Chapter IV #2
“Well, you’ll just call him back,” Clara said. “And you’ll apologize, and it will all be fine. She loves him, Winnie, you can’t just send him away.”
“No,” Bernadette said firmly. “No, you can’t call him back. And you can’t tell Evelyn. She can’t know.”
“What?” Clara asked, at the same time I said, “What?”
“She can’t know, and you can’t call him back, because you’re right,” Bernie continued. “It was the right thing to do.”
“It was?” I said, at the same time Clara said, “It was?”
“What does she think is going to happen? Henry’s a ghost. It’s not like they can get married. It’s not like they can have a long, happy life together. It’s not like they can have kids.”
“Evelyn doesn’t want kids,” Clara said.
“You get my drift,” Bernadette said. “It’s a road to nowhere.”
“But it’s Henry,” Clara whispered.
“I know, Cece, and we all love Henry, but what’s done is done,” Bernadette said, getting that I’m-the-eldest-child-and-my-word-is-final tone of voice that I was sure all eldest children were born instinctually knowing.
“So what do we do now?” Clara asked.
“We distract her,” Bernadette said.
“We distract her?” I said.
“That’s how you get over a broken heart,” Bernie insisted. “Distractions and time.”
“So what do we do?” Clara asked.
“I have tomorrow off. Let’s do something fun. A bike ride or those boats in the park.”
“You want to go for a boat ride in Central Park?” Clara asked.
“Yes,” Bernie replied decisively. “That’s exactly what I want to do.”
“That’s far,” Clara said.
“It’s a twenty-minute walk,” Bernadette replied.
“I don’t like water,” Clara persisted.
“We’ll get you a life jacket,” Bernie said.
We had lived in Manhattan for our entire lives and we had never once rented a boat from Loeb Boathouse.
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
Clara rolled her eyes. Bernadette looked pleased.
“First thing in the morning,” I continued. “Bernie, get Evelyn up. Clara, pack snacks. I’ll get the cooler from the basement and steal a bottle of wine. It will be fun.”
“I’m very irritated with both of you right now,” Clara said.
“You’ll get over it,” Bernie said.
“But will Evelyn get over it?” Clara retorted.
A long silence. And then, my voice barely a whisper. “Did I fuck everything up? Did I do the worst thing in the world? Am I a horrible person?”
“Yes,” Bernadette said. “Yes. No. We are going to fix this, Winnie. Everything is going to be fine.”
But I don’t think any of us—not even Bernadette herself—believed that.
The next morning was mild and sunny, with a light breeze and a scattering of white puffy clouds across the sky. Clara and I packed cheese and crackers and apples and pears into a backpack cooler, and I slipped a bottle of white wine into it and put it by the front door.
“Why are the three of you so insistent on going for a boat ride?” Evie said. She looked like shit. Dark circles under her eyes, unwashed hair, puffy face.
“It’s a beautiful day,” I said.
“We get plenty of beautiful days,” Evie countered. “And never before have we spent one boating.”
“She’s crabby,” Bernadette announced loudly, as if Clara and I had maybe not picked up on that.
“I brought sunscreen,” Clara replied, as if maybe the sunscreen would do something for our sister’s mood.
“Are we walking?” Evelyn asked.
“I thought we would!” I said. “I mean, it is—”
“A beautiful day,” Evelyn interrupted. “Yes. We’ve covered that.”
Outside, Evelyn walked with Bernadette and I walked with Clara. I had the backpack cooler on and after five minutes, my shoulders were already aching, so I clipped the chest strap on and hefted it higher on my back.
It really was a beautiful day, and we cut into the park before turning south, away from the reservoir, taking a path that would lead us past Belvedere Castle, past the Ramble, which, if I had to pick, was probably my favorite part of Central Park.
Thirty-eight acres of woodlands in the middle of the city.
Our father claimed he had once gotten lost in the Ramble for three hours and though that may sound like an exaggeration, it becomes very believable if you try to navigate it without the aid of a cell phone.
Southeast of the Ramble was the Loeb Boathouse, and it was early enough that the line of people waiting to rent the four-person rowboats was small. We let Bernadette wait in the line and pay as the three of us hung back.
“Maybe after, we can go visit Alice,” Clara said. The Alice in Wonderland sculpture was east of here, and Clara had always been fond of it.
“Sure,” I said. “And the model boats, maybe.”
“Bethesda Fountain is close,” Evie added.
“Oh, we can reenact some movies!” Clara said, because Bethesda Fountain was featured in probably every movie that had ever been set in the city.
