Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
S ylvie remained in the attic with the diaries in front of her, listening to the clatter of rain against the slate rooftop. Her pulse was quick, but she was so immersed in her mother’s world she couldn’t look away. She had no idea how much time she’d lost.
I’m writing this on the darkest day.
Wally and I have just returned from the doctor with the news.
After four glorious months of remission, months that allowed us to hope for a brighter future, Wally is sick again.
We have another few months of treatment, followed by another waiting phase, followed by more mystery.
It’s the mystery that’s making me especially sick.
How do I get my mind around this? Chemotherapy nearly destroyed Wally and me the first time around.
What will it do to us this time? What will it do to me?
May 5, 1983
James Bruckson came by this afternoon to say hello to Wally and drink a few beers. His eyes were red, as though he’d been crying. They sat on the back porch and looked at the water, murmuring God knew what, and I watched them through the window, suddenly terrified.
What were they talking about?
Wally has told me he doesn’t want to do another round of treatment.
He says it’s too hard on his body and mind that if he’s going to “die,” he’d rather die standing up.
I told him that’s ridiculous. But now, I’m terrified that James has been rationalizing Wally’s thoughts.
After all, they’ve known one another for even longer than I’ve known Wally.
They’re men. They want to think like men.
What if James has told Wally that “being a man” means doing exactly what feels right?
I know that chemo doesn’t feel “right.” But Wally can’t just give up after one failed attempt. He has to keep fighting. I’ll fight for him if I have to.
May 7, 1983
Wally and I are fighting like wild animals these days.
He’s told me he won’t do chemo, and I’ve told him I’ll leave him if he doesn’t.
It’s a wild attempt at keeping him that I never thought I’d try, but it wounds him.
The last time I said it, he slunk away and sat on the porch, his rocking chair creaking.
I drove to my mother’s this afternoon to take care of things over there. She’s been in such a decline, so much so that I can’t help but feel that death is all around me. I’m only twenty-two years old.
Sylvie’s heart ached for her mother. No young woman should have had to go through something like this.
But the strangest thing of all was the inclusion of James Bruckson in these stories.
James: the best friend of Wally, the man Sarah Bruckson had hated.
Sylvie dug deeper, knowing that whatever had happened next had not been nice.
May 22, 1983
Wally agreed to begin chemotherapy today. It feels like a battle I fought hard to win, but I don’t know if I’m terribly proud of it. Wally’s already incredibly ill, throwing up in the bathroom and sweating in bed. I’m doing my best to keep him comfortable.
James Bruckson came by this afternoon. He wanted to see Wally, but Wally had finally fallen asleep, so James and I sat on the back porch and drank beers.
I realized I’d taken Wally’s place, at least for now.
James told me he was afraid that Wally would die, and I told him that was ridiculous. Wally isn’t going to die.
I remembered what James’s fiancée told me in January, that James was in love with me. For the first time, I thought maybe I caught a glimmer of that love in James’s eyes. But just as soon as I saw it, I looked away.
James and his fiancée are going to get married in August. Wally is supposed to be James’s best man. I told James that Wally would be ready for that. We’ll dance the night away.
But according to Sylvie’s mother’s diary, Wally was far too sick to attend James’s wedding that August, far too sick to even get out of bed.
Sarah became a sort of servant to Wally’s illness, hardly leaving the house, puffing up pillows, and putting creams on his chapped lips.
She called that summer the hardest of her entire life.
And there was a sourness to her language now, an aching depression that seemed to swallow them up.
Bit by bit, Sarah seemed different. A changed woman of twenty-two.
August 11, 1983
James Bruckson is getting married today. I can hear the wedding bells from where I sit in old pajamas in the front room of the house. The doctor came by to check on Wally and “monitor his pain.” The look in the doctor’s eyes told me everything I needed to know about the future.
Why did God give me this pain to bear?
August 12, 1983
James Bruckson and his brand-new wife swung by on their way to their honeymoon.
The wife was telling me how the wedding was the best day of her life, and she was flashing her hand around, showing off her ring.
James looked pleased as anything until he went out to the porch to say hello to Wally.
He left me and the silly wife in the kitchen to make tea and sandwiches and talk about stupid things.
The wife asked me when Wally would get better, and I had to fight to keep from asking her to get out.
When we sat together outside, Wally was in so much pain that he couldn’t speak, and we sat there like idiots, listening to James Bruckson and his wife talk about how perfect their special day had been.
I’d never seen James Bruckson so happy. Apparently, his wife was going to boss him around forever, and he was going to be thrilled.
When they left, I helped Wally to bed and stayed up all night watching television.
A beautiful life was never for me.
September 30, 1983
Wally died today.
October 3, 1983
We buried Wally today.
October 4, 1983
Maybe I should follow in Wally’s footsteps. Perhaps I don’t belong on this earth anymore.
Sylvie was struck by the outrage, fear, and sorrow in her mother’s words.
As curious as she was about how her father and mother had finally gotten together, she was far more heartbroken about a backstory she’d never heard before.
It gave color to her father’s past, to his anger, to his bizarre mood swings.
It was clear he’d never forgotten losing his best friend.
But what had happened to James’s first wife?
That came later, in December 1983.
Sarah wrote:
December 24, 1983
I told everyone I wanted to spend the holidays alone, but nobody believed me.
Everyone keeps swinging by with more presents and cookies than I can take.
I’ve told more than five people that I’ll just throw the cookies out the minute they leave, yet they put them on my countertop anyway.
They say it’s a tragedy that I haven’t decorated this year, but I don’t understand what the point would be.
It’s just me in this house. I’m twenty-three years old, and I have nothing to show for it. What would I do with a Christmas tree?
But a strange thing happened this afternoon.
