Life After Yes

by Aidan Donnelley Rowley

Wordlessly, I climb in behind him and grab the anchor.

  “Remember when we carved this?” he says.

  “Of course I do.”

  And there they are, our clumsy initials scratched into the side of the aging and waterlogged fishing boat.

  “It’s interesting the lengths we go to make things immortal,” I say.

  The moon highlights errant strands of silver amidst the blond, the fading scar I left above his lip, the wrinkles, the bags under his eyes. And it occurs to me, foolishly for the first time, that he too will be an old man.

  No one’s immune to time.

  “Congratulations,” I say. “You’re a daddy.”

  His smile is vast and proud.

  “Didn’t want to give the poor boy his own identity?”

  He smiles again. “It’s interesting the lengths we go to make things immortal.”

  And then he speaks a new and beautiful language, the words of which I imperfectly understand. That little Phelps was colicky at first. That he loves tummy time and to be swaddled. That his head is in the seventy-fifth percentile, but is a bit flat because they sleep him on his back for fear of SIDS.

  “And he loves breasts just like his daddy,” Phelps says, and laughs.

  “He’ll be drinking beer and fishing in no time,” I say.

  Phelps nods and rows to the edge of the lake, chasing the moon. And stops. “The scene of the crime,” he says.

  I look around. The same canopy of lilting trees, the same dark water, the same old rowboat.

  But now, two different people.

  He offers me another cheese curd and says, “Nothing wrong with a late night snack.”

  But this time I refuse.

  Tonight he wears his ring.

  “The good husband’s back?” I say.

  He smiles. “It’s too easy being good,” he says, clumsily quoting himself from years ago.

  He puts his hand on my knee and squeezes. As he leans in, through the adult haze of cigar smoke that surrounds this grown man, this father, I breathe in that old familiar smell of a boy I once loved.

  He kisses me. And the sky rumbles, a cosmic warning perhaps, and I wait for a moment before pulling away.

  I’m gentle. Polite. I don’t slap him, or yell, or reprimand.

  And I don’t say it, but it’s loud and clear. I’m taken.

  I’m all his.

  “You don’t want to?” he says.

  “No,” I say. “I don’t.”

  “Ah. Not prudent to be rendezvousing with an old flame within hours of your vows?”

  And I think we both know this, but this time, I’m not being coy, or fumbling with nascent sexuality. This has nothing to do with caution or practicality or the fact that it’s my wedding day. No, this has more to do with beginnings and ends, and how sometimes in life they’re not clearly demarcated but bleed into each other.

  And, under snoring thunderclouds, swaddled in fresh air, I realize for the first time that endings don’t have to be catastrophic like the murderous collapse of a landmark or dramatic like the loss of a heartbeat. Endings can be quiet and satisfying.

  Even if they do sneak up on you.

  “Phelps,” I say.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve always told myself I didn’t know why. That it was one of life’s many mysteries. But I think I know. I think I knew who I was going to become with you. I think I would have spent my days answering questions instead of asking them. I think I would have stopped dreaming.”

  And, at this, he nods. And I study his face, baby fat long gone, faint wrinkles of adulthood claiming territory. I look for hurt, for disappointment, for anger. But instead, I see something both new and old. Something I haven’t seen for years: understanding.

  “I spent so much time planning and plotting who I would become. Where I would go and how I would get there that I didn’t realize that I was already becoming somebody.”

  I nodded. “A good somebody.”

  “Not good enough,” he says, and tears sneak up. “Not good enough.”

  “There’s no such thing as good enough,” I say. “We are who we are. And we can’t go back.”

  He nods, wipes tears. “I would go back,” he says. “In a heartbeat.”

  “Impossible,” I say.

  “Exactly,” he says, a tender mea culpa, too little too late. “There is something poetic about impossibility.”

  Just then as I am articulating the reasons for our end, putting that final period on our long and winding sentence, I realize that these are but shadows of reasons, shifting and gray. But as I utter them, the real reason becomes clear.

