Chapter 40
Gen didn’t want a funeral for Nella. That would be too sad.
Instead, Emily helped her plan a memorial brunch.
They booked the local rec hall and hired caterers to come from Columbus.
“I want colors for her,” Gen said. “I want champagne.” They collected Nella’s handmade blankets to give away.
The last one she made, and which Emily cut from its yarn, Gen kept.
Gen’s friends flew in. They came early to the rec hall and helped with setup, arranging tables and chairs.
Becca had printed out photos of Nella at Gen’s meets, and when no one could decide how best to display them, Nita made a last-minute drive to Walmart for a bulletin board.
Emily’s friends sent flowers that Adam and Kate arranged into table centerpieces. Rory texted: how’s Gen holding up?
Emily wasn’t sure. Gen greeted Connor and Stella seriously, as though they were adults, and thanked them for coming.
Emily and the kids had tickets to fly back to New York the following day.
It was Labor Day weekend and they would make it home just in time for the start of school.
Gen played the host with everyone, trying to be easy with the task; she wanted this to be a warm gathering.
Shipley made her smile. When Paul arrived, though, and hugged her, her shoulders sagged.
Emily couldn’t see her face, only Paul’s, but she saw Gen’s grief mirrored in his expression.
Gen was quiet around Emily, even a little distant.
They didn’t speak much—Gen was busy, of course, and Emily had to negotiate with the caterers, because more people were arriving than they’d expected, and while there would be enough food, there wouldn’t be enough servers.
“No problem,” her mother said. “Do a buffet.” When it became clear that the caterers hadn’t brought a long table for a buffet, only round ones for the brunch, she disappeared in search of the right kind, sure that the rec hall had one stashed somewhere.
Emily and Gen talked briefly about the change in plans.
“Hey, thanks,” said Gen. “Not just for today. I mean for everything.” She said it awkwardly. The words were nice but Emily felt dismissed, because saying thanks is what you do when what you’re grateful for is done. Gen’s thanks were another way of saying goodbye.
Emily shrugged and smiled, not trusting herself to speak.
“Really.” Gen spoke as though Emily had tried to argue with her. “You saved me.”
It occurred to Emily that Gen seemed awkward because she was embarrassed.
Emily had seen her at her grandmother’s bedside, devastated and helpless.
Maybe Gen wished that Emily hadn’t witnessed that.
She hated to be seen as helpless. Emily didn’t want her to feel that way or to think that something was owed.
“I came here because I wanted to. You would have done the same for me.”
Gen nodded but looked dissatisfied.
More people arrived. Emily’s mother and Candace put the found long table into place.
The crowd surprised Emily, not just its size but also its composition.
She had expected Gen’s friends. The industry people, too, with their bespoke suits.
Some glamorous Hollywood types. Athletes who greeted Shipley and Gen’s track friends as colleagues.
And she had expected yet wasn’t prepared for the extent of queerness, a visual kinship that ran through the crowd like a seam of ore.
Emily belonged to it in a way that she hadn’t felt before.
With that sense of belonging came the realization that all it took to belong was to know that she did.
Maybe that should have been obvious to her, but it hadn’t been.
What surprised her most, though, was how many townspeople had come.
She knew a few of them—retired teachers, the high school coach—but soon the rec hall was so full that it seemed as if all of Washford were there.
Young people, too. And people her age. Their kids played with Connor and Stella.
She could tell who lived in town, even when she didn’t know them: they wore their Sunday best. Their expressions as they glanced at the out-of-towners showed a mix of curiosity and discomfort.
This could have been an aversion to the queerness on display, but Emily thought that most of it was defensive: a worry that Washford and its people would be disdained by outsiders.
Still, whenever someone from home greeted someone from out of town, all she saw was kindness.
The faces of the Washford High kids made her breath catch—not just because she had been like them once.
Sometimes one of them looked at Gen’s friends, and their entire face became a wish.
Shipley approached. “How are you?”
Her throat closed. She was leaving the next day. Gen was stunned by loss. Shipley’s question felt too hard to answer. “It’s amazing how many people are here. I hadn’t realized how many people in town cared about Nella.”
“And Gen.”
“Because she’s famous?” She hated the thought that Gen was a spectacle.
“Because she’s done so much for the town.” Shipley looked at her more closely and added, “You didn’t know?”
No, Emily didn’t know that Gen returned home on a regular basis to coach kids on the track team.
She didn’t know that Gen funded scholarships, not just to colleges but also to trade schools.
She didn’t know that Gen had donated to the library and that it was undergoing renovations.
She didn’t know that Gen came back for fairs, just for fun.
The people in town knew her not only as Nella Hall’s granddaughter but also as herself.
“What do you think she’ll do now?” said Shipley. “Not that her career is necessarily over, but…”
“What do retired athletes usually do?”
“If she does interviews about why she left, she could get in good with the public again.”
Emily saw Gen across the way, listening to Becca, who was speaking emphatically. She seemed to lecture Gen.
“She could do the fame thing,” said Shipley. “More modeling. Do a talk show.”
