Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-Four
Joseph
May 1977
Violet poses before a gilded mirror, her arms sleeved in lace, and tilts her head to put on a pair of pearl earrings. Bridesmaids, friends of hers from Tufts and Stonybrook, float around her in powder blue dresses, buttoning and adjusting and fluffing in a scene reminiscent of “Cinderella,” a fairy tale I memorized from all the times she begged to hear it, those nights when she still fit tucked in the crook of my arm that seem both a lifetime ago and a recent memory.
Jane, the maid of honor, kneels by Rain, adorned in a similar blue dress. She has filled out to her normal lanky appearance, a far cry from the skin and bones that came home over a year ago. Her hair tamed and pulled back, her eyes clear and bright, her confidence growing as her shame dissipates, thriving under the distraction of a routine, changing sheets, scrubbing bathtubs, confirming reservations. My guilt from those lost years heavy and thick, for not being able to better protect our daughter, to prevent her deepest pain.
She thanked me once, months after she came home. We sat at the kitchen table while Rain ate diced strawberries. She avoided my eyes, wiping red juice from Rain’s chin, as she said, “Thank you, for coming to California. For coming for us both.” I told her I wish I had done it sooner. She broke down, telling us about her time there, the man she followed across country, the ache she mistook for love, all the ways it splintered and sucked her dry. Rain born so small and new, and the parts of Jane that woke up when she had her, wanting to be new again too. The shame that kept her away from us long after she was born; the craving, the need for family that eventually brought her home. I grabbed her hand and Evelyn grabbed her other and we held on because there were no more words, all the words that exist pulsing through our grasp, changing nothing, fixing nothing. All we could do is love her, this woman who crawled her way out of hell with her daughter, who holds on to us now. A lifeline to the girl she once was, to the woman she will one day become.
In the bridal room, Rain, now two and a half, practices scattering petals, dressed in a flower crown and frilled skirt, while Jane fusses with her hair. Violet’s curls are pinned back in a low bun, and when I meet her green eyes in the reflection, I can’t help but notice how much she resembles her mother on our wedding day. Evelyn was about her age, tender and iridescent, the brightest light radiating in any room.
“How do I look, Daddy?” She beams and twirls with grace, like the ballerinas in the music boxes she used to wind endlessly as a girl.
“Beautiful, sweetie. Beautiful.” I blink furiously, hoping I can hold it together to get her down the aisle. I hug her close and kiss her cheek, then leave to visit Connor. The church buzzes with soft chatter and anticipation, rainbows of light stream through the stained-glass windows. Evelyn was checking all the guests are seated, and I pass her in the hallway. She is dressed in a glittering navy gown and her hair is curled and pinned in ways I haven’t seen in years, her cheeks rose-dusted and lips painted a pale pink. Our fissure had ratcheted closed like it had been waiting, spring-loaded; any struggle or misunderstanding between us paltry next to this—our daughter, safely home. A grandchild, a whole new kind of tenderness. Her tiny hand, a salve.
Evelyn’s beauty stops me, even in the pre-ceremony rush, and catches me breathless, sends me back to the moment she first stepped off the train. The highlights of our life together play on an infinite loop in my mind, stringing every moment that led us from there to here, from here back to there, and I am in awe all over again. Except, I love her so much more today than I did even then.
She reaches for my elbow. “How is she?”
“She’s so beautiful. I can’t believe she’s getting married today.”
“I know. Our baby is all grown-up.”
“She looks so much like you, you know.”
She smiles, coy. “You think so?”
“I do. I don’t know if I can give her away.”
“If anyone deserves her, it’s Connor.”
“He is a good man, isn’t he?”
“He is.” She straightens my bow tie and thumbs my chin playfully, and my whole body softens at her touch.
“I don’t know where the time has gone. Where has it gone?”
Evelyn shakes her head and gives a light shrug, but she hasn’t stopped smiling, a dreamy, giddy smile that reminds me of sun-soaked kisses on a deserted beach.
“Is Jane with her now?”
“Yes, and Rain too. She’s practicing scattering the petals all over the room.”
“Oh dear.” She giggles. “Let’s hope there are some left for the ceremony.”