  Because reasons are like grooms and wedding gowns. Sometimes, you don’t find them when you are looking, but stumble upon them when you are living.

  “Phelps,” I say. “I left you because you weren’t him.”

  I walk back to our cabin. And though it’s the middle of the night, I’m more alert than I’ve been in a year. Back on our porch, as I step out of Dad’s boots, a small spider sneaks down the screen door, and I think of little Charlotte.

  Cigarette smoke. Mom waits for me, rocking slowly on the old porch swing.

  “It’s your wedding day, Prue,” she says.

  “You quit smoking twenty years ago,” I say.

  She looks at me, worry and understanding plain in tired eyes. It’s been years since she’s had to wait up for me.

  “Pajamas and wading boots?”

  “Beats all black,” I say.

  And so we dance.

  We can escape the city, but we can’t escape this—the profound understanding that only genes and genuine love and time can fashion. The ability to speak in a code of jabs and gestures and pregnant silences.

  Outside, it begins to rain.

  I watch as Mom stands up and goes inside. Through the window, I see the light in the kitchen snap on and off again.

  She returns with two big glasses of white wine and hands me one.

  “Seems like you could use one of these,” she says.

  Wind comes through the screen. Mom’s face glows in the moonlight. The wrinkles are multiplying, a map of wisdom on alabaster skin.

  Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

  “He’s married, Prudence,” Mom says. “And now he’s somebody’s father.”

  “So was Dad,” I say, and look down.

  And when I look up again, and meet her eyes, through the rumble of rain, I hear her say it: “I know.”

  “It’s over,” I assure her.

  She pauses, sips wine. “I believe you,” she says. But her eyes say something else: Is it ever really over?

  “You know something?” she asks.

  I look at her eagerly, hungry for one last morsel of motherly wisdom before I must grow up.

  “It’s never too late to become a good person,” she says.

  We sip wine without talking. The moon hangs there, witness to it all. After two decades of diatribes on the evils of tobacco, Mom offers me a drag of her cigarette and I take it. I inhale slowly, with purpose, and blow smoke into the November air, damp with possibility.

  Chapter 32

  I shave my legs the morning of my wedding day.

  Here I sit, holed up in the tiny bathroom Dad never finished, naked, at the bottom of the bathtub, dragging cheap pink plastic over white legs. Hot water sprays from the old showerhead, pelting my back. Dad’s Head & Shoulders is now gone, and now only Mom’s shampoo rests on the edge of the basin.

  As the room steams up, and the mirror above the sink fogs, something becomes clear to me. This isn’t how I pictured the beginning.

  And it strikes me that beginnings aren’t always majestic, or trumpeted. Beginnings can be quiet and satisfying.

  Even if they do sneak up on you.

  The hours pass steadily. And the rain falls furiously. Everyone keeps telling me this is good luck.

  Mom emerges from the kitchen carrying a mug. She hands it to me and I see that it’s a lat
te and she’s swirled my initials in the foam—QOM.

  I smile. “Thanks, Mom.”

  In the bedroom, Michael steams wrinkles from my wedding dress. Avery and I are on the porch. She hovers over my feet and fixes my chipped toenail polish.

  She paints delicately and stands up, studies her work. “Perfect,” she says.

  Mom hands us each a flute of champagne, and we sip slowly and watch the rain come down. We go inside and find Michael hopping around my dress, getting closer and squinting, pulling away.

  He turns the steamer off. “Perfect,” he says.

  I look at the dress, bright and innocent, white with promise.

  Mom stands behind me and puts a delicate chain with a tarnished old key around my neck. “Something old. This represents continuity with our family and the past,” she says. “Forgive me, I’m a professor. I like to know the history behind things.”

  Michael pulls my dress off the quilted hanger and holds it open, so I can step in. I do so gingerly, careful not to rip it or stain it. Avery zips it up. “Something new. To represent hope and optimism for your life ahead.”

