“Probably not,” said Rob. “But people die. Parents die sometimes.” Don’t I know it, thought Eliza. “We need to be prepared.”
Judith, the guardian of her children! Judith was a functioning alcoholic with lots of wonderful shoes, a tiny waist, and pots of money. She might give the girls a place to live, but she wouldn’t give them a home, study their flash cards with them, make them eat kale. Eliza’s stomach twisted. Behind her she heard the whir of pages sliding out of a printer—the sound of her fate being sealed.
“You do need to be prepared,” interjected Phineas, clearing his throat. “Believe me, the right decision now can save a heck of a lot of trouble down the road, in the event of something unforeseen. I’ve seen some doozies in my time.” He walked to the printer and picked up the papers. He tapped them on the edge of his desk to line the edges up perfectly.
“I’m sure you have,” said Eliza. “But even so, I’m not ready to sign.”
Phineas Tarbox cleared his throat again. Did he have some sort of problem? Allergies? It was April: the height of the pollen season. He said brightly, “Why don’t you take the documents home with you? And return them when you’re ready.”
It was agreed.
After, they did go for the tapas, but something dark and nameless had slithered among the gambas al ajillo and the patatas bravas.
The sangria, however, was delicious.
Partway through the meal, Rob put down his fork and said, “Should we talk about the elephant in the room?”
“There’s no elephant,” said Eliza. Not true. Obviously.
Rob waited. Eliza took another gulp of sangria and said, “Okay. Fine.”
“Okay fine what? Say what you’re thinking, Eliza.”
People loved to hear about the way Eliza and Rob had met, the icy street in Providence, Eliza holding the sandwich, sliding into him. What did they call it in romantic comedies? A “meet cute.” Silly name. That wasn’t the whole story, that was just to make it into a neat, packaged tale, the kind people liked to hear at cocktail parties. The whole story was that Eliza had been watching Rob for weeks, months even. She’d watched him with Kitty Sutherland. And she’d said to herself, That one. And one day she’d followed him, and she’d bought a sandwich she couldn’t afford, and she’d thought carefully about what to do next.
It was true about the sliding into him; the street was really very slippery, and it was a hill. She hadn’t meant to slide, but gravity and weather had gotten the best of her. The rest, as they said, was history.
“I’m not comfortable with the choice of your mother.”
She looked down, but even so she could feel Rob’s gaze on hers. She knew what he’d be doing, blinking in that innocent, bewildered way he did anytime the world surprised him by not going his way. Bumps in the road always came as such a personal shock to Rob because he didn’t encounter many. “But why? We don’t have anyone else.”
She was still looking down when she said, “Of course we have someone else. We have my father. He’s the other option.”
“Oh, Eliza. I mean a realistic option.” The tortilla espanola arrived, then the calamares en su tinta. The platter with the garlic shrimp sizzled. Eliza drank more sangria.
“Let’s talk about it another time,” said Rob.
“Okay,” said Eliza. The garlic from the shrimp sat sticky in her throat. The sangria was making her feel tipsy, but it was the hot and uncomfortable sort of tipsy, not the merry sort. “Another time.”
After that, Rob had put the folded sheaf of papers on the kitchen desk, where Eliza took care of the bills and signed permission slips and noted doctor’s appointments on a big wall calendar. Normally Eliza was meticulous about the kitchen desk, but the papers sat and sat; they sat like the final guests at a cocktail party who remained even as the hosts cleared the glasses from around them.
Of course she and Rob weren’t going to die at the same time. She should just sign the papers, compromise, the way married people did, the way reasonable people did.
But she couldn’t do it. She didn’t feel reasonable. She felt that signing the documents was akin to signing over her children completely to Judith’s world, to Rob’s world. Nothing would be left of Eliza’s world, nothing at all! She wanted to cry and stamp her feet like a child. If the unthinkable happened, and the girls went to Judith, all vestiges of Eliza, of Little Harbor, of the boats and the wharf and the traps, of the little house Eliza had grown up in, of Charlie’s strong hands and weathered face, would be gone, swallowed up in a wave of endless ease and privilege.
Eliza and Rob weren’t going to die, not at the same time, of course not.
