Ed
Ed
E d Freeman can tell something is wrong soon after his wife answers the phone. Soh is looking at him and frowning.
“Wait, baby, wait,” Soh says into the phone, touching a finger to her lips, her signal to Ed to not press his daughter for details. “Your father’s here, too, Ebby. Can we do a video call?” Then Soh’s face warms up as Ebby appears on the screen from France. In thirty-five years of marriage, Ed has come to know every one of his wife’s expressions, and this fact has not always been a welcome thing. But that look, right there, that’s his favorite. The way his wife, Isabella “Soh” Freeman, is gazing at their child.
Ebby, who looks just like Ed. Except for that tomato-colored hair. It’s her latest look. Jeez, he thinks.
“What time is it there?” Ed says.
“It’s two in the morning,” Ebby says, “but I was still up, reading, so I thought this would be a good time to try you.” Ed can see part of the bed and night table from where Ebby is sitting. A buttercup-yellow wall. A quilt and pillows in varying shades of blue, tossed to one side. The massive wooden beam that crosses the room behind her. Ebby is chattering, now, a high tone in her voice. No wonder his wife was frowning before. Their daughter isn’t the type to yap on that way, though she does have her lively moments.
“Oh, yes, the weather’s really nice,” Ebby is saying now. “A little warm, but fine in the shade. And the smell of lavender is everywhere. People keep saying they’re worried about the bees dying off, because of the environment, but you wouldn’t know it. You can hear them humming all day in the garden.”
Slow down, Ed thinks. Ebby’s speaking so fast.
“I wish you could be here to see it all,” she says.
Ed chuckles. But he knows that Ebby doesn’t really want him and Soh with her right now. Not after picking up and heading off to France for this…what? What should he call it? Hiatus?
The first night after their daughter left for France, Ed and Soh held each other in bed, neither saying a word. They had said it all before, over the years. They had shed tears at their son’s graveside and in the therapist’s office. His wife had cried the entire first night in their new house, the one they’d purchased even before their previous home had closed escrow.
“I didn’t think anyone would want our home, after what happened,” Soh had sobbed.
“But did you really think we could have gone back there, babe?” Ed asked. “Did you?” He knew the answer, of course. They had moved into a hotel the night of Baz’s death. Gone up to stay with family in Massachusetts after the funeral. Moved into a rental fifteen miles down the coast from their home. A quiet lot on the point where two rivers flowed together and down toward the beach. A place where there was no room for television trucks to park without trespassing on private property or sliding into the water.
And then they had settled on buying the house where they live now, with a different but equally beautiful view of the Sound, a new school for Ebby, and a public library with a resident cat. Ed and Soh have lived here almost twice as many years as in the previous place. Ed loves being just a few steps from a tiny cove. But that other house had been the home of their youthful dreams. The place where they had planned on raising a family. The place where they had lost their son. For that very reason, it remained sacred ground, even if they could no longer set foot on that lot.
After moving house, Ed and Soh managed to raise their remaining child in safety and relative comfort. They couldn’t do much to keep her from being exposed to perennial media attention. And they couldn’t undo the trauma of her brother’s death for her, only hope that therapy would help, along with the distractions of her daily routine. But they taught their daughter to keep going, no matter what.
Ed’s parents said the stay in France would be good for Ebby, but his wife couldn’t stand the thought.
“If she needed to get away, why didn’t she just go back to Maine, or up to Martha’s Vineyard?” Soh said when she finally did give voice to her feelings. They have had this conversation several times since, and each time Soh names a new alternative. Why not the Florida Keys? The Arizona desert? Any place on this side of the Atlantic. If she wanted to practice her French, couldn’t she have driven up to Montreal?
Ed found himself nodding in agreement. He missed his daughter. He had never gone more than a couple of weeks without seeing her. But he didn’t want to keep her in a cage. He wanted Ebby to live a full life. And she was on her way. She had excelled in school. She did useful work that she seemed to like.
There were people who wrote books whose work needed support from a person like Ebby. She had a way with words, and had studied literature and history. Her clients didn’t write anything as technical as Ed might, but they did produce material that required fact-checking and the reordering of paragraphs, pages, and even entire chapters. These were people who would say they needed a copy editor to put the final touches on a book when, in reality, they needed someone to help rewrite much of their work. Part editor, part ghostwriter, part researcher. That’s what Ebby was.
Ed knew Soh hoped Ebby would go back to school and study law. Or pick up another degree that felt more concrete, as Soh put it. But the beauty of Ebby’s work was that, like Ed’s, it was meant to feel invisible, though it did not lack substance. Ebby did not have Ed’s engineering degrees, but her work, like Ed’s, still involved a buoying-up of structures and systems that, if successful, went largely unnoticed. Like so much of the valuable work done in the world.
Ebby often smiled when she talked about the reports or books she was working on, and this brought even Soh some satisfaction. Soh didn’t want to keep their girl in a cage, either, though often it felt that way. The two of them just wanted to be sure that their daughter would always, always, always be safe, and they wanted to keep an eye on her. Not that proximity would be a guarantee of anything. They hadn’t been able to keep their son safe in his own home.
In his bleaker moments, Ed must remind himself that what happened to Baz is not the norm, not even in this country, where a young black man is especially vulnerable to unwarranted violence. Children do grow up. Teenagers do survive war, and abuse, and all sorts of misfortune. Too many don’t, but millions and millions do just fine. Lately, Ed has needed to repeat this affirmation every day.
So much of life must go forward on faith.
He’s missed something on the call. Ebby and Soh are laughing, now. Just the sound of his daughter being mirthful after all that she has been through feels like a small miracle. It never fails to amaze Ed how his heart can soar, even as he still feels the hole that’s been blown right through the middle of it by the loss of his son.
The first time he heard Ebby laugh a good, strong laugh again after… Baz, she was coming up the driveway and around the side of the house with Ashleigh, the Pittses’ granddaughter. The two of them had snow up to the tops of their boots and damp spots on the knees of their dungarees. A nor’easter had moved in, causing traffic delays and accidents, and Ashleigh had stayed overnight. That familiar noise, of two children laughing together, made Ed smile as he watched them through a window. They were kicking the steps outside the mudroom, now, to knock the snow off their boots. Just the uff-uff sound of their shoes gave him the courage to plod through the molasses of his grief.
But tonight, in Ebby’s laughter, Ed hears a kind of frenzy. He thinks of how a smartphone sitting on a desk can vibrate with an unanswered call. How the trembling of the phone against the hard surface can send it inching toward the edge until it falls off. Something about Ebby feels like that buzzing phone.
Yuh, Ed thinks, there’s something going on with Ebby . Something she’s not telling them. But who is he to question her? Ed has something he’s never told his daughter or wife. He wants to, but he doesn’t know how to begin.