I laughed and nodded, then looked across at my mother standing on the veranda in a blue dress that I remembered from my childhood. It was long out of style now, but I appreciated her effort to take me back to the past with little details like the pink bathrobe with the pompoms, and now this.
I haven’t told you what you really need to know yet, Sophie, and it has nothing to do with your father….
Suddenly I was impatient to hear the rest of her story and to discover this hidden truth she had promised me. Maybe it would help me find my way out of this dark cave I had retreated into, and back to a world where I was once happy and productive.
It was hard to imagine now, but there had once been a time when I rode the wheel of life as well as anyone. In fact, I rode it like a roller coaster at a theme park. It had not been a fairy tale.
On top of that, I had survived my worst nightmare. I was still here, wasn’t I? Megan still believed in me. She knew I could fix this. She wanted me to.
So off I went, with a measure of hopeful determination I had not felt in a long time. I crossed the street and approached the gate, never taking my eyes off my mother’s, while my heart began to pound in a curious, eager rhythm.
The Deep Blue Sea
Chapter Thirty-two
Cora
It was early October in 1968 when the monstrous wave crashed and exploded onto the coastline of my life, changing my future forever.
I had just turned twenty and was in my sophomore year at Wellesley College. Peter and I were still together. He was working full-time at his father’s pulp and paper plant in Augusta and was being groomed to eventually take over the business when the time came.
In my senior year of high school, I had applied to a few colleges around the country, and as a result of my academic record and volunteer work, I was accepted into Wellesley with a full scholarship. I was so happy when I opened the letter from that illustrious school and read the news. I believed it would be my greatest achievement.
It wasn’t, however. There was something else far more important in my future, but I knew nothing of that yet.
For two years, I studied cultures and humanity throughout the world, with a focus on Africa, Latin America and Asia. I completed courses in cross-cultural studies of family, gender, law, and economics, and in the fall of ’68, I looked forward to graduating with a liberal arts degree in cultural anthropology.
Where life would take me after that, I had no idea. Most of the Wellesley women settled into married life not long after graduation. Some of them made quite spectacular marriages, in fact, for it was, at that time, the customary ambition for a woman of my age to become a wife and raise a family.
Perhaps that’s why I was so distracted in my final year. I wasn’t entirely certain I was ready to take that path.
On a very drizzly Tuesday afternoon, I remember sitting at my desk in my dorm room with a textbook open in front of me. I couldn’t keep my mind on my studies, however. I kept glancing toward the window, where shiny raindrops pelted against the glass and streamed down in clear, quivering rivulets onto the stone sill. A wild wind outside was whipping the leaves off the trees and rattling the windowpanes.
Sitting there by the dim light of my flickering desk lamp and watching the violent weather outside put me in a pensive, reflective mood. I thought of Peter. I missed him, of course, but at the same time, all kinds of unsettling images of traditional domesticity began to flash in my mind like slide photographs on a screen.
A wedding dress. A three-tiered cake. Dinners, dusting, ironing, laundry soap, a burnt chicken in a roasting pan…
My heart began to pound as I sat there, trying so hard to study. I was aware of a growing sense of panic – a panic that quickly turned to desperation.
Frantic thoughts raced through my brain: I was too young. I hadn’t really lived. I wasn’t ready to close all the doors in front of me and cross that matrimonial threshold.
Peter, on the other hand, had no reservations about the future, not a single one. He doubted nothing, questioned nothing, and was simply counting the days until my graduation, when he assumed I would be ready at last to stroll down the aisle with a pretty bouquet of flowers in my hands.
He would have married me straight after high school if I hadn’t had my heart set on college. He’d agreed to wait, only because he knew I needed to see and experience some of the world before I settled down. He knew it because he knew me better than anyone.
That didn’t mean he understood it.
And so, I continued to sit there on that rainy afternoon, chewing on a thumbnail while I struggled with my anxiety.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love Peter. I did. I loved him very much. But for as long as I could remember, I’d felt a vague, mysterious longing deep inside me, which frustrated me, because even I didn’t know how to satisfy it. For a while, I thought Wellesley would cure me of this mysterious yearning, but still, there it was, like the pull of a magnet around my heart.
Tapping the end of my pencil lightly against my lips, I looked down at the small print on the white pages of my textbook…
Then my telephone rang. It was the residence hall reception desk. “There’s a gentleman here to see you.”
A gentleman? I frowned with confusion. It couldn’t be Peter. Unless he’d come to surprise me. But no, he would never do that. Was it my father? He hadn’t mentioned he was coming by.
“I’ll be right down.” I stood up and checked the mirror quickly to make sure my hair was tidy and neat, then dabbed my nose with powder and smoothed out my skirt. I left my room and ventured downstairs.
There, on the far side of the receiving room, a young man in jeans and a black leather jacket stood with his hands in his pockets, looking out the window. I didn’t recognize him, not at first, until he turned around and a quiver of excitement surged through my veins.
Matt.
