The stockings, Nell thought, heading upstairs to her bedroom. I’ll work on the girls’ Christmas stockings.
* * *
Nell was dusting the furniture in the living room later that day—not easy to do what with the Christmas decorations on every available surface—when her cell phone rang. It was Eric.
“Hi,” she said brightly. Her earlier anxiety had largely eased away, thanks to the soporific effects of daily routine and, more specifically, of housework. A tidy house allows for a tidy mind. It was something her mother always used to say.
“Hi,” Eric said. “Nell, I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel our get-together this afternoon. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” The dust cloth fell from Nell’s hand to the floor and she bent over to retrieve it. “Sure,” she said. “No problem.”
“I just got a call from my friend Hal,” Eric went on. “He owns a fantastic little bookstore in Cambridge. When I told him I was in Ogunquit, he asked if I could possibly come to a holiday open house this evening to mingle and sign a few books. I felt I couldn’t say no. Hal has come through for my family and me more times than I can count. He gave Sarah a job all through college.”
“Of course,” Nell said with a heroic attempt at sounding neutral and unmoved. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“Thanks, Nell. I knew you’d understand. I’ll let you know when I get back tonight, okay?”
Nell struggled to find her voice over the lump that was building in her throat. “Sure,” she said finally. “Bye.”
Nell stuck the phone back into her pocket. She felt keenly disappointed, though she knew she had no right to be. Eric didn’t owe her anything, not after all this time. Face it, Nell thought, and not for the first time. He means a lot to me but I just don’t mean that much to him. Before the reading at the Bookworm Jill had suggested that Nell ask herself just what it was she wanted from seeing Eric Manville after a separation of more than twenty years. But I didn’t take that advice to heart, Nell thought. I didn’t prepare to . . . to be disappointed.
Dust cloth in hand, Nell went to the kitchen where Molly was sitting at the table with a textbook opened before her. She was still wearing the ring Mick had given her that morning. Turning toward the fridge Nell noticed that two windows on the Advent Calendar hadn’t yet been opened. She was surprised she hadn’t noticed before now.
“Why haven’t you or your sister opened the windows for the seventeenth and eighteenth?” she asked.
Molly looked up from her textbook and shrugged. “I forgot. Fliss probably did, too.”
“Why don’t you open the windows now?” Nell suggested.
“That’s okay,” Molly said. “You can do it.”
Nell shook her head. “But I bought the calendar for you girls.”
“Mom.” Molly sighed. “We’re not little kids. We don’t care about stuff like that.”
“Like what?” Nell was aware of the tone of hurt in her voice. She hadn’t meant her feelings to be so plain, but she felt so raw at the moment, raw and vulnerable.
“Like Advent calendars and matching aprons. That stuff is okay when you’re a kid, but . . .” Molly suddenly got up from the table. “Okay, Mom. If it makes you happy I’ll open the windows.”
Nell watched as her older daughter dutifully opened the two windows on the calendar and realized that she didn’t feel particularly happy about it. “I was thinking of making that meatloaf you and Felicity like so much for dinner,” she said.
Molly went back to the table and her textbook. “Sure, Mom,” she said. “Whatever.”
Chapter 19
Nell had indeed made the meatloaf she had mentioned earlier to Molly, and though it was highly flavored with black pepper and oregano, Nell found that she barely tasted it. It was unlike her to eat mechanically. It was also unlike her to be checking her phone for incoming calls or texts while at the table, but that was exactly what she was doing. She hadn’t entirely convinced herself that Eric wouldn’t call that night upon his return from Cambridge.
“Guess what Ella’s father is giving her mother for Christmas,” Felicity said. “A brand-new Jaguar. Can you believe it? It’s a total surprise. I mean, Ella knows but her mother doesn’t have a clue.”
“They must have a lot of money to throw around,” Molly said with a frown of disapproval.
“I wouldn’t call buying a car throwing money around,” Felicity protested.