Evie smiled then, an actual smile, something I hadn’t seen for at least a week.
She looped her arm through mine and laid her head on my shoulder and I smelled her hair, which needed to be washed, but still smelled so undeniably like her, like lukewarm coffee and old books and vintage wool, that my stomach gave a little flip.
Everything was going to be all right. Evelyn was going to be fine.
A few minutes later and we had donned our life jackets and set off into the great blue waters of the Lake, the backpack by our feet, Bernie and me manning the oars, paddling west. It felt like sailing into a painting.
The trees surrounding the lake were on fire with fall colors—oranges, reds, yellows—and the calm surface of the water reflected everything perfectly.
“Okay,” Evelyn said after a minute. “This is pretty beautiful.”
It broke the tension that had been building between the four of us. Clara laughed and dipped her hand into the water, Bernadette rested her oar against the side of the boat and took an enormous breath of air, and I unzipped the backpack and triumphantly pulled out the bottle of wine.
“What time is it?” Evie said.
“I know, I know,” I said. “But it’s white wine. You know what Grandma says about white wine.”
“‘It’s never too early for a nice glass of chardonnay,’” Bernadette recited, in a very accurate impersonation of our father’s mother.
I poured three glasses and handed one to Bernie and Evie, then glanced at Clara and said, at her exaggerated frown, “Absolutely not.”
“None of you are twenty-one,” she whined.
“Right, but you’re fourteen,” Bernadette countered. “You can have one sip of mine.”
“One sip?”
“One sip or nothing.”
Clara, managing to still scowl during the whole process, took a sip of wine from Bernadette’s glass and then handed it back.
Bernadette, Evelyn, and I clinked glasses and took a sip. I didn’t really get the fuss about wine, but this didn’t taste so bad, and it felt really fun, drinking with my sisters in a rowboat in the middle of Central Park.
Clara stopped scowling after another minute or so and pulled a pear out of the backpack. She took a bite, sighed happily, and leaned back against the side of the boat.
“How lucky are we, kids?” Bernadette said.
Clara laughed so hard she snorted, which made me laugh, and made Evelyn smile again, a wide, happy smile that caused my heart to balloon in size.
She reached forward and dug around in the backpack, pulling out a wrapped wedge of Brie and a box of crackers.
She kept smiling as she made each of us a cracker with a neat slice of Brie on it, passing them around before finally making one for herself.
“I can’t believe we’ve never done this before,” I said.
“I can,” Bernadette said. “We don’t really do touristy things.”
“Sometimes we do,” Clara corrected. “We’ve gone to Ellis Island.”
“That was a school trip,” Bernie said. “And you weren’t with us.”
“Oh, right.”
“This should be a new leaf for us,” I said. “Doing the things we’ve never done before. One new thing a week.”
“We could go ice skating at Rockefeller Center!” Clara exclaimed.
“I’ve always wanted to try Magnolia Bakery,” Bernie added thoughtfully.
We all looked to Evelyn for her input. She had a funny expression on her face.
“What’s going on here?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” Bernie responded, because she was the best liar out of the three of us.
“I mean,” Evelyn said, tightening her grip on her wineglass, “this who-can-out-happy-the-hardest thing that’s happening.”
“I’m just happy,” Clara said. “Mostly. I mean, I’d like another sip of wine.”
Evelyn handed Clara her wineglass without looking at her. She was alternating between Bernadette and me, swiveling her eyes back and forth like she was scared of letting either one of us out of her sight.
“We all live in the same house,” Bernadette said.
“We know something’s going on with Henry.
We know something’s going on with you and Henry.
We’re trying to take your mind off it. It’s not some big conspiracy, Evie.
We’re your sisters. And we care about you.
We don’t know what happened to Henry, but we love you, okay? ”
Evelyn was blinking rapidly, in the way a person blinks when they’re trying desperately not to cry. It made my heart ache to watch her, so I looked down at my hands, at the wineglass, at a piece of cracker that had fallen to the bottom of the boat.
“I don’t know where he went,” she said finally, her shoulders collapsing, her tiny frame folding in on itself. “He won’t come back.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Bernadette said, her voice decisive and strong.
She handed me her wineglass and pulled Evelyn close to her.
Evelyn collapsed into her lap and Bernadette wrapped her arms around her, holding her.
“It’s going to be okay,” Bernadette said, but she was looking at me, and I got the impression that she was talking to me, too, staring directly into my eyes as I felt my bottom lip start to tremble.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said again, for the third time, and it began to feel like an incantation, like a mantra, like a spell.