“’Cause I’m not a chicken like you are,” Max said, scanning the sea of puzzle pieces. He was wearing an old Tom and Jerry T-shirt and the faded sweats he’d slept in, his hair greasy and uncombed. He looked so young, Grace thought. He was so young. Thirteen. He’d only just this year started liking girls, talking in a low voice on the phone, secreting himself in his room for hours, reeking, a few times, of Stephen’s cologne when he left for school in the morning. She smiled and felt her heart slow, overwhelmed suddenly with gratitude: for her children, for this day. The four of them together, snow falling outside, the house filled with the scent of the pumpkin bread she was baking for Max. Maybe, she allowed herself to think for the nth time since seeing Bennett, maybe the accusation would turn out to be nothing or, if not nothing, then no worse than a warning. Please, she prayed silently, promising, as she had from the first moment that she’d heard about the accusation, that she would break it off with Noah; she would devote herself once again, without regrets or longing, to what she had right here, right now—her children. Stephen. It was enough. It was more than enough. She swallowed hard. How could she not have known this?
“I’m tired of puzzles,” Erin whined as she fell back into the couch, her arms and legs limp.
“I know you are, sweets. Come sit with me and Jack.” Grace held out her free hand, gesturing for Erin to come over.
Erin rolled herself forward, dragged herself to her feet, then plopped heavily onto the carpet next to Grace, slumping against her shoulder.
“Tell me what you want to do,” Grace said into her daughter’s tangled hair.
“You want to play me cars, Erin?” Jack said.
“No,” Erin mumbled.
Jack leaned forward to peer at his big sister, then stopped, wincing, hand on his swollen tummy. “Ouch,” he said as if surprised. “That hurted me.” He looked at Grace.
“Well, you have to be careful, Goose. Here…” She straightened her legs beneath the coffee table so that he could lean back more. “Is that better?”
“Uh-huh.” He settled against her, then asked. “You want to play me cars, Mama?”
“No, Mama’s going to play with Erin for a while.”
“Don’t worry, Jack.” Max snapped another piece into place. “They’re just going to do yucky girl stuff.”
Jack laughed. “Yucky girl stuff!” He reached his hand back to touch Grace’s face. “You hear that, Mama? Max says you and Erin doing—”
“Yes, I heard, Mister Smarty-pants.” Grace kissed his hand, then leaned sideways and whispered to Erin, “What do you say we get out your new Barbie makeup case?”
Erin looked up, eyes wide. “Really?”
“Why not? We’ll get all beautiful for Daddy.” Grace gave Erin’s bottom a little pat as she jumped up and raced towards the stairs, thumping back down a minute later with the glittery silver and pink case that she set on the carpet next to Grace.
“Can I do you first, Mama?” Erin asked as she unfolded the mirror trays with their little glass pots of sparkly eye shadow and nail polish and different flavored lip glosses.
“Sure,” Grace said. “What should we start with?”
“Eyes.” Erin said. “Do you want green or purple or blue?”
“Hmmm, how about purple?”
She watched Erin fiddle with the case, her brow furrowed as she tried to open it. Beyond the front window, the pines dipped and bowed, wind and snow swirling in gusts. Maybe, Grace thought again. The word lingered. A possibility. A hope. Maybe this would all be okay. She would make it up to them. She’d start cooking more, instead of relying on frozen pizzas and macaroni and cheese. She’d bake more with Erin, take more walks with Jack, go to Max’s hockey games, finish Hockey for Dummies. Already, she’d read two more chapters. She now knew that Wayne Gretzky had scored more goals than any player in NHL history, that teams played eighty-two games a season, that when hockey first started, the referee had to place the puck between opposing players’ sticks during face-offs, resulting in numerous cases of broken knuckles. And Stephen. A tight band wrapped itself around her chest. She would fall in love with her husband again.
“Did you really question that I might have accused you?” Stephen asked as he climbed into bed.
She looked at him. “Only for a second. Less than that.”
“But what made you think it to begin with?”
