Chapter Twenty-Five
Twenty-Five
Joseph
May 2002
I hear the screen door creak open behind me. Evelyn appears in a floral sleeved dress, her long silver curls swept back at the nape of her neck, already dressed for the party. I’ve been out here since breakfast spreading mulch, planting red zinnias and combating an aphid infestation, trying to get as much done before I have to make myself presentable. The air is cool, but the activity has my blood moving, and I am warm enough under the sun.
She strolls down the path, something tucked discreetly beneath her arm. “How are Violet’s flowers?”
“Alright.” I point my spray bottle at the undersides of the infested leaves, the shriveled daisies a feeding ground for pests. “Let’s hope this takes care of the problem.”
She perches on her bench and in the morning light the dark circles under her eyes are more visible, purple and translucent. She shoves her hands into the pockets of her sweater, and says, “I love this time of year.”
Peak spring, the flower beds in full bloom, growing together into a kaleidoscope of color, the peonies like puffs of pink clouds, everything green and bright as it grows anew. A hummingbird flits around a honeysuckle blossom, black-eyed Susans quiver in the slightest breeze, the sun peeks out from behind a wisp of clouds. Many days spent like this, Evelyn keeping me company, reading or writing in notebooks while I worked. Sometimes I’d catch her gaze fixed on the violets instead of the pages in her lap, and I’d wonder where her drifting mind lands. Did she see me, desperate and waiting at the end of her walkway? Or was she in the very first moments, petals in her pockets, flowers in her hair?
She tilts her head back, warming to the sun. “Pretty morning.”
“Beautiful,” I agree, my eyes on her, the romance of the day, the excitement of the party, getting to me. Still, after all these years, so incredibly beautiful.
“I have a surprise for you.” She reveals a carved wooden box hiding behind her and sets it in her lap.
I scramble, unprepared. “I didn’t know we were doing gifts.”
“We’re not.” Evelyn drums her fingers against its lid. “I’ve had this tucked away for you for a long time, searching for the right moment.”
I tilt my head, intrigued, and brush the dirt off the best I can, wiping my hands against my worn jeans. She pats the spot beside her and I sit.
“I started writing you letters while you were away in the war and, well, I guess I never stopped.” She lifts the lid off the box, and it is filled to the brim with envelopes, my name in cursive scrawled across the front of each. “There are letters for when I wanted to tell you how I felt, or when I needed to get something off my chest, and one for every big milestone we’ve had along the way.”
“Evelyn...” Her name is all I can manage, overwhelmed.
“It’s a celebration, right?” She beams, and I am without words. Sixty years of her innermost thoughts captured in these pages, waiting for me.
“I don’t know how to thank you for this...” Again, as I often do, I wish for stronger words than I love you . She slides the box from her lap to mine, and I ask, “Do you want to be here when I read them?”
“I don’t know... I honestly don’t remember what they say. I never reread them. I just saved them for you, for someday.” I wrap my arm around her shoulders, search fruitlessly for the response a gesture like this deserves. “At first, I wrote them because you were away and there was so much I wanted to tell you, but then Tommy...and we didn’t speak. But I couldn’t stop writing. It helped me to get my thoughts out. Then as the years passed, it was a way to capture our life together, little snapshots in time. I was never sure when to give them to you, nothing ever felt big enough, but tonight, the party, it feels like the perfect time.”
She leans against me and reaches into the box for the letter on the very top. The envelope has yellowed, fragile to the touch, my name in faded ink across the front.
“Read them in whatever order you like, except start here. This is the first one I ever wrote.”
“Is it alright if we read it together?”
She nods ever so slightly, and I weaken, realizing after all these years, even though I have parted her thighs with my tongue, have spread my palms across her bare stomach while our own children lay nestled in her womb, have plucked unsightly hairs from her chin with my fingertips, that this—sharing these intimate letters, makes her shy.
I flip the envelope over and tear gingerly through the seal. The paper inside has yellowed, too, and I slide it from its hiding place. In the top right corner is the date: June 15, 1942. The year catches in my throat, so long ago. It was around the time we enlisted, before I knew war, when Tommy was full of so much life, fearless and brash, eager to be a hero. I swallow hard, and silently read.