“I would, especially when it’s a totally impractical car to have in Maine. She won’t be able to drive it for half of the year.”
“Mom?” Felicity asked. “What do you think?”
Nell looked up from her phone. “Sorry, what did you say?” she asked.
Felicity frowned. “Who are you expecting to hear from, Mom?”
“No one,” Nell lied.
“Then why do you keep checking your phone?” Molly asked.
Nell slipped the phone into the pocket of her sweater. She felt a bit chastened. How many times had she asked her daughters not to use the phone during a meal? And here she was, behaving like a lovestruck teen waiting to hear from her crush.
“So, what do you think of Ella’s father buying Ella’s mother a Jaguar for Christmas? Do you think it’s a silly purchase?”
“I think it’s none of our business how other people spend their money,” Nell replied.
“I wonder what Dad’s getting Pam,” Felicity mused.
Molly rolled her eyes, and though Nell resisted that particular urge she, too, had no desire to entertain the question. Silence descended on the table, and as Nell poked at her meal she was struck by a sudden surge of annoyance that bordered on anger. Why did Eric have to breeze back into her life at just this time only to highlight her feelings of loss and inadequacy? Why had she gone to that reading in the first place? And to think she had been foolish enough to consider asking Eric if he remembered the summer day on which that long-lost photo had been taken! Reconnecting with Eric was getting her absolutely nowhere and would only result in—
“Ugh!” Felicity cried. “It feels like I’m sitting here with Scrooge and the Grinch! Why are you two so unhappy and distracted and grumpy?”
“Sorry,” Nell said automatically.
Molly got up from the table and brought her dishes to the sink. “I’ve got a lab report to write,” she said. “Thanks for dinner, Mom.”
“Let’s watch A Charlie Brown Christmas after dinner,” Nell suggested when Molly was gone. “Or we could make popcorn balls. I found a super easy recipe online earlier.”
“That’s okay,” Felicity said. “If Ella is around, I’ll drive over to her place for a bit.” Felicity took her phone from her pocket and began to text her friend.
Nell stabbed at the remains of the meatloaf on her plate. She wondered if at that very moment Eric was chatting with an adoring female fan. He had become a media darling after the success of his first book, and the truth was that he was kind and good and smart and any woman in her right mind would welcome the chance to know him and to possess more of him than a grainy photo from the local newspaper.
“See you later, Mom.” Felicity was getting up from her chair. “I’m going to Ella’s house.”
“Okay,” Nell said. “Drive safely.”
“You always say that.”
“And,” Nell replied, “I always mean it.”
* * *
The curtains were closed against the night, but a sliver of moonlight had made its way into Nell’s room. She was tucked up in bed with one of her old notebooks and a biography of William Blake she had first read in college. The author of Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence had always fascinated her. Slowly she paged through the sections of the fantastical color illustrations—The Raising of Lazarus, Jacob’s Dream, the wildly famous portrait of Newton—and found that lines from “The Tyger” were running through her mind. “. . . In what distant deeps or skies/Burnt the fire of thine eyes?/On what wings dare he aspire/What the hand, dare seize the fire?”
William Blake would probably not have appreciated cell phones, Nell thought as hers rang loudly in the quiet of the room. She reached for it on the bed beside her. It was Eric. “Hi,” she said with a sense of palpable relief.
“You sound surprised. I told you I’d call when I got back from Cambridge. Is it too late? Did I wake you?”
“No,” Nell assured him, putting the book aside. “It’s not too late. How was the event?”
“Mobbed. It was a lot of fun and a big success for Hal, I think.”
Nell experienced a twinge of jealousy, of which she felt immediately ashamed. Of what was she jealous? Eric’s popularity? His wealth? His many friendships? Nell glanced at the old notebook by her side and felt keenly her own lack of ambition. She had taken no steps in her life to win such prizes, and there was no one to blame but herself.
“I’m glad you had a good time,” she managed to say.
“How was your afternoon?” he asked.
