Chapter 6
Once we exit the interstate, the drive to Alice’s farm is all country roads.
Hannah and I spot cows and horses, goats and pigs, red barns with weather vanes, gabled houses with deep porches, and green hilly pastures under sprawling oaks just begging for a tire swing. The bucolic scenery puts Hannah to sleep for the last fifteen minutes of the four-hour drive.
When we finally turn into the entrance of Alice’s property, a wave of nostalgia bubbles up inside me like a pot overflowing on the stove. I remember. It isn’t distinct. It’s more like a blurred-edge black-and-white movie, unfocused, reminiscent of a dream.
Alice’s farmhouse is a white Queen Anne, with a large spindled porch and grand steps leading up to it.
There’s a steep roof and a whimsical corner tower called a turret, exuding Victorian charm.
A carved wooden sign that reads “Rosehill” hangs to the left of the front door.
I see a woman who I assume is Alice raise her hand to shelter her eyes from the midday sun.
She’s tall with a thick build, muscular and robust. Her long curly silver hair has been wrangled into a braid that hangs down one side.
She wears sturdy blue jeans rolled up at the bottom and a blue, billowy cotton flowered blouse.
And Birkenstock sandals.
She’s at my car door by the time I unbuckle and exit. She says nothing at first, just embraces me. Tears sting my eyes. I don’t fight them, and they fall.
Alice pulls back from our hug and holds me at arm’s length and shakes her head, as if she can’t believe it’s me, that I’m all grown up, that I’m an adult. She then holds my face in her hands and wipes my tears with her thumb.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” she says.
I look away from her ocean-blue eyes. They seem to peer a bit too deeply into my soul. I gesture to the house. “I remembered it. The minute I saw it.”
“Of course you did. We never forget where we belong.” She peeks behind me. “Now, where is Hannah Banana?”
I gesture to the back seat. “Asleep.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” she says, opening the door to remove her from her car seat. “Now she can stay awake to see the stars.”
Hannah stirs as Alice lifts her and straddles her on her hip. I can barely carry Hannah anymore, but the load of a five-year-old seems to be light work for Alice.
“Are we there yet?” Hannah asks, still sleepy.
“You are here, my baby girl,” Alice says.
My baby girl. The words shoot through me like a bolt of lightning. Alice called me that in her letters.
Now awake, Hannah looks directly into Alice’s eyes. “You’re my Great-Great-Aunt Alice,” Hannah announces.
“Yeah, I’m pretty great.” She chuckles. “And you are Hannah Banana.”
Hannah smiles at her new nickname.
“Hannah, I have a very important question for you,” Alice says in a serious tone. “Do you like grilled cheese?”
Hannah nods wholeheartedly.
“And tomato soup?”
Hannah smiles and nods again.
“Well then, you are in for a treat. Because I make the best grilled cheese and the best tomato soup. With local butterk?se cheese and tomatoes from my very own garden.”
“Wow,” Hannah says.
“Wow, indeed.” Alice lowers Hannah to the ground and takes her hand. “Leave your things here. We’ll get them later,” she adds, walking hand in hand with Hannah to the rear of the farmhouse.
I’m about to protest and say we should unload the car first, but instead, I follow them to the backyard garden, and I soon feel a wave of heat where there are no trees and no shade. The sun sits high and beams down on the large plots my great-aunt sows.
“We’re going to pick some lettuce for a salad,” she explains. “But first come see my rhubarb patch.”
I notice an area of deep growth, with large, almost tropical-looking green leaves.
“That’s rhubarb?” I ask.
“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Alice squats beside the plants, at Hannah’s level, and begins her first gardening lesson. “You see these leaves?” she asks Hannah.
“You can’t eat them,” Hannah replies. “They make your tummy sick.”
“Very good. That’s right.” She glances at me, impressed with Hannah’s knowledge, then provides a more scientific explanation.
“Oxalic acid.” She lifts the large canopy of leaves to reveal beautiful red-hued stalks beneath.
“But this right here you can eat to your heart’s desire.
It’s tart like a lemon, but with some sugar?
It’s pure heaven. Do you like dessert, Hannah? ”
Hannah licks her lips. “Yes, please.”
Alice lets out a hearty laugh. “Well, then I know exactly what we’ll have for dessert tonight. My blueberry-rhubarb crisp with homemade whipped cream. And you can help me make it.” She taps Hannah on the tip of her nose.
“Blueberry?” I repeat. “Not strawberry?”
“Honey, you can put just about any fruit with rhubarb. Blueberries aren’t in season yet. But lucky for us, I have some frozen from last year, and that’s what we’re going to use to make the crisp. When it comes to rhubarb, I prefer blueberry over strawberry. You will too.”
Her assured tone reminds me of the certainty of her letter. The time has come. But I’m not offended. If she’s the kind of person who freezes fruit to enjoy peak produce all year long, then I’m apt to believe her.
I probably will prefer the blueberry.
Hannah goes to bed without dessert.
Not as a punishment, but as a mere consequence of running around in the sun too long.
When it’s time for eating the blueberry-rhubarb crisp, which she prepared with Alice this afternoon, Hannah is fast asleep on the porch wicker sofa.
I see her cheeks are pink as salmon, and wince.
We didn’t apply sunscreen, even though I packed the bottle April bought the other day.
That always seems to happen in late May and early June as we adapt to the new weather.
I decide to let her sleep on the porch, in the fresh country air, for a little while longer while Alice and I enjoy the crisp.
There are no mosquitoes to bother her yet, just the heavenly scent of lilac bushes at the end of their ephemeral bloom.
I join Alice at a wicker café table with two chairs. She sets out two plates of the crisp, dolloped with whipped cream. She’s also poured us two cups of decaffeinated coffee.
