Tilda's Promise

by Jean P. Moore

  Darren didn’t say anything else, but there were so many unanswered questions. Tilda knew it best not to overwhelm him, but she opted just the same to ask at least a few.

  “Is that how you left it, then? That she wants to come home, and it’s up to you to decide? Has she talked to Lizzie about any of this?”

  “Lizzie knows. She’s been leaving Post-it notes everywhere, all about forgiveness. Not very subtle, but I get the message. I know what she wants, and I have to say, Amanda doesn’t want Lizzie to be the reason I would take her back. Not that I’ve hinted of that to Lizzie. But of course, I have to think about her. This whole thing is as much about Lizzie as it is about me.”

  “So what do you think?” she asked.

  He shook his head and almost hissed. “A lot of nerve, that’s what I think. She leaves, has an affair, says she loves him, but it’s time to let him go. What does that even mean? What am I supposed to make of that?” He drew in his lips and continued to shake his head, in awe, it seemed, of his wife’s . . . what . . . gall?

  Tilda had to agree it sounded outrageous. By “following her bliss” Amanda had left a wake of despair. And yet . . . Tilda couldn’t believe she was beginning to feel some sympathy for Amanda.

  “She also said she loves you, Darren. I guess it’s hard to think that counts for anything, but it is possible, you know, that she does love you . . . very much . . . and she does want to come home for that reason.”

  Darren was unmoved.

  “And about letting Emile go. I don’t know, maybe that means she knows that it isn’t right to stay with him if it was his grief that drew her to him in the first place. Maybe it was a complicating set of circumstances, and it took her a long time to sort it out. I don’t know if that makes any sense.”

  When Darren remained silent, she continued. “Maybe Lizzie is onto something with her messages of forgiveness. Look, Darren, this is what I think, if it’s okay.”

  He looked at her, his eyes beginning to fill, Tilda thought. He nodded.

  “If you find that under your hurt and your anger there is even a shred, a tiny shred, of love left, then forgiveness is possible. Possible. And maybe worth the chance.”

  Darren looked away and wiped his eyes before standing to face her. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “Thank you for listening. I shouldn’t be putting this on you.”

  Tilda walked him to the door and once again restrained herself from offering a hug. He seemed withdrawn, and she was beginning to regret her advice. Still a meddling old bitty, she said to herself as she closed the door.

  Then the phone rang. It was Laura wondering if her mother was up to a visit. Tilda hadn’t had such an active Saturday in some time. “Of course I’m up to a visit. What does it take? I’ve already been out and done the shopping and had a guest.”

  She told Laura about Darren only to learn that Harper knew most of it and had already told Laura. “I don’t think it’s a secret,” said Laura. “But I have news. Harper got her period.”

  “Really? When?” Tilda sounded so casual, even to herself, she thought. But her words belied her surprise.

  “Last Thursday.” Tilda was more than a little miffed that it had taken over a week for Laura to be sharing this news. She wished that Harper had called and told her, but she put her hurt feelings aside. Her primary reaction was actually relief. To her the news signified a reduced likelihood of hormone blockers, but this she kept to herself. “Oh, how wonderful,” she said. “How is Harper taking it?”

  “Okay, I think. But I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. You haven’t been to Shabbat dinner. How about tomorrow?”

  Tilda immediately said yes without her usual first reaction: searching for a reason to decline the offer. It would be good to see Harper free of worries—at least, Tilda would be free of worries, but she wasn’t sure about Harper.

