The pieces tumbled together in my head. Jenny telling me that she didn’t much like him when they first met. I don’t know, there’s just something about him . . . Fighting me every step of the way on the garden. Until she didn’t. Until they had that lunch together. I remember Daniel asking me: Did Jenny tell you I took her out the day the garden went in? That we had a long talk?
I know how these things work. And, of course, I know how Daniel worked. How he felt. He’d told me so more than once. He’d as good as warned me: I believe life simply un folds—as mysteriously and inevitably as a flower. And, if you have any sense at all, you’ll do everything in your power to enjoy the process.
And then there was Jenny. Whom I’d refused to listen to. Whom I’d turned my back on. The heart of Jenny’s life had been ripped out of her. And I’d left her all alone—facing that bottomless void. And who was right there to fill it? Just as he’d been there for me when I felt so guilty and confused. What drew us to him? I wondered. And he to the two of us? Did he sense how damaged we both were? How vulnerable? And to think that I was the one who brought him so eagerly into our lives! I remembered the night of Jenny’s birthday party when Daniel gave her those roses and the plans for the garden. He’d called her “Mrs. Horigan,” and I’d said: Honestly! Aren’t you two up to first names yet? Here, let me introduce you: Jenny, this is Daniel.
When I walked back into the kitchen, my mother and Kurt were still talking quietly across the table. I knew I had to appear to be calm.
“Hey, Mom. I’m going to borrow the Olds, okay?” A plan was starting to form in my head, though I had only the vaguest sense of its final shape.
“You get through to her?” Kurt asked.
“No. I need to check the number Jude gave me. I think I’ll just shoot back over there.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier to call?” Kurt asked.
“I tried,” I said, “but the line’s busy.” I didn’t like lying to Kurt, but I knew that what I needed to do couldn’t wait. The urge to move, to make something happen, propelled me across the room. “I just want to get this done.”
“Sure,” Kurt said as I opened the door. “But give me a call after you talk to her, okay? I think I’m just going to hang out here for a while—and check back in on Dad.”
“Yeah,” I said. I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t thinking. I still had the key to my father’s Olds on my chain. I sensed Kurt knew something was up, so I drove slowly down the drive. But I picked up speed, heading north. By the time I pulled into the parking lot behind Kurt’s place, evening had settled in.
I pushed open the side door to the garage where Kurt and I store our heavy equipment. When I hit the switch, the overhead doors rolled up and the ceiling lights blinked on. By then I had a better sense of what I was going to do. I found the key on the rack inside the door, walked past our trucks, and climbed up into the cab of the Deere Excavator. We use it for lighter jobs: site development, garage foundations. It’s a small but powerful machine—with a swing boom and reduced tail swing—easy to maneuver in tight spaces. I hadn’t been behind the levers in more than a year. As the motor kicked in, it occurred to me that this might be the last time I’d be driving it. My work life would be revolving around a sales office from now on.
At top speed, the Excavator can average a little more than three miles an hour. With the lights flashing and the bucket stowed, I crawled along the side of the road. I felt oddly at peace as I drove. I felt as though my mind had cleared at last. I could see now where I had come from—all those wrong turns and dead ends—and where I was heading. I felt confident I could reclaim my life—I could win Jenny back—if I could just make this one thing right. It was about thirty minutes before I made the turn off Route 32.
The Excavator bumped along our driveway until I veered off onto the grass and down the incline along the side of the house. A new moon had risen over the fields. Daniel’s garden was bathed in silvery light. I shifted into park and took one last look at the stone walls and sloping pathways. The bare branches of the pricey specimen trees just starting to thicken with new growth, the carefully arranged groupings of shrubs, the mounded contours of the perennial beds. I felt no regret as I rotated the lever and watched the bucket stretch above me into the sky. I felt only relief as I shifted into gear and guided the Excavator down the hillside.
