Chapter 7
I wake up groggy, pillow imprint on my cheek, my hand still tight around the bird urn.
Hazy late-afternoon sunlight streams through the curtains. Except for some traffic noise from the street below, all is quiet.
I feel low feline purring and a warm weight on the bedcovers.
Lucy. I’m so glad she found a Heathcliff-free zone for napping. Gently, I rub her back, and she stretches languidly, peering
at me through one half-open green eye.
I stretch as well, suddenly remembering I forgot to text Henry. Drat. I do have to start talking to him. There’s an ocean
between us now, so things can’t be that awkward, right?
Setting the urn on the nightstand, I reach down to where my suitcase lies open on the floor and feel around for my phone.
Instead, I accidentally grab Philip’s phone.
For his screen saver, he has a photo of us holding chopsticks up dramatically over a large platter of sushi.
I’ve seen this image a million times, and during sleepless nights, I like to scroll through his social media—his last Instagram post from the weekend before he died is of Heathcliff jumping inside his kiddie pool wearing a Batman mask.
His last Facebook post was of me sitting across from him at our favorite café.
I’m wearing a teal sundress and smiling wryly over an espresso. He captioned it “I’m the luckiest.”
Most people lie about how great their lives are on social media. But not us.
We really were that damn happy.
Sad and numb, I just want to keep scrolling. After looking through his social media feeds, I jump over to his saved photos.
There are a million of us. Buried amid the shots of Heathcliff and me is one from the week before he died. It’s a picture
he took with his phone of a photo from the ’70s.
I make the image larger: it’s a bunch of people at a party on the banks of the Ashley River. Steam rises from roasting oysters,
and people stand around sipping beer under dripping Spanish moss. I spot Mirabel, and she looks amazing—sporting Farrah Fawcett blond layers and a hot-pink trapeze dress with white leather booties. She’s laughing with a couple—the
man tall and blond in a blue seersucker suit, the woman red-haired in a fitted Jackie O. blue dress. The man, woman, and Mirabel
are dressed very sharp and look a thousand times more interesting than Ted. In fact, Ted stands near the large grill contemplating
the oysters. He looks the same as he does now, only a little less gray.
Ted and Mirabel would have been married around this time. (He came from an old moneyed family with a large trust fund.) And
Philip would come along about three years later. But who is this handsome couple? Something tickles in the back of my head.
Philip saving the photo, so close to that night he went to Mirabel’s for dinner . . .
My phone rings, jolting me from my thoughts.
“Ian?”
“Hey, Lizzie. I’ll keep this short because my international phone plan sucks. I’m worried about Dad.”
“Is he ok?” I ask, alarmed.
“Oh, yeah, sorry I should have clarified. Physically, he’s fine. But you know he’s never been super-talkative. Lately he’s
been downright withdrawn. Like he just wants to sit in his study and read articles about Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
“How isn’t that normal?”
“He’s not hanging out with people. He’s stopped giving guest lectures at the university or doing any of his morning nature
walks. Also, when I stopped by to check on him the other day, he was eating a Twinkie.”
“Okay, that is weird.” Dad didn’t even eat the cake at my wedding reception.
“Yeah. Anyway, I just wanted it to be on your radar.”
He asks me how I’m holding up, and I give him a brief update.
“Good. Just please, continue to take care of yourself, sis.”
After the call, I slump back on my pillows, half-heartedly stroking Lucy. Perhaps I should have gone back home to Indiana.
Guilt washes over me. Dad might need me.
Why didn’t I think of him?
Dad was a distinguished English professor specializing in American transcendentalism. And not at a little failing college
like Willoughby, but at Notre Dame. He published only in the most prestigious American literature journals. If his colleagues
were as terrible as mine, he never complained.
He wasn’t particularly emotional or affectionate. And yet, I knew he loved me.
How did I know?
On the fourth-grade playground, I accidentally hit Janice Falls in the face with a dodgeball, and like a banshee from hell, she pummeled me.
I came home humiliated because the whole class saw my underwear in the scuffle.
Dad took me out for ice cream. Of course, he never bought ice cream for himself, and he said very little as I cried and retold the whole story and licked my cone.
But he sat by me, and he listened, and I felt better.
Dad and Mom were a pair. She was a no-nonsense hospital nurse. She cleaned all the time. Like, you could eat off our bathroom tiles. She loved us, but she was a “tough love” sort of parent. There was no babying. Resilience was everything.
We had to drink a full glass of milk every morning. No exceptions. Good strong bones and all that.
