Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
WREN
It’s early afternoon on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and Mom’s already gone home for the day after the rush of people picking up their premade pies came through. I’m alone in the shop other than Fisher’s niece, Indy, who keeps coming up to the counter and looking into the display case without buying anything. I feel like she’s been working up the courage to talk to me about something, and I watch her visibly gather up her strength before her fourth trip to the register. But the moment she says, “Wren, I—” the bell over the door chimes and our mail lady walks in, lips pursed with a look of disapproval for me.
“Another letter from ‘Guest L’ over in Colorado,” she says, holding out the envelope with a flourish.
“Oh, um, thank you,” I say. The look on her and Indy’s faces indicate that I might not be succeeding at my “totally chill” impression. They both wait expectantly.
“Sorry, but, did we start tipping the postal service or something?” I ask the same mail lady I’ve known since I was twelve. Maybe if I lay it on thick enough, she’ll be too aggravated to be nosy. “Is that what you’re waiting on?”
She rolls her eyes and tosses me a wave over her shoulder. “Happy Thanksgiving,” she drawls.
“You, too,” I call back. And then I’m left alone with Indy again. I’m sure as hell not opening it in front of anyone, but I also don’t want to hustle her out of here in an obvious way.
“You were saying?” I ask as gently as I can manage. Her eyes flick to the letter before I slide it into my apron.
“I—well, it’s awkward, but . .” Her arms cross and she looks at her feet, then at a spot over my shoulder. Anywhere but directly at me, it seems. “It’s just that, sometimes you sorta remind me of my mom, and I know this is a wildly personal question and it’s okay if you don’t want to answer it, but I just keep wondering lately, you know, and I wish I could just ask her things sometimes. That’s what I miss the most, I think, is just talking to her. I thought it might help if I could ask someone else who went through it.”
“Babe, whatever it is, it’s fine. I’ll answer it as best I can,” I promise.
Her eyes find mine now, and she heaves a big breath. “I was wondering what—actually, why , you decided to keep Sam when you were younger? I know it wasn’t, like, a religious thing or something. I don’t even know why I want to know this.” She looks off to the side and starts chewing her thumbnail, and something plucks sharply in my chest. The holiday season always stirs up grief in strange ways. I also know that Indy’s mom had her when she was young, too, and that their small town was not as kind.
I clear my throat. “I’m afraid my answer is specific to me, and I don’t know if it’ll help. Everyone’s answer is always going to be specific to them, sweetie. But, I’ll tell you, anyway, if you want me to?”
She nods, so I continue. “I have what’s called a pituitary adenoma . It’s a small, benign tumor that pushes on my pituitary gland and made it so I did not have any sort of normal cycle at all when I was younger. We found it when I was fourteen, and I’d been told that I would never have kids or that I’d have to take extraordinary measures to get pregnant someday.” I let out a long breath. “When I did, anyway, despite being careful, I was worried it might be my only chance to, and I decided that I didn’t want to take that risk.” It turns out I’d been right.
“Is that why no one was… Is that why everyone supported you?”
“I don’t know that anyone was particularly thrilled about it,” I say with a wry look. “I was still seventeen. And Ellis had just lost his only remaining parent.” I sigh raggedly. “Life can be a bully sometimes. And a bully doesn’t care if you’re already having a rough time. In my experience, it’s not gonna help you if you keep shouting ‘Ouch, you’re hurting me!’ at it, either. I think you gather up your friends and stand up to its ass and rock a bloody smile while you do it.”
She smiles with glassy eyes. “Glad Spunes is my friend now, too.”
“Damn straight, kid,” I say. “An often quirky, sometimes clingy, moody, and weird friend, but one that’ll always have your back.”
“Thank you,” she says quietly.
“Can I hug you?” I ask.
She nods, and I lean over and wrap her into an embrace, the way I hope another mother would if she were mine and I was gone. “You can talk to me any time, all right?” I feel her nod into my shoulder.
When she pulls away, she chuckles and quickly wipes at a tear. “I’m gonna go check on Fisher over at Starhopper,” she says, already making her way to the door, and I get it. Too much vulnerability at once can feel embarrassing. “I’ll see you on Thursday?”
“Yeah, I’ll see you on Thursday.”
The bell triggers the memory of the letter in my pocket, so I wait until she’s a safe distance away and go flip around the Closed sign, then slip into my little office in the back of the kitchen. I force myself to wait several beats, as if to prove that I have some semblance of self-control before I tear into it.
Dear Stranger,
I frown, inexplicably disappointed at the loss of a heinous nickname. I already had more picked out to sign off with. “That hair-goop thing clogging the shower drain” was vying for my top contender.