She sighed. She knew his question was genuine, that he really didn’t understand how she could have thought this about him. He was so good. Good the way people used to be good. He believed in volunteer work and helping people, he believed in community and trying to make a difference in people’s lives, and he assumed that others were basically as good as he was. He was genuinely surprised, even hurt, to find out they weren’t. She glanced at him and, for a moment, felt her love for him rise in her chest like something endangered and rare, something she needed to protect, to fight for, to save, but she didn’t know how.
She held her mug of hot chocolate to her chest, hands cupped around it for warmth. “Please don’t be hurt,” she said. “You know I wasn’t thinking right. I just—” She shrugged helplessly and stared down at her hands. After a moment, she said quietly, “You’re such a good person, Stephen.”
“Come on. We’re both good, Grace. We do our best.”
“But I’m so angry, Stephen. At everything. Everyone.” Her voice trailed off.
“And everyone includes me?”
She glanced at him. “I don’t mean to be.” She wasn’t sure this was true though. She’d gotten used to being angry—at him, at the insurance company, at the doctors from Hopkins. At least when she was angry, she felt strong and in control. Like gravity, it weighted her, held her in place. How could she explain that it was this rage that so often exerted the far greater pull on her, greater even than love, and that this rage was, at times, the only thing keeping her from whirling out of this orbit of her life into utter blackness?
“It’s stupid to blame you, I know that, Stephen, I just—” She looked at him. “Don’t you ever blame me?”
“Why? Jack is alive because of you. I know that. Hell, half the staff at Children’s knows that, has come right out and said it. My God, the idea that I could blame you—”
“I’m not saying it’s rational. But, I mean, didn’t it occur to you that my causing his illness would have meant that he was okay?”
“That’s a hell of a trade-off, Grace.”
“But I would have thought it about you; a part of me would have wanted it to be true, I think.”
“I know.”
“And that doesn’t hurt you?”
He shrugged. “A little, but it’s also one of the reasons I didn’t doubt you. I know that you would give anything, including your own life—or mine—for our kids.”
“Okay, now look,” Erin said, and Grace held up the pink plastic hand mirror to see her eyelids covered with lavender glitter. “Wow, lovey,” she said. “That looks nice.”
Max glanced at her. “Yeah, if you’re going for the Addams Family look.” He plunked in another puzzle piece next to where Jack was maneuvering his into place.
“Don’t, Max!” Jack swatted his brother’s arm, then immediately began coughing with the effort.
“Hey,” Grace said, patting his back. “No hitting, mister.”
“But he can’t help me!”
“I wasn’t, you little snot.”
Grace looked at Max. “And no name-calling either.”
Jack plucked out the piece Max had just set down, then put it back. “Ha ha!” he wheezed. “Look what I did.” He crossed his arms over his chest defiantly.
Erin giggled. “He’s so stubborn, isn’t he, Mama?”
“Are you stubborn?” Grace asked him.
“Yeah, I am!” Jack laughed. He didn’t have a clue what stubborn was, of course, and so they couldn’t help but laugh with him.
Later, in the kitchen, Grace set the steaming pan of pumpkin bread on the cutting board, and stoo
d for a minute, giving it a chance to set. Rivulets of water from the melting snow streaked the window in front of the sink. She was hungry, but trying hold off for the snacks she’d set out shortly: nachos, steamed shrimp, mini Greek pizzas with spinach and feta, Christmas cookies—of course— and the pumpkin bread for Max. She pulled in a long breath, then let it out slowly as if to dissolve the knot of sadness lodged in her chest. She both loved and hated New Year’s Eve, with its promises and regrets, its hellos and good-byes, all tangled into one. And this year, especially this year—with Noah in her life again, with Jack getting sicker every day—the best thing we can do is make sure he’s comfortable— Grace loved and hated New Year’s more than ever. She wanted to simply stand still, hold onto things just as they were—as they had been only a week ago. One week. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I just needed to see you. Is that okay?”
“Okay? Are you kidding me? Okay?”