  Harper wasn’t sure she wanted to go back to see Dr. Miriam. What had been easy, talking to her, was becoming hard and confusing. Besides, she was in it now. She’d had her period. It would be years before hormone therapy would change that truth, that she was changing from a girl to a woman. And then what? Even if finally Dr. M agreed to hormones, what then? Her period would stop, and she’d become a boy? She wasn’t sure, not really, that that would be any better. She’d still have to be a something, and she didn’t feel like being an anything. Why did she have to choose? Her head was hurting, her stomach turning. Some people weren’t in their right minds, she thought, but she wasn’t in her right body. She liked saying that to herself. It made sense, to think that she wasn’t in her right body. Yes, that much she knew, but that wasn’t all there was to it, because she wasn’t sure what her right body was. Suddenly, she was tired and didn’t want to think about it anymore, or talk to anyone about it anymore. Why couldn’t she just drop out, not be a girl, not be a boy, just be Harper.

  She closed her bedroom door behind her and pulled her phone out of her jeans to look at her calendar. One more visit, and that was it. She would stop going to see Dr. M after that.

  Then she thought about Grandpa and what he would think of all of this. He would understand, she knew, and love her no matter what, and it was the worst thing possible that he was gone. She didn’t know if she would ever stop being mad, sorry, and so sad that he was gone. When the reality hit her, as it did from time to time, it was like the top of her head was exploding. Everything went white. It was impossible that he was gone. Where did he go? Why couldn’t he come back? But of course he couldn’t. Then it happened again, the top of her head blowing up in raging disbelief. And she cried again, just as she had in Dr. M’s office. She fell onto the bed and pushed her head into the pillow so no one would hear, or knock on the door, or try to comfort her. There was no comfort; she didn’t want it, anyway.

  Tilda hadn’t been avoiding him, she told George when she finally answered the phone. It was just that there was so much to do after her trip, and she was just getting settled and back to normal. Yes, it was true, she hadn’t called him back, and she knew he had been trying to reach her. These excuses sounded thin, even to Tilda. It was well into March, and she was back to normal, whatever that was, but she was surely over jet lag and any other lingering effects of her trip with Harper.

  “So what is it, Tilda?” he asked. “I can’t keep chasing after you. It’s not good for my self-image.” He was half joking, but Tilda knew there was a trace of truth in what he was saying. And she had to be honest: she had been avoiding him, though she wasn’t sure why. Her life felt complicated, too complicated to add another person, to add George.

  “I’d like to see you,” he said. “A nice, quiet dinner. How about it?”

  She listened and began thinking about the little place on the Sound she and Harold used to go to when they wanted some time to themselves when Laura was growing up, when they needed a break from parenting and working, the getting-and-spending time of their lives. That’s when they would call the sitter and go to The Shack for oysters, beer, the sun setting, and the night surrounding them in a temporary respite. It had been good, and they had known it.

  “I’d like to go someplace on the water,” she told him, surprising them both.

  On April 1, Tilda invited Bev to the beach.

  “Are you serious?” she said. “I haven’t been to the beach since I was twelve. I’ve been wearing black since then, and the beach is too cheerful for an old nihilist like me.”

  “Yes, I’m serious. This isn’t an April Fools’ Day joke, and you’re not a nihilist. Nihilists don’t spend most of their lives trying to save the world. So come. Anyway, it’s still cold, so not all that cheerful, and maybe you’ll get lucky and it will rain when we get there. Besides, I’m not talking about Maine. Just here by me, at the Point.” Bev reluctantly agreed. Before hanging up, Tilda said, “And one more thing. We’re going to talk about you this time. My invitation. My rules.”

  “How about we take turns? You have to fill me in on things. Say yes, or I’m not coming.”
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br />   Water Haven’s beach was on the grounds of an old estate that had been left to the town sometime after World War II. If Water Haven’s shoreline looked like a hand, the beach was the thumb, and the Point, as it was called, was the nail. Tilda and Bev got there a few days after Tilda’s invitation, in the early afternoon, and they took over a picnic table vacated by a family of four. The kids, about two and five, had left cereal and cookie crumbs scattered over their places, and a colony of seagulls had descended, screeching and trying to make off with as much as possible as quickly as possible. Tilda and Bev moved in and spread their tablecloth over the blotched and marred wood surface. No matter. The sun was high. Temperatures in the high sixties had mitigated the still-cold breeze off the water. The salt marshes just in front of them emitted the sweet briny smell of shoreline spring. Tilda breathed it in deeply. She took off her sun hat, letting the air blow through her hair. Even Bev was serene, despite a brief struggle to balance her ample buttocks on the narrow bench.

