The Wideness of the Sea

by Katie Curtis

  Third lot, first row, fifth headstone. Her mother’s grave was a little more than a hundred feet away.

  “I miss you Mom,” she whispered, and closed her eyes.

  She opened them again and started to sketch the church, her hands moving across the canvas, her mind free to wander. Back to her mother. Back to her life here. Back to when everything came apart.

  The last time she saw her mother healthy, she was home from school for the weekend. It was the beginning of November, and she and Andrew had driven home together from school, the University of Maine at Orono. He needed to help his father winterize the boat. His MS was getting worse. They were happy on the drive home. They blasted Tom Petty and shared a bag of sour patch kids, and talked about classes they loved and roommates they didn’t. Andrew kept making Anna laugh until she cried. Other than worries about Andrew’s dad, they were carefree. That’s how she remembered that drive.

  Andrew dropped Anna at home, and she spent the afternoon painting with her mom in the barn – they were trying to capture the last sigh of autumn, and the way the colors of the trees reflected in the harbor. After they washed their hands and their brushes they cooked a big pasta dinner together and opened a bottle of wine. Drinking wine with her parents was still a novelty and Anna felt very grown up, on the cusp of living a life that seemed impossibly happy. She loved school, her boyfriend, her family, her work. Her mother seemed happy too – she was settling in to having an empty nest, and since she had more time to paint, she had weathered the transition well.

  Perhaps the universe could not abide such happiness.

  After that dinner, her mother said she didn’t feel well. She couldn’t eat very much the next day, and on Sunday she spent most of the day in bed before Anna had left to go back to school. She went to her doctor the next day, who sent her to the hospital. There she received a diagnosis: advanced ovarian cancer. The prognosis was 6-12 months.

  They were in shock. Everyone except her mother. Her own mother had died of breast cancer when she was in her early twenties. She had been here before. She had always mourned the fact that they never got to know their grandmother, but now, she realized she had a model for how to handle her own death. She gave chemo a shot, but it was too late.

  Once they realized how short their time was with her, Anna came home every chance she got. They spent weekends watching comedy shows and movies, playing cards, traveling to museums in Boston, her mother in a wheelchair, her favorite lavender cashmere knit hat on her bald head, her favorite oatmeal sweater over her clothes, since she was always cold. She had learned from her own mother that the way to die was to truly live. It freed them all up to enjoy each day as a gift, as it came.

  When she had the strength, they would paint. Her last painting was a small canvas of the things that lay on her bedside table: a stem of purple lupine, the flower that bloomed everywhere in Maine in early summer. Her father had set in a glass vase, since he knew she loved them. Next to it lay a blush colored seashell, a photo of their family, and an ebony rosary resting on a Bible.

  When she didn’t have the strength, she rested, and held the same rosary from the painting, its beads moving through her fingers, her lips mumbling the ancient words.

  She passed away in just nine short months. Anna was shocked at how fast it went, and though she and Andrew went home every weekend, she couldn’t shake the voracious guilt that she should have been there more. Her mother told her she should stay in school. She remembered praying that they could have the summer together. Praying her mom would last till June. She died at the end of May. That was one of the last times she could remember praying. It was almost eight years ago.

  When her mother died, Anna’s faith and guidance in all things, but particularly in art, was suddenly gone. She could barely return to it. Something about the ritual of painting evoked memories of her mother and seemed to reintroduce her loss, each time from a fresh new angle she hadn’t considered before. Her father couldn’t understand this. There was hardly a worse crime in John Goodrich’s world than letting talent go to waste. But in the wake of her mother’s death, his ideas were distilled through his grief and anger at her mother’s passing, until he was simply a tyrant.

  Her mom had been gone a year and a half when they had a blowout argument. She had come home from school, halfway through her senior year for Thanksgiving. After a bittersweet holiday at Uncle Charlie’s, where her aunt and her uncle had tried to love them hard, she was home packing her bags to go back to school. She came into the dining room. Her dad was sitting at the table, looking through the piles of brochures and packets for art programs at grad schools, and for art shows across the country.

  “What’s this?” she asked her dad.

  “I thought I’d help you get started on your applications. I know you’ve been distracted and maybe hadn’t thought that they are due soon if you’re going to grad school.”

  “I’m not going to grad school, Dad. I’m not going to submit to these shows, either. I’m going to take a break next year. I’ll waitress or babysit. And I am going to help Andrew on the boat. That’s my plan. But I’m taking a break from painting.” Her blue eyes were fixed with a stubborn stare that was mirrored by her father’s, only his eyes were brown. Andrew used to say that stubborn stare was the Italian and the Irish in them clashing.

  Her father got up slowly.

  “Goddamit, Anna, why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you throwing your life away? You could be a great artist. And instead you choose to be a waitress. You’re just like your boyfriend. He could be a brilliant doctor or teacher, and instead he is going to be a fisherman. What is wrong with you? You could have gone to Brown, or RISD, worked with some of the best teachers in the world, but instead you went to Orono. It isn’t exactly known for their art department—I should know. You just followed a boy. And now you’re throwing your life away over a boy.” He pushed the pamphlets and papers off the table in one sweep of his arm.

