“But what did I give you?”
“You gave me the life I once wished for, the life of Isabel Archer from my favorite novel: the sudden windfall of money and all the adventure that it affords, the travels through Europe, even the lousy marriage that you warned me against. You are a modern day Ralph Touchett.” We laugh.
“Oh, that dopey novel,” he says, rubbing his face to conceal a smile. “Remember that night you got drunk on that blue drink and the drag queens gave you a makeover? You were funny, Haley.”
But Dylan’s relief is short-lived. He looks off into the distance, where the sun, despite its brilliance, seems in danger of drowning beyond the horizon. Most of our light is now coming from the barn.
“You gave Mom and I the greatest life. Mom is so happy. Who knows what would have happened otherwise. She probably would have lived out her days in that little house we grew up in, pining for Dad. Maybe she would’ve given up, maybe she wouldn’t even be here; she might have died of a broken heart, and then we’d have lost them both. You gave her a new focus, new things to look forward to, the vineyard and the businesses, the traveling and the grandchildren.”
I wonder if Dylan’s eyes are wet with tears, or if it’s only Joseph’s expensive champagne playing tricks on me. It’s impossible to tell now in the darkness.
He shakes his head, as if unconvinced, his silhouette seemingly burdened by the shadows falling around us.
“Dylan, remember the Goya beans? Dylan, look at me,” I plead, but he’s standing now, his back to me. “Remember your favorite goofball Haley story: how when I was four years old I wandered down to that old bean factory on Valentine’s Day and all the neighbors went out searching for me, and Mr. Granger finally found me and brought me home? Remember that day? That was the day that Evan was born, Valentine’s Day, 1966. I’m four years older than him.”
Dylan turns to look at me now.
“The apartment building where Evan has been living since he came back to New York—it’s an old bean factory, it’s that same bean building. It’s now a newly renovated apartment building, and the neighborhood has become hip and trendy, thanks to the yuppie crowd that has flocked there in droves and transformed it.”
“That’s a freaky coincidence,” Dylan says, but I still can’t see his face, if only he’d turn toward the moon.
“It’s not a coincidence. Don’t you see? When I wandered down there back in 1966, it wasn’t just some crazy whim of mine, some foreshadowing of many loopy Haley incidents to come!” I punctuate this speech with the animated gestures that overtake me when I’m adamant. “I was remembering my future when I ran down there that day in my flowery best dress in the rain. I was looking for Evan. I was thirty-something years too early, but I was looking for him. Something in me knew that he had arrived that day in the world, that now he was here and I had only to find him.”
“That can’t be,” he says, disbelieving.
“It be!” I say. “It was all meant to be! Don’t you see? It was all planned out, way before we ever got here. It all happened the way it was supposed to happen. You didn’t ruin my life. You didn’t do anything wrong. It was all just part of some greater plan, like some story we wrote together and agreed upon before we were born.”
Dylan says nothing, but he moves toward the light and warmth of the barn, his face coming into view. He looks, strangely, twenty-eight again, as if all the burdens of the years have been airbrushed away, and the buoyancy of youth restored.
“What a bunch of baloney!” my brother says, but his face is full of the mischief and swagger and nascent optimism of 1989. I know at that moment that I have the old Dylan back.
“Life is not a freaking fairytale,” he says, grinning like the devil, as he offers his arm to escort me back toward the doorway. We hear Joseph crooning Gershwin’s The Man I Love; we see the shadows of couples waltzing under starlight sprinkling through the solar panels on the barn ceiling. Dylan’s mood is transformed. There is such levity in his aura that I wouldn’t be surprised if I glanced down to find his big clunky feet were not touching the ground at all.
“Let me tell you how life works, Sis,” he begins, but those words sound to me, at that moment, like the sweetest words I’ve ever heard.
“Yes, why don’t you tell me,” I implore, playing along.
“Maybe I’ll save it for another day.” He winks, and a playfully exaggerated grunt escapes him as his daughters crash up against him like little waves of love, dragging him to the dance floor.
**the end**
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