“I don’t think she cares about being a celebrity. She just loves to run.”
“Sportscaster?”
“Maybe?”
“Coaching?”
Emily remembered how Gen had been with the girl on the beach whose shoe she’d signed. “I can see that.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe she tries to make the Olympics again in 2016.”
Shipley nodded. “Never hurts to try. I mean, it does, of course. It can hurt like hell. But what else are you going to do? Regret a missed chance forever?” She was no longer talking about sports. “What about you two?”
Emily was tempted to answer openly. It felt like she and Gen were a story that couldn’t end well, a myth where the avoidance of tragic fate produces that fate, or a plot with a cruel scramble of the timeline, Gen looking at her when she didn’t see, then Emily doing the same to her.
Impossible. I have no right. That was the thought that kept welling up within Emily: I have no right to you.
She had broken Gen’s heart twice. How could Gen return to that—to her?
Look at this crowded hall. All the people who loved Gen. Emily was just one more.
“Hey, Ship,” she said. “Can you spread word that the buffet is ready?”
Shipley waited a moment, then replied, “Sure thing.”
Across the way, Gen said something to Becca, who flung up her hands, impatient.
Becca’s attitude made Emily angry and protective.
Why was she berating Gen? Didn’t she know how difficult this day was?
Emily saw the difficulty etched on Gen’s face.
Surely Becca saw it, too. Emily had the impulse to cross the room and interrupt.
Not my business, she decided, watching Gen argue with Becca. Although the rec hall was air-conditioned, it felt stifling. She went outside for fresh air.
It was not fresh. The sun had reached its height.
The air was still. The trees’ leaves were cupped, hoping for rain.
It was the dog days of summer—named by the ancient Greeks not because this kind of heat would drive a panting dog into the shade but because the peak of summer coincided with the rise of the dog star that hunted in Orion’s constellation.
There she was, doing what she always did: shifting her thoughts elsewhere to avoid confronting what mattered most. She turned away from the rec hall.
She had said that she’d stay as long as Gen needed her and she no longer did.
Face that, she told herself. Who cared about stars?
She couldn’t even see them. And if she could, she wouldn’t be seeing them as they actually were but as they had been ages ago, when they first made the light that had traveled across the universe.
The movie that she’d seen with the kids at the planetarium had said that the night sky is an image of the past. Most visible stars made their light ten thousand years ago.
Some of them don’t even exist anymore. She was filled with the sense of her irrelevance.
“Emily?”
It was Gen.
Emily turned and said something like, Everything okay?
Is there a problem with the food? The caterers?
She wasn’t sure what she said. Some bullshit.
Her voice trailed away. Gen’s expression looked like it had that summer day when they drank lemonade in the back of her truck. She was taut with nervousness.
Emily was, too. She blurted, “Why did you renovate the barn?”
“What? Oh.” Gen rubbed the back of her neck. “Um.”
“Real answers only.”
“It wasn’t safe.”
“Safe?”
“For Connor and Stella. The ladder to the hayloft was old, you know. I worried about them falling. I had the crew build a proper staircase, better guardrails. Some bunk beds, nicer shelves. Cubbies for toys. I wanted to surprise you. Like, I can live anywhere, but I’ll always want to visit Washford, because it’s where we come from.
I thought maybe you’d come back sometimes, too—I mean, to see your mom, if nothing else.
And you’d bring the kids. It’d be a great place for them to play. Is that okay? You look really strange.”
“But your mother made the hayloft for you.”
“It was mine. Then it was ours. I want it to be theirs. All kids need a secret place, a place of their own. Hey, don’t cry. Did I fuck up? Why are you crying?”
“I thought you renovated the hayloft because you were over us.”
“What? No.”
“That you wanted to get rid of it.”
“Emily. I will never get over us.”
Emily was too happy to speak.
Gen searched her face and said, “Can I ask you something? Will you give me a real answer? Do you still love me like I love you? You are my friend and you are my family. But I also want you to be mine.”
Emily kissed her. She said yes. She kept saying it. She didn’t understand how her yes hadn’t always been obvious. She wanted to be obvious. She wanted everyone to see how she felt. She told Gen this. She begged her to believe her.
Gen was hollow-eyed from lack of sleep, but she smiled. She believed her. “Becca told me you’d say that. But I didn’t know.”
“I hate that you didn’t know. But you know now?”
“I know now.”
“Always?”
“Yes.”
The rec hall, when they returned, was loud. The gathering was what Gen had wanted it to be: plates heaped with food, colorful tablecloths, lively conversation, shared memories of Nella. A good day.
Later, guests began to go home. Connor and Stella, restless, left with Emily’s mother. Many people stayed. They opened more champagne. Emily poured some for her and Gen. She leaned into Gen, head resting on her shoulder. Gen kissed her, mouth soft.
They weren’t paying attention to the others, but the others were paying attention to them.
There was a clinking sound. The room quieted.
Becca stood, gaze on Emily and Gen, her champagne lifted in a toast. She didn’t say anything—she didn’t need to.
Everyone in that room wished them well, and everyone raised a glass.