  Anna shouted back, “I didn’t need world-class art teachers! I had one of the world’s best art teachers. I had Mom. But she’s gone now. And I swear to you, I’m done painting. I’ll never paint again.”

  That was about the worst thing Anna could have said. Her father’s eyes were like those of a horse who had just broken a leg. Wild, in pain, wanting to fight, to keep going, but needing mercy. “For Chrissakes, don’t you dare bring your mother into this!” But Anna didn’t hear the rest. She stormed out of the room and slammed the door.

  She grabbed her bike and rode over to Andrew’s. I wish mom were here, she kept repeating through her tears. Her mother would have helped her talk sense into her dad. Instead he was going to squeeze her until he poured his sense into her. It was no use. She needed to leave. Get out of Maine. She thought of her teacher who had talked to her last week at school, saying she had a friend who was offering a paid internship at a gallery in New York City. She had recommended Anna, if she wanted it.

  Suddenly that choice blossomed in her heart like a new beginning. She could stop painting. She could use all she had learned. She could earn a living and be free from her father. Andrew could go to grad school, maybe. Her father was right; he was smart. She just had to find him and figure out when he thought he could leave. Probably after lobster season was over, she thought.

  But when she finally talked to him, out on the pier by the old fort, and told him about the gallery, he couldn’t look at her. She could still remember the sound of the waves and the light on his face when he said, “I can’t go to New York with you, Anna. I belong in Maine. We belong in Maine.”

  “But I need to leave,” she told him. Her father’s harsh words that she had followed Andrew to school made her stubborn side dig in. It was his turn to follow her.

  She left after her graduation, and found her way to Genevieve’s gallery. Still reeling from the hurt that he wouldn’t follow her, and not having dealt with her mom’s death and her dad’s rejection, she told him they should take a break. Andrew seemed p
hysically pained when she suggested it. She felt guilty then, but she was…frozen. She stayed that way for a long time—a year maybe?—before she finally realized she had made a mistake. As the shock and fog started to recede that her mother was gone, she realized how much she needed Andrew. Love was born of resource and need. Anna felt like a house that had been leveled by a storm. She couldn’t even fathom her need until now. And she needed Andrew. She needed his sweetness and his humor, his strength and his smile. She needed to hold him. She left a message on his home phone that she was coming home, that she needed to see him, and hopped on a bus.

  But when she went to the harbor to find him, to tell him how much she needed him, she saw him out on the boat, with another girl. The girl had reached up, and put her arms around him, and kissed him.

  He didn’t need her anymore.

  She turned around, went back to the train station, and came back to New York the same day a wreck. Genevieve told her to take some time off. Marie came for a visit and gently told her it was time to move forward. To let him go. He chose his life in Maine. She needed to choose hers.

  It was finally in a grief support group that she had found relief. They suggested doing for others was a way to heal, so she reached out to the Boys and Girls Club. She started teaching art classes. In the slow brush strokes her mother had taught her, in the swirl of burnt sienna and Payne’s gray, in the eyes of young children who still saw the world as hopeful, as new, she started to heal. And when she saw Miranda, so eager to learn and so talented, she found that the grief group was right. Giving to others did help her heal. Or at least, it had helped her find her way out of the dark.

  When Raphael came into the gallery looking to decorate his Tribeca loft six months later, Andrew had been buried deep in her heart. Like her mother, like her father. Like Maine.

  But here she was, unearthing them all.

  All of a sudden, like seeing a photo in a clearer focus, she saw how much her choice to let Andrew go was influenced by her grief, and as much as she hated to admit it, her father’s dislike of him. She was surprised by this. She couldn’t picture Andrew in her life now in the least. Wasn’t that proof that she had made the right choice? Raphael just worked in her life. Her New York life. He was smart and attractive and successful. Still, the memory of her years with Andrew gave her the gnawing feeling that she had known a happiness then that was more real than her life was now. Had she thrown that away because of her father?

  She decided she wanted to ask her father, tonight at dinner, what he had so disliked in Andrew. She was home now; she might as well muddy the water, then go back to New York and let it settle after she was gone.

  Chapter 5

  When she arrived back at her sister’s house, it was post-nap for Henry, and he was sprawled on the couch with a sippy cup, his blankie and a bag of Cheerios. She didn’t dare disturb him, walking instead into the kitchen where her sister was just cleaning up.

  “The beef stew is in the oven. There is nothing left to do but drink,” she said as she poured herself a glass of red. “Why does thinking about Uncle Charlie make me want to reach for a glass of wine? And do you want some?”

  Anna nodded. “Yes I do. I think it’s either because we’re Irish or because it is the universal prescription for grief.” She joined her sister at the island.

  “How was painting?” Marie asked.

  “Good, it was great to be outside. I’m painting St. Patrick’s.” Anna took a sip of wine, which tasted so good after her afternoon of working.

  “What a perfect thing to paint while you’re here. Dad would love that. By the way, how’s it going for you with him?” Marie asked. “I mean, when is the last time you guys came close to a real conversation?”

  “I dunno. Eight years ago I guess?” Anna laughed. “I was just thinking about it all. Remember when we had that huge fight? The one that made me decide to move to New York?”