I sucked in a breath and laid a hand over my heart. It had been almost six years. There had been no word from him, and I had accepted quite some time ago that I would probably never see him again. I’d even made a sincere effort to push every memory of him from my mind, for it was painful sometimes to think about our close friendship.
But there he was, in the flesh, standing in my dormitory at Wellesley College, his thick, black hair wild, unruly and wet, his eyes just as deep and blue as I remembered. There would be no pushing this image away. Not ever.
“Hey,” was all he said.
His gaze traveled slowly down the length of my body. He looked down at my black leather shoes for a long moment before he finally lifted his gaze.
Managing a few shaky breaths, I walked toward him. “My goodness,” I said. “I wasn’t expecting it to be you. What are you doing here?”
Then suddenly I was ecstatic to see him. He looked so different. He seemed to have aged a lifetime. He wasn’t sixteen anymore. He was a man.
He shrugged, then smiled that mischievous, crooked smile, his eyes gleaming, and I knew he was ecstatic to see me, too, even though his posture was relaxed. I could feel it somewhere in the mix of my out-of-control emotions and the clear, vivid memories of our childhood together.
My cheeks flushed with heat. I crossed the remaining distance in three long strides and finally stood before him. “Matt... The last I heard, you were in Chicago.”
He studied all the details of my face. “That’s right, and I’m still there. I’m just visiting right now, staying with my brother in Boston.”
“Well, that’s wonderful.” I wasn’t quite sure what else to say. My brain was turning to mush.
We stared at each other for a few seconds more, and despite feeling completely incoherent, I couldn’t believe how happy I was just to see him.
“You look great,” he said in a soft voice.
I couldn’t help myself. I stepped forward, wrapped my arms around his shoulders, and pulled him into my arms. He immediately buried his face in my neck. The leather of his jacket creaked like an old ship under my hands. He
smelled of musk and rain.
“It’s so good to see you,” I whispered in his ear. “We’ve missed you.”
And there it was. The we. I wasn’t sure why I had said it. I hadn’t meant to inform him of anything. It just came out.
Slowly, he released his grip on my waist and looked me in the eye as he stepped back, nodding as if to say he understood, when I hadn’t meant for him to understand anything.
“So you and Peter are still close?”
“Yes.” I felt awkward all of a sudden. I wished I hadn’t said we, but it was such a habit. “I wasn’t sure if you even knew about us, that we’d been…” I paused. “We’ve been together for a while. You’ve been gone so long.”
Matt casually slid his hands back into his pockets. “I know. I talk to my father every once in a while. He always tells me what’s going on back home.”
I moved to the sofa and sat down. Matt took the chair across from me. He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees.
“How are things with your father?” I asked, because I remembered it was why he’d left Camden in the first place, even before finishing high school.
“Better now that we’re not living in the same house. Or the same town, for that matter.”
I nodded. “I’m glad to hear it.”
Matt leaned back in the chair and stretched out in a lazy sprawl. “I know I used to say I hated him, but…” He glanced around the room. “He just had it rough, that’s all, trying to raise all of us on his own. I can see that now. Though I don’t know if he’s any different than he used to be. He’s probably the same.”
“It couldn’t have been easy for him after your mother died,” I replied. “It couldn’t have been easy for any of you.”
I’d never said anything like that to Matt before. It wasn’t something children said to each other.
“Do you have a job in Chicago?” I asked, sitting forward and resting my chin on a fist.
“Yeah, I’m working for a construction company right now.”
“Doing what?”
“Construction.” He grinned.
I smiled in return. “I see you haven’t changed.”
“Oh, I think I probably have.”
I was tempted to ask why, or in what way, but refrained because it seemed too personal a question after so many years apart.
“Tell me more about your job,” I enquired. “Do you drive a forklift? Fill out invoices? Pour cement?”
“I do a bit of everything, except the invoices. Most of the time, I’m swinging a hammer, or raising a wall.”
That, I could see.
“Do you enjoy it?” I asked.
“It’s a living.”
I sat back and said nothing for moment or two. “I always wondered what became of you after you left.”
He looked down at his index finger, which he was tapping on his knee. “Not much of anything, I suppose. Except that I did finish high school. That was the deal with my aunt. She told me I had to finish, and if I failed just one test, she’d send me back home to Dad.”
I nodded. “So you passed everything, I presume.”
“With honors.”
“Really.” I was so pleased to hear it.
The front door of the residence hall opened, and a group of five freshman girls came dashing inside to escape the wind and rain. Squealing and laughing, they brushed the water from their coats.
“Hi, Cora,” one of them said, sneaking a curious glance at Matt.
They were wondering where he’d come from no doubt, for he was impossibly handsome in a James Dean sort of way. He looked nothing like the young men who came around Wellesley with their short haircuts, crested blazers and neckties.
Yes, there was something dangerous about Matt. There always had been. He wasn’t the kind of boy a young girl’s mother would be pleased to meet.
The freshmen girls climbed the stairs and entered a room upstairs. I wasn’t sorry to hear their squeals die away with the click of a door.