I’d been at it for more than an hour when I heard the sirens. I’ll probably never be able to hear that sound again without thinking of Betsy. Despite the chill night air, I felt sweaty and a little feverish. It seemed like years had passed since Eddie had picked me up for the EBT meeting that morning. The sirens sobbed over the noise from the Excavator for a time—somewhere to the west, probably heading up the Taconic—and then bled away into the night.
23
Jenny
The Traegers’ kitchen faces east toward Broadway and is bathed in sunlight on mornings when the weather is clear. At the start of my fourth week there, I walked into the kitchen to make coffee and felt dazed by the light. It was late March; the sun dominated a cloudless sky. The panes of glass in the old wooden cupboards and the wineglasses drying in the drainer by the sink were shimmering in a way that seemed almost otherworldly. I slept a little later than usual that morning and woke up with a throbbing headache. Now I felt the dull, steady pain start to sharpen. It became something I could almost hear—a kind of muffled keening—like someone crying in a distant room.
My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the brightness when I picked up one of the wineglasses in the drainer and turned around to put it away in the cupboard. I felt it slip through my fingers.
It cracked against a metal drawer pull as it fell—and smashed onto the tiled floor. Several large shards—along with a dusting of pulverized glass—glinted up at me. My shadow fell across the floor as I leaned over to start cleaning things up, and a piece of glass I hadn’t noticed sliced into the tip of my right middle finger. Blood dribbled onto the tile. As I raised the fingertip to my lips, the noise in my head started to swell. Dizzy and frightened, I closed my eyes, sucking on my finger to try to stanch the bleeding.
And then, in that instant, my thoughts flashed back to Betsy’s last day. To that moment when I was strapping her into the safety seat. But unlike all the other times I’d tried to recall what I’d done, the memory was no longer clouded or confused. I could see it clearly now:
It’s almost as though I’m living it over again. As if no time at all has passed. The late afternoon sun warms my shoulders as I lean into the backseat. I feel the cool metal buckle in my fingers. I sense Tessa nearby—she’s bouncing Jamie in the BabyBjörn and the rhythmic movement rocks the Jeep a little. Then I feel my heart about to burst—there’s Betsy! I’m weak with joy. I breathe in her sweet, musty smell as I fit the two parts of the bottom buckle together—and hear a little click.
It’s funny how the mind works. It’s only now that I realize how I’ve come to blame Tessa for making me interrupt what I’m doing. How much I resent Jude because she makes me turn to Tessa and say:
“I haven’t gotten a chance to tell Cal yet. About Jude coming back.”
And why am I so afraid to tell him? Is it because I don’t really trust him? Because I don’t trust Jude? No, I see now that it’s because I simply can’t believe my own good fortune. My amazing luck. A loving husband. A beautiful child. Everything I could hope for in this world—but also everything that I know in my heart I can’t really count on. And that I probably don’t deserve. Because any minute now, everything I love could be snatched away. Just as on an otherwise normal day, my own mother walked out the door, climbed onto the back of a stranger’s motorcycle, and rode out of my life forever.
“Enough said,” Tessa tells me as Cal approaches. I know something’s happened between him and Edmund. He’s looking at the ground as he walks, and he’s not moving with his usual swagger. I can tell his mind is elsewhere. He’s lost some of his cockiness since his dad had his surgery. And, with business so down these days, I
know he’s beginning to worry. I fell in love with such an easygoing, fun-loving guy. But I’ve come to admire and am slightly in awe of the way Cal’s growing up, stepping up, becoming a man. As I lean back into the Jeep, I’m thinking how much I hate having to tell him about Jude—and dredge up that whole awful period in our lives.
That’s what I’m thinking about when I buckle the strap that goes across Betsy’s chest—or when I forget to. My husband. Someone I love too much for my own good. And I want to tell him so. That he’s my whole life. But I can’t now, because of this damned business with my sister. The timing’s off. I feel the moment slipping away. I realize how much I’ve been keeping from Cal since Betsy’s birth. And I know it isn’t right. Soon I’m going to have to tell him the truth: how vulnerable I’ve been feeling, how uncertain. How my mother’s shadow so often seems to fall between me and my own daughter. I kiss Betsy on her forehead.