Dear Joseph,
You and Tommy just left, and I sit on Bernard Beach again, this time alone. I wanted to chase that train down the tracks. I wanted to beg you to stay. I wanted to do anything but stand there as you disappeared. I am scared, Joseph. I am scared of not seeing you again. I am scared of how the war may change you. I am scared you will come back and you won’t love me anymore.
Love. I am uneasy using that word, like if I use it too much somehow you will take it back. You told me you loved me. You love me! Now I know, I can’t bear the thought of you ever stopping. I am sorry I couldn’t say it back. I’m furious with myself, regretting it since you left. I want you to know I do love you. I have loved you, desperately, for so many years, hoping someday you would feel the same way. And now that you love me back, you’re gone. Please come home to me, so I can tell you in person. I love you. I have always loved you, and I will never stop loving you. I am yours.
Forever,
Evelyn
My vision swims as I reach the end of the page and I’m yanked back to the present, Evelyn leans against me in the garden, in a new decade, a new millennium. So many years since she wrote this, the innocent, unbroken girl waiting for me on Bernard Beach. All we’ve been through since then, war, and loss, and the life we created right back where we started.
How young and sure of the world I was then, how she was the answer to it all. I have always loved you, and I will never stop loving you. I am yours. How desperately I wanted to hear those words while I was away, how much I needed to hear them when I returned. How the thought of her feeling the same way, still, sixty years later, brings me to my knees. My affection for her is almost too much to bear, the tenderness of her love illuminates me from the inside, fills all of my empty spaces with the purest light.
Evelyn
The garden twinkles with string lights, winding paths traced with tea candles and lanterns. Tony and Rain have handled the cooking, pasta with meatballs rolled by hand, his grandmother’s sauce, buttery garlic bread, and a salad tossed with olive oil and balsamic sent by family in Sicily. Red wine decanted on the table along with pitchers of ice water and strawberry lemonade, beside freshly snipped bouquets.
It feels like a wedding, a bar mitzvah, New Year’s Eve, a buildup to something new, something awaiting that is an afterthought to the night itself, because tonight is why we’re here, giddy with it, the merriment, the lights, and the flowers and the stars, with being together.
Violet approaches, hands me a flute of champagne. “You’ll need this.”
“There aren’t speeches,” I say, certain now there are.
Violet shrugs, grinning.
“Nothing sad, you said,” I warn, accepting the drink, knowing this night is already more than I could have asked for, that I can’t promise not to fall to pieces if my children start saying sweet things.
“I didn’t promise no speeches.” She kisses my cheek, and carries another glass to her father.
Joseph finds me, putting his arm around my waist as Thomas clinks his glass with a butter knife, and we all turn toward him.
“First, I’d like to remind everyone that bets are open—” he points to his nieces and nephews “—anyone want to guess the over, under, on how often your mom cries tonight?”
Violet swats him on the arm.
“Hey, you said keep it light,” he teases.
“Yeah, not at my expense,” Violet says, but she’s grinning. Connor sidles up to her, hands her a glass, and she squeezes his arm in thanks.
“You two aren’t like any parents I’ve ever met, or any two people I’ve ever known. It’s hard to explain, what it’s like, being raised by two people so in love. Truly made for each other. When I was Patrick’s age—” he tips his glass to his youngest nephew “—it was mortifying, to be honest.” Everyone laughs. “But now I see what a gift it always was. To be raised here, in this place. To have you guiding us. Not only helping us find our way when things didn’t go as we hoped, but for supporting us in whatever we chose to pursue. Jane, with her journalism, and me, with moving to New York, helping Violet and Connor all the time with the kids, and never pushing your dreams on us. For closing the Oyster Shell when none of us wanted to keep it going. But still keeping this place for us all to come back to, this house that binds us together, where our memories live. A place we’ll be able to return to, always, and feel close to both of you. I don’t say it enough, I’m sure...” His voice breaks, and I wish I was near enough to put my arm around him, but he doesn’t need me now, Ann is there, beside him, gripping his hand. “But I love you both, and anything good I have in my life,” he says, turning to Ann, “I owe to you.”
Violet dabs her eyes with a tissue, and she says, “Nice job keeping it light.”