I met Matt’s deep blue eyes again.
“Have you made a lot of friends here?” he asked, looking around at the traditional decor – the Victorian furniture, the chintz curtains, the gilt-framed portraits on the papered walls.
“A few, but I’m older than most of them in this dorm, so we don’t have much in common. I stay in a lot.”
“Because you have a boyfriend back home,” he added, but it seemed more of a question than a statement.
I sat back. “It’s not just that. I spend a lot of time studying. I might want to travel next year, to some of the countries I’ve been learning about.”
I didn’t know where that had come from. I had never before committed to any future plans beyond graduation, nor even hinted at such a thing. I couldn’t imagine what Peter would say.
Matt sat forward slightly. “Yeah? What countries?”
I answered the question as if I’d already given it a great deal of thought. “I’d like to see Africa.”
“Africa.” He leaned back again and tapped that finger on his knee. “That would be great.” He paused. “So how is Peter? He must still be working with his father?”
“That’s right.”
“We always said that’s where he’d end up. Remember?”
I smiled, pleased by this acknowledgement – however small it was – that we had been close at one time and understood each other’s minds.
Another group of girls pushed through the door and giggled into the reception room. When they noticed Matt, they went silent.
Unlike the others, they quickly disappeared up the stairs without a word.
“Busy spot,” he said.
“Want to go somewhere?” I immediately suggested. “We could get a drink or something. I just haven’t seen you in so long… I’d love to hear more about Chicago.”
“Yeah, sure,” he replied. “Where do you want to go?”
“There are a few places in the village. Just let me get my coat. I’ll be right back.”
I hurried up the stairs to my room, threw on some lipstick and brushed my hair, and realized with quite a bit of uneasiness that I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so wound up.
I grabbed my handbag and coat, and trotted back down the stairs.
Matt was waiting by the front door, flipping his keys around his finger. “Ready?”
“Yeah.”
He held the door open for me. Outside, the wind was gusting through the trees and the rain was coming down sideways.
I pulled my coat over my head. “I’m glad you have a car.”
“Though we might need a rowboat if this keeps up.” He pointed toward a silver and black hardtop with shiny metal trim. “That’s my brother’s Buick over there. Come on.”
He took me by the hand and we dashed across the courtyard, splashing through puddles. He unlocked my door and held it open while I climbed in, then slammed it shut, ran around the front of the car and slid into the driver’s seat.
“Now that’s what I call a downpour.” He flicked the water out of his hair.
I laughed and tried to wipe the wetness from my cheeks, but my fingers were wet, too, so I rubbed them on my knees.
“It is an absolutely perfect day,” I said, smiling. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
I reached into my handbag for my compact, and while I checked my makeup in the little round mirror, I was intensely aware of Matt’s eyes on me.
“You’re staring at me,” I said at last, as I snapped the compact shut.
“Yeah, I am.”
I met his gaze, but he didn’t look away. He continued to stare, and for a few brief, electrically-charged seconds, I gave into that old familiar connection that existed between us when we were children – when we would smile at each other as if we could read each other’s minds.
So much about him was the same: the expression in his eyes, the quiet intensity, the way he made me feel as if he were holding me in his arms, though we weren’t touching.
But t
here had always been an inexplicable understanding between us, as if we were swimming together in the same pool of thoughts and desires and ideas, just the two of us. Sometimes, as a child, I felt that he was my other half, even though we were two very different people. When I dreamed at night, he was always a part of those dreams.
He looked away and slipped the key into the ignition, and the connection between us snapped like a taut cord. In that moment I realized, with more than a little regret, that while he was the same in many ways, there were changes in him as well.
Where he had once been angry and wild as a youth, he seemed calmer now. There was something different in his eyes. A look of defeat, I wondered?
Or was it peace? A sense of easiness with the world and his place in it?
I faced forward, contemplating the strange aching sensation in my chest.
I suppose we had lived apart for too long. There were things I didn’t know about him, when at one time I knew everything. The years felt like a deep chasm between us.
He turned the key and started the car. The engine roared. The wipers batted noisily back and forth across the windshield as the rain rapped upon it.
“Where to?” he asked.
I pointed. “Just take us in that direction, then you can turn right onto Central Street.”
We drove across the campus, saying nothing while I looked out at the blustery weather outside. We drove past rolling green hills strewn with the first fallen leaves of the season, and past wooded groves of conifers and ancient oaks. The brick-and-stone university buildings – cloaked in green ivy with leaves quivering in the storm – always reminded me of old English manor houses, straight from a fairy tale.
That moment felt like a fairy tale, I thought soberly. A stormy, tempestuous tale, full of uncertainty and regret.
Or maybe it was more like a hallucination, and in the morning I would wake and discover it was all nothing more than a dream.
Chapter Thirty-three
“It’s a nice campus,” Matt said.
We stopped at an intersection. The rain pounded on the roof of the car, while the wipers squeaked intermittently across the glass.