Chapter 15
Greta woke up in Alana’s hotel room and in Alana’s bed. She felt a strange wave of comfort at the memory of the last time she and Alana had shared a bed. It must have been more than forty years ago when Alana had suffered from nightmares. It must have been the time before Alana knew how to show her anger to Greta and before Greta grew to resent Alana. How Greta wished she could take that back!
Alana had tended to Greta yesterday with the sort of mastery, empathy, and love of a mother. She’d intuitively known Greta’s needs and gotten her out of the restaurant. And she’d let her hole up in her hotel room and hide herself away from the ache of her own emotions.
But now it was time for Greta to go back home.
Greta got up, made a cup of coffee, and drank it quietly. Alana still didn’t stir when she got into the shower, dressed and packed her little bag. It was only when Greta touched her shoulder that Alana erupted with a start and said, “What time is it? Did I miss it?” Alana blinked and then collapsed back on the pillow. “Sorry. I had a dream that I missed my audition.”
“That was yesterday,” Greta said with a laugh. “But I know those kinds of dreams well.”
Alana sat up in bed, and Greta pressed a cup of fresh coffee into her hands. “It’s ten minutes after nine,” she said. “I’m going to check out of my room and head back to Nantucket. I don’t like leaving your father alone too long.”
Greta knew this was because so much time had been taken away from them. She wanted to spend every moment she could with him—even the dull moments, the in-between moments. She wanted to yawn beside him, laugh with him and watch bad television. She wanted to make stovetop popcorn and escape the sorrow of what she’d learned.
She hugged Alana. “I love you, sweetheart. Thank you for everything.”
“I love you, too.”
“When are you meeting the director to talk about the play?”
“Friday,” Alana said resignedly. “I know it’ll be tricky with Fourth of July and everything.”
“You’ll make it work. When are you heading home?”
“Probably tomorrow morning,” Alana said.
“You’re getting pretty used to that drive.”
“I hope to get really used to it,” Alana offered. “I hope to make it a part of my lifestyle.”
Greta touched her daughter’s hair and prayed beyond anything that Alana would get what she wanted. Her eyes were filled with light.
* * *
Greta got home a little after three that afternoon to find Bernard asleep on the back porch. He had his shirt off and a pair of jeans on, and he’d folded his hands over his chest and tipped his head back. His breath was light and sweet. Greta tried to tip-toe off the porch and back to the kitchen, but the screen door screamed and woke him up.
“Hello?” He looked flustered.
“It’s me,” Greta said sweetly. She returned to him and pressed a kiss on his lips.
“My girl’s in from the big city. How did it go?”
Greta grimaced. “Lots to say. But it’s so good to see you.”
Bernard stood up, and his body creaked and popped. “Look at me? I’m falling apart without you here.”
Greta laughed and wrapped her arms around him. “You look perfect to me.”
Bernard suggested they go on a walk before dinner so that he could wake up a little and stretch his legs. He buttoned up his shirt and talked about the past couple of days, how James had come over with a few of his friends, and Bernard had made them frozen pizzas that had turned out “like poison, or worse. I don’t know how I messed them up so badly. James was begging me to call you back home.”
Greta laughed and laced her arm through Bernard’s as they stepped out onto the sand. A wind kicked up from the Sound and spit bits of sand over their ankles. They were quiet for a good five minutes before Bernard said, “Are you going to tell me what happened? Or do you want to keep it for yourself?”
Greta sighed. She knew she owed Bernard an explanation. She wasn’t in the habit of keeping things from him during this era of their marriage. There was no point to it. So briefly, she explained what she’d learned about Celeste from her husband. It was a miracle she didn’t burst into tears this time.
“You should have seen me at this restaurant,” Greta said. “I was a mess. And I couldn’t explain to Alana exactly what was wrong. It took me an entire drive back to Nantucket to fully grasp it.”
Bernard furrowed his brow. He wanted her to go on.
“Around a year after she arrived, Celeste started talking about moving to New York to pursue playwrighting and possibly directing. I was over the moon. She had so much talent. So much skill. And she’d already teased me, saying, ‘Who says I’ll ever leave Nantucket?’ I’d given her speech after speech about how I was washed up, and she was the one with the future career. So, this was proof that my speeches had actually worked. We set to work perfecting the script we’d written together, and we got it into a really good place right before she left.”
“I’m sure it was a masterpiece,” Bernard interjected.
“The night before she left, I cooked an enormous meal,” Greta went on. “And we toasted her future career and future success. But all at once, she burst into tears and hugged me and begged me to let her stay. I’d never seen her like that before. It scared me. In retrospect, there was so much she wasn’t telling me about her past. She’d never told me about some stranger she’d been with before Nantucket, someone who’d probably hurt her. And she’d never told me about her mother and father and how lonely it had been growing up there. I couldn’t have known that I was this mother figure for her. Although…” Greta trailed off and wrung her hands. “Although I should have known! Part of me did know! But instead, I took her hands and said, ‘You’ve come too far to give up on yourself.’ And I remember what she said so clearly. It’s been echoing in my head ever since I found out she died. She said, ‘I want to stay here. I want to build a life here. I don’t care about that other stuff.’ Of course, this mortified me. I said, ‘What do you mean you don’t care? That’s what life is all about! It’s about art and music and pushing yourself! If you don’t go, you’ll regret it forever.’ And I was the only person in her life. I was closing the door in her face. She basically had to go.”
Greta’s lips trembled at the memory, and she pressed her face against Bernard’s chest. They stopped walking so that he could hold her as the Nantucket wind tore at their clothes.
“It wasn’t your fault, Greta,” Bernard said. “You didn’t cause any of that other stuff to happen. You saw potential, and you wanted to hone it. It’s what we’d been doing at The Copperfield House for years!”
“But I knew how much pain she was in,” Greta offered. “I should have done something about it. Maybe I should have moved to New York City and helped her along. I shouldn’t have made her go into the world alone.” She bit her lip. “Maybe she wouldn’t have gone through so much turmoil.”
Bernard took her small hands in his and locked eyes with her.
“I pushed her out, and I pushed her into a life that ultimately ended in misery. She gave up on her dreams anyway, maybe because being loved and protected was always more important to her. I didn’t offer her enough of that,” Greta went on. She was speaking too quickly. She couldn’t keep track of what she’d already said. It was all pouring out.
“You gave her all the love you had,” Bernard said tenderly.
“It wasn’t enough,” Greta said.
Bernard tugged her back into him and held her for a long time. Greta listened to the steady beat of his heart and felt herself dissolve. All she could think about were those four little kids who no longer had their mother, along with the devastating fact that they would never know the version of Celeste that Greta had known. They would never know the magic of her writing nor of her heart. And wasn’t that a tragedy?