Chapter 14
Two Years Ago
When Arietta’s mother, Regina, slipped into unconsciousness and passed away, Arietta wasn’t at the care home.
At the time, she’d had a cold, but it hadn’t been a run-of-the-mill, easily-fixed-with-medication cold.
It was a horrible and nausea-inducing head cold that had kept her in bed for much of the week.
On the one hand, Arietta had known that her mother was getting worse, that her moments of consciousness were few and far between. But on the other hand, she’d felt that Regina had been so ill for so long that a single week of lying in bed and waiting to get better didn’t seem like a problem.
“She’ll be okay for a little while,” Fred had told her.
Arietta hadn’t thought in a million years that she would miss her mother’s death. She hadn’t thought she’d fail her mother like that. Arietta wasn’t sure if she’d ever forgive herself for not being there.
The fact that Shannon was there and Arietta was not was humbling, to say the least. But Arietta was glad that Regina hadn’t been alone.
“She wouldn’t have known you were there,” Fred told her when she said this. “She didn’t really know what was going on anymore, honey.”
“Hearing that isn’t the relief you think it is,” Arietta said.
Regina had requested cremation. She didn’t like the idea of being buried in the ground.
After the funeral, after everyone had left the wake and gone back to their lives, Arietta drove to the funeral home to pick up the urn filled with her mother’s ashes.
She sat in the car for a long time with her mother’s urn on her lap, crying quietly.
She wasn’t sure what to do after that. She longed to be with one of her daughters.
Shannon was the only one who answered when she called.
Arietta drove from Boston to New Haven, where Shannon and her boyfriend, Cole, were waiting for her on the balcony of the apartment she shared with her roommate, Dina. Shannon hurried down the steps and threw her arms around Arietta, who bit her tongue to keep from sobbing in front of Cole.
Up on the balcony, Dina came out. She frowned down at Arietta and Shannon, then raised her hand and called out, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Peters.” Her tone was flat and strange.
Beside her, Cole looked embarrassed for Dina’s sake. Arietta wondered if something was wrong with the girl. She knew that college could do psychological damage to young women. She made a mental note to ask Shannon about Dina’s health, then promptly let it float away.
After Cole left the apartment and Dina went back inside, Arietta and Shannon decided to go for a long drive.
As they traced paths around campus, around New Haven, and then around West Haven, they talked about Regina, about how funny she’d been, and about the mysteries of her beautiful life.
Arietta shared with Shannon that Regina had always found Fred’s money to be “stupid.”
“It’s funny,” Arietta said. “Every time I’m with one of our country club friends, your grandmother’s voice pops into my head. She ridicules everything they are. And I don’t know. Sometimes I find myself agreeing with that voice.”
Shannon looked at Arietta with big eyes and smiled. “I won’t tell Dad,” she said.
“Thank you,” Arietta said. “He wouldn’t understand.” She hesitated, then continued, “It’s not that I don’t appreciate all your father and his family have done for me over the years. Being a journalist was never a stable decision. It’s getting worse all the time.”
Arietta knew that Cole’s family had money. They didn’t have Fred Peters’s level of money, but they’d made a series of impressive investments and were often invited to what Fred’s mother called the “right” parties. She wondered what Shannon thought about that.
“I hope you’ll marry for love,” Arietta said suddenly, surprising herself.
Shannon turned to her mother, raising her chin. “Did you not marry for love?”
Arietta let out a surprised laugh. “I wasn’t a gold digger, no matter how much your father’s mother wanted to think I was. I genuinely and completely loved your father. I still love your father. The money was… convenient.”
Shannon held the silence for a moment, as though she were trying to deduce what Arietta wanted to say to her.
Often, Arietta felt that mothering women in their twenties and later teens was even harder than mothering young girls. During those ages, there was so much at stake. One wrong move, one wrong marriage, one baby with the wrong man, and so much of your life was ruined.
Several weeks after Shannon’s graduation from Yale, Arietta, Fred, Shannon, Isabelle, and Felicity went on a family vacation to Big Sur, California.
They rented a house on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, ate burgers, steaks, and bakery goods, and drank wine while gazing out over the water.
The trip was for Arietta to heal after the death of her mother, to spend time with her daughters and beloved husband, and to find meaning in life again.
Another reason was to spread Regina’s ashes.
Once upon a time, Regina had lived in California.
She’d been a comedic actress with dreams of performing on stage or in film.
After three years of auditioning without success in Los Angeles, she’d driven up the Pacific Coast Highway.
She stopped in Big Sur, where she’d walked into a diner and immediately gotten a job waitressing.
Of Big Sur, Regina had always said, “That place stopped me in my tracks. It was like I knew my future was waiting for me there.”
Regina turned out to be right. Three weeks into her waitressing stint in Big Sur, a man entered the diner for a cup of coffee and a slice of pie.
His name was Bobby. He fell in love with Regina immediately and decided to stick around Big Sur, too.
For weeks, they hiked and swam. They ate fish and laughed and danced through the night.
They communed with Big Sur locals and tried to get the lay of the land.
But when Regina wound up pregnant with Arietta—goodness, what a wonderful thing—they decided to move out east to be closer to family.
Regina and Bobby said goodbye to Big Sur forever.
On their third day in Big Sur, Arietta and her three daughters walked to the edge of the cliff and looked out at the horizon. Arietta held her mother’s urn. It was time to let her go. “We should say something,” Arietta whispered.
Isabelle went first. She was never frightened of speaking, even if what she said was empty. “We love you, Grandma. We hope your spirit is at peace now.”
Felicity nodded. “We love you, Grandma! We can feel you watching over us.”
Arietta closed her eyes and tried to feel her mother watching over her. She really wanted to feel that. Was Felicity making it up? Or could Felicity really feel Regina’s warmth?
Shannon went next. “It was one of the great privileges of my life to know you, Grandma. Your illness robbed you of so much, and I want to give my life to finding a cure for that. Thank you for giving my life a purpose. Thank you for giving me your wisdom, or as much of your wisdom as I can carry.” Her eyes shimmered with tears.
When it came time for Arietta to say something, she couldn’t find the words. A sob escaped her throat. She removed the lid from the urn, then tipped it, watching as her mother’s ashes escaped into the air above the ocean. She joined the rest of the world. She became one with everything else.
That night in bed, Arietta turned over and gazed at her husband’s profile. She could tell that he wasn’t asleep by the sound of his breathing. “Fred?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer her. A chilliness came over the room, one that reminded her of the previous month.
For reasons she couldn’t fully understand, Fred had felt at a great distance from her.
When she’d brought it up to him, he’d told her that it was her grief.
“It’s making you feel far away from the rest of us,” he’d said. “It’s making you feel like an island.”
But Arietta wasn’t sure if that was so. She felt something amiss.
Rather than pester him for information he didn’t want to give, Arietta rolled over and stared into the darkness. She imagined her mother’s ashes, still blowing somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, searching for peace.