James Bruckson came by with a pan of lasagna, which he put in my freezer, saying that I could eat it whenever I wanted.
His eyes have been so wounded since Wally died.
It’s curious. I used to hate James Bruckson, but now that he’s the only person in the world who understands my pain on a basic level, he’s almost the only person I can stand.
We sat together in the living room, exchanging old memories of Wally.
We both cried. And then, he reached over and took my hand.
I didn’t know what to say. I just looked down at our hands interlaced. It’s been so long since anyone touched me. Even when Wally was alive, he was too sick for anything like that.
Nothing happened. But my heart raced in my throat.
December 28, 1983
James came over again. When he got up to leave, I had the urge to tell him to stay. Instead, I asked him, “What does your wife think of you visiting me here?” He said she told him it was the right thing to do. He said, “She knows you’re lonely, and she feels bad.”
So I asked him, “Does she know we hold hands? Does she know we feel this way about each other?”
That’s when he kissed me.
I don’t know what to think. I’m a tangled web of sorrows and fears. Nothing feels right.
Sylvie read on. She consumed the story of her father and mother’s sordid affair.
She read about how Sarah and James had hidden themselves away, skirting around James’s wife and James’s wife’s feelings.
They validated what they were doing by reminding one another how sad they were.
But through her mother’s writing, Sylvie could feel how tormented Sarah was.
She could also feel how desperate her father had been.
By all accounts, James’s wife had been right.
James was and had always been in love with Sarah.
He’d never done anything about it, presumably because of Wally.
And now, he was too heartbroken about Wally to care about his wife.
But why was Sarah with James? This was an element of the story that mystified Sylvie.
Oftentimes, her mother wrote of James with contempt that ranged from mild to severe.
She spoke of everything James had done wrong, everything “strange” he’d said, every way he’d disappointed her.
She compared Wally and James in ways that made Sylvie’s blood run cold.
It was clear that Sarah still loved Wally, that she would always love Wally, and that she resented James for remaining alive when Wally had died.
February 4, 1984
I threw James out today. He said he loved me, and I said that was ridiculous. I told him to go back to his wife.
February 6, 1984
James is threatening to tell his wife about us.
I don’t know what that would solve. He says we could have a future together, that we could leave Rhode Island.
I can’t even see my way through today or this week, let alone a move elsewhere.
Wally’s from here. We’re from here, and our entire lives are here.
It was around the time of Sarah’s mother’s death that the truth of James and Sarah’s affair came out.
Sarah wrote in the diaries that she wasn’t sure how the truth came out.
Driven by fear of losing Sarah, driven by reckless love, Sylvie imagined that James had confessed to his wife.
He’d decided on a brighter future for himself and Sarah, one he imagined elsewhere.
By July, Sarah and James were on Nantucket Island, and Sarah was pregnant.
July 27, 1984
My body has betrayed me. Why didn’t it give me a child with Wally?
July 28, 1984
Sometimes when James touches me, I scream.
July 29, 1984
I have never been more alone in my life.
I walk through Nantucket with a brand-new baby in my belly and put my feet in waters that feel so foreign to me.
James spends all day applying for jobs and planning our future, and I ask him, “What future? Who cares?” and he reminds me about the baby.
His eyes always looked panicked when that happens.
Like he thinks I’m going crazy.
Maybe I am!
James says he loves the tight-knit community here. He says he could imagine us raising my children here. We can teach them to swim and ride bikes.
I have nightmares of Wally. I don’t think he’s happy about any of this. I told James, and James went into the back room to cry.
July 31, 1984
I called Melissa back in Rhode Island. She sounded strange on the phone, as if she didn’t want to talk to me.
I know that me and James running away created quite a scandal.
But I told Melissa, “That’s all people ever want.
They want something to gossip about. I’ve given you something to gossip about!
” But when I hung up, I cried for hours.
Melissa was my best friend. She was the maid of honor at my wedding.
I never should have married James.
With a sense of disbelief, Sylvie continued to read.
She read about her mother’s constant dissatisfaction with her father.
She read about her mother’s anger at Nantucket and how they weren’t immediately accepted.
She read about how unhappy her mother was when her father purchased the place that would soon become The House on Nantucket.
Her mother wrote: The last thing I want is to work behind a front desk all day. But James is so sure that the tourism industry is the way to go. He’s so sure that’s the only way to make money. I envision changing a million bedsheets. I imagine that I’ll meet a billion terrible guests.
Sylvie read about the day James and Sarah went to the hospital to welcome Sylvie.
Sarah wrote: All my life, I wanted a child. I never imagined how unhappy I’d be.
Sylvie got up and closed her mother’s diary.
Her heart hammered in her chest. The rainstorm outside escalated, and the wind pressed hard against the structure, making the old building creak.
Slowly, she backed away from the desk, then ducked down the ladder to the hallway below.
The House on Nantucket suddenly felt massive and empty and filled with ghosts.
She shivered and went all the way downstairs to find her sweater.
Back on the sofa, she curled into a ball and listened to the storm rage outside. It seemed to match her mood.
All she wanted in the world was to call Graham. But the way he’d been acting made her feel foolish. She felt aligned with her father’s first wife—the woman who couldn’t compare to Sarah Bruckson, not in James’s mind. The woman he’d left.
Sylvie thought, My mother didn’t know how to love us.
Sylvie wondered what that lack of love had done to her father. She imagined twisted, dark words. She imagined empty beds and passive aggression. She imagined Sarah telling James, “I never should have married you. We never should have had a child. I always hated you.”
For all these years, Sylvie had thought her mother was the perfect angel who’d died and left Sylvie behind with a monster. But it seemed that the real “monster” was Sarah herself.
Sylvie felt terribly alone.