The answer came to her from an unexpected source—a line from a poem she had read long ago: All ports look like home to a sinking ship.
Everything at home had been falling apart. With Daddy’s death and Granny Q’s stroke, the torment was simply too much for her heart to bear. She had nearly drowned in it. Sinking fast, she had fled blindly away from her pain, and taken shelter in the first port that came along—Mike’s love.
But what she’d found wasn’t love. It had never been love. Need, perhaps. Some unfilled place in her soul. Maybe even a distorted compulsion to be Mike Damatto’s savior, to rescue him from himself.
Shame washed over her. She had done the unimaginable— given herself without resistance to a person she didn’t love and wasn’t committed to. And for what? One short-lived moment of adventure and relief, a brief and fleeting sensation of being embraced, cared for, surrounded by safety.
Well, at least she was finished with all that. By two-thirty this afternoon, Mike Damatto would be out of her life forever. She would have plenty of time to deal with remorse and guilt later. For now she simply had to steel herself to break it off with him and hope he didn’t make a scene.
She sat up on the side of the bed. The churning in her stomach increased. The room swayed, and then began to spin.
Fighting against a gag reflex, she lurched to her feet and lunged toward the bathroom.
Abby had just come out of her bedroom when the bathroom door slammed. She paused and heard faint sounds of retching, and then the toilet flushing.
She knocked gently on the door. “Neal?”
The door opened a crack. Her daughter stood there, still in her pajamas, a sheen of sweat on her face. The odor of vomit drifted out into the hallway.
“Are you sick, honey?”
Neal wiped at her mouth with a wet washrag. “I’m OK. Better now. Just a stomach virus, maybe.”
Abby put a hand to Neal’s forehead. “You don’t have a fever.” She looked at her watch. “I’m supposed to meet Birdie for brunch in half an hour, but I can cancel.”
Neal shook her head. “No, don’t do that. I’m all right. Really. Just—I don’t know, maybe I ate something that didn’t agree with me.”
“Or maybe you’re nervous about confronting Mike this afternoon,” Abby ventured.
“Yeah, I guess that could be it, too. I’ve been dreading it all week.”
“You sure you don’t want me to cancel with Birdie? I could call her—”
“And do what? Stick around here all morning hovering over me?” Neal gave a forced smile. “Go on to your brunch, Mom. I’ll take some Pepto, get a shower, and be good as new by the time you get back.”
“OK. I’ll be home by one-thirty. Promise.”
The bathroom door closed again. Abby waited until she heard the shower running, then went downstairs and into the kitchen.
Mama was up and dressed, sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice and the newspaper. She glanced up as Abby entered and smiled. “I’m just looking at the movie listings,” she said. “Thought maybe we ought to have a little fun tonight.”
Abby sat down at the table. “Are you sure you’re strong enough to do something like that? Perhaps we should check with the doctor.”
“Never mind the doctor. I feel fine.”
“Well, you certainly seem fine. You’ve been making amazing progress with the physical therapy, Mama. And your speech is much clearer.”
“Almost feel like my old self again,” she said. “Or maybe an older version of my old self.”
“That’s wonderful.” Abby patted her hand. “But I think we’re going to have to reschedule that movie. Neal Grace is a little under the weather.”
A curious look passed over her mother’s face. “What do you mean, ‘under the weather’?”
“She’s got a stomach virus or something. If you ask me, I think she’s just nervous about breaking up with this guy she’s been dating.”
“Mike.”
Abby shot her a glance. “You know about him?”
“Neal told me a day or two after I came home from the hospital. Can’t say I’m impressed with what I’ve heard.”
“Me either. I offered to cancel my brunch date with Birdie, but she said no. Maybe you could check on her later.”
“I will.”
“She’s really come around, hasn’t she, Mama? It’s like we’ve got our old Neal Grace back again.”
“Yes. Our old Neal Grace.”
Abby thought she saw a shadowed sadness in her mother’s expression. But she didn’t have time to pursue it at the moment.