“She seems a lot better,” I tell Cal. “Maybe it was just the heat after all.” I’m stepping back from the car seat and Betsy when I feel the incredible gentleness of her baby fingers, wrapping around my thumb. Her eyes are that Horigan hazel, shifting—like sunlight across pond water—from brown to green, from wary to warm. I feel a sharp tug of mother love. She smiles sleepily up at me.
“See you later, little gator,” I tell her as I pull my hand away.
I don’t know how long I stood there in the sunlight in the middle of the kitchen. When I came to, I realized that I was rubbing the bloody fingertips of my right hand together—index, middle finger, thumb.
I was able to cry for only the first few hours after Betsy was killed. And I was still in shock then—swinging wildly between a feverish disbelief and the abyss of reality. After Chief Tyler called on me early the next morning to tell me about the car seat, I was never really able to cry for her again. I would squeeze my eyes shut to try to block out the anguish. But soon I could no longer access my real feelings—it felt as though my heart had frozen over. I remember seeing Tessa weeping at the funeral, her body rocking back and forth. I longed for the same release. I remember wondering if people would think it strange that I seemed so composed. How many months have I spent seeing myself through other people’s eyes? Judging my actions through them. Awaiting a verdict. Knowing the whole time what it would turn out to be.
I leaned over the sink to wash the blood away. I watched the water sluice between my open fingers—and felt my body begin to shudder. I choked on my sobs—harsh gasps that burned in my throat. I could hardly breathe. Then I heard that high keening sound again—like an animal in terrible pain—and realized it was me. From some vast source of unending sorrow, I wept, tears rolling down my cheeks, down my neck, down the length of my body.
I cried until I couldn’t anymore. Until I simply didn’t have the strength to go on. Exhausted, I went into the living room and curled up on the Traegers’ formal-looking couch. I realized that I could never again sleep in the bed I’d been sharing with Daniel. Just the thought of him made me feel sick—in an immediate and physical way—as though I’d ingested something that had gone bad. The memory of his smell, the rough texture of his skin, the slight oiliness of his hair—everything about him now made my stomach turn. I rested my head on a scratchy roll pillow. But it was too hard, so I pulled it to me, wrapping my arms around it for comfort. It was the first time in almost a year that I could let myself believe I actually had the right to be comforted.
“Dad?” I said. The voice that answered the phone didn’t sound like his, and I wondered briefly if I’d dialed a wrong number.
“I told Judith you’d call,” he said. “Shall I get her for you? I’m sorry about what happened.”
I thought he was referring to our last argument, when I’d become so enraged because he suggested I needed to move on with my life. When he told me that Cal and I should have another child.
“No, not yet. I wanted to tell you something.” I hadn’t prepared myself for any of this. I was still a little groggy from having slept straight through for nearly eight hours. It was seven o’clock in the evening. I remembered hearing the phone ringing at some point. Daniel took most of his calls on his cell, but he’d changed the Traegers’ message to one of his, and for some time the sound of his voice rippled through my dreams. As soon as I woke up, though, I knew I had to get out of there—and away from him. I needed to get back to Covington. To Cal. I wanted to go home.
“Yes?” I could hear the quaver in my father’s voice.
“Remember when you told me that I should stop believing that—if I could only find a way—I might somehow be able to hold Betsy again? You said thinking like that could only make things worse?”
“I was too blunt, I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m aware that I don’t have a very sympathetic bedside manner.”
“No, you don’t,” I said. But I’d resented him so deeply and for so long that I hadn’t allowed myself to realize that in his own way, he’d tried to reach out to me. He’d tried to help. “But it doesn’t mean you were wrong. In fact, I want you to know that almost everything you told me since Betsy died turns out to be true. I only wish I’d been able to listen to you sooner.”