But they might. Phineas was right: they had to prepare for all eventualities.
First Rob took the casual approach: “Hey, could you sign those papers when you get a chance?” Then he tried the harried approach, via text: GOT VM FROM PHINEAS WE NEED TO GET THE DOCS OVER TO HIM. He tried the stern approach, the goofy approach, the cajoling approach, the friendly, no-nonsense approach. Once he left the papers on her pillow, like they were chocolates at a fine hotel and he was in charge of the turndown service. She moved them from one place to another and then finally shifted them to Rob’s third-floor office, out of sight, out of mind, unsigned.
Except they weren’t out of mind. They were on Eliza’s mind constantly—more, she’d wager, than they would have been if she’d just signed them. And the worst part about it was that Rob was right. He was right! Judith was the obvious choice, really the only choice. She loved the girls in her own weird, gin-soaked way. Charlie hadn’t been a realistic candidate before—it would be ridiculous to expect the girls to grow up in a lobstering village, and even if Charlie was financially compensated by their estate he wasn’t going to move to Massachusetts and stop hauling traps. Now that he was terminally ill, he obviously wasn’t a candidate at all.
And yet! Even now, even so many months after their initial meeting, even in the shadow of her father’s diagnosis, her mind kept going back to Phineas Tarbox’s office and the easy way Rob had answered for both of them, the way he’d just assumed. What he hadn’t said (because he hadn’t needed to) was, Your family isn’t good enough for our kids. But mine is.
Her resentment over all of this was buried deep, like the pea under the princess’s mattress. And, like the princess, Eliza could feel it each time she shifted in the night.
Or maybe it wasn’t a pea, maybe it was something small like a pea but sharper, like a razor. You could rip a seam with something like that. And then what? Once the seam was ripped, everything spilled out.
———
Eliza had been gone from Barton a week, but by the time she got home it felt like much longer. It was like living in a time warp, being back in Little Harbor. During her absence the peonies in the yard of the Cavanaughs’ house across the street had come into full bloom. Mrs. Cavanaugh was out in her clogs, holding a pair of clippers and studying the garden. It didn’t seem right—in fact, it seemed downright inconsiderate of the peonies—that her dad had a brain tumor, the very worst kind of brain tumor you could have, and the peonies were blooming so exuberantly. How dare they. She remembered a similar feeling from when her mother died; just two days later, Eliza was expected to go to school and do math and science, and it was all so unbelievable, that the numbers still added up the way they were supposed to, and her lungs and heart still did their jobs of breathing and pumping, and she still had to go to the bathroom and drink water when she was thirsty: all of these normal, pedestrian activities, with such a glaring void in the world.
Charlie had been angry with Eliza for snooping in the drawer; he was angry with Val for telling Eliza about his tumor. No, he didn’t want to talk about it. No, he didn’t want to go see a doctor in Boston; he wouldn’t go home with Eliza to Barton. He wasn’t leaving his traps untended. No, he didn’t want to go out to dinner in Ellsworth or to The Lobster Trap in town. He wanted to watch television and go to bed, and he’d say goodbye now, Eliza, because he
was getting up too early in the morning and he knew she’d be gone before he got back.
“You can’t haul,” Eliza had said. “With your arm!”
“Got some help,” he’d said. “I got it figured out, Eliza, you don’t need to worry about it.”
Eliza had wanted to ask Russell to help, but Russell had his own traps to haul. He shouldn’t take on Charlie’s too. Although he would if Eliza asked him.
When Eliza was sixteen, Val used to tell her, A flame like that is going to burn itself out.
And it did, of course. Eventually.
Eliza waved at Mrs. Cavanaugh and pulled into her own driveway, then let herself in the front door.
“Hello?” she said. “Hello? I’m home. Where is everybody?”
Evie would be at theater camp, but Zoe should be home, and certainly Rob should be home, tucked up in his home office, working on Cabot Lodge. Unless he’d gone up to Naples again. Would he go to Naples without telling her? She didn’t think he would. She put her overnight bag in the foyer and climbed the stairs to the third floor. Rob’s office was a disaster. It looked like an army of industrious rodents had visited during the night, scattering plans and books and papers all around. She saw that on Rob’s drafting table were not one, not two, but three coffee cups, each partially filled, with the contents beginning to congeal.
