Chapter 39 #4
The number was the number. What Emily felt was fresh and sweet and cool: a river of relief.
She felt saved. She had saved herself. She wasn’t sure what she said into the phone.
It seemed like she wasn’t saying words, just making joyful sounds, like a puppy, like a child, a toddler, the world a bath of wonder.
Leila laughed. “I guess we’re saying yes.”
After Emily hung up, she flopped backward on the bed. She stared at the faded floral wallpaper. She would be able to keep paying her rent. Her lawyer. She would be okay.
As her heart calmed, she thought of the ending of her book.
She had been envious of her own character when writing it.
She had wished that there was a way to outmaneuver Jack like Athena had tricked Zeus.
The ceiling fan wobbled as it spun. Outside, Stella asked for a Popsicle.
It occurred to Emily that there was no trick that could undo the problem of her husband, but she could at least tell him something that was true.
When Jack answered the phone, she said, “I want full custody and I want to settle out of court.”
“You’re not going to get that.”
“I have photographs of your abuse.”
“We’ve been over this. Why would a judge believe you?”
“Why would a judge believe you ? I have years of stories of what you’ve said and done. I’m not going to stay quiet. I don’t care who knows. The judge. Your parents. Your colleagues. Your friends.”
He was silent.
She said, “Connor and Stella will know.”
“Are you seriously saying you’d try to turn our children against me?”
“I won’t lie for you.” When Jack was silent again, Emily said, “I know you love them. You could become a different kind of father, but they will be safer with me. Any reasonable judge will see that.”
Quietly, Jack said, “I don’t want our marriage to be over.”
“But it is. You need to know that. You need to know that I’ll fight for Connor and Stella and I will never give up.”
When Gen heard about the book deal, she said, “I knew you’d do it.”
“You did?”
“I’m proud of you.”
“You are?”
“I’m really, really proud.”
The marigold seedlings leafed into tiny trees.
“Gran doesn’t always recognize me now,” said Gen. “She thinks I’m my mother. Or her own mother. But she doesn’t always say the right word. Sometimes she says ‘other.’?”
“What do you do when she thinks you’re someone else?”
“I pretend to be whoever she needs me to be.”
Gen’s friends sent flowers. Shipley had the local store deliver groceries.
Becca sent board games but Nella didn’t have it in her to play.
In the beginning, Gen hadn’t realized that Emily was cleaning the house, feeding the chickens, and doing laundry; Gen had been too sad to notice.
But one day soon after Emily had arrived, as they put away Shipley’s groceries, Gen stared at the clean kitchen and then looked at Emily.
Gen begged her not to do anything like that again and hired a housekeeper.
Yet Emily had the habit of tidying the farmhouse and did it when Gen wasn’t aware.
She didn’t want to feel useless when everyone around her was working.
The nurse, the housekeeper. Gen, getting through every day.
Nella, trying to live a little longer. Once, when Gen was out for a run, Emily brought clean sheets to Gen’s room.
On the nightstand lay a strip of photographs.
They were from the night at the bar when Gen had given Emily the hat and scarf, and they fought, and ended up in bed.
Emily held the photos. She hadn’t seen them that night; Gen had glanced at the strip and tucked it into her pocket.
We look like good friends, Gen had said, but that wasn’t true.
The black-and-white Emily looked at the black-and-white Gen with such longing that it was as clear as a word typed on a page.
That didn’t surprise Emily. She had expected it.
But she hadn’t expected the last image, where the Emily in the photograph looked straight into the camera’s lens.
This time, it was Gen who gazed at her. Gen’s expression, too, was full of longing.
They had looked at each other the same way, just not at the same time.
“Mom, where does time go?” asked Connor. They were sitting in her mother’s front yard at dusk. Fireflies rose from the grass.
Emily said, “What do you mean?”
“I just asked that question— Where does time go? —and now it’s in the past. But we can only be in the present.”
“Yes.”
“Did that question get mixed with everything in the past? Like the dinosaurs and the big bang?”
“I think it must have.”
“Does it all keep existing?”
“What do you think?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I want it to.”
“I think that’s right. Because you made a memory. You’re remembering the dinosaurs and your question. The past keeps existing because it stays inside us.”
“Do I ask too many questions?”
“I like your questions. They are big questions. They are the ones we all want to know.”
The children decorated the Styrofoam cup with drawings of the flowers that would soon open. The seedlings’ color darkened, the green more robust. There were many buds. Connor and Stella counted them.
Nella slept more and more. She was rarely awake.
But Emily had told Gen that Nella would be able to hear her until the end, so Gen talked to her grandmother when it seemed like she might be listening.
Gen asked Emily to sit with them. Emily listened to Gen tell Nella about the first race she had won.
How Nella had taught her to drive the tractor.
Gen described her mother: her long, dark braid.
She told Nella about getting lost at the fair. Nella had found her.
Nella opened her eyes. “Lucky.”
“Gran?”
“I’m lucky I got to have you.”
Gen’s phone call came very early in the morning, when it was still dark out.
Emily drove to the farmhouse. The lamp in the living room was on.
Emily let herself in. Gen was sitting next to Nella.
Even though Nella was gone, Gen continued to murmur to her.
Gen’s palms lay open on her own lap, limp and upturned.
Emily touched her shoulder and Gen fell silent. Emily placed the cup in Gen’s hands.
The marigolds were ready to flower. One of them had begun to open. Gen’s face crumpled. “You were supposed to keep them,” she said, “for when you needed them.”
“I did,” said Emily.