She stared towards the emptied lake, the landscape blurring into a wash of gray, as hidden as a secret. Like the history of the Pine Barrens itself: an entire history of secrets. Tories had hidden in these woods during the Revolutionary War. Later, smugglers stored sugar and molasses here; during Prohibition, it was the bootleggers. Even the landscape conspired toward silence, the largest freshwater aquifer in the country—seventeen trillion gallons—lying beneath the forest and swamps. Her own secret, her love of Noah, felt like this—liquid and huge, uncontainable under the surface of her life.
“She still fills my Christmas stocking with socks and deodorant and a roll of stamps.” Noah grinned. “As if I were in college still.”
“I always liked your mom. Does she still make those cinnamon rolls?”
“You remember those?” In his eyes she saw the sudden sadness she’d come to expect whenever they talked of that one summer twenty years ago. “She usually sends me home with a half a dozen or so.”
Grace lifted her head from his chest. “And you will save me one.”
“As many as you want.” He squeezed her tight. “Besides, after a week at home, I’ll be back to a liquid diet.”
She lay her head back down, fingers tracing the bones of his ribs. “I still can’t believe you were fat.” His chest was hairless, like a boy’s.
“Fat? Whoa, I don’t recall ever saying fat, thank you very much.” His voice was back to normal. “Ample, perhaps. Pleasantly plump. Renoiresque, maybe.”
“Renoiresque?” She lifted herself up again to look at him. “Where do you come up with this stuff?”
He shook his head. And then, “God, I love you,” he blurted.
She smiled. “You do? Really?” She still couldn’t believe it some days. That she’d found him, that he loved her after all these years, that she loved him. She snuggled against him, burying her nose into his neck as if to breathe him in through his smells—salt and cinnamon and something briny that made her think of the beach in the rain.
“So, at some point, my mom will ask the question,” he was saying.
“Let me guess…Have you met someone? Are you ever going to get married?”
“Close, but the actual words are ‘Have you met the right girl yet? Girl.” He chuckled. “How old am I?”
She kissed his shoulder. “Not a day over twenty-two.” Then his neck. “So what will you tell her?”
“Oh, same thing I always say: I met the right girl twenty years ago, but she dumped me.”
“You do not tell her that.”
“Oh, I absolutely do.”
“Those words?”
“Those words.”
She wanted to tell him that she had met the right “boy” twenty years ago too. But had she? And if so, where did that leave Stephen? Her children?
“Hey.” Noah shifted beneath her, nudging her chin up with his thumb. “What’s up?”
She shook her head. “It’s sad. And I guess I feel guilty, like you blame me, like I ruined your life.” She sighed. “I was seventeen, Noah.”
“I know that, Grace. Come on. I was a kid too.” He pushed himself away from her. “I do tell my mom that you were the One. And yeah, my brothers, and now their wives, all tease me about how I never got over you, but it’s all in fun. I mean, if anything, it’s kind of flattering, isn’t it?” He sounded angry now. “Christ, the last thing I’m trying to do is make you feel guilty.”
He stared at her another minute, then leaned back into the pillows, arms crossed behind his head, staring at the ceiling. “It’s not like I was a monk for the last twenty years,” he said finally. “I didn’t shun society and don sackcloth and spend my evenings reading your old letters by candlelight—”
She smiled. “Only because I never wrote you any letters.”
“You didn’t?” He grinned. “Must have been another woman I was remembering.”
“It must be difficult keeping track of us all.” She traced her index finger along the cords of his neck.
“I love your touch,” he said sadly, as if already anticipating the time when it would be gone.
“I love touching you,” she said. And then quietly, “I do hate that I hurt you, Noah. Even if it was twenty years ago.”
“I know.” He nodded. “But you said it, Grace; you were seventeen.”