Obviously, Dad and Mom weren’t the romantic types, but they loved each other like crazy. Mom would pull something out of the
oven, like her lasagna—cheese, noodles, and tomatoes put together with perfect precision. Dad would walk up behind her and
put his hands on her shoulders, his nose close to her neck. It wasn’t a hug. He just seemed in wonder at her scent, and Mom’s
lips would curve into a soft, happy smile.
In graduate school, when I returned from Haworth heartbroken, Mom listened, letting me cry on her shoulder for a full five
minutes before telling me that Wes was a “stupid weasel,” and I should never cry for more than five minutes over such a person.
Shamefully, I couldn’t keep my tears to the allotted time, so I wept softly in my bedroom until Dad knocked on the door: Do you want to go out for ice cream?
Mom and Dad couldn’t have been more different and yet they were perfect for each other.
I realize now how much she grounded my academic Dad in so many ways. Underneath my preoccupation with my own grief and widowhood,
I’ve worried about him and what he’s doing without her. Her constant cleaning, her perfectly arranged lasagnas, her scent—it
all anchored him.
I stare at my phone. Dad doesn’t text out of principle. He prides himself on staying “technologically disconnected,” as he puts it. I think it’s a transcendentalist thing. Emerson didn’t text.
I call him, but it goes to voicemail. I leave a message telling him even though I’m in London, he’s on my mind, and I love
him. I tell him my neighbor, Edith, is caring for the pretty orchid.
Henry: Are ya’ll there yet?
Me: Yes, but jet-lagged. Can we talk tomorrow?
Henry: Holy hell, have I hit some walls with your MIL. Piece. Of. Work. Will 6:00PM London time work?
Me: Sure
The dots start like he’s typing something, then stop. I hope we can dial back the awkwardness and wrap up this strange trust
business.
Blushing, I remember how nice that almost-kiss was.
Maybe we can just pretend the almost-kiss didn’t happen.
Lucy purrs into my side through the covers, and I rub her back.
I might be wearing nineteenth-century widow’s weeds, but even I’m not that delusional.
After a hot bath, I venture out wearing my favorite black silk pajamas.
Pausing at Heathcliff’s bedroom door, I watch him snoring softly. He has Philip’s hair color and face shape. I tug the covers
up and kiss him, inhaling that wonderful little-boy smell of sweat and cotton Batman pajamas.
Downstairs, Ms. Fernsby sits at the kitchen table with a scrapbook. “You took a good nap, luv.”
“It was nice. As was the bath afterward.”
She puts a red teakettle on one of the gas burners, turning it on with a few loud clicks.
“Have some biscuits while I reheat dinner,” she says, pushing a cookie plate toward me.
I realize how hungry I am. Soft and delicious, the shortbread cookies have a subtle maple flavor. After three, I remind myself
that well-behaved widows probably didn’t binge on baked goods. While Ms. Fernsby puts a platter of roast beef and asparagus
into the oven, I hesitate, then go ahead and reach for a fourth cookie. Widowed Queen Victoria certainly looked like she gave
up on squeezing into corsets.
I start flipping through the open scrapbooks. Most of the photos are polaroids with what is undoubtedly a younger Ms. Fernsby
and a look-alike girl.
“That’s my Mabel. She’s your age, and she’s trying to go back to school. She didn’t do so well her first time at uni. But
she’s a good girl and tired of working in the coffee shop.”
I stare at the little girl cuddling a Cabbage Patch doll.
“You’re probably wondering who her father is.”
“Oh . . . uh . . . no?”
“Lord Archibald Routledge—Sarah’s father.”
I almost choke on the cookie. Sarah never said anything about that.
“It happened soon after I started working here. His wife stayed married to him on account of his money, but she never fancied
me. I hadn’t wanted to hurt her. But . . .” Ms. Fernsby shrugs. “He felt badly and kept me employed. He was also always afraid
of it leaking out—that someone with the newspapers would learn he had a daughter with his young housekeeper. I had mixed feelings
about staying here, but I had nothing—no schooling, no money. He could give Mabel a life I thought I couldn’t. It’s his money
she’s using to go back to school.”
The teakettle screams. She steeps our teas and brings the mugs to the table with a little porcelain dish of sugar.
“It hasn’t been a bad life.” She spoons a teaspoon into hers and then nudges the sugar bowl to me. “But it never felt like
mine.”
I swallow a sip of the lavender tea, warm and comforting.
“He never belonged to me. The house never belonged to me. Mabel’s the only thing that’s truly mine, and I needed him to support