Regarding hopes and dreams—I have to admit that even though I asked you first, I still find that I’m unprepared to answer that question for myself. I can’t remember the last time I hoped and dreamed for more than just the safety and happiness of those around me. Which probably makes me sound like some saint. I’m not. I need that to be very clear. We’ve been honest here, even if we’ve withheld certain things on purpose, and I don’t want to change that now.
As far as dreams go? I want to be connected with my wife again. I want to learn about her dreams and make them come true. I want to love without restraint. I want to say the good things without reservation and not be afraid to say the bad or difficult things, too.
But here’s the truth I’ve been discovering. I’m actually just scared all the fucking time. I’m scared to get things wrong. I’m scared to let people down. I am so scared to fail to the point that it prevents me from acting, let alone taking a risk, or it makes me try to control everything that poses a potential risk around me. I’ve been living and loving in half-measures for years. Living my life in pencil, because I don’t think I can get shit right the first time. Maybe because I think it’ll save me some pain. So far, I’ve been wrong.
All I know is that your letters unlocked something in me again, and your hope for a pair of horses inspired my own sort of hope, too.
In the envelope, you’ll find a picture of Major and Kelpie. They were found about forty-five miles from home, thin and a little worse for wear, but in decent health considering everything. They were still together. Their owners have been beside themselves with relief.
Thank you, dear stranger, for this handful of hope you gave me on a few pieces of flattened trees. You’ll probably never know what it’s meant to me. The fire is over 80 percent contained, so I won’t be headed back, which means that this will be my last letter.
Sincerely Hopeful,
L
Melancholy bleeds through me like an inkblot on fabric, something that starts at a point and seeps wider and wider. I wouldn’t call my feelings for this stranger romantic , but I’ve certainly been romanticizing this thing. Him being married feels… wrong, even though I know it shouldn’t. If there was a flirty tint to these words on paper, no harm was done.
No harm done at all.
Except that the stupid hope they awoke in me has made the ache of loneliness morph into something barbed, and I immediately want it off. I… I think I’d like to meet someone, but I think I need to actually try to do it. Not just try to find a warm body—I already know that would be easy and leave me feeling empty.
I look at the picture of the two beautiful horses side by side, having made it through a terrible, exhausting time. My heart trips over itself when I immediately think of Ellis, how we didn’t make it through our own disaster together in the end.
Maybe we had to separate and go our own ways for our survival. It probably made it more difficult for this pair to stay together all the time. Different endurance levels, different needs. What happened to Ellis and me was just… nature. We did what we needed to. We’re not horses, either. We’re human beings with obligations and a son who deserved people who weren’t distracted by their resentment for each other and the mountain of responsibilities on our plates.
It’s over and done with.
“You don’t put a burnt cake back in the oven,” I say aloud, an expression coined by my mom. All you can do is take away what you learned and begin again. Agonizing over it only wastes time and prolongs suffering.
But what if it’s not burnt? I think. What if it just didn’t turn out like it was supposed to? Couldn’t you walk through the recipe and figure out where you went wrong—
“Stop,” I say out loud again. I fold up the letter and forcibly regain my composure. No more muttering to myself. No more harping. It’s time to start over.
My touchstone for recalibrating myself has always been my mom, which is probably why I’m compelled to drive over to her place after I close up the bakery. Savannah Meridian is completely indomitable, in spite of her MS diagnosis four years ago. In addition to being a successful business owner (which she started as a single mother to a newborn me) she attends a combination yoga and Pilates class four days a week, paints, voraciously reads, volunteers, and maintains a healthy social calendar.
And for the vast majority of my life, she’s been unshakable. Regardless of whether the bakery had a rough couple of months or if a pipe burst in our house, or if her daughter came home pregnant at seventeen, Mom’s been steadfast at keeping calm and carrying on. When I went to work with her one early Saturday morning all those years ago and burst into tears over my expectant news, she pulled some cinnamon buns out of the oven (because irony) and coolly asked me what I would like to do and how she could support me. It was a year too early, but I recognized that I was an adult right then in her eyes.
I’ve never felt like an extension of her and have always known that I am my own person, which is maybe why joining her side at the bakery didn’t give me any sort of identity crisis. My home was a little lonely and quiet too often, by no one’s fault other than capitalism, really, since Mom had to work, and owning a business meant long hours and limited energy outside of them. But between the Byrds’ house and Savvy Bakes, I could get my fill of noise.
Noise and a pseudo-family. Because while I’ve always adored and looked up to Savannah Meridian, whatever gene it is that makes her perfectly content being alone unfortunately skipped me. I have always needed people more. I’ve always wanted to be needed by them, too.
I pull into Mom’s driveway and let myself in through the front door, surprising a strange “Oh!” out of her, already walking toward me. What starts as a brilliant smile on her face falters into something less convincing.
