Wildwood

Chapter 2

“This is insane,” says Topher when I walk him through the facts of the call. He’s sitting at the island, rubbing his scalp with both hands. “I mean, I knew you had an uncle in Vermont, but it seemed like you guys had nothing to do with him.”

“We didn’t. He and my grandmother had a huge falling-out.

We used to spend every summer there, and then suddenly, we just stopped.

I must have been around eight or something.

I never knew what it was about. My mother wouldn’t tell me either.

” My breath catches in my chest. Even saying the word mother still causes visceral pain in my body.

She died two years ago. Two years and four months, to be precise.

She slipped on black ice in the driveway, falling backward and hitting her head in just the wrong way.

She died instantly, but it doesn’t dull the pain I feel when I imagine her lying on the frigid February asphalt.

Alone. My father wasn’t there to help because we had lost him a few years earlier to a sudden heart attack.

Both parents just gone, seemingly in an instant. There and then not.

The loss of them both had left me gutted and adrift. Topher has been slowly stitching me back together, but I sometimes feel like one small tug will unravel it all.

“Think your grandmother was jealous Wildwood was left to Ezra and not her?” He stands, walks over to the fridge, and takes out a beer. He cracks it and takes a long sip, staring out the window over the sink.

“I don’t know. Possibly.” So many things about my mother’s side of the family feel like a black box to me.

I had been close to my cousins, Tom and Anna, Uncle Christopher’s kids who I guess are technically my second cousins, and had wonderful memories playing with them during family gatherings.

But then we stopped going to Wildwood. I think for a while I just accepted it the way little kids do.

But I remember when I was a little older, I used to nag my mother incessantly about why we no longer saw our relatives.

Sometimes families grow apart, my mother would say, sighing and her eyes avoiding mine.

It had left a huge, empty gap in my life.

I’m an only child, as was my mother. So Uncle Ezra and Aunt Vera’s family had made up a significant portion of my family.

Cousins standing in for siblings. My grandmother simply refused to talk about them at all, waving her hand and tutting angrily if Uncle Ezra’s name was mentioned, before leaving the room.

“And it just seems strange that he’s leaving it to you and not your cousins. When’s the last time you saw them?” Topher takes out a box of spaghetti and dumps the entire contents into a pot of boiling water.

“God, it must have been over twenty years ago. I think we saw them once or twice after the big falling-out, but it’s been forever. It’s sad. I have such good memories of playing with them at Wildwood.”

It has been so long, yet since hanging up with Mr. Warnick, I’ve been able to conjure if not memories, at least images or snapshots from time at Wildwood.

I can picture a labyrinth of rooms unfolding, moving through them over creaking floorboards and past roaring fireplaces.

I can hear the laughter of my cousins as we play hide-and-seek, crawling through closets that rarely saw the light of day, plumes of dust and the scent of mothballs tickling our noses, threatening to give away our hiding spot.

The house could not have been more different from the ranch house I’d grown up in, in suburban New Jersey.

But mostly what I remember is the woods.

Our own hundred-acre forest. We’d build lean-tos, pretend we were deer, hunt for lady’s slippers.

Old foundations became castles, moss-covered boulders became mountains.

I know I’m probably just looking back on my youth with rose-colored glasses, but the Wildwood of my memory was paradise. It certainly wasn’t cursed.

“What do you think the house is worth?” Topher looks like he almost doesn’t want to ask the question.

“I don’t know,” I admit truthfully. “Again, it’s been ages.

From what I remember, the house was huge but really old.

I have no idea if it’s been updated. But I feel like it was on a massive piece of land.

I remember my mom called it ‘the hundred-acre wood’ like from Winnie-the-Pooh, though it was actually on about two hundred acres. ”

Topher whips his head toward me. “Two hundred acres?”

“Yeah, I mean it’s an old property in Vermont. It wouldn’t be that uncommon.”

He looks at me a moment longer, almost perplexed that I’m not incredulous at the size. “Well, that settles it, right?”

My gut contracts. “Settles what?”

“You can’t honestly be considering moving to Vermont, can you? Shit!” The pot has boiled over, sending the gas flames into a flurry of hissing steam.

It’s not until he says these words that it hits me how much I truly want to. It feels like a sign, like some divine intervention. I lose my job in a truly catastrophic way and the universe hands me an estate. One that I loved as a child. One that I can imagine raising a child in.

“Why can’t we consider it?” My chest feels tight. “We could just stay for the year and then decide.”

“We have jobs here. We have a life! We are city people. How the hell do you think we’d take care of two hundred acres?” He’s nearly laughing now, which makes my skin prickle.

“Correction. You have a job,” I say coldly. His face softens, and he tries to jump in, but I continue, “It’s not like we’d have to take care of the whole thing. Most of it is wooded. Plus, we are going to have a baby. Do you really want to raise it in this tiny condo?”

He doesn’t answer but works his jaw slowly, back and forth. “What about your grandmother? Won’t this feel like a betrayal?”

I look at the floor and feel the guilt that’s been nagging at the back of my brain rush forward.

He’s right on that point. My grandmother, Mathilde, has not talked to her brother for probably twenty years.

Clearly, Ezra had done something unforgivable.

My grandmother is one of the most pragmatic people I know.

She wouldn’t hold a grudge without a good reason.

Still, maybe it’s because I’ve lost my job and I’m grappling for something familiar, but I feel a strange and desperate need to go to Wildwood. I want to at least see it again. I want to be in a place where, before things fell apart, I had happy memories with my family.