Her laughter fills me and makes me want to confess every single thing I love about her. The wrinkles around her mouth, the sharpening of her cheekbones, the softening of her thighs. All the ways she has aged track every year we’ve shared, the proof on her body is the map that tells me I’m home, the scars and freckles I’ve traced with my tongue, that I could follow with eyes closed, the only place I’ve ever cared to know. I love her so much, and today I’m bursting to tell her over and over. But I don’t, because I love you has become routine, the period at the end of a sentence rather than the explosion of affection that erupts the first time it’s said. I need words stronger than I love you . I need a whole new emotion to describe the depths of which I care for the woman to whom I’ve given my life, and who in turn, has given her life to me.
“You better go check on the groom. I’m going to take my seat. It’s almost time.” She stands on her tiptoes to kiss me, and her fingers linger on my arm even as she turns away. It seems she is falling victim to the romance of the day like I am.
Connor is down the hall, on the opposite end of the church. I tap my knuckles against the door, and he shouts me in. His three brothers and his father circle him, redheaded with Boston accents, slightly stockier, taller, balding or mustached variations of the groom. I shake his hand and can sense a shift in him, from the young boy roughhousing with his brothers, to a man ready to devote himself fully to a woman. I direct him out of the door, his groomsmen and father follow closely behind. The ceremony is a blur of tears and applause. Violet radiates, and Connor trembles as he slips the ring on her finger. I study him during the vows, recognize the look of total powerlessness on his face. I know that expression well; it was the one I wore when I married Evelyn. It’s the one I have every time she gazes into my eyes, undoing me effortlessly and completely.
At the crowded reception hall, Violet and Connor are announced to a ruckus of cheers and after they share their first dance, they invite everyone onto the floor. I gesture to Evelyn to join me, although in the past it would’ve been her dragging me out, with some resistance on my part. Since Jane has come home, nothing feels so serious that I can’t dance with my wife. Evelyn presses her cheek to my chest. Violet and Connor sway near us, eyes locked in their own secret conversation, a love story all their own to discover.
I’m taken back once more to life as a newlywed. Of all the words we said without a sound, those days and weeks and months we hid beneath the covers. She made me so weak then. Even now I’m weak for her, heavy with the weight of my love and the ache of wanting endless years with her. To be able to start all over—young and new. To learn each other again. We met when we were kids, we were the only loves we ever had. It scares me to think if she had explored the world, if she had left Connecticut out of something other than grief, if she would have met someone else. If someone would have broken her heart, or worse, loved her as deeply as I do. If she would have settled for me if she had any other choice.
Evelyn shifts against me, raising her chin, her gaze on the glow around Connor and Violet.
“Remember that feeling?” she whispers, peering up at me.
“Remember it?” I stare into those ever-changing eyes. “I’ve never forgotten it.”
She presses her lips to mine and I stroke her lower back, pull her closer. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
The glimmer in her eyes as we dance, her contented smile, give me courage and I ask, “Would you have chosen me, again? If you had the chance to do the things you wanted to do? Would it still have been me?”
She is quiet, our bodies drift with the current of the other couples on the crowded floor, all lost in their own sweet undertow.
I’m not sure she heard me, but before I can ask again, she speaks.
“Are there things I wish I had done in this life? Things I have never done, and probably will never do? Things I wish I could change? Yes. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have regrets. But you, our children, everything about our life together...that’s a choice I’d make again and again. It’s always been you. Even when I was afraid. It’s always been you.”
She says the last part in a whisper, as if to herself. And we sway together on the dance floor until the songs and the people around us all fade into the most beautiful, soothing melody, like waves along the shore...until there is only Evelyn in my arms as the tide comes in and out, out and in, at once blurring and keeping time.