“Just talk to him, Abby. I’m sure he didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”
Abby toyed with her eggs Benedict and thought about Birdie’s advice. She had told Birdie about the discussion with Charles the night Mama had been taken to the hospital, and how distressed she was at the idea of putting Mama into a nursing home. Maybe Birdie was right. Maybe he hadn’t meant to be so dogmatic about it. At the end of the conversation he had relented, after all, and had not brought up the subject again in any of their conversations in the past couple of weeks.
Of course she had been occupied with Mama and Neal Grace lately. She hadn’t been alone with Charles since that night in the visitors’ lounge. And she couldn’t rid her mind of the image of him taking over, being so adamant about decisions “they” needed to make together.
“He thinks you’re avoiding him, you know,” Birdie confided.
“I’m not avoiding anything. I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy to see your fiancé?” Birdie raised one eyebrow and pointed at Abby’s bare left hand. “Or to remember to wear his engagement ring?”
“Too busy to get it sized,” Abby corrected archly. “I’ll get it done. Soon.” She averted her eyes and gazed out the window.
The restaurant—Birdie’s choice—was a tiny place on Wall Street, with a bakery in front and a café in back. Next to their table, large windows looked down on a brick plaza sandwiched between the city buildings. Below, in the courtyard, a small crowd had gathered. Abby peered between the leaves of a russet-colored oak tree that stood next to the window. “I wonder what’s going on out there?”
“What’s going on in here is someone trying to avoid my questions,” Birdie cracked.
Abby didn’t respond. She couldn’t speak around the lump in her throat.
She had seen him, just a glimpse. A fiddler, sitting on the stone wall surrounding the massive oak tree. Through the glass she couldn’t hear the music, but it filled her mind nevertheless, twining through her consciousness like a familiar, much-loved voice.
Devin Connor.
Her left side was getting stronger, but the climb up the stairs was still a painful and arduous journey. Edith paused at the landing to catch her breath. I should have packed a lunch, she thought wryly.
With some effort she made it to the upstairs hallway and shuffled toward Neal Grace’s room. The bedroom door stood ajar, and Edith could see her granddaughter propped up in bed, reading. She pushed it open the rest of the way and knocked on the doorframe. “Care for some company?”
Neal jumped. “Granny Q! What are you doing up here?”
“Coming to visit you, if that’s all right.”
“You shouldn’t be climbing the stairs.”
Edith shrugged. “It’s therapy. Needed the exercise.”
“Well, come on in.” Neal got out of bed, dumped an armload of dirty clothes out of a chair onto the floor, and pulled the chair closer. “Sorry the place is such a wreck.”
Edith settled herself in the chair while Neal climbed back onto the bed to sit cross-legged with her back up against the headboard.
“Your mother said you weren’t feeling well.”
“My stomach was upset earlier this morning, but I’m doing better now.”
“Throwing up helped, did it?”
Neal shrugged. “Guess I had a bug or something. Mom thinks it’s because I’m nervous ab
out breaking up with Mike.”
Edith tilted her head. “Does she?”
“That’s what she said.”
“And what do you think?”
Neal averted her eyes and picked at a loose string on the comforter. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Edith leaned forward and stilled the girl’s fidgeting hands. “Neal Grace, look at me.”
Neal raised her head. The expression of misery in her eyes was enough to break any grandmother’s heart.
“Tell me more about this young man you’ve been seeing.”
“What about him?” Neal’s voice came out as barely a whisper.
“Do you love him?”
“No. I thought I did, I guess. Maybe. I—” She blinked furiously to keep the tears at bay.
“You’ve had terrible losses and unspeakable pain,” Edith finished, working hard to articulate her thoughts. “And in the midst of that pain, you reached out for something. You—”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” Neal interrupted.
“I know you don’t,” Edith said gently. “But I expect it’s time for such a conversation.” She waited for a moment or two, and when Neal didn’t respond, she went on. “You’ve lost a great deal in your brief life, my dear. First your Grandpa Sam, then your father, then me.”