“She looks just like you,” Alice says.
I smile. Hannah has my brown curly hair and blue-green eyes. “Yeah, she does.”
“And Sean? Does she look like him too?”
She says his name with such love, such compassion, as if she knew him.
“She has his smile,” I say. “I would call it an impish grin. And she has his dry sense of humor.”
Alice adds creamer to her coffee and stirs. “You miss him.”
I nod.
“It’s the hardest part, isn’t it? Of loving someone. Saying goodbye. Letting them go.”
Somehow, Alice seems to understand my loss better than my own mother, friends, anyone. She takes a sip of her coffee and sets it down with a clink into the saucer.
“That’s an old lady’s roundabout way of saying it was hard letting you go,” she adds, digging her spoon into the crisp. “It was a different kind of goodbye. Not the same as Sean.”
I let my dessert and coffee sit. “Alice, I hope you know, my mother never told me about you. I’ve literally gone my whole life never knowing that I lived with you, that you raised me for three years.
And all those letters and cards you sent over the years?
My mother never gave them to me. I just read them for the first time yesterday.
It was disorienting, almost like finding out I’d been adopted, but not quite.
” I realize I’m rambling. “My mother kept it a secret because she didn’t want me to find out that she outsourced her parenting.
And I’m so sorry. Had I known, I would have . . .”
Alice makes a shushing sound, as if consoling a colicky baby. “None of that matters now.” She sighs. “Though, I always wondered if you remembered your time here. But you were so young.”
“It’s coming back to me,” I say. “Memories of things I thought took place elsewhere or with my mom. Like, I remember biting into a tomato like an apple and warm juice dripping down my chin.”
Alice throws her head back and laughs, flashing all her teeth and a few silver fillings. “You just loved those tomatoes. Your shirt collars were always stained a watercolor orange.”
Alice’s laughter relaxes my shoulders, and I finally sneak a bite of the crisp. The mild sweetness of the blueberry makes a difference. “Alice, I do prefer the blueberry. It lets the rhubarb shine more than strawberry.”
“See? And it’s quicker too. With strawberries, you have to remove the tops and slice them. Extra work. The blueberries need no prep.”
I sip my coffee and take a deep breath as I hold the warm mug in my hand, soaking in the beauty of this peaceful night on Alice’s porch. If the purpose of this vacation is relaxation, I’ve come to the right place, I think.
“Tell me more,” I say. “About my time here.”
Alice’s eyes meet mine. “It was the loveliest three years of my life. We just . . . got along, you and me. Like peanut butter and jelly. It didn’t matter whether we were playing a game or reading or cooking or baking.
Or if we just sat quiet, staring at the stars.
We had a rhythm. Being with each other was the same as being alone. Does that make sense?”
I nod. “I have that with Hannah.”
“I can tell.”
“But I didn’t have it with my mom. I still don’t.”
Alice shrugs. “We’re not all cut from the same cloth.”
I think back to all the times in my life I felt different from my mother.
Disconnected. Especially about food. “I used to frustrate her a lot,” I share.
“Other kids would have loved a frozen pizza for dinner, but I took one bite and said it tasted like salty cardboard. And another time, I stained the countertop making blackberry jam, because the cheap stuff she bought ‘didn’t have real fruit in it.’”
Alice smiles. “You had a sophisticated palate.”
“Thank you. Unfortunately, she just thought I was picky. She’d say ‘Why can’t you eat like a normal kid?
’ or ‘Just eat it. There are starving kids in China!’ You know, no one else—my mother, my aunts, my cousins—seemed to have any interest in food except to eat it, and quickly.
My mom doesn’t cook. Or bake. She basically microwaves things. ”
“I know. And my brother, Albert Jr., rest his soul, couldn’t boil water to save his life.”
“Then I must have gotten my love of food and cooking from you,” I say.
She smiles. “Maybe you were born that way, honey. Maybe we both got the foodie gene. But I suppose living here with me probably sparked your natural interest even more. We were always in the kitchen or garden or market.”
I sense the impact of Alice’s vacancy in my life. “I just wish we had stayed in touch all this time,” I say. “If only my mother hadn’t hidden our past away, hadn’t hidden you away.”
Alice shrugs. “I suppose she had her reasons.”
“Did she?”
“She loves you very much,” she says emphatically. “She just had a hard time balancing her love for you with her love for herself.”
My mother in a nutshell. Well put.
“Does she know you’re here?” Alice asks.
I nod. I texted my mother last night to thank her for the box of letters and to tell her we were going to see Alice after all. She texted back Have a nice time, and that was that.
“We don’t talk all that often,” I tell Alice. “Maybe every few weeks.”
Alice nods.
“So how did you find me?” I ask.
“The internet. Turns out it can be useful sometimes. I went to the library in town and looked you up. The librarian had to show me how to do it. I saw some great articles about your exhibit opening at the museum, and I even found your address. Good thing I’m not some crazed psychopath.
That internet is scary. Too much information at your fingertips. ”
It’s my turn to laugh. She’s right. I suddenly wish I could live as simply as Alice, without internet or a cell phone.
I realize now that I haven’t looked at my phone all day, and my laptop is still packed away.
I debated about bringing it along—Elena would have told me not to—but I decided I should, just in case.
And yet, we’ve been too busy eating and talking and gardening and swimming in the pond.
I wonder if I’ll even open it this week.
“I looked you up too,” I say. “After I got your letter. I didn’t find much. Just a recipe for zucchini bread in the town newspaper. Magpie’s Zucchini Bread. Do you have more recipes? I’d love to see them.”
“More recipes?” She lets out another hearty laugh. “You might regret asking me that question.”