“So,” she said, “what I wanted to say is that I’ll be there on my own. Well, with Rico. But … just in case …”
I waited a bit before saying, “In case what?”
“In case it matters to you. Percy, you don’t make things easy, do you?”
Laughter seemed to be the most diplomatic reply. I might have answered that I was not the culprit here when it came to making things hard. But I am getting better and better at holding my tongue. I am a man of too many words—no secret to anyone—but I am slowly learning to withhold them when it is wise. To wait rather than speak.
“I have hair again,” she said. “A little. I look like Rico’s GI Joe. Like I joined the marines.”
“Lucky for you we live in an age of sympathy for the soldier.” Again, I waited.
“Oh Percy, the world is such a strange and illogical place.”
“As I believe you told me the day we met. You underestimate my memory, Sarah. And please don’t tell me again how complicated everything is.” I let my rebuke sink in for a moment. Then I said, more kindly, “I am learning to live with complications that just may rival yours.”
“I want to hear all about them. I do.”
“You will. But right now, one of those complications has made me a sandwich and I have simply got to eat it or I will pass out. I also have to pee rather badly.”
“I’ll see you at the wedding.”
“You will,” I said.
After eating two sandwiches, I put on my pineapple swim trunks and walked to the harbor. We were midway through September, but the Atlantic Ocean was as begrudgingly warm as it ever gets. I launched myself from my favorite rock and swam toward the lighthouse, the closest point on the other side of the harbor. The first lighthouse on the point was tended by one Ezekiel Darling, who Poppy insisted must be tangled somewhere in my bloodlines. As much as I like history, genealogy bores me, so I have never bothered to find out whether she was right, and I probably never shall. I suppose that if I’m ever invited to parties here where people care about such things, I’ll be asked about the connection. One day soon, I’ll dream up a story or two; why not lend myself a bit of local color?
The harbor is long and narrow: on a good day, I can swim across it in ten minutes—though this is a tricky proposition at midsummer, when boats are tightly moored from one end to the other. Then, you could practically cross it on foot, stepping from deck to deck. By Labor Day, however, the number of boats has visibly diminished. First go the flashy motorized hulks and the visiting yachts from far-flung ports like Halifax and Chesapeake Bay; then, one by one, the indigenous sailboats disappear. The few that linger are the trawlers, the rusty stinkpots that haul in whatever fish remain to be caught. This gradual winnowing, I’ve mused, is not unlike the deterioration of memory: the last recollections to go, if you’re lucky, are the homeliest, the plainest, the ones that travel farthest, if slowly, and cast their nets deep.
In my early days of learning the town—repeatedly losing my bearings, reversing my steps from lanes that dwindled to private yards or scraps of pebbled beach—I found myself on the street where Poppy lived as a girl. She’d driven me here, once, decades before. I recognized it because of an eccentric fork in the road, but I could no longer single out the house. Several stood close together, all old, no two alike, yet countless coats of paint and the intervening years had stolen from me the details necessary to saying, There. That’s the place!
Strangely, I wasn’t sad. I recalled Trudy’s odd story about something she’d heard her mother say: that the third child she wished for was the opposite of a ghost, someone waiting to be. Perhaps that’s what Poppy was, here and now: the opposite of a ghost. She had brought me to a place of becoming, away from a place of having been.
Oh, Poppy.
I made it all the way across the harbor and back. I would be very sore, but I didn’t care. When I returned home, both young men were asleep on the couch. The television was on, broadcasting a tennis match between two alarmingly muscular women. I stood and watched until one of them raised her thick arms in victory. Then the news came on, and right away I turned it off.
I had yet to subscribe to any newspapers, national or local. Sometimes I heard rumors when I shopped—that the world of high finance was about to implode, that Obama might actually win, that my new town would have to swallow a huge tax hike to pay for a seawall—but I’d had quite enough of headlines, enough of police logs and photographs of loved ones in trouble with the law.
Robert’s restraining order from the town of Matlock will prevent him from attending the wedding. Ira wishes that Celestino could be there, too, but we know it won’t be wise for him to show his face, either. Celestino tells me that he’s cared for that garden through several seasons, that he knows exactly which roses will be blooming the day of the ceremony. He’s promised me that next spring he will make a beautiful shade garden in our yard, despite the tyranny of the tree. He tells me there is one sunny corner for roses. He is already preparing the beds.
I will have to contend with seeing Maurice and Evelyn, both of whom I feel have betrayed me, if subtly; yet far more difficult will be my encounter with Clover. I have no idea how she will react to my presence, nor how I will react to her reaction.