Eliza closed her eyes and thought about how long Rob had listened to her when she told him about Charlie. She thought about how he had offered to drop everything and drive up. She opened her eyes. The coffee cups were still there. She closed the door.
Zoe’s bed was neatly made, with her ancient stuffed elephant, Marvin, sitting on top of the pile of pillows. Evie’s bed had the top sheet bunched up and hanging out the bottom, but at least she’d tried. Eliza and Rob’s bed was not made at all. Eliza closed that door too. She’d get to it later; she’d get to all of it later. She was suddenly exhausted and had to fight the urge to crawl into the unmade bed and go to sleep. When she heard the front door open she flew down the stairs, just as Deirdre, Sofia, and Zoe were coming in.
“Mom!” said Zoe, and her face lit up like a Christmas tree. She was a little too cool for a full hug in front of others, so she offered Eliza her specialty: a half hug, half lean. That was okay. Eliza knew the love was under there somewhere, maybe hidden inside those stupendous legs. You couldn’t take your eyes off teenage girls, you really couldn’t: their legs just got longer and longer and longer. But you couldn’t say that to them because they just rolled their eyes and made you feel old and short-legged and thick. “You’re home!” said Zoe. “For good, right? You’ll see the fireworks with us.”
Deirdre was sporting a navy-blue halter dress, which showed off her toned shoulders, and matching navy espadrilles. She smelled like a garden after a spring rain shower, and she looked like a walking ad for probiotics, glowing with good health and the appropriate amount of gut bacteria. Eliza had on a pair of grimy shorts that she’d worn twice without washing, and an old Lobster Festival T-shirt she’d found in her childhood dresser drawer. She hadn’t meant to stay so long in Little Harbor when she’d packed, and she hadn’t especially wanted to do battle with her father’s geriatric washing machine.
———
Lesson Number Two from her mother’s letter:
Floss, Eliza! I have good teeth. Your father has good teeth. Your teeth have come in pretty close to perfect. This is a gift, not a right. Take care of it.
———
“I’m home!” said Eliza. “I’ll see the fireworks with you.” Zoe smelled exactly like herself, like hair that had been washed too often and too vigorously. She smelled like overly fragrant lotion from Bath & Body Works, and a little bit like Belgian waffles. She smelled glorious. “I’m home,” said Eliza.
“Rob had to drive to Boston,” said Deirdre. “Something about meeting with Mrs. Cabot, an emergency. Super early, he should be on his way back. He didn’t want to bother you. Kristi has the day off from nannying, so I brought Evie to camp, and then I took these two”—she indicated Sofia and Zoe—“out to breakfast at Big Joe’s. And here we are.”
“Big Joe’s!” said Eliza. “Lucky.” That explained Zoe’s Belgian waffle cologne.
She tried not to be bothered that Rob and Evie were both gone. Of course Rob had to work. And of course Evie had to go to camp! Soon they’d be holding auditions for the end-of-session performance of Charlotte’s Web.
When Sofia and Zoe left the room, Deirdre said, “He said—well, he didn’t tell me any details. But he said something is going on with your dad. I figured you could use a hand.”
When Deirdre said things like I figured you could use a hand, sometimes Eliza heard Clearly you can’t handle things yourself. It made her feel inadequate, even though that’s probably not how Deirdre meant it. Deirdre never seemed to feel inadequate. Of course she didn’t! She was living in the exact same kind of world she’d grown up in. Deirdre’s parents were both alive and well in Darien, Connecticut, residing in the four-bedroom, three-bath center-hall colonial where Deirdre and her younger sister, Bethany, had grown up. Her parents golfed together four mornings a week and traveled internationally twice a year. Brock’s parents had retired to Clearwater, Florida, and Deirdre and Brock took Sofia to see them every April vacation. Deirdre and Brock were fully pedigreed. They were purebreds.