“It was fine.”
“And the girls? How are they?”
“They’re fine, too,” she said. “Getting ready for finals. Spending time with their friends. Dropping hints about what they want for Christmas. Well, Felicity is. Molly’s not much of a materialist.”
“Hey, apropos of nothing,” Eric said, “guess what I was thinking about on the drive back tonight? The day we rode the swan boats in the Public Gardens and one of the swans, the real ones I mean, came charging at us. One of us screamed—it might have been me—and the kid manning the pedals dove into the water, leaving us stranded.”
Nell laughed. “How could I forget? Luckily the swan lost interest in us. They can be pretty vicious when they’re protecting their young.”
“I hadn’t thought of that incident in ages,” Eric admitted. “It’s funny, but suddenly the years we were together seem so close.”
“Yes,” Nell said, glancing again at the old notebook in which both she and Eric had written out their thoughts and feelings. “They do. And yet . . . and yet they also seem so very far away.”
“Yes,” Eric replied softly. “I know what you mean. Well, I should let you get some sleep. Good night, Nell.”
“Good night, Eric.”
Nell plugged her phone into its charger. She was very pleased that Eric had phoned and recalled with a bit of surprise the moments since they had last met when she had rued her decision to attend the reading at the Bookworm. Suddenly Nell remembered another afternoon when she and Eric had been in the Public Gardens. A fierce rainstorm had broken out with little warning. Hand in hand they had ducked under a massive oak tree, where they had kissed passionately and shamelessly as only the young can do in full view of the world. Only when the storm had long passed did they emerge from under the protection of the branches, aglow with happiness.
Nell put a hand to her chest. Their romance had been so very passionate. Of course, it was true that intense passion never lasted for very long. If she and Eric had stayed together, one day the strength of their physical desire for each other would have weakened. No, Nell decided now, tucked in her bed on Trinity Lane. It would not have weakened. It would have transmuted into something more mellow but just as strong and wonderful. She thought of what Eric had said about the shiny gold ring becoming lovelier over time as it was marked by experience, both good and bad.
It was a beautiful image and one to treasure.
Chapter 20
Ever since she was a girl Nell had gotten a kick out of the police blotter page in the local paper. This morning, the nineteenth of December, she learned that the guy who owned the Flipper had run a red light; that a twelve-year-old girl had been caught shoplifting a box of Hostess cupcakes at the convenience store; and that a local artist who went by the name of Nico had called the police to report a possible intruder that turned out to be his neighbor’s cat. Nell smiled. Running a red light, shoplifting, and breaking into someone’s home (if you were a human) might be wrong, but they were hardly the stuff of big-city crime. Life in Yorktide was pretty darn good.
Nell turned the page, and her eye was caught by an advertisement for a poetry course being offered at the community college. The course was geared for those with some academic background in poetry. The cost was reasonable, and the class would conveniently meet every Monday evening for six weeks starting in early January. It all sounded too good to be true. Nell reached for her phone to sign up online and then hesitated. When she had been reading and writing poetry seriously she had been so much more self-aware, so much more alive than she had been since succumbing to her parents’ pressure to end things with Eric, an act that had led to her abandoning her other great passion. Nell just wasn’t sure she had what it would take to return to poetry. Not quite yet. Not until she tested the waters further.
With a sense of determination Nell got up from the table, went into the living room, and stood before the floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases that stood at right angles to each other, creating a sort of book nook. Two shelves were packed with books Nell had collected in high school and college. There were several hefty Norton anthologies; collections of the work of poets she had binge read back before binging on anything but food was a thing, poets such as Emily Dickinson and John Donne, Frank O’Hara and Anne Sexton. There were volumes of poetry she had read in translation, like the work of Adam Zagajewski and Charles Baudelaire, as well as slim, self-published works by other young poetry students in whose company Nell had spent so much of her youth.