“But you weren’t that much older, so why—”
“Why didn’t I move on?” He shrugged. “I don’t know, and after a while, it didn’t really matter. Maybe I didn’t want to get over you. Maybe it was a way of protecting myself from getting too close to anyone else. Maybe I only want what I can’t have. There’s a thousand reasons, but the bottom line is that you’ve always been right here.” He placed her hand on his chest, and she felt his heart thudding in her palm. “And I like that. I like that you’re a part of me that way. I like having conversations with you, even if half the time they’re only in my mind. Who knows? Maybe it’s that you were the first person I really loved. Maybe it’s that you were the first person to really hurt me.”
“Those are two pretty different maybes, though, Noah. How can it not matter which one it is?”
“Because knowing doesn’t change the outcome, Grace. It doesn’t alter the fact that I’ve thought of you every day, every goddamn day, for the last twenty years. I like that. I like that a lot. I like that I can imagine a future with you. Do you have any idea what that means? I’ve never, Grace, never been able to do that with anyone else.”
She edged the bread knife along the contours of the pan she had just pulled from the oven. Future. She’d read somewhere that its Indo-European root had once meant “grow,” which was why, she imagined now, when she thought of that word at all—future—it seemed ocean-like and terrifying, as if to venture too far into it was to fall off the edge of the world. In the future, Jack would be gone.
She set the bread knife on the counter, then flipped the loaf of pumpkin bread onto the wooden cutting board, releasing it from the pan. A cloud of steam wafted up, smelling of cloves and ginger. She set the emptied bread pan in the sink and turned on the warm water, then stood for a moment, letting the liquid heat pulse over her hands. It’s over with Noah. The thought darted in front of her like a frightened animal, and she felt something in her wrench away from it. Why? another part of her cried. Nothing had changed. Stephen hadn’t found out. And he wouldn’t. She would be careful. More careful. And assuming the accusation was a mistake, a misunderstanding—
But no.
It was over.
It had to be. There was no future with Noah; there never had been. He was the past—who she might have been, the life she might have had, if she’d made another choice. Something so simple, returning a phone call twenty years ago, and everything could have been different.
But it wasn’t.
Abruptly, she lowered her head to her hands, grief unstoppered inside of her. How was she going to leave him? Really leave him? Again. And what was she going to do without all that joy in her life, that laughter?
Outside, the sky had darkened.
Her reflection in the lighted window shone back to her. She thought of birds crashing into glass, confused by their own reflection, and felt herself slam up against the pane of truth that Jack’s illness had long ago forced her to confront: Love isn’t enough sometimes, love isn’t all you need, love doesn’t make the world go around, because if any of those clichés were true—any of them—children would not die.
She closed her eyes, promising herself, you’re doing the right thing, but she felt flayed open by the thought of losing Noah all over again. She had only just found him.
Two more days and he’d be home. Home. Her word, not his. For him, Michigan was still home, and at one time, it was for her too, despite living in New Jersey ever since she was a teenager. She had been born in the Midwest, her aunts and uncles and grandparents lived there. But the day Max was born, home forever shifted—no longer did it mean the place where she had grown up, but the place where her children would.
“So what made you end up in Cape May?” she asked once as they were walking along the beach.
“What do you think?”
“Please.” She swatted his arm. “You did not end up here because of me.”
“Okay, you’re right.” He grinned. “Not because exactly, but you were a motivating factor.”
She didn’t know what to say. They walked in silence, hands in the pockets of their sweatshirts, the sun only a faint pulse against the womb of autumn sky. An older couple, their pants rolled above their ankles, crouched at the water’s edge, searching for shells or sea glass or maybe the flint arrowheads left centuries before by the Lenni Lenape Indians, who had once inhabited the coast. Or, who knew, perhaps they were hunting for Captain Kidd’s treasure cache, rumored to have been buried at Cape May Point back in 1699. She smiled sadly. So many people searching for lost artifacts from lives not their own.
As they were almost back to the observatory, she stopped. “You really knew I was here? All these years?”
“It wasn’t a mystery, Grace. My parents and your grandparents are in the same church. You could have just as easily found out where I was.” Except you didn’t. The words stayed unspoken.
The Life You Longed For Page 9