Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen
Violet
November 2001
I return from a morning run, annoyed to see Connor’s car still parked in the driveway. I peel off my gloves and stow my hat and windbreaker in our overstuffed mudroom, an explosion of puffer coats and mittens and muddy boots. With Patrick already off on the school bus, I was looking forward to the respite of our empty house. My lungs jagged from the cold, only a few more weeks of my usual loop to Bernard Beach and through town before winter sends me back to the Y. Not like it makes much difference. Ever since my parents told us their plan, things that usually bring me peace, like the cadence of my feet against the pavement, the calm of low tide at dawn, do nothing for me.
Especially since I can’t escape them. There they were, the pink streams leftover from sunrise, Captain’s Rock glowing in the morning light past the shrinking sandbars and my parents, huddled together on that massive quilt we use for beach picnics, unaware of me as I huffed past. When was the last time Connor and I set out on purpose like that, packing a blanket and a thermos to watch the day begin? I rack my brain but come up empty, mornings dictated by routine, by children, by tackling the chores that consume us, but rarely sunrises.
I bring a glass to the sink, run the tap and see my father once more, visible out my kitchen window, raking mulch beds. The porch door opens behind him, and my mother appears, bringing him a cup of coffee, leaning on the railing to hand it off. They linger in conversation and my cup overfills as I watch them, trying to decipher their body language, desperate for a hint of disquiet between them, but as always, there is only ease.
I can feel the rank smell of cold air and sweat on me, and cock my ear to the stairwell, hear the distant rush of water, Connor running late and only now in the shower. I’m grateful he isn’t poking around in the kitchen, grateful I don’t have to pretend to be fine. Meanwhile, my parents still manage to fit romance into their morning, despite everything. A more romantic morning than I can remember having in years, no less. How sad, how sick, to be jealous of my mother in her condition, to make this about me—it makes me hate myself—but I can’t help but compare our marriages as they play out side by side.
What would Connor do, if I stripped under the cover of steam, opened the glass door and slipped in behind him? It’s laughable. I usually undress with my back to him in the dim lamplight, aware that my nudity is only a necessity between changes of clothes, rather than something that excites him. If I joined him now, he would say, I’ll get out of your way , or, I gotta run , or worse, thanks, next time, ok? Gratitude laced with pity, recognizing my attempt but not wanting it, or me, at all. He would step out, still dripping, my naked figure no longer something that could make him late to work, but rather like the bathroom decor, something picked out ages ago that barely registers.
I fight through piles of faded sheets shoved in the hall closet to find a towel. Then step into the kids’ shower, now just Patrick’s, not wanting to wait until Connor is finished, and partly hoping he leaves before I reemerge. I can’t bear to be near him since my parents told us. I’m self-conscious of taking up too much space, of breathing our shared air, of existing beside him, my thoughts of divorce a concealed weapon I am sure he will uncover.
Not that I’m in any rush to get ready. My calendar is open until Patrick’s orthodontist appointment at two. I am careful not to touch the shower walls with any exposed skin, the grout discolored, shower curtain liner streaked with mildew, and now I know how I’ll be spending my morning. Patrick is supposed to keep it clean, but he has soccer practice and trombone and more homework than I ever remember having in middle school. A lesson I learned with the other three, with Connor, too—if I want it done, I’m going to have to do it myself.
I linger under the hot stream, stalling, circling my neck as the water loosens my shoulder muscles. Connor is supposed to be at work by now, but if he doesn’t leave first thing he waits until after rush hour, so he doesn’t get caught in traffic on the way to Groton. There are some perks, this flexibility especially, to reviving the family business, this house not the only thing we inherited from my grandparents. The Groton Ship and Engine Company was left to my mother after my grandpa Saunders died, long before I was born. It maintained a shaky existence, trading hands and managers until Connor came on as chief engineer. A source of insecurity for Connor, our life constructed on the shoulders of my parents, their parents and a constant taunt from my siblings, of course Violet gets the house , Violet, the favorite. But the truth is neither of them wanted Grandma’s house. Neither of them wanted the company either.