Thomas, teary, locks eyes with Ryan and says, “First speech in, and we’re on the board.” Violet laughs, hitting him again.
“I guess I’m up,” Jane says, downing the rest of her glass. “Mom, Dad. How do I begin? Everyone knows we’ve had our moments, no need to go down memory lane. I kept things interesting, didn’t I? We couldn’t all be Violet, I suppose.”
Violet lifts her palms. “Thanks for that.” She shoots Thomas a look and he tilts his glass in cheers.
“You two are my favorite people on this planet.” Her eyes are shiny as she says it, and she catches her daughter’s gaze. “Sorry, Rain. You too. And that baby, while we’re at it.” She gestures to Rain’s belly, her dress stretched tight. “But the two of you.” She turns back to us. “God, you have saved me a million times, in a million ways, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am. How lucky I feel to have made it this far, when it could have been so different. Those years that Rain and I lived here, I can’t thank you enough. Can’t explain what it meant to feel so safe, to share her childhood with you, to have you there for bedtime stories, and her first days of school, and every lost tooth. For helping me find solid footing again so I could build my own life, and make her proud. Becoming a mother taught me so much about us, Mom.” She turns to me, and my eyes fill. “All the ways you were there for me that I was too stubborn to see. And, Dad, you were always my rock, the one place I could land, and you never let me forget I could always come home. And this will always be your home, too, we will always be your home...” She pauses and I think she will say, with or without mom, but she doesn’t, and it hangs in the air as she continues, “Thomas was right about this place, we are lucky to have grown up here, but more than that, we were lucky to have you both, waiting here with open arms.”
Joseph is crying now, too, and I can’t take another, it’s too much, I’ll never be able to thank them for tonight, for feeling so loved, so lucky, so overwhelmed with gratitude, but before I can protest, Violet is standing, wiping her eyes. “And I’m supposed to follow that?” She blinks furiously, and smiles through her tears. “We had one rule,” she says, shooting her siblings a look. “So instead of a long speech, because quite honestly, we all know I’d never be able to get through that. I’ll just say this.” She turns to us, eyes rimmed red. “We love you. We are so thankful that you are ours, that you raised us to love the beach, and each other, and because of that, because of everything you’ve given us, if we ever feel alone—” her voice catches “—when we hear the waves, we can close our eyes, and be right here again, with you.”
We lift our glasses, tears streaming down our cheeks.
“Cheers,” Joseph says, “we love you all.”
The grandchildren clear the table and someone turns up the stereo, making way for a grassy dance floor. Marcus is here, and he leads Jane out with him, and I wonder how much context he has, under what guise she invited him tonight. But the way he holds her around the waist, the way she tips her head back in laughter, gives me my answer. There’s nothing about her, about us, he doesn’t know.
A song, “Brandy,” by the band Looking Glass comes on, and Violet and Connor bob and sway to the beat, the grandkids joining in, singing. Thomas and Ann, and Rain and Tony join in, shouting the lyrics and dancing along, singing the story of a sailor, and the girl he left behind to chase the sea.
“Look at them, Joseph.” My voice more breath than sound.
He squeezes my hand. “I know. Who would’ve thought we would be so lucky?”
Our three, and the ones they love, and the ones they made, all here tonight. Their lives now the only thread to follow; their choices and mistakes and triumphs and regrets, the people they will meet, the families they will create, their songs reverberating long after we’re gone.
“They could not be more different.” I laugh. “Are we sure they’re all ours?” But in truth, they have never seemed as alike as they do in this moment. I can see Joseph in each of them, in Violet’s easy smile, her affection with her siblings, Thomas’s frame, his quiet confidence, Jane’s devotion to her daughter. Violet threads her arms around Thomas, and around Jane, their youngest sister between them, and they dance, rooted together, three completely different people, branches of the same sturdy, steady tree. “They make me so happy, every one of them.”
“I always hoped they would,” Joseph says, kissing me.
“Let’s join them, shall we?”
We make our way to the edge of the grass, and Thomas turns to us with a wide smile. Usually we are the ones to reach for a hug, to show our affection, but tonight he is unbridled, he is joy, and he is here, fully here, and he reaches toward us.
For the first time, he pulls us into his open arms.