My voice wavers as I speak. “Yeah. You are right. I would feel weird and wrong accepting something from Ezra. But . . . I don’t know. Maybe she’d want me to accept it if she knew it would give us stability. But I can’t ask her that.”

“I know,” he says softly.

He’s staring out the kitchen window now, and I walk over and wrap my arms around him from behind.

“Didn’t you always want to move to Vermont?”

Topher laughs. “Yeah, but for, like, retirement. Not right now. Besides, I’m an emergency medicine doc. I hate to sound crass, but the action is in the city.”

“Not necessarily. There’re lots of emergencies in the country, I’m sure.” I bury my face in his back. “I don’t know, like a freak tractor accident. Leg severed in a hayfield.”

He turns to face me and gives a faint hint of a smile, but then his face darkens again.

“I’ve been working my ass off for years, we’ve had plans for years, and it’s like you just expect me to throw it away.” He crosses his arms over his chest, forcing me to take a step back.

“I don’t expect that. But seriously, they need good doctors everywhere. And besides, maybe a slower-paced life will be good for us. Now that we have the baby coming. And I’m sure I could find remote work.”

Topher looks like he wants to say something, then changes his mind.

“Please.” I don’t like how close to begging I sound. “Can we at least go look at it?”

“Fine.” He picks up his beer and pours the remains down the drain.

“Topher . . .”

But he starts walking out of the room. “It’s fine,” he says, though it sounds anything but fine. “Just set up the appointment.”

I stand there for a few minutes, feeling depleted, the conversation already hazy in my mind.

I should have waited to talk to him about it.

I should have processed it myself, on a day that wasn’t today.

On a day when I could think rationally and could have approached the conversation rationally.

Instead, everything had come out in a torrent.

The house, the history, the implications.

I walk to the stove and turn off the burner.

The pasta has boiled too long and the pot is now full of bloated noodles and cloudy water.

Sighing, I pour myself a bowl of cereal, which I eat, staring off into space.

It’s funny. I hadn’t thought of Wildwood for probably twenty years.

I hadn’t thought of the great rift for almost as many.

It shouldn’t matter so much to me anymore, but it suddenly feels like the most important thing in the world.

For years, my family slowly shrank. And with each death, a source of information about who I am and where I come from vanished.

Wildwood feels like a lifeline. Maybe if I could spend time there, I could learn about my family’s history.

I could have stories to tell our baby. This is where I came from.

This is who we are. If only I could get Topher to understand that.

* * *

A few hours later, I am lying on the edge of my bed.

I put a hand on my belly. It is still pretty flat, but focusing on the baby growing inside brings me a sense of peace.

I hear the bedroom door open and feel Topher slide into bed a moment later.

His arm wraps around my waist, and he lightly kisses my shoulder.

I take his hand in mine. “I’m sorry about earlier. It’s a huge decision and I don’t want to pressure you into it. I was just caught off guard myself and . . .” I trail off. “It’s probably a ridiculous idea.”

He is quiet for a moment, his thumb tracing circles on my palm.

“I’m sorry too. You are right that we should at least look at it.”

“Really?” I try to keep my voice level.

“Yes. A slower-paced life could be good for us given the baby.”

“I agree. And I’m sure I could get a remote position somewhere, and that would help the work-life balance even more.”

“Or you couldn’t.”

“I will,” I say convincingly.

“No, I mean, you could take some time off work.”

“For maternity leave?”

“No, for like, a longer duration.”

It catches me so off guard, I’m almost stunned into silence.

“Why would I do that?” Every muscle in my body feels rigid suddenly.

“Look, you’ve been miserable at your job for years.

And you’re pregnant. If we inherit Wildwood, and that’s still a big if, we’d be able to sell our current home, so you probably wouldn’t need to work for a little bit.

Maybe you could take a few years off or something and figure out what you want to do next.

Even if we don’t inherit Wildwood, we could try and make it work. ”

I don’t say anything and try to steady the pounding in my chest. I have a degree from a top-ranked college, a degree for which I’d worked countless work-study jobs to obtain, a degree that still holds me hostage in tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of debt. I’ve always worked. It’s who I am.

“I don’t mean that because you’re the mother, you should be at home.

I mean it sincerely. I hate seeing you stressed all the time.

I’m not saying don’t go back to work, I’m just saying, take a break, take the pressure off yourself of finding something immediately.

Go back when you’ve found something great.

And spend a year with the baby, not this twelve-week maternity leave crap.

” He pauses. “Most women would love that opportunity.”

Irritation flares in my chest. No good statement from a man begins with “most women would.” But I swallow down my annoyance.

Because despite our bickering, at the end of the day, I know I married one of the good ones.

And if I’m honest with myself, he’s right.

I need a break. I probably should have quit long ago but never had the mental bandwidth to actually go through with it.

I don’t know what I want to do next. But I know I shouldn’t rush to figure it out.

It also sounds like me being able to spend more time with the baby could be a selling point for Topher with Wildwood.

“Maybe you are right,” I say slowly. “But I don’t want to decide anything now.”

“Of course not.”

“I’ll keep an open mind about it. And you’ll do the same with Wildwood?”

“Yes,” he says. “I promise I’ll keep an open mind about Wildwood.”

He kisses my shoulder, then rolls over to turn out the light. The minutes tick by but I still can’t sleep. My brain is humming with a mixture of apprehension and excitement, an endless barrage of unanswered questions, and the strange sensation that some long-awaited plan has been set in motion.