Chapter 19
It wasn’t till the week before school began, the final week of August, that Bethany was allowed to return home.
They made her promise not to work. Take it easy.
Bethany begrudgingly agreed, because she wanted to be back in her own bed.
She wanted to hear the sounds of her children downstairs or safe in their rooms. She wanted to watch movies with them, eat snacks with them.
She wanted to feel Rod, turning over in bed.
Rod helped her into the passenger side of the car, then leaned over to kiss her. “You’re coming back!” he said, happier than she’d seen him in weeks.
When they got back home, Bethany was shocked to find that her three teenage children had made dinner and dessert.
Homemade pizzas, plus tiramisu, because they remembered what their mother loved.
Together, they sat on the porch overlooking the Nantucket Sound, drinking diet sodas and watching the sunset.
Bethany demanded more stories about the weeks they’d spent here without her, about their work, about Phoebe’s final performance at Alana Copperfield’s theater camp.
They didn’t disappoint. Maddie told her that, eventually, Johnny had come crawling back, begging Maddie to be his girlfriend again.
“He told me that he couldn’t live without me.” Maddie rolled her eyes.
“Where did he learn that line?” Phoebe asked. “It’s the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Just wait till you start dating,” Maddie said.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Rod said.
But Bethany knew that there was no slowing her children down from the lives they wanted to live. There was no pressing the brakes, not now that they’d gotten their first taste of what it meant to be alive and make their own decisions.
After dinner, Rod convinced Bethany to go to the sofa and relax for a while.
Maddie suggested that they watch a film together as a family, and Phoebe set to work, popping popcorn and filling water bottles.
Within half an hour, they had a Marvel movie on television, one that Tommy and Maddie had been wanting to watch for a long time.
Although it wasn’t exactly Bethany’s thing, she allowed herself to get lost in the story.
After a satisfying, explosive ending, she “hurrahed” along with her kids.
Upstairs, Bethany and Rod got ready for bed. Bethany was so happy to curl up against him and feel his hands on her pregnant belly again. She was so grateful not to hear the endless beeping of hospital machines. He kissed her in the dark.
They lay there in silence for a while, waiting to slip off.
But then, Bethany’s thoughts turned to Helena, who’d visited her in the hospital as recently as two days before. She couldn’t get her out of her mind for long.
“Rod?” She breathed. “Are you already asleep?”
“Hmm?” Rod turned over, his eyes still closed. “I’m listening.”
“I was thinking about Helena,” Bethany said. “You know what she told me the other day? She said that she’s been waiting to die for years. She’s just been alone at home, waiting for her liver to give up on her. I can’t imagine what that would do to someone’s psyche.”
Bethany could, of course, imagine. She’d seen it happen to many patients before. She’d seen that lack of hope and surrender destroy someone from the inside.
Bethany carried on, telling Rod about Helena’s divorce, about how she’d lost her parents in quick succession, about how her husband had had an affair with a close friend of theirs.
“It’s been one thing after another for poor Helena.
I can’t imagine. And I can’t help but think…
” She trailed off. “I mean, there’s nobody in her life to donate a liver to her. ”
At this, Rod’s eyes popped open. “Bethany…” He sounded reproachful.
“I know. I’m too sick to do it now,” Bethany said. She’d never been too sick to do anything before. This was a debilitating thought. “But Rod, what if there was someone else?”
“I don’t think Helena wants you scouting around, looking for a liver for her,” Rod said.
Bethany tried to sit up in bed, but Rod reached for her and gently, gently laid her back down.
“I don’t want you to get worked up about this,” he said softly. “Close your eyes. Breathe. Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
Bethany said they could, she supposed. But what she was thinking was that Helena didn’t have very long left. Who was going to talk about her health if not Bethany?
The Saturday before school began, Bethany, Rod, Maddie, Tommy, and Phoebe went to the Sutton Book Club to eat dinner and hang out with the rest of the Suttons.
Bethany’s father, holding down a large table next to his adopted son, Kade, looked formidable and intellectual until he smiled widely and stood to embrace Bethany’s family.
He always seemed more of a bear than he was.
Bethany hugged him, then sat gingerly, maintaining her smile.
Kade raised a hand to say hello, then burrowed into a book by Dostoyevsky. It wasn’t exactly a light read.
“Good to see you slowing down a little bit, Bethy,” Victor said. “You were always too fast and furious.”
“Ha,” Bethany said.
“No, but seriously,” her father said. “We want you to be healthy. We want you to be all right.”
Bethany felt the intensity of the moment, then lowered her head when it felt too extreme. After not knowing her father for so many years, sometimes his love could feel like too much. She knew this was a trauma-hangover, something she needed to shake.
Soon after, Valerie was there with her baby and her husband, Alex. Alex came over to shake Rod’s hand and ask him a question about sailing, leaving Valerie to sit with Bethany and gush about Helena’s paintings.
“Look at how perfectly it suits the room,” she said, pointing out the framed painting that she and Rebecca had selected for the dining room.
Bethany had by then looked through Helena’s paintings online.
But to see one in person was an entirely different experience.
It was bold and extravagant and free. It spoke of a woman who was uninhibited and not done with being alive just yet.
She smiled, knowing that this was one of the things that had brought Helena back to life.
You could feel it in each swirl of paint.
Maddie, Tommy, and Phoebe were downstairs, flipping through some of the books their grandmother kept in the library section.
Soon, they appeared with stacks of novels they seemed sure they would read before school started, as though they wouldn’t want to spend that time with their friends.
Esme seemed terribly pleased. She told them what she liked about each novel and how magical their time with the stories would be.
Their grandmother had become like a book fairy to them over the years in Nantucket.
Bethany felt a sudden, wonderful expectation for the books her mother would give her baby.
She imagined Esme, selecting story after story as her child grew bigger.
She imagined Esme teaching her child how to appreciate the wonders of the world through fiction.
It filled her heart.
That night’s dinner was lamb with spiced mashed peas and a decadent sauce.
It wasn’t a traditional New England meal, and that’s what made it special.
All around her, Bethany heard diners gushing about Rebecca’s incredible prowess in the kitchen.
When Rebecca came out to say hello to the rest of the Sutton family, a glass of wine in her hand, numerous diners reached for her, wanting to say a word of congratulations and demand answers about how she’d made her sauce.
“Don’t get up, Bethany,” Rebecca said when she drew near, dropping down to hug Bethany in her chair.
Bethany rolled her eyes. “I am sick of being coddled!”
“Let yourself be coddled!” Rebecca said. “Maybe you can find a way to enjoy it?”
Across the table, Esme nodded her head furiously.
“I remember after Larry died,” she said, her voice low so that Victor didn’t hear.
“I went to San Francisco and lay around on Valerie’s sofa and did very little with my time.
They were the least constructive days of my life.
And for the first time, I realized—maybe I don’t need to be productive all the time? ”
The words struck Bethany as bizarre yet poetic, beautiful. Maybe a life well-lived wasn’t one of incredible productivity. Maybe it was one of love, of rest, of eating and sleeping and laughing.
Maybe she still had more to learn, and therefore more to teach her children, both the teenage ones and the one on the way.