“I didn’t lose you. You’re still here.” Neal Grace’s voice quivered. “You’re not going to die, are you?”
Edith chuckled. “Not today. I hope to be around for quite a few more years. But when I had the stroke, things changed. I changed. The relationship between us changed.”
“That was all my fault,” Neal muttered. “I should have been able to see that you were still the same person underneath.”
“Hindsight’s always clearer,” Edith said. “I’ve had the same problem myself recently. Took quite some doing to enable me to see beyond my own clouded vision. But let me finish, if you don’t mind.”
Neal nodded for her to continue.
“When we see what we love slipping away from us, we tend to grab on to anything that seems to promise a measure of security, of hope.”
“Like Mike?”
“Yes, exactly like Mike. Romance, emotional connection— even with the wrong person—can be powerfully seductive. Makes us feel beautiful, desirable, needed. Gives us a sense of belonging when we feel dis—” she paused, concentrating on the word— “dislocated. It can even make us forget the greater wisdom we’ve accumulated in the course of living.”
“What you’re saying is that people in love can be stupid.”
“Even people not in love. Even people who only want to be in love.”
Neal shut her eyes and took a deep breath. “Go on.”
“And when we get caught up in that sense of belonging,” Edith continued, speaking slowly and deliberately, “we can lose sight of who we really are. We can do things we never intended to do.”
Neal Grace’s eyes snapped open. “Such as?”
Edith gazed into her granddaughter’s face. For a brief moment her mind cast back to the child’s birth, when she had stood in the hospital room with the squirming, squalling infant in her arms, breathed on her, calmed and comforted her. “Why don’t you tell me?”
All the blood drained from Neal’s face, and she froze in place, still as an alabaster statue and almost as white. She swallowed hard, took two or three deep breaths. Then she said, in a voice so small it could have belonged to a child, “I think you already know.”
“Maybe,” Edith said. “But I believe you need to tell me anyway.”
Never in all her seventeen years had Neal imagined having a conversation like this with her seventy-five-year-old grandmother. She was terrified, mortified. Yet she knew Granny Q was right. She needed to talk about it.
Once she got started, it came fairly easily, despite her apprehensions. Her grandmother sat there, listening compassionately, not interrupting, not challenging her or showing any sign of shock or outrage. Granny Q was pretty cool, she had to admit.
Neal started at the beginning—how claustrophobic she had felt after Daddy’s death and Granny Q’s stroke. How she had wished for her life to be different, and desperately needed change. How she had known from the beginning that the relationship with Mike was all wrong, but had rationalized until somehow it had begun to seem right. How she had even endured verbal abuse and violent anger because she felt stuck.
Then, suddenly, she realized where this line of thought was taking her. She couldn’t go there—not with Granny Q, not with anyone. She stopped talking and sank back against the bedpost.
“Go on,” her grandmother said.
Neal shrugged and looked away. “That’s about it.”
“You sure? Absolutely certain? I got a feeling there’s something else. Something you need to say.” Her grandmother shook her head. “Confession’s only helpful if you tell it all.”
“We’re Protestants,” Neal joked, trying to divert the conversation. “We don’t believe in confession.”
“We don’t go to the church, sit inside a confessional, and speak to a priest through a screen,” Granny Q corrected. “Maybe we ought to. Sometimes I think it’s easy to confess only to God, who already knows it anyway. Release comes when you don’t have to live with keeping secrets from the people you love.”
But the people you love can reject you if you’ve screwed up too much, Neal thought.
As if she had read her granddaughter’s mind, Granny Q squared her shoulders and looked intently into Neal’s eyes. “There’s nothing you could possibly tell me that would make me love you less.”
A heavy weight pressed in on her lungs so that Neal could barely breathe. Her hands trembled, and she was afraid she might be sick again. “I’m so ashamed,” she whispered.
“Ashamed of having sex with him,” Granny Q said. It was not a question.