September 1983
We agreed to close the Oyster Shell for good after Labor Day, the mark of the end of the summer in Stonybrook, when the striped umbrellas are gone from the beaches and the seasonal cottages board up their windows for winter. We talked about it for years, built up our savings and imagined what retired life would be like, debated if we could really swing it, if we had the courage to shut the doors. We’ve lasted longer in the business than anyone else we know, over thirty years. There are a few other bed-and-breakfasts nearby, and we’ve seen the inevitable turnover of ownership, watched inns become private homes and private homes become inns. Most family-run places last about ten years before selling off or shutting down. The burnout rate is high because the demand on the innkeeper is constant—to share your lives with strangers, to be available and welcoming and invisible all at once. But selling the Oyster Shell, its cedar shingles as gray and weathered as I am, was never an option.
But now, our children are settled in their own lives. Thomas and Ann newly engaged, Violet pregnant with their third, and Jane once again the daughter we used to know, bold and adventurous, but not wild, not on a path of destruction. Just free. Eight years she and Rain lived with us, helping to check in guests, serve breakfast, change linens. I miss the patter of Rain’s little feet in the hallway, Jane sipping coffee at the kitchen table, but I’m proud of how far she’s come. Her own apartment, a steady job as a bank teller in town, taking journalism classes at the community college. It feels like as good of a time as any to turn the page. Unlike my parents, who were forced to close, to grieve it like a loved one, our dream wasn’t swept away by gale-force winds. When we closed, it would be our choice, not because we were broken by the work, but because we wanted to spend our time however we like, to let our house become nothing more or less than a home.
The last guest checked out, the room turned, their car long gone from the driveway, Evelyn grabs my arm, threads it with hers, and we walk together to the end of the driveway. It is the perfect September day, the slightest breeze, clouds drifting lazily by.
“Will you do the honors?” Evelyn asks, handing me my pliers, and I work the faded Oyster Shell Inn sign off its chain.
We look at each other, the signpost bare, the sign in my hands. Evelyn asks, “Now what?” and we both laugh. She wraps her arms around me, and I rest my chin in her hair. Our world suddenly so quiet, just us two.
She begins carefully, “You should figure out something ...this retirement is a gift, and I’d hate for you to waste it being bored.”
I say nothing, deeply insecure. She squeezes me, demanding an answer.
“But what am I supposed to do?”
She wiggles her eyebrows. “Anything you want. That’s the beauty of it.”
Easy for her to say. She has other dreams, other wants, besides me. Lists of them. I wonder, not for the first time, if I love her more than she loves me, if I’m enough for her. Why do I love her so much? Because she is everything I am not, and everything I wish I could be. I envy her. Even in her darkest days she felt more than I have ever felt, gone deeper into herself so she could be born anew.
I wish I had more to offer, some interesting secret to confess. There are things I enjoy about our quiet beautiful life, like hot coffee after a shower in the morning, or the cold surge of water around my body in the first swims of summer. But I’m not a dreamer. And although she wishes that were different, I am not unhappy. People always seem to know what path they were supposed to take, but I’ve merely drifted in the current I found myself in.
I resuscitated my parents’ dream, found my way without them all these years. Together Evelyn and I breathed air into dusty rooms, watched them bloom with chatter and life, raised our children and catered to guests as they did; we lived in the shadows of their memory, while they existed in the caverns of ours. There wasn’t room, or need, for anything more. For me it had always been enough. We barely had time even for friends, although we did our best to be sociable, Evelyn always the life of the party while I struggled to make small talk. I never again found a bond like the one I shared with Tommy. Relationships came and went with the phases of our life. Outside of Maelynn, Evelyn’s connections to other women were swept aside by bustling schedules and promises to get together that evaporated with the passing seasons. But like I said, I am not unhappy. And yet, I can’t answer Evelyn’s question.
“Are you listening?”
“Yes. I’m listening. I don’t have anything to say. Is it so wrong to want to spend time with you?”
“You’ll get tired of me if all we do is spend time together.”
“We’ve been married thirty-eight years. If I am not tired of you yet I don’t think I’ll ever be.” Her arms around me no longer a comfort, I slip out of her hold. “Let’s head back. I want to find a place for this.” I lift the sign in answer, something to do, for the moment.
She calls after me, “Think about it, okay?”
What do I want, Evelyn? God if I know. I want time with her, with the people I love. I want time with the people we lost. I want to go back to the beginning. I want to reach for her hand in the surf, my heart pounding. I want her to say yes to me all over again.