I never loved her house, myself. I always thought it was a bit of a monstrosity, the marble foyer and ornate doors, dark and overfurnished, not to my taste. But it had more than enough room to raise our four children, it was a reasonable commute for Connor and my parents certainly didn’t need it. It didn’t make sense to sell it and buy something farther away from the beach, only to invite some strange family into our enclave, invading the lot we share. I prefer the house I grew up in, and I’ve tried to replicate its homey comforts while making it our own. I replaced heavy window treatments to let in more light, found wicker furniture, linen fabrics. But it was too much house for us even when the kids all lived home. We could never keep it clean, the cavernous rooms packed with toys, sports uniforms peeled off and tossed in the corners, fossilized apple cores found beneath couch cushions. Grandma would have been horrified. But their chaos, their noise and their mess, three little redheads, and later, their littlest baby brother, was what finally made it our home. The clichés all turned out to be true, the one about the good old days, the way a heart can expand, how happy a life together could be.
I am dreading winter more than ever this year, when everyone cocoons inside and our emptying nest is even more apparent, three of our four already off on their own. Patrick more prone to hiding out in his room now that he’s nearly a teen, no older siblings to draw him out with overheard debauchery, drama unfolding in the living room or the thrill of watching someone who is not you getting in trouble. Winter, which will lead to spring, to June, a countdown I can’t silence in my own head. My parents’ final year. I can’t fathom it, and now, only seven months to go. I scrub the soles of my feet, hard, working at the dead skin around my ankles, elbows, trying to banish the thought. But it bucks back, no matter how red my skin gets. The sudden panic, the feeling of falling that startles me from sleep. The loss that wells up swift and loud, as though grief is a sound, a passing train between my ears. Soon, my constant guides, the two people I count on most, my paradigm for a life well lived, for true love, will be gone.
Jane doesn’t believe them, or that has been her party line, a way for her to not deal with her emotions, as usual. Jane, the prodigal daughter, who somehow gets the honor of Mom’s grand finale, their performance at the symphony. Even though I’m the one who has been here, who they can depend on, who helps them call the cable company, and booked that bus tour of the Grand Canyon for the entire family, and spends Sundays weeding their flower beds.
I was the one who worked on Thomas when he was barely speaking to anyone. I told him—even though I hate the very thought of it, and I can’t imagine their house without them in it, their voices never again on the other end of the phone—I also can’t imagine one of them without the other. I told him he would regret it if he squandered the little time we have left to make a point. Punishing them won’t keep Mom healthy, won’t stave off grief or change Dad’s mind. My siblings don’t get it; they think I’m crazy, but they don’t live next door. They don’t see what I see every day. The flowers Dad clips from the garden, the hours Mom spends keeping him company while he works. The walks they take together, the lit windows that follow their path at night, moving together through the house. The impossible bar they have set, the one thing I’ll never forgive them for.
I’ve brought up couples counseling, but Connor doesn’t believe in therapy. He’s from Southie, a place where people mind their business, don’t invite strangers into their problems. He thinks we are dealing with normal life, our relationship giving way to the demands of running a business and raising four kids. He’s not wrong, not solely to blame. I, too, had settled into what we had made. I slept better on my side, away from him; the couch was more comfortable when I could recline alone. I stopped recounting my days, not wanting to bore him with stories about volunteering at the kids’ school, the library, charity 5Ks, gardening, all the ways I filled my time that never elicited follow-up questions. I packed lunch boxes and set out dinner plates as he came and went, and at some point he stopped kissing me hello and goodbye, or I stopped kissing him, and I’m not sure either of us noticed until it became a pattern, too late to protest. The exhaustion building with each child never subsided, never let us carve a path back to each other.