  “I feel like it’s Halloween,” I say, glimpsing myself in the mirror.

  “You know what I always said on Halloween,” Mom says.

  And in unison, Michael and I say, “All you need is one.”

  Mom smiles. Pulls her wedding ring and hands it to me. “Wear it,” she says. “Something borrowed. So Dad’s and my good fortune in marriage will carry over to you and Sage.”

  And Michael and Avery leave the room, to give Mom and me a moment. And I take her ring and I slip it on my hand, the dull band that Dad slipped on her finger long ago. And Mom whispers in my ear: “Despite everything, despite the struggle—because of it maybe—we were happy.”

  And I think I believe her.

  “And now,” Michael says, his voice carrying loudly from the next room. “We have for you something blue…”

  And Michael and Avery walk back into the room. And between them, with tears in her eyes, is Kayla.

  “I’m sorry,” she mumbles.

  And then she reaches into her bag and pulls out the highest, most imprudent pair of stilettos I’ve ever seen in the brightest of blues. “Something blue,” she says softly, her words laced at once with shame and hopefulness, “to symbolize love, modesty, and fidelity.”

  I take the shoes from her, and look at the five-inch spike of a heel.

  “Let the heeling begin,” she says.

  And in this moment that’s meant to be serious, where fibers of what might be forgiveness float about uncertainly, I can’t help but laugh.

  It’s a start.

  I look at her. “What happened to being disinvited?”

  “I’ve spent my life doing things that I’m not supposed to do,” she says. “I wasn’t about to stop now.”

  Kayla hugs me. And I let her. Before she pulls away, she whispers something in my ear. “The second part of your gift is in your suitcase.”

  And I know what it is, this gift, but I go and look anyway. Sitting there atop my honeymoon clothes is a pair of handcuffs. White ones. Just like the ones in my dream. I pick them up and fiddle with them and smile. And then toss them back into my bag.

  When I walk down the aisle this time, Mom’s there. Not Dad. She grips my arm strongly, protectively.

  This time there’s no judge or jury.

  No little flower girl waiting to erupt.

  Under that vast oak tree by the water, Sage stands there, waiting for me. His tux is wrinkled and his fingers are shaking.

  “Repeat after me.”

  And so I do. I like being told what to do. Like a child. It’s easier that way.

  But I go off script. Add one word.

  “I, Prudence Quinn, take you, Sage, to be my husband.”

  Without looking, I can see Mom’s smile. And feel Dad’s.

  And Sage kisses me.

  Sometimes a kiss isn’t just a kiss.

  And there are no screams or burning petals. Nothing turns to black.

  Instead, for the first time all day, the sun smiles coyly. And things are brighter.

  We laugh and drink. And eat blackberry pie. Henry’s pie. The berries are out of season. Bittersweet. And delicious.

  Mom stands. After years of giving lectures, of captivating students and colleagues, her confidence flickers. This is her chance to say something about her little girl.

  “‘Great Oaks from Little Acorns Grow.’ That was her solo in the kindergarten play. Every night for months she’d stand next to me while I cooked dinner, practicing, her young voice unselfconsciously confident and loaded with uncertainty. She was only five. And the words were simple, beautiful, but repetitive. She stood up there all alone on that painted wooden stage. She remembered those words and belted them out so we could all hear. When we clapped, her eyes lit up and she smiled big. And then she clapped for herself too.

  “Today, as we stand under the oak where her father and I baptized her twenty-seven years ago, I’m full of pride and nostalgia and most importantly, love.” She wipes her eyes, lifts her glass. “To my little acorn. Today, you’ve decided to grow up. And you are a little like me, a little like Dad. But mostly, thankfully, just like you.”

  When everyone claps, Mom’s eyes light up like a little girl and she smiles big. And then she claps for herself too.

  She takes a large celebratory sip of wine, but doesn’t sit. Pulls out paper this time.

