I sank back into my own chair, embarrassed by my own histrionics and the buzz in my veins, which I was sure was apparent to anyone within miles. I felt determined to push the conversation back onto Silas. I crossed my arms over my chest and looked down to make sure my arms pressed my breasts up. I think by this time I knew where I wanted the night to go. I hope you don’t think any less of me, or your father, because of this.
I asked what Silas was doing building a life up in Grandor. He stared down into his beer and told me that it was “nice living up here.” I could tell he didn’t want to say much more.
It was as if he had some kind of invisible boundary surrounding him. Protecting him. A line not meant to be crossed. Not by anyone. But the tequila and the bits of chest hair peeking out from Silas’s shirt had me emboldened.
I asked him what he meant by “nice.” A lot of places were nice and he didn’t live in them.
It felt exciting to be so sassy, so outspoken, so bold. I was a different woman that night in Grandor. It really felt like that.
I brought my elbows down to the table, sure to reveal my cleavage this time. (I’ve seen you employ this trick yourself from time to time, my dear!) I wanted to keep it light, and sexy, but I still wanted to know more about him. I had never before felt a boundary so palpable in another man. Silas was so excruciatingly hard to please. He just looked back into my eyes, not even for a moment looking down at my chest. It was impressive.
He confirmed that he wasn’t going to go any further than nice. He told me the woods and the lake and the solitude were nice.
That word, solitude, was my chance to probe. I asked him if he had a young woman to keep him company.
His eyes dimmed and his shoulders slunk a bit, although I could tell he would have been very upset to know that I noticed. There was a sense that trying to get at Silas’s story would be a violation of everything he stood for. He was a man so deeply in possession of his truth. He held it close and it was for no one else to see.
There was a moment of thick silence.
And then I just leaned over the table, spilling the remainder of Silas’s beer, and pressed my lips as fast and as decidedly as I could into his lips. And, before I realized I had said anything at all, I had invited Silas to my hotel room.
This is how your story begins.
I’m sorry if it made a mess of things,
Mom.
12
As Jane read Susie’s words, her insides twirled. Susie’s story was different from her own, but the feelings behind them were so similar. The outcome was so similar. Perhaps Susie was right that all mothers’ stories were the same in one way or another. Jane felt an urge to place her own words, her own stories, right next to Susie’s. She didn’t think too much about why; she just followed the feeling to write. She had no idea if Hazel would ever see these words, these thoughts, but she knew she wanted to write them down for her. And with that, Jane took her journal and pen and wrote:
Letter 1
Meeting your father
Jane
Dear Hazel,
The first thing I noticed about your father was his green, alchemic eyes. It reminded me of the very first bead I ever wanted to use to make a necklace out of. I noticed him at the market up in Grandor where I lived for a summer. It was closing and everyone had already started to take down their tents. There was always a sense of slowing down at this time of the day at the markets. Each artisan tucked their products away into bags and cases and boxes, occasionally slowing to a stop to inspect their own tapestry or necklace or candle or woven scarf. A trace of a smile would usually emerge before the thing was packed away until the next sunrise. Another chance to place their handmade things into the hands of a passerby.
Someone would tell me that whatever they were dangling in front of their eyes would look fabulous on me.
There would be trying the thing on, a mirror held up, and then usually a “thank you, but no thank you, I’ll be back again later.”
For me, the goal of coming up to Grandor was to escape with my things rather than to connect other people to them. I was determined to waste what was meant to be my premed education money on the experience of living on the great and moody lake of Grandor, Maine. There were many things a straight and well-paved path could lead you to. It could lead you to the love of your life seated next to you on the first day of medical school. (That was your great-grandparents, Hazel.) It could lead you to a nice home in Placer with a daughter you loved. (That was your grandparents.) It could lead that daughter to set out to pursue a medical degree of her own. (This was me.) And for the first five semesters this was true for me, if you can believe it. But that straight and well-paved path couldn’t prevent a patch of black ice one early spring day from sending a car into a tailspin. It couldn’t prevent the front of the car from meeting a thick and strong tree. And it didn’t prevent me from becoming an orphan when I was twenty-one.
(I so wish you’d gotten to meet your grandparents. You would have loved them. They would have loved you.)
The medical degree didn’t seem as important to me anymore now that I was on my own. What called to me was a great and moody lake that I stumbled on, in a small and quiet town in northwestern Maine, where nobody’s eyes looked downward when they saw me walk by. I was so sick of people saying, “How are you feeling, Jane?” with an empathetic tilt of their head and pout of the lips.
The hefty sum of my parents’ savings accounts appeared in my bank account within days of the funeral. It was more than enough to have all the things one needed in a lifetime, I thought. But I was numb to what “having a life” could mean without my parents, your grandparents. Their money manager called me to confirm the transfer as I was walking down the street in my hometown of Placer. I happened to be next to a bead shop at the time, and I walked in, determined to spend as much money as one could at a bead shop. The transactions of a normal life seemed meaningless now.