But he doesn’t know that sometimes, in those rare nights we fumble in the sheets, an autopilot routine that gets the job done, I think about my high school boyfriends. About the ways we explored each other, the ache of desire, of being desired. I would never share this with him, even in therapy. I’m embarrassed by it, forty-five and fantasizing about boys I once knew, younger than my oldest son now, but frozen in time as nearly men, virile and wanting me.
I had never said the word aloud. Divorce . Not until months ago, when I told my parents what I was considering. I had never entertained it. The kids came first, creating a stable, happy home for them. Connor is the kind of dad that knows how to butterfly a bandage, helps with long division and makes egg-in-a-hole toast. He is not the kind of man you divorce. I know women in town, whose husbands had strayed, and they are still married. How could I justify it? Even the logistics—where would he live, where would I live, what would holidays look like, how would I support myself, would I have to return to teaching, a career I barely began, didn’t feel confident I could jump back into after a twenty-two-year hiatus—and my biggest fear, would the kids hate me, stopped me in my tracks.
Until June, until my parents sat us down, setting our unspoken agreement, a marriage that was good enough, to flame.
Because there’s no hiding from the truth now. I have a husband I care about, who I don’t wish bad things on, who I want to be happy. But I don’t have a husband I would die for, who would die for me. Jane and Thomas may think it’s twisted, but don’t I deserve to find a love like that? Doesn’t Connor? Don’t we all?
A vague shout in the hallway, and I turn off the shower. I towel off, wrap and tuck the fabric in place to walk to our bedroom. Peek out the window, the driveway empty.
I don’t even have a husband who makes sure I heard him say goodbye.
I turn on Good Morning America to keep me company as I dress. An image of the wreckage, firefighters still working through rubble. Since the towers fell, everything feels more tenuous. Thomas appears to have found some clarity through the tragedy, but all I can think about is all of those people, the way it should feel to lose someone, the absolute devastation. But if I lost Connor, I could go on. I would be shattered for the kids, for the loss of their father, but I could exist in a world that he left behind. Maybe wanting it, believing in love, waiting until we find our way, isn’t enough. You shouldn’t have to work tirelessly, to talk the other into staying.
Love is walking hand in hand, following each other into the light.
Later that morning, I tip a wrinkled bag of flour into a measuring cup, level it with my finger and pour it into a mixing bowl. I’m making muffins from a bunch of brown bananas Mom forgot about, while she keeps me company at her kitchen table, a knit blanket tossed over her knees. The sun peeks from behind a cloud, fills the kitchen with a false sense of warmth. Illuminates the dog-eared cookbooks, the copper kettle, the floral aprons on a hook beside the pantry, jammed with repurposed coffee tins and canned tomatoes and hefty bags of sugar. I pour the batter into muffin tins and lick a bit off the edge of my thumb. I pop them in the oven and sink beside her at the table, spread the woven blanket over us both.
“How are you feeling?” A question I know she hates, but I can’t help but ask, hoping for a new answer, one that means we can reverse course, talk about this years later with disbelief, the near miss dodged because we held out hope.
“Alright.” She tries to smile, to reassure me, but it comes out like a grimace.
I snuggle close, can’t help but revert back to her daughter when we are tucked in side by side. Try to keep the tremble from my voice when I ask, “Are you scared?”
“Sometimes.” Her face smooths and turns to stone, the masked expression I’ve noticed before, one of the symptoms I’ve learned to measure, to clock, the real answers to my questions. “But, honey, I’m more scared of staying, of being alone at the end in my own head.”
I trace a scratch across the antique oak table, etched with fork tines and stamped with murky outlines of sweating glasses left too long on its surface. “I know. I really do understand...more than anyone else ever will. I’m terrified of being alone.”
“You won’t be. You have Connor.”
If it were true, she wouldn’t have to say it. No one has to reassure her about Dad. They are the wisteria vine, he is the structure around which my mom has flowered, my mom giving life to what would otherwise be an empty frame. Connor and I have grown away from each other in the most mundane way, as the kids left to build their lives. No one to lash us together except our baby, who is no longer one, who will soon be on his own. And what then? It haunts me, how little I have to say to my husband across an empty table. I can’t remember the last time we hugged.