  Taking out a chilled bottle of rosé, Bev asked, “What shall we toast to?” She placed two glasses on the table, unscrewed the top, and began to pour.

  “To life,” said Tilda, taking up her glass.

  “To life,” said Bev.

  And they drank.

  When the bottle was half-empty, Bev began to eye a bench nearby with a backrest. Tilda suggested they move. The sun went into shadows, but the wine had left a glow they both enjoyed as they gazed out over the water.

  “It’s almost a year,” said Tilda, barely getting the words out.

  “Yes, it is,” said Bev, leaning a little closer to her friend, an offer of bodily as well as emotional support. “And it’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? Let’s start with you.”

  Tilda nodded in agreement. “Quite.” Her dinner with George was uppermost on her mind this afternoon, and she was eager to talk to Bev about it, even though this beach trip wasn’t supposed to be about her.

  She’d known George wanted to talk about their “relationship,” a term he had used on the phone. It struck her at the time as the sort of term George wouldn’t use, too “Dr. Phil.” To her relief, he was not in a Dr. Phil frame of mind at dinner. He was open and direct and his words were from the heart.

  He had called her back the same afternoon she’d agreed to go to dinner to ask if she liked the Loading Dock, a restaurant on the water by the yacht club. Tilda thought about it, searching her memory for any previous associations, and had come up blank. She and Harold had passed there many times, but oddly enough—because it was a popular spot—they had never been. She said yes.

  George had reserved a quiet table in the back, away from the bar and the piano. “Look, Tilda,” he had started, after dessert, after the waiter had served them coffee. “I’m not going to waste words; I can’t, really. It would be silly, wouldn’t it? At our age, to waste anything? Here’s the thing: We’ve spent some time together this year. Hell, we’ve spent the night a couple of times. Well, Cuba doesn’t count, I guess. I left as soon as I undressed you and got you into bed.”

  Tilda raised her eyebrows and looked at him over her reading glasses.

  “Okay, I made sure you were okay and in bed for the night before I left you to sleep it off. And the second time, I was on the couch. But technically, you get what I’m saying. We’ve shared some emotionally intimate moments, but you always seem to back away after. When I think we should be getting closer.”

  Tilda was about to offer an explanation, but he cut her off.

  “Wait, just let me say one other thing, or two more things. I know this is your first year without Harold, but—and here’s the second thing—but you’ve been open to me, whether you admit it to yourself or not. You’re making yourself not want me. I think you could want to be with me if you let yourself.”

  Tilda wasn’t sure she wanted this conversation, but she had accepted the invitation, and now she owed him an explanation, but what she said instead was, “You’re right.”

  Now, on the bench at the beach, with her eyes on the horizon, Bev asked, “So how is everything with George?”

  Tilda gave her a sideways glance. “It’s as though you’re reading my mind. I was just thinking about our dinner last week.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, it was nice.”

  “Nice?”

  “Yes, and George wants to take it to the next level. What a stupid expression. As though relationships were a competition, and only the really good ones get to advance.”

  “But that’s kind of true, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, but to his credit, that isn’t how he put it. He just came out and said it. ‘I think I’m in love with you, and I want to be more than an occasional date or a friend,’ is how he put it.”

  “Wow. That put it out there, didn’t it? And what did you say?”

  “I told him I knew it wasn’t fair to keep him waiting and that I knew at our age we didn’t have that kind of time. I told him I had feelings for him, that maybe love was possible, but I just couldn’t say it yet. I told him I hoped he could give me a little more time, and if he could, I would promise to be more open to him—and not ‘emotionally unavailable.’ Another term I can’t abide. What is it about relationships that causes this psychotherapy language?”