  “You mean the one where he told you to go to grad school and you told him no? Then he screamed at you and you decided to move to New York?

  “Yes, that’s the one. Well, I just keep going back to that time, wondering why he disliked Andrew so much. I mean, everything about that fight was because Dad thought I was choosing Andrew over grad school. Just like I chose to go to University of Maine instead of RISD or RPI to be with Andrew. Which happened to be a great choice, by the way. We were so happy there. And after you and Stephen went off to big schools I saved dad a lot of money. But I just couldn’t think about painting after mom died. I needed a break to figure out what I wanted to do. That’s why I told him I was going to hang out with Andrew and waitress that summer. I knew I couldn’t pick up a brush or go through those motions while I was grieving her. I guess Dad just couldn’t hear that.”

  “Maybe he also couldn’t let her die in you,” Marie said. “If you stopped painting, everything she taught you, and what you guys had, would die too. I mean, he was having a pretty messed up time then.”

  Anna felt a twinge of guilt. “I know. And I beat myself up over it. I know that we were both hurting. But he was the parent, right? He was the one who should’ve heard me say enough, this hurts.”

  “But it was his wife. He couldn’t hear you and your feelings when he was knee-deep in his own.” Marie said.

  “I did figure that out with my grief group a few years back.” Anna nodded and took another sip. “It definitely helped me be less angry, having empathy for him. But I still don’t get why he disliked Andrew so much. Sure he was going to be a lobsterman instead of a lawyer, but he was still a pretty solid guy. He didn’t deserve the level of loathing Dad had for him. Maybe I’ll ask him tonight.”

  “Don’t you think we should avoid bringing it up? I mean everyone’s so raw about Uncle Charlie,” Marie said, her forehead wrinkled with concern.

  “I won’t make a big deal of it. I just need to know. I’m just starting to see how much his dislike of Andrew made me let him go so easily I guess.”

  “You’re not having second thoughts about Andrew?” Marie said, her impatience hard to miss in her tone. “I thought we had that weekend where you let him go for good. Remember? Peter Gabriel on repeat? Several empty wine bottles on the floor?”

  “It’s not like that,” Anna said. “I am not stewing about him. I think it is safe to say we’ve both moved on. I just need to understand what happened, I guess. Don’t you ever think about how the events around mom dying impacted your life? As I recall, you decided to go to med school for oncology, right?”

  “Yes, of course. And then I met Mike. But in my case, those were good things.”

  “In your case, Dad loved Mike because he was a doctor. He had done something with his life. He had achieved something, instead of sitting around in undeveloped potential like some people on Dad’s list of people who suck. At the top of which were Andrew and yours truly.”

  “Stop, you are being ridiculous,” Marie said, just as Henry ran in the room.

  “More Thomas! More Cheerios!” he said.

  “Am I?” Anna asked. She turned to scoop up her nephew and blew raspberries on his stomach. “Tell mommy Auntie is not being ridiculous! She is just asking some important questions!”

  “’Portant quetchions!” Henry replied, laughing.

  “See?” said Anna. “At least he understands me.”

  As her sister took care of her nephew, Anna poured another glass of wine and stirred the stew, and then wandered over to put another log in the fireplace. A picture on the mantle caught Anna’s attention. It was a picture of her mom holding on to her children. It must have been summer, since her mom’s hair was up high in a messy bun, her skin gleaming from a light glaze of sweat under her white eyelet sleeveless blouse. She stood in front of a fountain somewhere – Portland? Boston maybe? – with all three of them under her arms. No doubt her father was taking the picture. Her mother had the look of someone who was perfectly happy even while being mildly annoyed. Her father was a perfectionist at pictures, of course. But she rem
embered how her mother had always remained unflappable in those circumstances. Anna remembered her own stress at his loud voice, the stern reproachful look. But her mother always managed to sooth him - a hand on his arm, a warm laugh like Champagne that bubbled from her throat, and she could melt the moment, turn an iceberg into a stream. “Oh John,” she would say. “That’s enough dear.” And he listened to her. That is all it took for him to turn his heart in a moment, to let his mood be softened. And he would look at her and smile. His love for her yielding to his best self so often that Anna didn’t even think of him as overly harsh or stubborn, until she had died, and her ability to balance him was gone.

  Anna saw herself in the photo. The long pig-tails flowing to one side, tied with white ric rac ribbons, the red and white checked shirt with white shorts. She squinted in the summer sun, her teeth revealing the wreckage of an adolescent mouth. Her shoulders showed the lines from her bathing suit, set off by a faint sunburn. Her father managed to capture her thick eyelashes, and knobby knees holding two thin reeds of long legs together. Anna remembered those awkward years anew. Marie looked beautiful then, in her jeans and billowy blouse and long, thick hair. And Steven looked exactly the same, tall, like her dad, with his hair messy and overgrown.

  Anna remembered just how the world looked to those eyes, the little girl in the picture. This was how she remembered her family. Always doing something enriching, always in her father’s gaze, always under her mother’s arms. At least until her mother died. Then she saw her family as a group of people bonded together because they all missed the same person.