighed nearly nine
pounds at birth, so Natalie was enormous. And there was always a lot to do at Hillside Haven. Evangeline and Scarlett were
so young; every time Natalie got in the car she knew she was leaving Austin with the lion’s share (the cow’s share) of both
farm and family life. Austin hadn’t complained, not even once.
She thought she’d be able to bring the baby to meet Theresa. She’d take a photo of their hands together, Theresa and the baby’s.
She’s always been a sucker for those old hands/young hands photos. Not to post it! Of course not! Just to have it. To treasure
it.
She thought there was time.
But there hadn’t been enough time.
Natalie considers calling Scarlett over as a distraction, but now Scarlett and the other little girl have found a second hoop and a second stick and they’re playing together so nicely.
(You worry about social skills as a homeschool mom; you rejoice in every “normal” interaction you witness.
Like there’s any such thing as normal.) Scarlett is a little better than the other girl at managing the stick and the hoop, but Natalie tries not to notice that.
“I’ve seen a lot of ends, and some of them are awful,” says Kara. “A peaceful one is a blessing.”
Oh, no. No, she did not. “Death is not a blessing,” says Natalie, continuing to hiss. “Losing your mother is never a blessing.” She thinks suddenly
of the calves again, those guttural, haunting cries, slicing through the night air.
“You’re right.”
“And I suppose now you’re going to tell me that with her last breath my mom managed to wheeze at you that you should marry
my dad?”
Kara looks like Natalie slapped her.
“Of course not. That’s not how it happened. It was much later, long after, when Calvin and I reconnected. I’m not trying to
take her place.”
Natalie does not like the word reconnected, so she gets even meaner. “He’s almost seventy, you know.”
“I know. Of course I know. I’m married to him! I know how old he is.”
“Well. Don’t you think that’s weird?”
Kara shakes her head and says, “No.”
“Why not?” You should! she thinks. Everyone else does!
“I always thought I’d marry an older man if I married again.”
“You did?”
“Not this much older. But, yeah. Older.”
“Why?”
“It always made sense to me.”
“But why?”
“I didn’t grow up with a dad. My mom was—is—problematic, to put it generously.”
“So you married your dad?”
“No. I married a dad. I always thought I’d want someone who offered me a chance to step into his life and his family. Someone who was willing
to say Here’s where we live. Here’s our favorite restaurant, our favorite Cabernet, our favorite way to read the newspaper.” (Not from front to back, thinks Natalie, if you ask Calvin. Sports first, then News, then Lifestyle.) “Someone who would
say Here is our life. And here’s how you fit in it.”
“But didn’t you want to do all of those things with someone your own age?” asks Natalie. She thinks about how she and Austin
have been growing up together for the past eight years.
“I did that,” says Kara. “My first husband was my age. But we couldn’t have kids, and now, a ready-made family is more appealing
to me than any kind of family. And if you’re waiting for an apology, Natalie, I’m not going to give you one. I’m sorry your
mom died, but I’m not sorry your dad’s not alone now. I love your dad, and he’s good for me, and I’m good for him.”
Her voice is steady, and her eyes are clear. Kara isn’t asking permission or forgiveness. She’s stating facts. “When I said
he’s really sad, I didn’t mean about your mom. I meant about you and your sister. How he feels that by choosing any happiness
for himself, any at all, he’s lost you and Jordan. And that’s not fair, Natalie. He shouldn’t lose you two. He doesn’t deserve
that. He brought you all here to try to make it better.”
Even hearing this, even acknowledging, in some ways, the validity of it, Natalie still clings to the vestiges of anger that
she feels are rightfully hers. “He brought us here to sell our mother’s house! To someone who’s going to tear it down!”
Kara inhales deeply, then blows out a puff of air.
“That’s the tangible reason, sure. But also, he wanted to see you all together and he knew you wouldn’t come if he didn’t force you into it.
The cleaning out of the garage, getting the house ready, those are things that had to be accomplished.
But they’re also excuses. Seeing you all here together, that’s the reason. ”
Scarlett comes up to them, breathless, red-cheeked, happy, and says, “I love it here!” before she runs back to her new playmate.
There it goes. The ice begins to thaw, the stranglehold to ease. Natalie softens. Maybe it’s the hundreds of years of ghosts
she feels around her that are helping her to do that. There are three centuries’ worth of history and life and death in this
very spot, this neighborhood that changed and changed again and again throughout time.
“I thought I’d feel grown-up enough for this,” she says finally, as though Kara is her therapist. “I thought maybe I’d be
ready to lose my mother, when the time came.”
“Nobody’s ready,” says Kara, as though she is Natalie’s therapist. “I’m around grief every single day. There are various stages of being not ready, but nobody is ready.”
“Nobody? Really?”
“Nobody,” repeats Kara. This sort of makes Natalie feel better, like she’s not worse than anyone else at having her mother
die.
“That’s why I try not to say no to joy, because it’s fleeting. You could easily turn it down and it doesn’t come around again.”
Natalie thinks about life being dim sum on a lazy Susan at a Chinese restaurant. You might fail to take a spring roll as it
spins by and then suddenly they’re all gone. You might grab the last egg tart, leaving none for the next person. Joy might
seem like a renewable resource, but it’s finite, just like everything else.
“You missed some time with him, you and Jordan. You shouldn’t miss any more.”
The other girl successfully does the hoop and stick and Scarlett cries, “Good job!” just the way Natalie says it when she
or Evangeline does something skillful with the cows. The Ladies.
“I didn’t know you couldn’t have kids,” she tells Kara. “I’m really sorry.”
“Why would you know that? It’s okay.” Kara smiles. “I came to terms with it a long time ago.” She has a lovely smile, even
with the gap between her front teeth. Maybe because of the gap! It’s a smile that really transforms her face. Natalie had
forgotten about that, about Kara’s smile.
Then just like that, she is not their father’s new wife but the woman who helped her family through the awfulness of two years
ago, the woman whose smile sometimes managed to lead them out of the darkness, and who is still leading Calvin, step by step,
out of a lonely place.
Mae was right the other day, when they talked after Kara’s arrival. There’s more than one kind of love. When they get home,
maybe she’ll even admit that to Mae.