  “Hmm. As interesting as a linguistics lesson would be right now, I’d rather know how you feel about this,” said Bev, who had turned to face her friend, who, deep in thought, was still looking at the horizon.

  “You know, to tell you the truth, I felt a little pressured,” she answered.

  “Let me put it this way,” said Bev. “If there is even a shred of a chance that you could love him, then maybe a new relationship in your life is possible.”

  Tilda turned to look at her. “Really?” She smiled, knowing what her friend was up to. “You are really going to turn my own words back on me?”

  “Well, isn’t that some version of what you told Darren about Amanda? And if it could be true for them, couldn’t it be true for you and George?”

  Tilda took a breath. “I’m thinking about it,” she said. “But it has to be on my terms, my timetable.”

  “So your year of meddling hasn’t turned out too badly. You rescued your granddaughter from Brooklyn, Lizzie still wants to play Scrabble with you, Darren has forgiven you—thanked you, even. And your advice to him can be applied to your relationship with George. Not a bad year. Well, a terrible year, I know. But look at you, in spite of it.”

  Tilda smiled. These things were true.

  “But wait,” said Bev, “before we move on, I still have to ask you what’s new with Harper. When did you see her last?”

  “I haven’t seen Harper much since we got back from Portugal. She’s busy with school, but I did have a long talk with her the last time I was over for dinner.”

  Tilda drew her arm out in front of her, pushed up her jacket, and scratched her elbow. “I think I told you everything was okay since she got her period.”

  Bev nodded.

  “Well, not exactly.”

  Frowning now, Bev said, “I’m not surprised. After all, isn’t that exactly what she was trying to avoid?”

  “Yes, exactly.” Tilda pushed her jacket back over her arm. “Sometimes I’m too close, or maybe I just say what I want, hoping I can make it be true. How could she be all right with it?”

  Tilda felt herself close to tears now. “I think we’ve all missed how really hard this has been on her.”

  Tilda had known as soon as she saw Harper on Friday night two weeks ago that she was troubled, her green eyes dark, her gaze often downcast. She was grateful when Harper asked if she wanted to see how her Portugal souvenirs looked in her room. She knew Harper wanted to talk.

  “She closed her door immediately and sat on the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest. I was frightened, but then she just told me about her period. She had told Dr. Bernstein she didn’t want to get her period, but now it was too late. She would have to wait a long t
ime before Dr. Bernstein or any doctor would agree to hormone therapy.”

  Tilda was trembling. The sun was beginning to dip behind late-afternoon clouds. But she pressed on with her story.

  “I asked her if that was what she really wanted, to begin testosterone, and she waited a long time before she answered that she didn’t know. I asked her what it meant to her to be Harper and not Tilly, and she said it meant she could be anything, or nothing different. Which left me a little confused.”

  “Well, it’s okay, isn’t it? She has time to decide. These are huge questions she’s asking, and she’s brave enough to admit that she doesn’t know if she wants to be male. Maybe she doesn’t want to be either, or maybe she’ll be both. That’s possible too, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. It is possible.”

  “How did you leave it?”

  “I told her what I always tell her, that we love her, will always love her, and that she has time to sort it all out. In the meantime, she will have to live with puberty. And I honestly think she will be all right. She told me she was glad we went to Portugal and that it was our connection to Grandpa. It was, you know?” Tilda said, turning to look at Bev.

  She reached over and gave Tilda’s hand a squeeze. They were quiet a moment and then Bev said, “It all sounds logical to me, but what’s the professional opinion?”

  Tilda wiped a stray tear away and said, “When I talked to Laura she said Dr. Bernstein thought Harper was on the verge of a breakthrough but that she wanted to wait until her next visit before reaching any conclusions. I think she tells Laura and Mark about Harper’s progress, but then she also sometimes sees the three of them together. She says she’s Harper’s therapist and won’t say anything to either of them, Mark and Laura, that Harper isn’t okay with.”