I was surprised to find that there was something cathartic about rolling the tiny beads around between my fingers. The way the colors swirled into one another in such a small little orb. The way the light hit the glass. The differences in texture, or patina, or shine, or color. It was subtle, and I found the things that drew me to a given bead were arbitrary. I rested my favorites one by one in my left palm and imagined myself arranging them into delicate glimmering strings for necklaces. I imagined my hands occupied and productive while the rest of my body and mind and heart was a grieving mess. It seemed very appealing in that moment.
So I bought a large pile of beads and clasps and strings and wires and tweezers and pliers, found a place on a map with a stall where I could sell my yet-to-be-made jewelry. And then I packed up everything in my college apartment, sent in my notice of leave to the registrar at school, and went to that place on the map.
And soon after, I found myself on an uncomfortable wooden chair, behind a collapsible table full of jewelry that no one bought. I didn’t mind, though.
While people walked past my tent, usually without a second look, I spent most of the day in the tent reading and decoding poetry. I had always been drawn to poetry in theory, but my life in pursuit of an MD wouldn’t have allowed for such indulgences. But now, on my new path, in my new life resembling none of the old one, poetry could abound. I indulged in it as the cool spring turned into the summer heat next to my beads.
On a particularly hot Tuesday midmorning, I looked up from a collection of Emily Dickinson’s greatest poems, peered over the spine and found myself intrigued by the green, alchemic eyes of the furniture designer across the way.
I shared that I liked his stuff and then pulled my fingertips along the edge of the wood. I had honestly just intended to start a conversation, but the wood felt smooth and strong. Like it was in the shape it was always meant to be in.
Your father descended from the black pickup truck into which he was loading handcra
fted chairs and tables and desks and bureaus.
He had a stunning mane of wild black curls that fell over his face. He was burly and handsome with strong hands and shoulders and pronounced cheekbones. He sat on the bed of his truck in a faded flannel shirt with specks of sawdust catching the light as he moved even slightly. The top two buttons were undone, revealing dark curls on his chest. He leaned back, crossed his legs and raised an eyebrow.
He responded to my comments with a certain look in his eyes that made me think he was flirting.
His long dark eyelashes were shining. He crossed one leg over the other and swung his foot back and forth. His boots were firm and rugged with holes and different-colored laces on each. His one foot came toward me and receded again. Like a metronome on an old piano.
I sat down on a lingering coffee table. “Sturdy,” I said. It was the sexiest word I could think of at the time.
I don’t know what had come over me, acting like that. As my fingers rounded the edge of the table, they dipped into a slight groove in the wood.
I quickly recovered by throwing something else out there. I told him I liked the finish. I continued to save myself the embarrassment of being so forward.
There was a geometric cube carved into the side. It was stained a darker wood.
I asked inquisitively about the engraving as confidently as I could.
To this day, I do not know what emboldened me in this moment. What force within my body pressed me up toward that man or brought my finger along his table so seductively. To ask such prying questions without hesitation. It was my first experience with bohemia. It felt meaningless, asinine even, but it enlivened all that was numb within me in those difficult days.
He told me it was his logo. A box. After his last name. And then he told me his whole name. Silas Box. It sounded as slick and cool as I expected.
Before Silas came down and greeted me properly, I pulled my finger along the wood once again and yelped out. I recoiled my finger from the table and brought it close to my chest and held on to it with my other hand.
Silas jumped from his position on the bed of the truck and took my fingers in his. His hands were calloused and scarred and manly. His eyes grew large and attentive as he inspected my finger.
He asked if I had caught a splinter, distress creeping up in his throat.
I playfully extended my finger right in front of Silas’s and smiled generously. I was just faking and I let him know it.
Silas’s shoulders fell and he tucked his chin, coarse with stubble, into his chest and shook his head at his own credulousness. His curly hair flopped back and forth effortlessly. He tucked a curl behind his ear as he lifted his head. Those green, alchemic eyes again. As my eyes met his, a grand and flitting feeling rushed into my heart. I hadn’t felt anything in so long. It was glorious.
He asked if I was free for a beer and I told him okay, as casually as I could muster.
There was a time in my life that I considered what it would have been like if I had never made my way across the market. If I had never seduced your father with my long dress and slightly sunburned chest. Or him me. If I hadn’t said yes to that beer. If I had instead veered off this wild road, this directionless detour from my life, and returned to everything I was meant to see and do.
But it brought you to me, my dear Hazel. And I would never take that back. Not for anything in the world. Even if it started to make this mess.
We spent a lot of time together after that first beer. When I began falling in love, or in lust, with your father, I was young enough and aching over the loss of my parents enough to embrace the freedom that came with being in that place. Being with that man.