After the fire, she wrote me a letter in which she told me how sorry she was about the damage to the house but how she did not regret having told “the truth about Robert.” She told me she’d come to realize that I loved Trudy more than I loved her and loved Robert more than I loved her children. She said she could forgive me but would rather not have any contact with me for at least the rest of the summer. She asked me not to phone her.
I wanted to sit down and write her at once, to tell her how wrong she was on each and every point. Yet I also imagined telling her everything I’d honestly felt about her behavior over the past three years. I would withhold nothing. By happenstance, Douglas called that day, to give me an update on Robert’s case. He could tell how upset I was, and he pried a confession from me.
“Dad, don’t do that,” he said. “Don’t write her. Not yet. I can tell you what’s going on. She’s reached the stage of therapy where she’s really grieving for her mother. And you’re not looking too good in that scenario. How could you?”
I wondered how much Douglas knew from Trudy about the night of Poppy’s death; everything, of course. But when he continued, I realized I had it wrong. “You’re the one who stuck around,” he said. “The parent who stays is the only one who can make the mistakes. Not fair, but what can you do? An absent mom can do no wrong. She’ll get past this, Dad. She will.” Douglas, my good-tempered ordinary fellow of a son-in-law, who called me Dad without a hint of irony, whom I had always liked but not well enough until now, blamed me for nothing.
So I let Clover be. I stepped back and, yes, held my tongue. And since the fire had deprived me of the few farewell weeks I’d expected to spend in the house, I would not bump into her, not by accident or contrivance. I had my spies, however. It was Ira who told me that Clover would be spending July and August in New York, subletting an apartment from Ira’s sister.
She is back from that summer now, back at Elves & Fairies, planning what Ira calls the “auction do-over.” She will be at his wedding. She will be there with both of her children. Now there are two people I can’t wait to see.
My young men are sometimes secretive, and both of them flip through the daily mail feigning disinterest. Celestino received a letter from France last week, forwarded by Rayzon Dettrah, addressed to Celestino in a flourishy hand that reminded me, odiously, of the letter I’d received from Maurice Fougère. He took it away to his room at once; I could not decipher his expression.
Robert has an e-mail account linked to mine. We check it—together, as required—every evening after dinner. I sit beside him as the list of new messages cascades from top to bottom, reminding me of the old-fashioned boards on which one still sees train schedules posted in places like Grand Central Station.
r /> And one day, there it was. Neither of us recognized the sender, and we were about to delete it as spam. The subject line read, regrets from afar. Robert said, “Wait.” He opened it.
i only recently learned what went down last spring. the whole story. i had no idea you’d take the fall, believe me. i am sure i never lied to you, though i understood what you chose to believe. a lot of that wasn’t true. it became necessary truth in the light of things that had to happen. i know enough to know that if you are reading this, you won’t agree. people will say i was not your friend. not true but so be it. i owe you money and you will receive it. i hope you are okay, i know you will rise and thrive. that’s you. you exist in a zone of tranquillity & strength and all will be well. as for me, i remain senza ragazza, and in a way senza patria too. my own cross(es) to bear. be in touch with me—or not. i move around at present, but wherever i’m staying, i keep tabs on the world. nor have i ceased working for what matters most. no choice but perseverance! i hope our friendship remains, a small portion at least.
Faint, mostly inscrutable noises escaped from Robert as he read. I was breathing heavily, trying not to shout with indignation at the vile, smug, disingenuous miasma emanating from the words on the screen.
I could tell that he was reading the message over and over again. When he closed it, I reminded him that he must forward it to his parole officer. “I know that, Granddad.” He struggled to speak without emotion. I watched him click on the white arrow and type Mike’s address.
We moved on, without comment, to messages from Robert’s mother; from a friend still at Harvard; from one of the many overwrought environmental organizations whose newsletters he reads and quotes, his passion for “doing the right thing” undiminished.
When Poppy used to reminisce about her childhood, she’d say that Vigil Harbor was a town of people who respect your privacy as long as you let them feel that they know your deepest secrets. Take a walk in this town on a balmy summer’s night and you will pass many an open window spilling conversations directly onto the street. It’s quite the opposite of living in Matlock, and that is, for the moment and possibly the rest of my life, precisely what I need.
It’s what all three of us need. So while our arrangement may perplex the casually nosy passerby, I like to think that the neighbors have debated our peculiar triad and come to a consensus that offers toothsome fodder for speculation and yet, because we’re so friendly and unguarded, spares us suspicion of anything truly perverse. We may be heard grilling hamburgers, arguing over television channels, cheering for the Red Sox (sometimes with Norval or Douglas present), and singing along with Tom Lehrer, Nat King Cole, Mercedes Sosa, Tom Waits, or Kanye West. (The things I am learning to tolerate!)
