Ezra
Amy had tried to break the news gently when she called. “I’m sorry, Dad. I really wanted it to work out, but I just don’t see how we can manage it this year.”
He heard her sigh on the other end of the line, and instantly felt bad. “Though I understand,” he rushed to add. “I do. You and Ethan have your hands full with the kids, and now he’s got that new job.”
“They won’t give him the time off, Dad,” she tried to explain. “And bringing all three kids out there alone… well, it’s just too much.”
“You won’t be alone,” he said before he thought.
“Of course not.” She paused. “What I meant was the travel, the plane and such.”
Ezra knew she meant him, too. His grandchildren were all under the age of five, and Ezra was seventy-six, with a heart that wasn’t working like it used to.
He could not be the kind of physical help Amy would need with all three little ones.
Plus, there was the house. Perched atop a rocky bluff with steep wooden steps running down the craggy hillside all the way to the water, it was the worst kind of setup for toddlers.
It may as well have been made of glass and filled with alligators.
Just imagining the kids toddling about the perilous edges of his patio made his heart tick too fast.
But so did the thought of not seeing them. They’d missed Christmas, when Amy and little George came down with the flu. Ezra tried to cover his own sigh, but Amy heard it three thousand miles away.
“I’m really sorry. We miss you a lot, Dad. But we’re going to try for Thanksgiving, alright?”
Thanksgiving? That was six months from now.
“Alright then,” he’d said, sadly. Neither of them mentioned the idea of him flying to Seattle. His health was not up for that these days.
When the call ended, Ezra wandered to the patio and sat staring out at the water.
From his viewpoint, through the part in the stand of cedar trees that lined the hillside, Pleasant Bay shimmered softly.
“They’re not coming,” he whispered. Rachel did not answer him, but that never deterred him from talking to her.
These days she was the only person Ezra regularly spoke to.
He watched a man on a boat sail away from its neighboring mooring, though he didn’t know any of the neighbors anymore.
That was Rachel’s thing; the many years they summered here with Amy, Rachel knew all the neighbors by name, and their kids as well.
Hell, she even knew their pets. Rachel was like that.
She liked people, and people sure liked her back.
“Oh, come on,” she used to tease when he dragged his heels about going to a dinner party or barbecue. “You know the Rogers, and you like the husband.”
“I don’t know the Rogers, not really,” he’d remind her.
“And I don’t even remember his name.” Ezra, who worked long shifts in the Mass General neurosurgery department during the week, joined his family on the Cape only for the weekends.
By then he was exhausted, having made the traffic-jammed trip down the mid-Cape highway, often still in his suit, having left straight from hospital rounds.
By then Rachel, who’d spent the week alone with Amy, would be practically vibrating on the front porch waiting for him.
Their love was fierce, and they did not like to be apart.
But it was also the aspect of adult company Rachel would be craving.
Back then, all Ezra wanted was to shed his loafers and throw on his swim trunks, race Amy down the steep wooden steps and dive off the dock.
Perhaps a cold beer and some fresh fish on the grill.
And most definitely, after Amy was tucked in, to slip between the cool sheets while the salt air stirred their bedroom curtains and press himself up against his lovely wife. That was a summer weekend.
Sometimes Ezra got that. But sometimes, and he always knew by what she was wearing when she greeted him, Rachel had plans.
Plans of her dreaded sociable nature, that took them out of the little haven of their house perched on the rocks over the bay and into someone else’s house.
Where small talk and introductions needed to be made, and Ezra would be forced to engage with people he would be perfectly happy never to see again.
But he made the small talk with those people, and he often saw them again, because of Rachel.
Rachel was a butterfly, so unlike him and so perplexing to his scientific mind with her social proclivity, and yet he loved to watch her flutter through a crowd.
The way she slipped effortlessly into conversations with perfect strangers.
The lilt of her voice when she laughed at something someone said; the flush of her cheeks from a glass of wine; the way her eyes sparkled on the walk home, arm in arm with him, as she recounted the evening, the hem of her gauzy sundress rustling against his shins.