My relationship with your father was devoid of promises and apologies. Nobody bought flowers or left little love notes. Nobody folded laundry without being prompted or arranged weekend getaways. I never lit candles over a romantic home-cooked meal of Silas’s favorite foods. Silas never came home from his day with something special he picked out just for me. If we wanted those things, we would do them together. Or not. There was nothing needed or compromised over. There was only want and lust and the simplicity of being just ourselves.
At the time, I believed in the expansive potential of my life. That Silas and I could grow into any kind of life together. Fill up the spaces of the world with our honest, naked, uncompromised selves. There was romance, true romance, in that. Togetherness in independence. (You can see how my mind has changed with Cam.)
There is a moment I often hearken back to when I think of that summer. The sun was high and the windows were open. There was no breeze to rattle windowpanes or billow curtains. There was just thick, drooping, hot air saturating the bedroom. White sheets were tangled at our ankles and pillows and bras and shorts and underwear peppered the room (I’m sorry to make you cringe!). My eyelids were heavy and I had my arm stretched across Silas’s abdomen. I could feel his breathing. The rhythmic rise and fall of his belly. I lifted my arm to reach for a glass of water beside the bed and Silas’s skin lifted with it. It was as if our bodies melted into one in that room. I let my arm linger for a moment, Silas’s skin affixed to mine. Your father drew his heavy eyelids open and I instinctively thrust my hand toward the water glass. I knew Silas would not want to witness our bodies connected like that. It surprised me, though, how viscerally aware I was that this scene of skin stuck to skin would violate a sacred condition of our relationship.
It was in this moment that I realized it wasn’t a free-spirited ideal that sustained us. It was the avoidance of all realities. That single flinch of my arm set into motion my scrupulous study of Silas’s gestures. I became desperate for casualties. The conspiracies cloaked in every movement, every word. The way his jaw tensed when we made eye contact. The way his knees turned away from me when we spoke, even casually. The anxious twisting of his hair around his right pointer finger. The empty gaze that would sometimes befall him.
I asked once while we were sitting in his backyard where he went mentally. I put my hand on his hand tenderly.
Silas didn’t blink once as he spoke of his own tragedies in his past.
He told me that he was only sixteen when he met his first love, Torrey, but he was sure that it would last a lifetime. I think I can recite almost verbatim what he told me about her. For many years I played that scene back over and over in my mind. He said that Torrey was an equal but opposite force. Calm and free-spirited. She never paid any mind to the rules but would break them only gently. Torrey got pregnant the year after they met and Silas’s parents put them up in that lake house in Grandor (the one you’re in right now). They redid the whole thing together. They were really making it work. Starting a life. Silas was just starting to earn some money from selling furniture, too. He told me with a sparkle in his eye about the rocking chair he had made for her. How excited she was to rock their little girl in it. I think they were going to name her Ruby. Cute, huh?
Then, one day, as Silas was preparing to meet Torrey for a picnic, the phone rang. It was the hospital. Torrey had gone in with some bleeding and cramps. Before long she was unconscious. They saved Torrey, but they couldn’t save the baby.
He described, with such anguish, how Torrey reacted. I could tell the images of that horrible day were just ripping right through to the very moment that he was telling me this. They returned from the hospital to their home, but she was never the same. They as a couple were never the same.
I disclosed that unexpected death landed me in Grandor, too, and that he wasn’t alone.
He took my hand and walked me into his workshop. He showed me a picture of her that he had tacked up onto the wall. Her eyes looked metallic and gray, reflecting the lake. Her lips were full and pink and burst out from her lush skin. Her shoulder was turned toward the camera and she was beautiful. Silas lifted up that photo to reveal two sonograms underneath. It was their baby. One sonogram at three months and one at f
ive months of a baby that would never be.
My heart ached for him. And it was a deep, deep ache. I was never certain why he shared what he shared in that moment.
I felt a sadness both for him and with him. I sensed both an intimate attachment given our shared experience, but also a certainty that there would be an unnavigable distance between us.
From time to time, I would see him pick up the phone to try to call her. But, to my knowledge, he was never able to get himself to go through with it.
I don’t know why I feel compelled to admit this now but I do. One day, I snuck into his phone and took down her number. I had a feeling I might need it at some point. I didn’t want to acknowledge it yet, but I think it was my way of admitting to myself that we would have never lasted. I think if it wasn’t going to be me in his life, I knew it would be her. I don’t think there is a single woman on this earth that could replace Torrey for him. Or Ruby, for that matter.
But that doesn’t mean he can’t love you, and Eve, too. I really believe that.
I’m sorry if it made a mess of things,
Mom.
13
For Jane, the rest of the day almost felt normal. The twins woke up and still did all the twin things. Cam still did all the Cam things. And the door to Hazel’s room was still slightly ajar with nothing but quiet behind it. The quiet behind the door wasn’t new, but the feeling of emptiness was. Jane put her hand against the door and thought about pushing it wide open and lying down on Hazel’s bed and calling her and closing her own eyes and listening to the sound of her daughter’s voice. But she knew she shouldn’t.
That Summer in Maine Page 7