Chapter Fifty
The only communication I have from George is the text he sends the day after I get home.
I’m going to give you some space. But I’m not running away. I’m coming home to you.
Days pass. I bang out slow-cooker recipes for Brie in the mornings, but I throw myself into cooking for myself all afternoon and evening.
I pour all of my frustration, my hope, and my soul into making whatever the hell I feel like making.
My mom’s vegetable garden is reaching its peak, and she lets me pillage what I like.
She doesn’t even complain about how loudly I play my music or when sauce splatters her counters and walls.
She doesn’t clean up after me, either. I take care of my own mess.
I don’t remember the last time I felt this kind of freedom in the kitchen.
It’s not about proving myself, and it’s certainly not about control.
It’s about letting go. I batter and fry zucchini blossoms one day and fold them into a frittata with goat cheese the next.
I grill Niagara peaches and olive oil–slicked baguette slices and serve them with burrata, pine nuts, mint, and a balsamic reduction.
Pages in an imaginary cookbook fill my mind in vivid color. Simple recipes that showcase ingredients from across the country. A culinary tour of Canada. An adventure through food. An edible passport.
I take long walks through the woods after it rains and spot oyster mushrooms and chanterelles.
I invite Mimi for dinner and serve the mushrooms with orzo, which she declares is almost as good as fried rice.
She must sense that I don’t want to talk about her grandson, because she doesn’t mention him until I’m walking her back to the Big House.
“None of us are perfect, Francesca,” she tells me. “Not even George.”
It gives me pause, because perfection is exactly what I’ve come to expect from him. At some point during the last decade, I stopped seeing George as a three-dimensional person.
Another day, I dig out my pasta maker. I make ravioli, filled with ricotta and Swiss chard from the garden, and serve them when Darwin, Anh, and Birdie come for dinner, along with grilled cheese and carrot sticks for my niece, which she declares “Yummy! Yummy! Yummy!”
Most evenings are passed with my mom on the porch while Dad watches baseball.
There’s a softness between us that wasn’t there before.
She’s taken up knitting and spends these nights cursing over the sweater she’s making Birdie while I stare out at the field.
George is never far from my mind. There are younger versions of us everywhere I turn.
Laughing little ghosts running through to the hedge, lying in the grass, reciting vows beneath the apple tree.
Aurora gets me a last-minute virtual session with a client who’s a therapist, and when it’s time for my appointment, I take my laptop to the Big House, where there’s space and privacy.
Mimi tells me she’ll be outside supervising Leo’s pool cleaning, and I climb upstairs to the bedroom I slept in on the occasional nights that I stayed over.
“That’s a spectacular space,” Lydia says, easing me into our conversation.
And it is. Velvet drapes the same blue as George’s eyes. A canopy bed fit for a princess and an antique armoire.
“Where are you?” she asks.
As succinctly as I can, I tell her about this house and the people it belongs to.
“Things between George and me are really complicated right now,” I add.
“Would you like to tell me more about your relationship?”
I begin to nod, but then I say, “Actually, I’d like to talk about my mom.”
By the end of the hour, I feel like canvas stretched over a frame.
I’ve cried, but mostly I’ve gone on and on and on about my mother while Lydia says things like, “That must have been hard,” and, “How did that make you feel?” When my eyes show a hint of glassiness, it’s, “What’s coming up for you right now?
” It’s draining, but it’s also cathartic.
I haven’t lost all the heaviness I’ve carried with me for so long, but I think I’ve left a layer on the floor, like a snake shedding its skin.
“If you’re open to it, I’d love to talk to you again this week,” Lydia says.
“Twice in a week? I must be a pretty big mess.”
“Not at all. But it sounds like you could use some extra support right now.”
“Yeah,” I say. “And we haven’t even talked about George.” Or Nate, come to think of it.
She laughs. “Shall we book another appointment, then?”
So we do.
· · ·
A week passes. The Civic Holiday weekend arrives.
I tell the family we’re having a picnic Monday afternoon in the field.
I fill a container with the wild raspberries that grow along Old Stone Road and Mom bakes a peach and raspberry pie.
Dad barbecues chicken and ribs. I make deviled eggs and potato salad, corn, and coleslaw.
Moby comes home and brings Mimi over. I lay blankets in the field.
Darwin fetches chairs for our parents and Mimi to sit on, and we eat and laugh and make an utter mess of ourselves.
It’s the most fun I’ve had with my family in a long time.
But I miss George so keenly I feel it in my body—a sharp pain in my side.
I excuse myself to bring out the platter of watermelon slices, and I put my forehead on the kitchen counter, willing myself not to cry.
There have been so many times when I’ve wanted to talk to him, when I’ve felt desperate to hear his voice, but I’ve held myself back from reaching out. I want to be sure of myself when I do.
I open my phone to our text message chain.
I miss you, I write.
But I’m not sure what else there is to say, so I put away my phone, message unsent.