Rob was also a purebred, and Rob’s girlfriend before Eliza had been a purebred too. Kitty Sutherland. Eliza was a mutt. Brown hadn’t even been Rob’s first-choice school—he’d wanted to go to Princeton and hadn’t been accepted. Brown had been more of a safety, he’d told her once. She never really got over his saying that. She could never get Rob to understand what a big deal it had been for someone from her tiny rural high school to get into an Ivy. It had literally never happened before. He would never truly comprehend how she’d had to claw her way there, and then scrabble to keep herself afloat once she arrived.
Deirdre said, “Sooo…” And Eliza understood that this was the place where she could bring Deirdre into the kitchen and tell her about Charlie, but the thought of doing that filled her with a bone-deep fatigue.
Just then they heard the mudroom door open and Rob called out, “Helllooooo!”
“I’ve got to run,” said Deirdre. She called up the stairs, “Sof?”
“Leave her here,” said Eliza. Rob’s phone rang, and he called from the mudroom, “I’m going to grab this, I’ll be quick!”
“Are you sure?” asked Deirdre, about leaving Sofia.
“Of course.”
“Oh my God, thank you,” said Deirdre. In Barton you were supposed to go out of your way to thank someone who did you a favor, even if it wasn’t one you’d asked for, so that in turn they could over-thank you when you returned the favor or performed a favor of a similar value. It had taken Eliza a little time to learn these rules, but she was pretty sure she had them down now. “I’ve got a hundred and thirty things to do for the gala. And with Kristi off today…”
“Go,” said Eliza. “It’ll be my pleasure to have her here.”
While Rob finished his phone call, Eliza went at a few sticky spots on the island with the rough side of the sponge, and then she pulled out the spray bottle and gave the whole place a good wipe-down.
“Let me do that,” said Rob, off the phone now, wrapping his arms around her. “I thought I left it clean.”
“I got it,” answered Eliza. “I have to tell you the whole story, and if I stop moving I’ll start crying.” She’d only had a chance for the short version on the phone with Rob. Besides, there were a lot of unidentifiable sticky spots on the counter.
Rob leaned back uncomplainingly when the spray bottle came near him, and he made surprised and sympathetic little noises at all the astonishing parts, and he didn’t try to jump in and finish Eliza’s sentences the way some people did. It felt good to talk and have someone listen, and when she had finished talking, Eliza said out loud what she’d already known was true: “If he won’t com
e down here I have to go back, right after the Fourth. I’d bring the kids with me, but there’s not a lot of room, and I don’t want to upset them, and they’ve got their activities going on down here….But I can’t leave my dad alone with this. He won’t do anything on his own, I know he won’t. I have to go back.”
“Of course,” said Rob. “You go.”
“But the girls.”
“I’m here.”
“You have Mrs. Cabot.”
“Mrs. Cabot can wait.”
“No she can’t. Can she?”
“No,” admitted Rob. “Mrs. Cabot doesn’t know how to wait.” They both stared at the counter, and then Rob said, “Deirdre can help!”
“She has the gala. She’s really busy.”
“But she has a full-time nanny. And one child.”
“True,” said Eliza, thinking. “But we didn’t hire Kristi to take care of our kids.”
“We could hire our own nanny.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“What about my mom?”
Eliza rolled her eyes. “She’ll probably get them drunk.” It was such a cliché, having a boozy, rich mother-in-law, Eliza realized this; it was a subplot to so many sitcoms, but the fact that it was a cliché didn’t make it any less true.
Rob laughed. “I bet she won’t. Not too drunk, anyway.”
If anyone asked Eliza about her relationship with her mother-in-law her answer was always, It’s complicated.
(As a wedding gift, Judith had paid off the eighty thousand dollars remaining on Eliza’s student loans.)
The first time Rob had brought Eliza home to the Back Bay townhouse where he’d grown up, Judith had mentioned Rob’s ex-girlfriend Kitty Sutherland twice, and even though Rob had blown an imaginary referee whistle and said, “Mom! Unnecessary roughness!” she’d told one more story, something about Rob and Kitty and a trip to Nantucket, just hilarious. Kitty’s heel broke on one of the cobblestones, ha ha ha ha ha, they almost missed their dinner reservation…
The Captain's Daughter Page 10