“Oh. Well. Thank you,” he said, pausing a moment before he added: “You’re telling me this because of what’s been happening in Cal’s family?”
“No, I’m telling you—What do you mean?”
“I mean what’s going on with the Horigans.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You haven’t heard? Isn’t that why you called?”
“No.” The room darkened. I could tell by his tone of voice that whatever had happened was bad.
“Is Cal okay?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so,” he said. “But his dad is up at Albany Medical. He’s had a massive heart attack.”
“Oh no,” I said. “Oh, Daddy. I’m coming back right now.”
“And that’s not all, I’m afraid.”
I packed my things as soon as I hung up from talking with my father, and I left Daniel a note that said simply “I’m going home—for good.” But I missed the last train out of Grand Central, and I was forced to spend a sleepless night at a nearby Marriott.
I called Jude before I left the next morning, and she was waiting for me at the station in Hudson. I felt as though I hadn’t seen her in years. She even looked different to me. She was sporting a new haircut. I started crying as soon as I saw her. We both stood there on the train platform, arms around each other, sobbing like children. She finally pulled away to dig in her shoulder bag for a Kleenex.
“Mascara!” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “Can you believe it? I got a makeover last week and spent about a hundred dollars on a bunch of damned stuff that just keeps coming off all over the place!”
“Why the makeup?” I asked her. I was stalling, and I think she knew it. It wasn’t only my father who had been right about things. There was so much that I needed to learn from her—but also so much I wanted to tell her.
“Why else?” she said with a shrug. “I’m so unliberated it’s totally pathetic.”
“You’ve met someone!”
“Yeah. Sure. Maybe.” As we climbed into her beat-up old Chevy van, she said, “He’s the stage manager at the Warwick Summer Theatre Festival. Did I happen to mention that I landed the role of Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
“Oh, Jude! That’s so great!” I said, turning to hug her again. “I feel like Rip Van Winkle, coming back down from the mountain after twenty years. The whole world seems to have changed.”
“Yeah,” she said, letting out a long sigh as she backed out of the parking spot. “It sure has.”
“Okay,” I said. “Dad gave me the bare bones. I need you to start fleshing things out.”
“So you and Cal haven’t talked yet?” she asked, glancing over at me.
“No.”
“He didn’t call? Because I’m really, really sorry, but he made me give him the number.”
; “No—,” I began. And then I remembered the ringing phone at the Traegers’ the day before. Whoever called had hung up when Daniel’s message came on. Oh God, had it been Cal?
“No,” I told her again, fighting back panic. I had to get back to him. I had to try to explain. But first, I knew I needed to calm down. Sort things out. I looked out the window at the rolling fields and farmland. The area around Hudson greens out a week or two earlier than our more northern Covington. Could it be that another spring was arriving without Betsy in the world? She’d be talking in sentences now. She’d be a little girl. I could imagine her, reaching up to hold my hand. The two of us walking through these fields together.
“Tell me what’s happened,” I said.
“Before we go into that, I’d like to know what—”
“It’s over,” I said, sensing what she was going to ask. “You were right. One hundred percent. I was so wrong—I really can’t tell you what I saw in him. I can only plead temporary insanity. And tell you that I’m so sorry about some of the things I said.”
“Well, you were right about me, at least,” Jude said. “It really is time for me to grow up. And I want you to know that I’ve been trying.”
“Oh, Jude—I’m so sorry—”
“Yeah. I know,” she said, glancing over at me with her mischievous smile that reminds me so much of Betsy. “I just needed to milk that a little. And you’ve already apologized twice now. So, okay, where do I start? I saw Cal yesterday—but, like I say, all he wanted was your number; he didn’t tell me anything. There were just so many wild rumors floating around! I decided to call Tessa. We talked before I left to pick you up, and she filled me in as much as she could. It turns out Edmund’s been cooking the books at Horigan Lumber. He’s been doing it for years, evidently. Nobody really understands yet how it happened—but it looks really bad for the business right now. The bank’s probably going to have to get involved.”
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