When I return to the group, my mom sits on the blanket and pats her lap. I rest my head there, close my eyes, and listen to my family, knowing someone is missing.
· · ·
Another week slips by. Mimi and I drink iced tea while Leo cleans the pool, and when she mentions something about George’s grandfather never learning to swim, I realize that I’ve never asked her about how she met the great Edward Saint James.
She tells me that she was dancing in Giselle, playing the part of the vengeful Queen Myrtha.
One night, during the curtain call, she spotted an enormous man in the front row.
He looked wholly out of place, burly and bearded, but he was on his feet as soon as she took her final bow, smiling right at her.
And then he was there, backstage, with the principal ballerina’s fiancé, a close friend of his.
Edward asked Mimi whether she was as villainous in real life as she was on stage, and when she’d said yes, he’d laughed so loud she thought she could feel the walls shake.
It was a magnificent chesty bellow. Mimi was a goner.
“He was handsome and rich, and busy with his family’s lumber business here, which suited me just fine, since I was having a hell of a time in Montreal. We wrote to each other constantly. Oh, how Edward wrote. It’s where George gets his talent. He visited whenever he could, and then I got injured.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t like to talk about it. It was my own fault—a stress fracture to my tibia. I’d been pushing too hard, ignoring the signs, and it ended my career.” Mimi lights a cigarette.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago. Edward came right away. He took care of me. Proposed. I came here and started a new life. It was different from the one I’d lived before but no less magical.”
“That’s a nice story,” I say.
“It’s no story, ma puce. It’s my life.”
· · ·
The urge to explore arrives as I’m lying down for bed that night, itchy as a mosquito bite.
The need is so great that I can’t sleep.
I remember how I’d lie in this room as a child, wishing for something interesting to happen, sure my life would hold incredible adventures.
But I’m not a child, and if I want adventures, I’m the one who has to make them happen.
I open my laptop, and by the light of the screen, I start planning my next trip.
I’ve been as far west as I can go in this country.
Now I want to go east. Newfoundland, I think.
Or maybe Prince Edward Island. Maybe my mom would come with me. Maybe she could show me her whales.
· · ·
On August 16, three months after the wedding that never happened, I go to a yard sale with my mom.
I rescue a vintage Ridgway Heritage plate and begin my new collection.
In my imaginary cookbook, I present each dish on mismatched antique china.
Maybe a few pieces of pottery to make it feel contemporary.
I could section the book by parts of the country: the coast, the woods, the plains…
No slow-cooker recipes, but nothing too fussy, either.
It would feel like me. I text Brie that evening.
Me: Would you consider it a conflict of interest if I were to write a cookbook one day?
Brie: No!
Brie: I mean, it would be bad if you developed your recipes on my time. But you have integrity, and I know you wouldn’t.
Me: Never. And it’s just a thought. I’m kind of craving a creative jolt.
Brie: In the meantime, let’s talk about how to give you a jolt at work.
Me: I’ve got ideas.
Brie: I have no doubt.
· · ·
The next evening, I make pizza dough and grill it over charcoal with homemade tomato-basil sauce and fresh mozzarella. I top it with arugula and prosciutto. Darwin is watching the game with Dad, so Mom and I take our slices to the porch with glasses of red wine.
“When did you know you were in love with Dad?” I ask.
“Oh gosh. I really couldn’t tell you. It was so long ago. But I don’t think there was any one moment.”
“So it wasn’t love at first sight, like it was for him?”
She snorts. “Is that what your dad said? He’s so full of it.
No, it wasn’t love at first sight.” She takes a bite of her pizza, pondering.
“Don’t get me wrong: I thought your father was cute.
But what made me love him was an accumulation of so many things over the years—conversations, small gestures, jokes.
He was interested in everything I had to say.
He wanted me to achieve my goals as badly as I did.
My love for him was like a bucket sitting out in the rain, slowly collecting water, drop by drop, until one day, it was spilling over.
” She shrugs. “He was my partner. The person I wanted near me for the good times and when it felt like the world was falling apart.”
“It sounds simple when you put it like that,” I say.
We listen to the song of a whippoorwill, and my mom pats me on the knee. “Love is the simplest thing. Relationships are the hard part.”
She’s not talking about us, but it reminds me of what I’ve been waiting to ask her. “Would you consider coming out east with me one day?” I say, trying not to sound nervous. “I’d like you to show me your whales.”
She turns to me, surprised.
“Don’t you wish you could see them again?” I ask.
“I’d love that, honey.”
After my parents have gone to bed, I sit in the porch swing, staring at the silhouette of the apple tree against the night sky. I think about my mom, and Mimi, and the assumptions I’ve made about other people’s lives, and I send George a message.
I want to hear your story.
He replies within seconds.
George: Which one?
Me: The one where you fall in love with your best friend.
George: Ah. That’s my favorite one.
George: Give me a few days? I think I need to write this down.