Neal jerked her head up. “How long have you known?”
“Long enough. I suspect you’re also ashamed of getting involved with someone like him in the first place.”
“Oh, yeah.” Neal bit her lip. “But he didn’t force me. And I didn’t resist. I didn’t enjoy it much, but I didn’t say no.”
“So what happens now?”
Neal exhaled heavily. “Now I get on with my life and try not to let this experience scar me forever, I guess. This afternoon I’ll tell him to get lost, and it’ll be over. End of story.”
“Is it?”
“Is it what?”
“Is it the end of the story?”
“You bet it is. I don’t want to have anything to do with him. Ever again.”
She looked up to see Granny Q gazing at her, her expression a mixture of love and pain. “Have you checked the calendar lately?”
Neal did a double take. “What calendar?”
“The calendar that tells you how long it’s been since your last cycle.”
Her grandmother’s face began to swim, as if she were underwater. Neal’s mind raced as she counted backward. Six weeks. Maybe seven. The nervous stomach. The queasiness. The nausea.
No, she couldn’t possibly be— But she was. Despite her resistance, at some deep level she knew it was true.
Her voice failed her, and she could barely whisper, “Oh, God, please—no!”
Granny Q hoisted herself up onto the bed, took Neal into her arms, and began to stroke her hair. All the memories from childhood came rushing back, times she had fallen off her bike or cut herself or scraped a tender place on her heart.
She felt herself shrinking, growing younger, becoming a little girl again. A little girl who wanted nothing more than for her grandmother to take the pain away.
“It’ll be all right,” Granny Q said, her voice quiet and entreating. “We haven’t been down this path before, but we’ll do it together. You won’t be alone.”
But Neal knew this wasn’t a skinned knee that could be healed with a kiss and a Band-Aid. In a single devastating moment of awareness, she realized a terrible truth.
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Her childhood was over . . . forever.
21
More Decisions
By the time her mother’s car pulled up in the driveway, Neal had showered and dressed, ridden her bicycle to the drugstore for a home test, and confirmed the fact that she was, indeed, pregnant. Now she sat with her grandmother at the kitchen table and waited as her mother opened the door, saw them and waved, and made her way toward them through the living and dining rooms.
“I’m scared,” Neal whispered.
Her grandmother patted her hand. “It’ll be all right. I promise.”
“Birdie found the greatest new place for brunch,” Mom was saying as she approached the kitchen. “We should go sometime. I had eggs Benedict, and Birdie got the pecan waffles. It’s down on Wall Street next to—”
She stopped and stared at the two of them. “What’s up?”
When neither answered, she put her hands on her hips and grinned. “Come on, out with it. What are you two conspiring about?” She came to the table, leaned over, and felt Neal’s forehead with her wrist. “How’s that stomach virus, honey? You look better.”
“I’m OK,” Neal said.
“Did you get something to eat?” She went to the refrigerator and looked inside. “There’s leftover chicken. I could make chicken salad sandwiches if anyone’s hungry.”
“Abby, sit down,” Granny Q commanded. “Nobody’s hungry, and we need to talk.”
Neal took a deep breath and tried to steady herself as her mother returned to the table and sat down.
“It’s almost two,” her mother said. “Won’t Mike be here any minute?”
“Mike’s not coming,” Neal said. “I called him and postponed. I can’t face him right now.” I don’t really want to face you, either, she thought. But she didn’t say it.
“I know you’ve been nervous about breaking up with him, but putting it off won’t make it any easier. Maybe—”
“Mom, please—” Neal interrupted. “Please, just listen.”
Edith sat in silence while Neal Grace began to stumble her way through her confession. She prayed silently that her granddaughter would have the courage to say what had to be said, and that her daughter would have the grace to hear it without condemnation. She had raised Abby to be a loving, empathetic person, but Edith also knew that it was easier to be understanding from a distance, when one’s own offspring and future weren’t directly involved. This situation was going to demand a great deal of up-close and personal compassion.
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