“Wren, sweets. Hi,” she breathes, a hand flattening to her chest. She’s looking at me like I’m a potential home invader and not her adoring (only) daughter. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you?” I chuckle awkwardly. “Are you busy?”
Her entire face, so different from mine with her hazel eyes and ultrafair skin, scrunches apologetically. “Sorry, sweets. I sorta have plans.” She flaps her hands around. “Oh, but I have time for a super-quick visit, I suppose. Did you want something to drink?”
I look back at the door and then at her. She’s got a full face of makeup on and a gray sweater pulled off one shoulder behind her apron. “Are you expecting someone or something?” I ask.
She pauses in her fidgeting and knits her hands together at her front. “I am.”
O-kay? “Do you have book club?”
“I do not.”
“Another coven meeting?”
She makes an unflattering sound and rolls her eyes like a gum-popping thirteen-year-old. “That was not a coven , Wren Salem. It was a holistic gardening group, and we were brewing herbal remedies.”
“You were stirring a cauldron and chanting in unison while passing around an expertly rolled blunt.”
“It was a spring simmer pot! And—” Another scoff. “And you had to be there to get it.” She shrugs.
I blink patiently. “Are you going to make me keep guessing, Mom?”
Suddenly, she sways a little on her feet, and her arms lift and freeze at her sides. She stares off to the side at a spot on the ground.
“Mom?” I say, choking on a quick rise of panic. Her gaze lifts blankly to mine. “ Mom? ” I say again, reaching for her.
“Ah, shoot ,” she abruptly groans, spinning away and marching for the kitchen. “My alarm went off to put dinner in the oven earlier and I got sidetracked. Now we won’t be eating until late.”
She flutters off, and I have to stand in place and collect myself, gulping back a few heaving breaths. She’s been in remission for more than two years, but her symptoms had started with things similar to that—random freezing, stumbling—things that would often preclude slurred speech. She’d complain about tingling and suddenly would go numb. She’d blink strangely and suddenly she couldn’t see or walk straight. She’d have days where she slept more than she was awake. We were referred and redirected in a million directions throughout the health care system, were put off time and time again and had to fight for answers. The time in which her disease was a mystery was the only time I’ve ever seen her truly rattled, which in turn, rattled the hell out of me. She was so scared. And angry that no one could figure anything out, which meant I’d open my eyes some days suffocating beneath my anger on her behalf, too. I was enraged that this woman, who had never needed anyone, who had always been alone and overworked, yet willingly spread all her love and energy wide, was being robbed of her own agency before my eyes. It took almost a year to obtain a diagnosis.
But, in her typical way, once Mom knew the problem and knew what she was fighting, she didn’t waste any time screaming up at the sky over it. She carried on and fought.
I can’t say the same for myself. Not now, and not then, either. My husband had pulled away from me at home. He’d begun needing and wanting so little of me over the last few years. Other than my son, the only person who actually needed me was fighting something I was helpless to fix, and I was fucking mad about all of it.
I manage to compose myself and find Mom in her kitchen now. She slips a whole chicken into the oven, trussed up and garnished with a variety of things.
“You’re roasting , huh?” I ask. Cooking and baking are more different than you’d think, and her joy for both are far from equal. “Who are you having over?”
Her chin lifts primly. “I have a… Well. I have a man friend.” She sighs.
This is the last thing I would have guessed, and I’m sure my expression conveys it.
“Oh, don’t look so scandalized,” she says, flicking a dish towel my way. “And make yourself scarce. He’ll be here soon.” She starts herding me back toward the door.
“Where did you meet this… suitor of yours, Mother?”
“At the gym in Gandon. His name is David. We’ve been seeing each other for a few months now, and I really like him and this will be his first time staying the night,” she says in a rush, patting me forward. “I met him when my friend Diane and I crushed him and his friend in pickleball.”
“When did you join a pickleball league?!”
“Like three months ago!” she whines. “Honey, I love you, but please .”
“All right, all right! Don’t get your panties in a wad.” I cut her a look when she ushers me out the door. “If you’re even wearing any, you old hussy.”
She whips the dish towel at me and catches me with the corner before she shuts the door in my face.
I laugh all the way to my car and down her driveway as I pull away. It takes about a block for the loneliness to crash over me again.
I’d gone to my mom’s hoping I’d be inspired. Empowered, maybe? That I’d be reminded that being alone is different from being lonely. I’ve always wished for more of her independence, but maybe that’s impossible when you find your other half before you’ve got a fully developed frontal lobe.
Instead, even she has a man friend , now, on top of all her own things.
Meanwhile, I’ve got my piece of the bakery she began herself, and all my friends are my ex-husband’s family. My hobbies include riding the horse that I still share with him and avoiding thinking about him.
And I can’t even keep a pen pal.