  “As you all know, Prudence’s father was a planner. He liked to take care of things ahead of time. So, last June after Sage asked us for Prue’s hand in marriage, my husband began scribbling away,” she says, looking at me. “The man had delivered thousands of babies, was cool under pressure, but the thought of giving his only daughter away rattled him and he wanted to get it right. I found his notes, the beginning of what he planned to say.

  “In this modern world, brimming with technology, I’m so happy we still have fishing. Good old-fashioned fishing. Rowboats, bamboo rods, flies made of nature’s bounty, mayfly hatches, no-see-ums, fading quiet, and lily pads.

  “Prue, I’m not convinced you really like fishing. Sure, you like to be out in the boat, to talk, to observe. But you never wanted to pry that fly from the lips of a fish. I told you this was a big part of it all, but you were always scared. The slightest delay, the slightest wrong move, and the creature could die. But isn’t it always this way?

  “But one doesn’t have to love fishing to have the soul of a fisherwoman. And that you do. My Prudence, you have eyes as deep as the deepest pond and as full of life. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell what’s going on under the surface, but if you have the patience and bravery to look and cast yourself in—and, Sage, I hope and trust you do—you will find there the beautiful chaos of life.

  “My Prudence: You have a heart as healthy and fragile as life itself—forever pumping, energetic, but vulnerable to forces bigger than yourself—love being one of them. Love is one of those great mysteries like prudence and forgiveness, a beast more inscrutable than Faulkner’s bear or Melville’s whale. But we all understand enough of these things, each our own part, to feel their force, to be pulled this way or that, to make grand decisions, in their universal and commingling wake.

  “When I first met Sage, like any good father, I wanted to hate him. I wanted a grave flaw to appear in him that would confirm for me that she was still mine, that I wouldn’t have to give her away yet. I hoped that my daughter was still up to her old game of catch and release, that this was just another slimy beast she’d hooked but one whom she’d release into the waters of the world. But that first time I met Sage, I realized that like my dear daughter, this one was a keeper, one of those catches you can’t bear to part with. Not a twenty-five-incher that you want to wax and mount and show off to all your friends, but a creature that’s stunning and imperfect, so unique and yet so universal, so weighty and yet so transient, that as time elapses you have no choice but to hold on.”

&n
bsp; Under our table, the Jitterbug table, I clutch Sage’s hand as we both cry.

  I stand and hug Mom. Little acorn and big oak. A moment that’s both an end and a beginning.

  “I love you,” I whisper as if this is a secret. “And he did too.”

  And now Sage takes my hand and leads me to a patch of grass, our makeshift dance floor. He leaves my side only for a moment to press play on Dad’s old boom box.

  Dear Prudence won’t you come out to play?

  Dear Prudence greet the brand new day

  The sun is up the sky is blue

  It’s beautiful and so are you

  Dear Prudence won’t you come out to play?

  Dear Prudence open up your eyes

  Dear Prudence see the sunny skies

  The wind is low the birds will sing

  That you are part of everything

  Dear Prudence won’t you open up your eyes?

  Look around round

  Look around round round

  Look around

  Dear Prudence let me see you smile

  Dear Prudence like a little child

  The clouds will be a daisy chain

  So let me see you smile again

  Dear Prudence won’t you let me see you smile

  Dear Prudence won’t you come out to play?

  Dear Prudence greet the brand new day

  The sun is up the sky is blue

  It’s beautiful and so are you

  Dear Prudence won’t you come out to play?

  And we dance. My blue heels sink into the ground, and that beautiful white dress, once pristine and perfect, is soon covered in mud and grass, and a tiny speckle of blackberry juice. But none of this matters. What matters is that we are here, alive, together, dancing. What matters is that for the first time in a long time, I’m smiling. Really smiling.

  Chapter 33

  When I wake up the next morning, it’s still dark outside.

  Today, Sage’s snoring is a familiar and lovely melody. It fills the quiet, in fits and starts, until the moon’s shift is over.