Nell removed several of the books from the shelves and settled into one of the comfortable armchairs nearby. All but one volume she stacked on the carpet at her feet. The volume she kept at hand was a collection of the poems of Wallace Stevens. Nell opened at random to find one of Stevens’s most well known works, “The Emperor of Ice Cream.”
Before she could read the first line, the girls came down the stairs one after the other. When they saw their mother in the book nook they halted.
“What’s up?” Molly asked curiously. “I haven’t seen you sit down to read in ages. Maybe ever.”
“You might need to get used to it,” Nell told them. “I’ve decided to get back to reading poetry. I used to live and breathe poetry. I wrote poems as well.”
“I never knew that,” Felicity said, sinking into the armchair across from Nell’s.
There’s so much about me you don’t know, Nell thought. That no one knows. No one but Eric.
“Did Dad know?” Molly asked, picking up a copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets from the stack of books at her mother’s feet. “He’s not exactly a serious literature kind of guy.”
“He knew that I used to write,” Nell told her, “but honestly, I don’t think it much registered with him.”
“Why did you stop writing poetry when you liked it so much?” Felicity asked.
Nell closed the volume of Stevens’s poems. “It’s hard to explain,” she said. “I found that once I was married I couldn’t . . . I guess I couldn’t concentrate.” Couldn’t, she added silently, or wouldn’t? I wouldn’t give my work the attention it deserved. I wouldn’t give myself the attention I deserved.
“That’s too bad,” Felicity said. “Were you published?”
“Yes. A few of my poems were published in my college’s poetry journal and a few were published in literary journals with a wider readership. One of my professors encouraged me to apply to a prestigious graduate program but . . . but in the end I didn’t.”
“Because you were marrying Dad?” Molly asked, looking up from the book of sonnets with a frown.
“That was only partly why,” Nell said. The other part, she added silently, was because I was afraid and unsure.
“Can we read some of your stuff?” Felicity asked. “Not that I know much about poetry. I like Robert Frost, though, especially ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.’ ”
“Maybe some day.” Nell gestured to the books on the floor. “This all is . . . Well, it’s bringing up a lot of memories.”
“What
kind of memories?” Molly asked, putting the volume of sonnets back on the stack.
“Bittersweet.” Memories of Eric and me, Nell thought. Memories of a time when options seemed limitless and the future seemed rosy.
“Why now, Mom?” Felicity asked. “Why are you suddenly interested in poetry again?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Nell prevaricated. “A whim I guess.”
“Whims come from somewhere,” Molly said quietly.
Felicity got up from her chair. “So what are you baking today, Mom?”
The question took Nell by surprise. “I haven’t thought about it yet. I’ll whip up something.”
“Or you could take the day off,” Felicity suggested. “We’ve still got about a pound of oatmeal raisin cookies and about six pounds of peanut butter bars. Slight exaggeration.”
Nell smiled. “I’ll consider taking a break.” Then she turned to Molly. “Has Mick come by yet?” she asked.
“First thing. Six geese a-laying. He brought a dozen goose eggs.”
Felicity laughed. “At least he’s not bringing you real birds! I’m going to grab one of those peanut butter bars and be off. See you guys later.”
“I’ll make a quiche with the eggs tonight if you’d like,” Nell offered when Felicity had gone.
“I don’t really care what happens to the eggs,” Molly said roughly. “I’m half tempted to break them down the kitchen sink.”
“Molly.” Nell sighed. “You need to talk to him.”
“I can’t, Mom. I just can’t. Not yet. I’ll see you later. I’m meeting Andrea at the library.”
When Molly had gone, Nell again opened the volume of Wallace Stevens’s poetry. “The Anecdote of the Jar.” Not an easy work to fathom. For a moment her eyes swept over the lines and her brain refused to focus. And then, quite suddenly, something changed and Nell began to read and to listen and to experience the poem in the way she once had so long ago.
When she had read through the poem three times Nell realized that she was crying. She smiled. I’ve done it, she thought. I’ve done it.
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