Ezra understood Rachel needed these outings like one needs oxygen.
Just as she understood he needed his peace.
The next morning there would be a warm frittata on the kitchen counter beside the Boston Globe, and the two would sink into the patio lounge chairs with steaming cups of coffee, the toes of their feet brushing against each other on the little teak table.
Wordlessly they’d read and sip and pass sections of the paper back and forth.
Then, finally, Ezra’s weekend would begin.
It was the pace of their Cape summers that became the pace of their marriage, the constant ebb and flow, not unlike the tide that tickled the base of their hillside and the shore of their little beach.
Rachel and Ezra, two peas from opposite pods, who loved different things but one another even more.
It was how their marriage had sustained them, through his entire career at Mass General, and later, his private practice in Newton.
All the years until he retired, something they’d desperately looked forward to, when he would not drive up to the Cape house alone on a given Friday night but rather with his wife in early June.
To stay not for the escaped breath of a weekend, but for the whole summer.
Where Amy, now an adult, would join them for a week or two or three with kids of her own.
Retiring to the Cape to enjoy the fruits of his career was Ezra’s greatest wish—the only one he ever made each year he blew the candles out on his birthday cake.
Double chocolate, made from scratch, by Rachel.
Ezra finally got that wish, but only for two years.
Two nearly perfect years before Rachel got sick.
As a doctor, a surgeon no less, Ezra understood the diagnosis.
He understood the prognosis, too. Medically, these things clicked with him.
But still, he could not wrap his mind around the changes to come.
The diagnosis altered both his life and his heart like a spring storm rearranges a whole beach, washing away swaths of land before it is finished.
When it ended and they laid Rachel to rest last August, Ezra found he did not recognize any part of his life here on the Cape anymore.
He could not make sense of the emptiness of the house.
He did not know his neighbors, and if he were honest, he barely knew his own grandchildren far away in Seattle.
Since Rachel left this world last year, Ezra was not even sure he wanted to be a part of it anymore.
The news from Amy that morning made his old heart feel even heavier.
He rested a hand on it now and looked down.
Whose hand was this, the skin thin and mottled with sun spots, the knuckles so knobby?
How was this the hand that once cradled the skulls of his young patients and performed delicate surgeries on their brains?
The hands that once held a scalpel now had trouble holding a paintbrush.
Ezra lifted his gaze once more to Pleasant Bay.
Even the name of it was an affront these days.
When the shaggy dog emerged from the bushes like a bungled missile fired from the neighbor’s property, Ezra did not see him.
Not at first. Which was a good thing, because the dog slowed only long enough to lift a leg on Rachel’s hydrangeas before continuing his course.
Despite not knowing where he was going, the dog was committed.
He rounded the corner of the house, tongue lolling, legs akimbo, as he made his haphazard approach. Spying Ezra, the dog accelerated.
Ezra heard the scuttle before he understood.
A brown woolly beast, most certainly a bear, hurled itself at him from the shadows of the patio.
There was no time to get a good look. Nor was there time to flee.
Ezra barely had time to tuck reflexively before the beast thrust its bulk upon him, a magnitude of paws and snout and something else… a tongue that swept up Ezra’s nose.
Ezra cried out. The beast recoiled, rolling off his lap like a furred sack of potatoes. Only then did he realize it was a dog.
“Bruce!” someone shouted. There was the stamping of footfalls and crackling of branches, as someone hurried through the brush at the edge of the yard.
“Help!” Ezra shouted. He could not risk another attack.
The sound of his voice caused the dog to launch into a wagging frenzy so fierce the back end shook the front, and it began dancing toward him.
“No,” Ezra cried, leaping to his feet. The dog cowered.
“Bruce? Where are you?” a woman called.
“Is this your animal?” Ezra shouted, one eye on the dog and one on the narrow strip of woods between his property and the inn next door.