I pause for a beat, my voice shaky and uncertain. “I still think about leaving.” I lift my gaze, scanning for her reaction, needing her to tell me to do it, to not do it, to assure me I’m not horrible for feeling this way. “I wonder what he would do? If he’d fight for us? Maybe it’s what we need.”
Mom exhales slowly, giving nothing away. “I left once.”
My eyes widen. A trick of her mind, maybe? I’ve read about confusion like this, the ways her thoughts may begin to distort, her memory jumbled. “What are you talking about?”
“I left your father. Or I tried to. When Jane and Thomas were little, before you were born.”
I am stunned for only a moment, before I shake my head, sure one of us misunderstood. “No, you didn’t, you couldn’t have. You and Dad love each other so much.”
She nods. “Yes, we do. I loved him even as I packed my things. But...I felt like my life wasn’t mine anymore.” Her eyes clear, locked on mine, here with me completely, her lucidity terrifying because it makes it all true. “I was overwhelmed with motherhood, and the inn, and I didn’t recognize the person I was becoming.”
My mouth falls open, unable to hide my shock. “But you love each other...”
She gives a sad smile. “It wasn’t about your father. It was about feeling like my life wasn’t what I expected. Like I was drowning and everything I wanted was out of reach. I was terrified if I didn’t do something I’d be lost forever.”
A tear escapes, I’m relieved, and stunned and devastated, to hear her echo my darkest thoughts back to me as her own. “I’ve felt that way.”
“I know. That’s why I’m telling you this. Because I did leave, and I am so thankful I didn’t get far. I wouldn’t have gotten to experience the best parts of my life. And I never would have had you.” She grabs my hand, gives it a squeeze.
It can’t be true...not my parents. Not my mom... I have so many questions, don’t know where to begin, try to piece together this new image against the one I hold of their marriage, the one I’ve pocketed and carried, a photograph worn thin from all the times it’s been studied. “So what happened?”
“I got in the car and drove to Boston. I don’t even think I had a plan outside of a vague dream of playing for the symphony, of putting space between me and a life that was trying to swallow me whole...but I couldn’t do it. I had planned to audition but missed my time slot, by accident...or maybe even a little on purpose... I don’t know, I just broke down. All I could think about was your father and what this would do to him. I tried to picture a life without him and I couldn’t go through with it. Losing him and hurting him was more terrifying than anything we could face together.”
The reality of actually having the conversation with Connor twists my stomach. Sitting him down, saying the words. I want a divorce. To think it is one thing, and to share with the locked vault of my parents, another. But to him? I had played out the after in a surface level montage—the small cottage I make my own, recipes I’d learn to cook for one, driving solo to visit the kids in college—but I never allowed myself to imagine the moment the words left my lips, to watch the shock and pain etch across his face. A man who doesn’t deserve it, who would never see it coming, who has been head down in this life for two decades, raising kids and paying bills, sure we would come out the other side. The trust we’ve built, the friendship that exists beneath, irreparable. The certainty within me that he would never devastate me this way, never ask for the unthinkable while I sat before him, blindsided, made the fool.
“I’m so sorry. I never wanted you kids to know. I never even told your father. I was so ashamed and felt so guilty for so many years.” Her voice cracks and tears begin to fall.
I reach for her and hold her tight. “I understand, Mom, I do.”
“Then you need to understand this—” Mom pulls away, looks into my eyes once again. “The choice to leave is not one you can take back. You need to be sure there isn’t a more important reason to stay.”
I nod and lean into her, her decision mingling with mine, my shoulders shaking as my tears fall. Mom puts her arm around me, and she cries too. I cry for my parents, for my kids, for Connor, for everything I can’t face, everything I stand to lose. I cry for the little girl who dreamed of love, and for the grown woman who is beginning to understand what it means.