The young men may be heard practicing their achingly awful French, sometimes up in the tree. (Passez-moi le—qu’est-ce que c’est, ce truc? L’ammaire? Did I just ask you to pass me the ocean? The hammer, dude! … Veux-tu prendre un break pour manger un peu de chips et salsa? Moi, je peux fabriquer du guacamole, peut-être.… Avez-vous une idée à propos de cette bizarre angle?) I hadn’t thought of French lessons as a way to get them laughing again, but eh voilà. I still have my flashes of genius.
Then again, the eavesdropper on the sidewalk might hear Spanish or even an Indian dialect whose name I have yet to catch: this would be Celestino upstairs on the phone, most likely with his mother or one of his sisters. Celestino never sounds so spirited as he does in these conversations, which range from angry and exasperated to joyful and teasing. I do not need to understand a word to know that these are family conversations.
Ears that know our house must perk up a bit whenever a woman’s voice joins in. It could be Daphne’s; she lives two blocks away and drops in sometimes when she’s walking her Jack Russell. She’s invited us to a neighborhood party the weekend after Ira and Anthony’s wedding. (“You will meet the high, and you will meet the low.”) Or it might be Trudy’s voice—though she is as busy as ever, and her office is nearly an hour’s drive from here. And though my hunch may be a delusion, I am thinking that soon the occasional woman’s voice will be Sarah’s. Sarah’s voice and her unbridled laughter, Sarah alive and as well as can be, drifting out into the streets of Vigil Harbor, over the harbor itself. Voices carry surprisingly far over water.
They stand on the highest branches that will hold them, each with an arm braced around the trunk. One arm rests comfortably on the other. Separately and together, they are shocked to realize how far below the ground is, how far they can see over the house and the lower trees in nearby yards. They see the harbor, the lighthouse, a small uninhabited island—and, on the crisp horizon, a massive ship aimed for open sea, its progress almost impossible to gauge.
Beneath them, through leaves that are brightening and falling, they can make out the framework of the tree house they’re building; unlike the one they built in Matlock, this one they’ve approached with only the sketchiest of plans.
“Do we know what we’re doing?” one of them says to the other.
The other one shrugs. “Qui sait bien ce qu’il fait? Personne!”
They laugh.
One of them is thinking about French women in general and about Madeleine, their bossy French teacher, in particular. At the first meeting she said fiercely, to the five people who showed up, “The only way you become any good at a new language is when you are perfectly willing to make a complete fool of yourself. You’ve got to shed your pride!” He sees her point, but he is thinking that there are certain places in his life where he will never shed his pride again.
The other one is thinking about what they might eat for lunch. These days he thinks often about pleasures of the moment: the pleasure of TV, of sports (where were those tennis courts they passed the other day?), of swimming in the ocean; definitely the more difficult pleasures of building the tree house. So much is uncertain, but not this: he is becoming a good carpenter.
“How about a stained-glass window? Old wine bottles.”
“I like that idea.”
“And a roof made of funky old license plates.”
“Where do we get them?”
“We’ll figure it out. That’s the way we roll. Comme ça. We figure stuff out.”
“C’est vrai.”
The snap of the screen door draws their gaze to the house. Percy Darling steps onto the porch, dressed for the wedding. He wears that vaudeville orange bow tie he wore at Thanksgiving, a white shirt, a blue jacket. He looks like a large songbird, in full courting plumage. When they call to him, he looks around in several directions, startled. It takes him a moment to see where they are. He shades his eyes and shouts at them to be careful. They are too high in that tree!
Their reply comes in French.
“Ne t’inquiète pas!”
“Nous connaissons cet arbre bien!”
He shouts at them, also in French, to be good while he’s away. Or they think that’s what he said. He gets into the pickup truck and backs out slowly.
Wind blows through the boughs of the tree, and it’s as if the sound of the ocean has been tossed aloft, directly to them, for them alone. They watch the truck climb the hill, pass the graveyard, and turn out of sight onto the road leading inland, away from the shore.
Acknowledgments
For touring me through their respective worlds and answering my too-many questions, I am especially grateful to Barbara Burg, Lucy Curran, and Jennifer McKenna. Thank you all for your time and generosity. The thorough and engaging Widener: Biography of a Library, by Matthew Battles, was also enormously helpful.
A Note About the Author
Julia Glass is the author of Three Junes, winner of the 2002 National Book Award for fiction; The Whole World Over; and I See You Everywhere, winner of the 2009 Binghamton University John Gardner Fiction Book Award. She has also won prizes for her short fiction and essays, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advance
d Study. She lives with her family in Massachusetts.
Julia Glass, The Widower's Tale
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