A young woman emerged from the underbrush, her eyes wild, a leaf sticking out of her hair. She looked almost as unhinged as the dog. “Bruce!” she cried, spying the beast. The dog broke into a gallop, rushing to greet her like the yard was his own. “Oh, thank God.”
“I’ll have you know…” Ezra began as the woman fell to her knees and embraced the dog. “Your animal almost killed me.”
She stood up, taking hold of the dog’s collar. “Killed you?”
“Yes!” Ezra finally had the wherewithal to inspect himself, to be sure all limbs were intact. No obvious flesh wounds, but he was certain there must be something. The animal must’ve weighed 130 pounds.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman said, “he never runs away. I don’t know what got into him. He’s a really good dog, a happy boy, as you can see.”
“I see no such thing,” Ezra cried, brushing off his arms. No blood. No discernible bruises, but those took time. “Your dog tore across my property and almost knocked me out of my chair. You can’t let an animal like that roam wild.”
The woman made a face, like she might be trying to hold back a smile, which only served to infuriate him.
“I could call the police.”
“The police?” Now she looked like she might cry.
“Just take him away, please,” Ezra said, feeling a little bit bad. “And leave me to my peace.”
“My name is Holly,” the woman said, extending her hand and closing the distance between them. Which meant the dog did, too.
“Please. Keep the animal back.”
Thankfully, she stopped. But not the talking part. “Holly Goodwin,” she went on. “I run the inn next door, the Cranberry House. And this is Bruce.”
Ezra glanced sideways at Bruce who (was this possible?) had the gall to smile at him. “Bruce is our inn dog, and he loves everybody. Again, I am so sorry he got loose, and I assure you it won’t happen again. If you’ll please allow me to make up for your scare, I’d like to…”
“There was no scare,” Ezra insisted, straightening.
“Still, I’d like to offer you dinner. Compliments of the Cranberry. We have a fabulous chef—Greta—who puts her own Scandinavian twist on things. Everyone loves her food. And I think you might, too.”
“You can’t begin to know what I like,” Ezra said, crossing his arms. It was only morning and already he was finished with this day: The news from his daughter, Amy. The canine assault. And now Holly and Bruce standing in his yard, smiling, intruders both of them.
“I recommend her cucumber-dill gazpacho,” Holly went on, undeterred. “It’s legendary.”
At the mention of gazpacho, Ezra’s heart skipped another wonky beat.
He put a hand to it. Gazpacho was Rachel’s summer specialty—now, that was legendary.
With tomatoes fresh from their side garden and garlic from the farmer’s market.
Her secret ingredient was basil. Just recalling it, the bright taste of basil filled his senses.
As did the memory of Rachel’s face, watching him as he savored the first bite.
Rachel, sitting across from him at the kitchen table, as if she’d be seated across from him every night for the rest of his life. His heart calmed.
“Pick any night you’d like to come, and ask for me: Holly. I will take care of you.”
Ezra felt his insides soften. When was the last time anyone had offered to take care of him?
He dared a last look at the dog. “Will he be there?”
Holly shrugged sheepishly. “Yes. But I can keep him in my office during your meal, if that would make you more comfortable.”
“Well.” Ezra did not commit. Nor did he thank her. His morning was ripe with affronts enough.
To her credit, Holly steered her beast back toward the woods and led him away. “We look forward to seeing you,” she called, smiling over her shoulder one last time. “Big fat apologies, once again.”
Big fat apologies! For the rest of the day, there was no sight or sound of the young woman or the beast. Ezra puttered about the house.
He waited for his painting to dry. Later, he made one of his two usual dinners: grilled chicken, a small salad, and a piece of bread.
It was marginally more interesting than his other usual: scrambled eggs on toast. As Ezra ate his meal, a little tasteless and a lot dry, his thoughts drifted across the yard and through the woods to the Cranberry House next door.
He found himself thinking about the Swedish chef’s legendary gazpacho.
Before he slipped into sleep that night, he wondered what the dill twist tasted like.